That’s all he’s getting out of me.
I already feel like I made a mistake in telling him about Hallie. I won’t repeat it with Rory.
In fact, I decide right then that I won’t give anything else away until the stranger decides to open up himself. And maybe Maverick agrees. As we hike down another empty, broken street, he finally gets the hint and shuts up again.
Now if only I could stop my mind from screaming at me just as easily.
Who’s Rory?
Rory Holden, Engine Company 33, Ladder 26. Five years older than Hallie and me, he turned twenty-eight last October. He had a long-term girlfriend. Nina Patton, a sweetheart who worked as a young lawyer for a non-profit. Like Rory, she got the Injection through her job.
Like Rory, she was one of the first lurkers to Turn.
I don’t know what happened to Nina. With Rory working on New Year’s, she went out with a few of her girlfriends and wasn’t in Madison when the Turning began. Still, I figure it’s the same thing that happened to Rory, and if there’s one small mercy I cling to, it’s that they didn’t have to suffer the way that Chase suffers now. They died together, regardless of how they perished.
Sometimes, when I think about the accident, I wonder why the same thing couldn’t have happened to me and my twin—and then I wonder if Chase would’ve been willing to take my place if it did.
He loved her as much as Rory loved Nina, but if there’s something I’ve learned since January, it’s that love… sometimes it’s just not enough.
Give me a match and some gasoline any day.
CHAPTER 12
Imight’ve managed to break free of the Grave, but I can never escape the nightmares.
Since the Turning, they’ve been bad, but they’ve gotten so much worse after what happened to my twin. There’s not a single night when I don’t have at least one. The only real question is just how bad it’ll be.
Sometimes I dream of what the future could look like at the end of the world. Those are some of the scariest because there are fewer and fewer survivors these days. Supplies will run out. The danger only increases… but the lurkers keep on coming no matter what. They’re endless, and that’s why it’s so important to find a way to take out a huge nest. Maybe I won’t survive it, but if I can make a dent in those fuckers, it’ll be worth it.
Some nights, I relive the past, thinking of what my life was like in the before times. I hate those nightmares the most. When I’m weeping, hot tears seeping through clamped together eyes, torn between then and now… I ache because of how much I miss the way the world used to be.
I miss Mom. Rory. Hallie. Our old neighbor Sam, and his sweet daughter, Brianna. Jack’s sisters died; no more aunts, uncles, and cousins. Neighborhood strays… the sweet orange catI was working to convince to move in with me… they were easy pickings for the lurkers.
Raccoons who made their home in the trees behind my house. Deer. Skunks even… when the lurkers can’t get human meat, anything will do.
Unbroken streets… our journey toward the city proves how damaged the world is now. Before the lurkers realized they could hide in abandoned houses to keep from burning up in the daylight, they used their inhuman strength to rip through asphalt and tear up the earth. Cars crumple on impact against their density. They destroyed more than just the way things were.
They destroyeverything.
And that’s why, most of all, I dream of the actual Turning and what it stole from me on January 1st.
It didn’t happen all at once. It wasn’t like there was a light switch that was flicked, engaging the Injection. The Turning happened slowly, with a report of a few hostiles going wild in one of the hospitals on the other side of town. They locked down the ER, the police and fire department—including Jack’s engine—being sent to contain the situation.
Rory was on-duty that New Year’s Day, but he wasn’t on the truck. He was at the firehouse, holding down the fort with three of his colleagues. When four more reports came in about other offenders all over the county, he risked taking the five-minute ride from the station to the Holden house just to check in on the rest of us.
Hallie was at the Knight house. It was just Mom and me home… and we were the only ones there to witness it when my beloved older brother started to Turn.
His ruddy skin went pale. That was the first sign. Always an outdoorsman when he wasn’t on-duty, he was darker than me, freckles dotting his arms, his face, his back. Not then. He wentas white as a ghost, sweat pouring from his brow. His dark blond hair turned brown from the sweat, but when he shoved it out of his face, a whole hunk of it fell out with the motion.
I remember that so fucking vividly. All that hair stuck to his fingers, the way he stared at it with wide eyes.
Blackeyes.
Rory had brown eyes, just like Jack. As the Injection took over, he doubled over, arms wrapped around his middle, a moan of pain erupting from him… I stared at his eyes. It looked like someone filled them with black ink. The irises were black. The sclera were black.
His eyes were black.
And that’s when his teeth started to elongate?—
