Dan gets to his feet and wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt.
“I’m sorry, Dan. She didn’t deserve to die.”
Dan nods and walks to the table.
Thomas stays with Jennie for a moment, looking at her, feeling like he needs to say something, but unsure what. “I love you,” seems so tacky, so movie-like. Instead, he just whispers: “Bye, Jennie. Sorry we need to leave you like this.”
He’s just about to turn away, when he notices something different about her. He kneels down and puts a finger under her nose. No wind. Jennie isn’t breathing anymore. He turns his head and looks at Dan.
Dan stares back at him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Is she … is she dead?”
Thomas nods.
Dan breaks down into tears. He slumps to the floor and sobs into his palms. “Why is this happening? Why us? Couldn’t it have been someone else who had to take out those stupid papers?”
Thomas feels a hard lump in his throat. The whole thing is still too surreal to take in. It’s gone way too fast. He can’t believe Jennie is gone—not really. It starts spinning behind his eyes. A sharp headache is throbbing right underneath his temples. He has never been this thirsty in his life.
He goes and picks up the pipe and starts banging away at the hatch once more. Then, Dan calls out his name.
Thomas turns around. Dan is standing a few feet away, stiff as a board, pointing to Jennie.
Jennie is lying in the exact same position; she hasn’t moved an inch. But her eyes are open. They’re staring up into the ceiling.
They’re blank.
But alive.
EIGHT
Thomas bangs away faster and faster. He’s no longer worried about the zombie child waiting on the other side of the hatch. He doesn’t register the dust or the woodchips hitting his face and getting into his eyes. He doesn’t even feel the blisters burning on his hands. He just wants to get out of here before Jennie comes back to life.
Dan has gone to the farthest corner. He’s just standing there, staring across the room at his sister, who’s still lying there, not moving, eyes open wide.
Almost through ... almost through ...
The muscles in his arms are aching. Between the blows he can hear the zombie scratching eagerly right above him.
And then it happens.
A piece the size of a fist breaks off. Thomas lowers the pipe, panting, and stares up through the hole. For a moment, nothing happens.
Then a milky-white eye appears on the other side. The dead gaze fastens on Thomas, as he feels his skin contracting all over his back. The eye disappears, and instead a tiny, greyish hand comes through the hole. Judging from the remains of sky-blue nail polish, the hand once belonged to a girl. The hand grabs and flails eagerly in empty air.
“I think it’s her,” Thomas says. “The girl from the photo album.”
Dan doesn’t reply.
Thomas turns to look at him, and immediately sees what Dan sees.
Jennie is sitting up. If he didn’t know better, he could almost be tempted to think Jennie’s body might have fought off the infection, that she’s no longer ill.
But one good look at her face is enough to break that illusion. The seventeen-year-old girl who less than half an hour ago was Thomas’s annoying girlfriend, is dead. The creature now sitting there, glaring around with an empty expression, has nothing to do with Jennie. It looks like her, but behind the eyes is nothing human; only hunger.
The Jennie zombie bares its tiny, white teeth and growls from deep in its throat. It starts getting to its feet with cumbersome movements, like an overgrown toddler.
Something flies across Thomas’s brain at that moment. He has seen a lot of zombie movies. In some of them, the zombies run around like people on speed. They can sprint, jump and even climb fences. But in other movies, they are slow and wobbly and move around like sleepwalkers. Those movies have always been his favorites, because the zombies are a lot more terrifying when they move slowly.
Jennie obviously belongs to that category. It takes her half a minute to stand up. When she finally manages, she immediately reaches both arms out towards Thomas and takes two steps forward.
For a moment, Thomas is certain the cord won’t hold. It will simply snap and Jennie will walk right over to him, put her arms around his neck, like she used to do back when they were still in love, but this time it wouldn’t be to kiss him—instead, she would bury her fingernails in his neck and bite off his ear. He sees it all very clearly.
The cord holds.
The pull of it is almost enough to throw her off-balance. She stumbles and snarls. Regains her balance and tries for another step forward. The cord stops her once more. She tries again. And again. She doesn’t look down, not even for a second. She’s not at all concerned with finding out what is holding her back. Her eyes are only fixed on Thomas. Her first meal, waiting right there, a few yards in front of her. She steps forward again. Is stopped. Again. Stopped.
Thomas forces himself to regain focus, and he looks over at Dan, only to see a boy who has obviously left the situation mentally. His gaze is distant, his lips are trembling, and he is absentmindedly shaking his head.
“Dan? … Dan! … Dan!”
Dan turns his head and looks at Thomas, his eyes coming somewhat into focus again.
“I’m almost through the hatch now. As soon as it breaks, we need to be quick—so be ready, okay?”
Dan nods.
Thomas turns back to the hatch in the ceiling.
