Page 39 of Immune

That thought is shoved away with the force of a tidal wave. He’s not my problem. He’s likely awake by now, already aware that I’ve slipped away while he was sleeping. He’s probably annoyed, probably following me, because apparently the guy interprets the words ‘don’t follow me’ as an actual challenge. A stupid, warm-smelling, worn-flannel challenge.

Tightening my jaw, I reach for a plastic container on the highest shelf. Just as my fingers wrap around it, another groan sounds through the floorboards. Not the usual kind this time. Oh, no. This one has some weight to it.

My body turns to stone in an instant and I watch as dust falls in a speckled curtain from the ceiling. It’s quickly followed by a thump from upstairs, and I swallow hard.

A Zed.

And then another.

My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach. They must have heard me trying to wrangle the cabinet into submission,or maybe caught my trail. Hell, maybe the building simply got bored of the silence and decided to have a dinner party with unfavorable guests.

Whatever the reason, I can’t ignore the dragging of feet that scrape across the floor above. A low groan follows, then several more, and I close my eyes for a long moment in a funny little prayer for patience. Then I breathe almost silently, “Fuck my life.”

Shoving the container into my bag without checking it, I turn toward the stairs just as the ceiling cracks. Not above me, but beside me. The sound tears through the basement like snapping bones, and I move before I can even think, diving toward the nearest metal shelf as the floor gives way. Wood explodes downward. Plaster, tiles, furniture, and one very confused Zed come crashing through the ceiling in a storm of dust and rot.

The impact knocks me off my feet, and pain bursts through my shoulder as I hit the ground hard, my bad knee twisting under me. My breath is knocked out of me, the air puffing right out of my lungs, and for one long second, everything around me turns white, and loud, and fucking impossible.

Then the Zed that fell through the floor twitches a mere three feet away from my face.

“Shit.”

I scramble backward, my hand slamming against something sharp. Pain bursts across my palm, but I ignore it, grabbing my knife as the Zed starts to drag itself toward me. Half of its ribcage has caved in from the fall, and one of its arms has twisted at an angle that turns my stomach, but its white, cloudy eyes are fixed on my movement.

It snaps its jaw at me, and I kick it in the face with the heel of my boot. Pain screams through my knee, but the Zed’shead cracks sideways, long enough for me to roll onto my hip and drive my knife through its temple in one swift movement.

The body drops, and dust chokes the air as the Zeds above me groan. The hole in the ceiling gapes open to the clinic floor above, busted beams now jutting out at questionable angles. Dead hands reach through, fingers clawing at empty air. One Zed leans too far and almost topples after the first, catching itself on a splintered board with a wet, garbled snarl.

I shove to my feet… or, I try to. My knee buckles and the world tilts around me. I have no idea how I manage it, but I catch myself on a shelf before I go down again, gritting back the kind of sound that would inevitably get me killed in a room full of snapping teeth. The stairs are half-buried under beams and shelving, and getting up is going to take time, a whole lot of noise, and a miracle I won’t be betting my life on.

I check the basement for another exit, breath coming too fast under my bandana. Storage door. Maintenance panel. There has to be something. Old buildings like these always seem to have a never-ending gut to them. Pipes, tunnels, service hallways, ways for workers to crawl under the world and fix things no one else would think about.

Above me, the Zeds are pressing closer to the hole. Rotten fingers are clawing at broken edges, and one finally falls through. I jerk back harshly as it hits the floor all wrong, its skull crackling grossly against the concrete. Somehow, it still moves, because of course that’s my luck right now. I drive my knife down into its skull before it can push itself up, then stagger away from the impact with panting breaths.

Blood runs down my palm, my knee is throbbing, my backpack feels too heavy, and the room suddenly feels like it’s closing in on me.

Absolutely not. I can’t let that happen. I haven’t survived six years, Mom’s white eyes, Maine leaving and never returning,packless heats, fever dreams, and the world becoming one giant shit show only to get trapped in a basement because I was looking for expired pills.

“Calm down and think, Dakota,” I hiss to myself, seconds before another Zed drops into the hole.

This fucker lands on its side and instantly starts crawling. I don’t think, I simply act, throwing my knife at it. It sinks wetly into its eye socket, the Zed pauses for only a split second before it starts crawling a little slower toward me. Great. Now my knife is all the way over there and the fucker isn’t even dead.

“You’re an idiot, Kota,” I grumble loudly, because what use is there in being quiet now?

Another sound comes from above, but not one I was expecting. It’s not a groan, nor the creaking of the old building. It’s a voice.

“Kota?”

Everything in me stills as time freezes for a split second. For one insane second, I think it’s Maine. My mind conjures the possibility before I can stop it, gripping tightly with both hands, cruel and unrelenting. Then reality comes and slaps it away, right before a head pops through the hole in the ceiling.

Kaito. Of course. Tell the guy not to follow me and he develops selective hearing. I glare at his worried face, fury and relief battling inside me so hard they might as well be the same thing. Then I snap, “Are you shitting me right now?”

He looks down at me from the edge of the broken floor, dark hair damp from the rain, eyes scanning quickly. He looks a little paler than before, which I’m considering hella rude given that I stitched him up and expected him to at least pretend he wasn’t going to ruin my hard work by being himself.

His gaze finds me first, and then he sees the crawling Zed, the broken stairs, and the dead hands clawing near the gap in the floor.

“Don’t move,” he calls down.

I give him a look that hopefully says more than words could. But just in case, I retort, “Oh, fine. Ruin my plans, why don’t you? I was about to host a Zumba class down here.”