Chapter Twenty
The house is mostly destroyed on the inside, and it’s so dark it’s impossible to move around in without flashlights. Whoever boarded up the windows did an amazing job, because absolutely no light gets through to the first floor. The darkness makes it impossible to see the blood soaked into the entryway carpet, or the bloody smears along the walls.
Ryder, Tobe, and I stay downstairs with Melissa while Reese and Naomi check the upstairs. Naomi comes back down with a handful of long, thin candles, and she distributes them to us. “Alright, how are we doing this?” she asks once the candles are lit. “Are we going to take turns guarding her?”
“I think we should lock her in the upstairs bedroom, and just check on her periodically,” Reese says.
“I agree,” Tobe says, startling me. She sees me watching her and shrugs, managing to look both proud and ashamed at the same time. “I’ve survived this long, Sam, and I’m sorry, but I’m not going to risk my life now. She needs to be quarantined so she can’t hurt any of us.”
Ryder nods. “I agree, too. Put her in the upstairs bedroom, and we’ll have take shifts guarding the door. If she needs to use the bathroom, she can just knock twice on the door, and we’ll escort her there and back.”
Melissa snivels, and I instantly feel sorry for her. A group of people she doesn’t know are standing around making plans for what’s left of her life, and she doesn’t get a say. Add that to the fact that she’s most likely going to become a flesh-eating monster, and she’s got a reason to be terrified.
Is she already planning for her death? Has she accepted that she’s going to die?
The second we’re done figuring out a watch rotation, Reese turns to Melissa. Her eyes widen, and the second he touches her, she begins to scream and fight. It takes both Reese and Naomi to get Melissa up the stairs and to the bedroom and, when they do, she continues to kick and scratch at the locked door. Reese sits a chair right across from the door and takes a seat with his rifle.
Naomi gives us all angry looks before storming back downstairs. I’m not sure if she’s angrier at us, or at herself, but either way, she’s pissed off. She thinks we’re monsters for doing this to a fourteen year old girl, but she doesn’t seem to realize that young girl aside, she’s now a danger to the rest of our group. Naomi sees her as a child victim; the rest of us see her as a ticking time bomb.
She’s only been infected for about an hour, but she’s still dangerous. I’ve heard reports of people succumbing to the infection in as little as twelve hours, and as long as three days. So we might be leaving with one less person as early as tomorrow morning, or we might be here for a few days. There’s really no way to tell until the fever sets in. Then you can kind of judge based on how soon a person becomes delirious.
Ryder and I sit together on the floor with our backs up against the couch. He stretches his legs out, and wraps his good arm around my shoulder. Tobe cooks up two MRE’s, passes out lunch and, when she’s done, she takes some up to Reese and Melissa. When she comes back down, she looks troubled.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is Melissa showing symptoms yet?”
“No, but she’s curled up in a ball in the corner of the room. She’s crying so hard she can barely breathe. When I went in there, I finally heard her speak, and she asked me why we were doing this to her. She doesn’t understand that she’s dangerous to us now.”
“She’s just a kid,” Naomi snaps. “Is she supposed to be ok with being locked up and told she’s gonna die?”
“Naomi, what is your problem?”
She looks away. “I’m sorry; I should have been there. If I hadn’t gone back to the car, I might have been able to save her. It’s my fault she’s infected now, and it’s my fault she’s going to die.”
“Naomi, even if you’d been there, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything. She wasn’t paying attention, and that zombie just came out of nowhere. All you would have been able to do is stand there and watch, kind of like me.”
She sighs. “I know, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. She couldn’t take care of herself, and I should have been there to do it for her.”
Tobe cleans up like she always does and I curl up tighter to Ryder’s side. He rests his head against mine, and I feel the scratch of his growing beard. He managed to shave before we left, but it’s already growing back. He kisses more temple, “You should try and get some rest before your watch.”
I close my eyes, trying to ignore the fact that a young girl is upstairs dying.