Waking Up Dead

push it back.

Jackson frowned again and wrinkled her nose. “I could swear I smelled…” She shook her head. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Lynx,” Luke said slowly, taking a deep breath, wondering if the concussion was messing with his mind. “You can smell Lynx. It smells exactly like the stuff you sprayed outside the rec center…”

“It’s useless,” Sebastian piped up. “No good to anyone apart from as a deodorant.”

“Which is its actual purpose,” Luke said.

Sebastian shrugged. “If my own specially mixed citrate spray doesn’t repel them, you can bet the weak amounts of citrate in that stuff won’t. Anyone still hoping it will is dead wrong. Literally. And besides,” he added. “I confiscated all the aftershaves and deodorants from camp months ago.”

“Then how—”

A roar sounded from outside—the noise splitting the air around them. Luke felt Jackson jump. She placed a hand on his and made to stand.

“Wait,” he said, because the sound was teasing around the edges of Luke’s battered brain as he tried desperately to place it.

“I can’t believe it,” Jackson whispered. “It can’t be.”

“What is it, Jack?” he asked, worried for just a moment that more zombies were approaching, maybe even burrowing. How could they possibly fight off more? But…the roar had not been a groan…it was something else entirely.

“The fire,” she whispered.

Luke shifted, remembering the moment the fire had rained down. Where had it come from? What was going on? “I don’t—”

“Look,” she said.

She squeezed his hand and pointed toward the open door, where the flames were still flickering in the distance. Luke narrowed his eyes, trying to work out what she meant, a moment later and understanding dawned. “There’s someone else out there.”

“Someone else,” her words were whispered, her eyes wide. “It can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” Sebastian asked. “What the devil’s going on?”

Someone screamed, another roar sounded. Luke tried to lift up a bit farther to see, but Jackson’s hand on his shoulder halted him. She turned, met his gaze, shock stamped across her features, and then, oddly, she smiled.

“Tye,” she said. “It’s Tye.”

…

Jackson stood up, wincing as she did so, fucking tears threatening all over again. Her entire body shook, pain radiating out from everywhere, but it was almost as though those feelings were secondary to the alarm going off in her head…the possibility that she was right, that he’d found them at last.

Tye.

She narrowed her eyes against the smoke. Looking, searching.

When a figure emerged from the gloom—illuminated by the last of the flickering flames—it emerged in a way she had not expected at all. It was running, but slowly, because held in its arms was something Jackson had never thought to see in a million years.

Tye. But he was not alone.

She gasped as the light brought his face into focus. Those features, so dear to her, the brother that had helped to fill the hole of those she’d lost. It was almost too much to comprehend.

“Jack?” she heard Luke’s words and swallowed down the lump in her throat. Her knees were shaking, the damaged one in particular feeling like it could go at any moment.

“It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s him.”

Sebastian rushed past her—his limp barely slowing him down—as he too caught sight of the figures. A moment later and they were all in the room. Sebastian. Pete. Jay…and Tye…

Jackson shuffled forward, reaching out, needing to touch him to convince herself he was actually real, but he sprinted past her, blood pouring down his face, and the heavy bundle in his arms bleeding even more.

“Tye…”

Jackson made to step forward, but her knee failed, and she would have fallen. Only Luke was suddenly there, struggling as much as she, but he caught her in his arms and held her fast. His presence was like cold water over a heated wound, and Jackson half slumped against him. The pain, the shock, everything overwhelming her.

“Help me! Help her!” Tye’s words were wrenched from him, and Jackson’s heart thudded at the sound.

She looked down at the woman who Seb and Tye were laying on the floor. She was tiny, her cloud of curly brown hair spread out like a halo around her head. She was also covered in blood and pus, her eyes closed tight…and she was curled in on herself.

“Has she been bitten?” Seb demanded.

Tye nodded, his jaw locked tight as Seb peeled back the woman’s T-shirt, exposing a deep bite on the side of her belly.

“I thought it was dead,” Tye growled. “It was in the ground. I thought it was already dead. Oh God…”

“You need to stand back,” Seb said, just as the woman gave a bloodcurdling scream.

“Help her,” Tye demanded. “Fucking fix her.”

The words held so much pain. Everyone in the room felt it. Each looking from one to the other, understanding passing between them. Jackson’s eyes met Seb’s and she immediately suspected what he was thinking. When he gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head, she knew for sure.

She stepped forward, Luke helping her to do so. “Tye?”

Tye turned, confusion chasing across his haunted features. “Jack?”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, it’s me.”

“I knew I’d find you here,” he said. “Polly promised. The fire was her idea.” He reached out and stroked his hand across the back of the woman’s face. The gesture was so tender, so loving, that Jackson’s heart hitched. Tye had found his Luke…and she was so happy for him, but then she realized what was about to happen and her heart sank.

“How long ago was she bit?” Sebastian asked, pulling a syringe from his bag.

Tye shook his head, pain pinching his face. “I don’t know? Five minutes? Maybe more?”

Sebastian plunged the syringe in and the woman, Polly—where did Jackson know that name from?—let out a shriek. It made them all, all but Tye, jump back, because the sound was so familiar to each and every one of them.

“No, no, no!” Tye leaned across and started to gather Polly into his arms. Despite the screams and the shrieks she was completely limp, her head lolling as he tried to move her.

“Don’t do that,” Seb said, pulling the syringe free. “Leave her there.”

“The floor’s cold,” Tye snapped. “She hates the cold.”

“I know.” Sebastian held the syringe aloft. The blood inside it seemed almost to glint in the light. “Pete? Jay?”

The two men stepped forward, ready Jackson knew, to pin Polly down the moment she tried to attack. Because she would attack. It was simply a question of time now.

“Get away from her,” Tye shouted as Pete and Jay moved in. “Get the fuck away from her.”

“It’s okay,” Sebastian said, but his words were drowned as the redheaded zombie groaned, as if sensing the awakening of one of her own.

“Fix her,” Tye roared, placing kiss after kiss on the Polly zombie’s head, rocking her stirring body in his arms. “Fucking fix her.”

Sebastian stood up, the syringe still in hand, the deep red, antibody-rich blood almost pulsing. “I intend to.”