Even my body had its limits.
“Dead,” I repeated out loud. The word came out sounding garbled.
“Dead? Dead? Oh, no. You don’t get to tell us something like that and then die.” Bethany put her face right next to mine, and it came into focus.
More or less.
“That’s not how this works, Super Girl. You don’t get to go to sleep. You don’t get to pass out. You don’t get to die. The only thing you get to do is wake up and tell us what the hell is going on.” Beth’s words were harsh, but her touch was gentle as she pressed something warm to my skin—a warm washcloth, damp and soft. “And then,” she added, working the cloth across the surface of my body, “we’re going to have a nice, long chat about lying to the Bethany. Surface wounds, my ass.”
My last thought before I drifted back into darkness was that Bethany appeared to be referring to herself in the third person.
This could not possibly be good.
“Do you know what this is, Kali-Kay?”
Mommy is in a good mood. I think. I look at the object in her hand and then shake my head.
“Nuh-uh,” I say. I stick my fingers in my mouth and give them a light chew. “What?”
Mommy gently takes my hand out of my mouth. “This is a gun. Can you say gun?”
“Gun,” I repeat dutifully.
Mommy takes my still-damp hand, brushes it over the surface of the barrel. It is cold and hard. It feels like a doorknob. It looks funny, too.
“Do you want to play a game, Kali?”
Mommy and I play lots of games. Secret games. I am her secret girl.
“Close your eyes and count to ten,” Mommy says. I close my eyes and count to four. I like four.
“Okay, now open your eyes.” Mommy smiles, but it does not reach her eyes. It makes my tummy hurt. “Where’s the gun, Kali?”
I can’t see the gun anymore. She hid it, and I don’t know where it is. I wish I did. I wish I could tell her. I wish I could be good.
“Find the gun, baby.”
I’m not good at this game, the secret game. I put my fingers back in my mouth. We have lots of secrets, Mommy, Mama, and me.
This time, when I woke up, the world was the right color and the right shape, and I recognized the person looking down at me instantly.
Vaughn.
It figured—the almost invincible girl gets hurt, and they call a vet. Given that the others had seen me tearing through a zombie horde like a wild animal, it seemed highly appropriate—if a bit insulting.
You’re not an animal. They’re human. You’re more.
Maybe I was just in a bit of a mood after being zombie chow, but instead of warming me from the inside out, Zev’s words made me want to roll my eyes. I’d never asked to share my brain with a two-bit motivational speaker.
I hadn’t asked for any of this.
“Your vitals are good. Your wounds are healing, and based on your body temperature, I’d guess your system is burning through the mortis bacteria instead of allowing it to shred your brain.” Vaughn paused, his brown eyes searching mine. “How do you feel?”
I felt fine, naked, and thirsty—in that order. I remembered the looks on my friends’ faces when I’d made my confession all too well. Physically, I was doing okay, but I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so open to attack.
So vulnerable.
So much for keeping my back to the wall.
“I’m fine,” I said, not meeting Vaughn’s eyes. “Thirsty.”
I very purposefully did not specify what, exactly, I was thirsting for.
Hunting without feeding is ill-advised, Zev told me, undeterred by my response to his last comment. Healing you makes the Nibbler that much hungrier. You’ll have to feed it soon.
Well, forgive me for having been too busy being eaten by zombies and trying to kill them dead to stop and think about drinking their blood to keep the parasite inside me plump and well fed.
Anyone ever tell you you’re cranky when you almost die?
There was a retort on the tip of my mental tongue, but I realized that Vaughn was giving me a very odd look, and I wondered if a bevy of emotions had passed over my face with Zev’s words.
The last thing I needed was for the vet to think I’d caught some kind of zombie-induced insanity. He’d be forced to report me for quarantine, and I’d spend the rest of the day unable to do a thing to save Zev.
“I know this probably seems really weird to you,” I told Vaughn, thinking understatement all the while, “but I’m okay. Nothing hurts. Nothing’s broken. And I’m about as sane as I get.”
I waited for Vaughn to ask me how my recovery was possible, but he didn’t. He just nodded. “I’d tell you to take it easy,” he said, “but based on the pile of bodies in the basement, I’m guessing that ‘easy’ isn’t really your style.”
There was a light note of censure in his voice—though I was pretty sure he disapproved more of my aversion to bed rest than to the fact that I’d dispatched a horde of zombies to the great beyond.
“What time is it?”
Giving voice to the question felt like showing my hand, but I wasn’t used to not knowing, and today, more than any other day, each minute, each second, was crucial.
Every second I lay here was another second that Chimera Biomedical had Zev—another second that they could be coming for me.
“You were out for just over an hour,” Vaughn said, “assuming Skylar’s timeline of the ‘you-know-what incident’ is somewhere close to the mark.”
My lips curved upward at the idea of Skylar referring to zombies as “you-know-whats,” but the second my brain registered the fact that I was smiling, a wave of nausea passed through my body, bringing with it a kind of bleak hopelessness I recognized as regret.
Skylar.
Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I liked her. She was brave and openhearted and insane—and now she knew. She knew what I was, or—more to the point—what I wasn’t.
I wasn’t normal.
I wasn’t human.
I was a liar.
I shouldn’t have cared what she thought about me. I should have been more worried about who she and the others might tell, but instead, all I could think about was the fact that they’d hate me now.
They’d have to.
“Hey.” Vaughn’s voice was soft as he chucked me under the chin. “None of that.”
“None of what?” I said, wiping all trace of emotion from my face.