“The door’s locked,” Crash said.
“Is Noah in there?” Karmen asked.
“We don’t know,” Parrish said. “Did you try to reach him with your mind earlier?”
“I tried to connect with all of you,” she said.
“Can you tell if he’s in there?” Parrish asked.
Why wasn’t he answering the door? And why would he have locked it in the first place?
Maybe he just wasn’t in there at all. Maybe he was on his way here now, and he’d just locked the door behind him to keep their stuff safe.
That had to be it.
Only, she didn’t think that was it. She knew he was in that room, and that something was wrong. She could feel it.
“We have to break it down,” she shouted, suddenly feeling that they didn’t have much time. “Crash, help me.”
Together, they both walked as far away from the door as they could and then counted to three. In sync, they both rammed the side of their bodies into the door.
Thankfully, these rooms were not designed to be all that secure. No one who built this place ever expected it to be a safe zone against a zombie horde or anything like that, so there was just a normal doorknob and lock, like you’d see in any house or office building.
The door opened, and both she and Crash had to catch themselves before they ran into the set of bunk beds against the wall on the other side of the room.
To her horror, Noah was curled up on the floor, shivering.
No, shivering was not a strong enough word to describe it. He was shaking uncontrollably.
Parrish dropped to the floor at his side.
“Noah, can you hear me?” she asked.
She placed a hand on his arm to try to get him to open his eyes, but the moment her skin touched his, her panic ratcheted up a notch.
“He’s burning up,” she said. “Crash, grab a washcloth and water bottle from my bag.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Karmen said. “He has to wake up. How did he even get sick?”
Parrish shook him a little less gently this time, and he didn’t even attempt to open his eyes. Was he in some kind of coma?
When had this happened? She’d just seen him an hour or so ago when he’d told her to go to Tank’s office. He seemed fine then. How had he gotten so sick in just an hour?
Her entire body went stiff with fear.
“Do you think it’s possible he’s been bitten?” she asked.
Noah had apparently taken most of his clothes off before he climbed into bed, so it made it easier for her to search for any kind of bite.
“There’s not a scratch on him,” she said. “I don’t understand. What could have happened to him?”
Crash handed her a cool, wet washcloth, and she pressed it against his forehead.
“Stephen,” he said, sitting down on one of the other beds. “He helped to heal Stephen, earlier. The guy was so far gone, everyone was sure he was going to die. Even with the antibiotics, it wasn’t looking good. But Noah stepped in. Did his healing thing. Maybe something got into his system.”
Parrish tried to calm her mind, but it was racing a mile a minute.
They had a horde of zombies closing in on this place, with God knows how many super zombies in the mix. Zoe and the fifth were alive and trapped somewhere in New York with the Dark One and Lily searching for them.
And now Noah had contracted some kind of potentially fatal illness from trying to heal a guy they’d never spoken to before and already risked their lives to save.
It was not a great day.
“I hate to break it to you, but we don’t have time to deal with him right now,” Karmen said. “Let him stay in here and rest if he has to, but we’ve got a horde to deal with.”
“He might die if we don’t deal with this right now. A battle out there could last hours. I can’t just leave him like this.”
“If we don’t leave him, we might all die,” Karmen shouted.
Parrish shook her head. This was not a choice she was prepared to make. She needed to take it one thing at a time.
Everyone kept looking to her to be the leader here, but she didn’t have all the answers, either.
She was tired of having it all put on her shoulders. She just wasn’t cut out for it.
“Then you come up with a plan,” she said to Karmen. “I’m going to try to wake him up, so you can either help me, or you can get out.”
She saw Karmen and Crash exchange worried glances, but she honestly didn’t have time or energy to think about them. She just needed Noah to wake up so they could go out and fight. She needed him by her side right now.
Somewhere inside her mind, she realized how ridiculous that was. There was no way Noah was going to be fighting with them right now, even if they could wake him up.
Still, she had to know he was okay.
She took the water bottle Crash had partially used on the washcloth and poured it on Noah’s face and neck.
Finally, she got at least some kind of reaction from him, then. He still didn’t open his eyes, but his body shifted on the floor a little bit. That was something, at least.
“Here, let me try,” Karmen said, pushing Parrish to the side.
Normally, Parrish would have been pissed to be pushed like that, but right now, she was just glad someone else was willing to help.
“I’m going to see if I can snag some of those antibiotics from the storage room,” Crash said. “I’ll be right back.”
He left the room, and the second he opened the door, Parrish got a glimpse of the chaos that had quickly erupted within the compound. Word of the horde had spread to everyone, and they all seemed to be running down the hallways, guns
