Death's Awakening

Chapter Twenty-Five: Noah

Someone was pounding on the door upstairs.

A fierce nausea gripped Noah's stomach. Had someone finally come for his father? Did they know what was happening?

Taking his hands from the lab's computer keyboard, Noah glanced over at his dad. The emails from headquarters had been coming in pretty close together lately, wanting to know how his research was going and whether he had any hope of finding answers. What was Noah supposed to tell them? That his dad was sick? That there were no answers?

He just let his dad's emails pile up, unanswered.

And now they had come for him.

With heavy feet, Noah trudged up the stairs. He had no idea what they would do to his dad now, but Noah knew that nothing could be worse than what had already happened.

The pounding grew louder, more frantic. Then he heard a girl scream, and his body went suddenly cold with fear. That wasn't some government official coming to take his father into quarantine.

Noah sprinted down the corridor and flung open the front door. Parrish must have been leaning against it with all her weight, because she tumbled inside, pulling Karmen with her.

"Shut the door!" Parrish grabbed the edge of the door and pushed it closed.

"What's going on? Are you hurt?" Noah scanned her body, looking for any injuries. There was blood on her hands. "Are you okay?"

"No, we're not okay, boy genius," Karmen muttered. He turned to look at her and saw that her legs and hands were covered with blood. "There are infected people out there trying to eat us."

Noah's heart stopped cold. "What?"

Two days ago, he might have laughed at her. Told her she was insane. The infected trying to eat people? Wasn't that something you only saw in movies? But after what he'd seen, he knew she was telling the truth. He just hadn't expected it to happen so fast. Not here. With trembling hands, he pushed the curtains aside and looked out into his front yard.

He counted eight infected. And they looked hungry.

He needed to act fast. Contain the situation before it was too late. "Were you bitten?"

Karmen looked at him like he was crazy. "Excuse me?"

"Your wounds," he said, motioning toward her bleeding leg. "Were. You. Bitten?"

The impact of what he was asking finally seemed to sink into her blonde head and she slumped against the wall. She kept shaking her head back and forth, not exactly answering him. He turned his attention to Parrish instead.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, pressing her back tight against the door. Then to his surprise, she laughed. "Actually, I'm not fine. I don't know why I said that. Conditioned response, I guess. To be honest, I'm very much not fine. I'm completely freaked out."

"Do you know if either of you were bitten?" He asked again. If they were bitten, he didn't have much time. Plus a couple of the infected had made it to the front door. He could hear them stumbling around out there on the stairs. Pretty soon they would get frustrated. Violent. He'd watched enough footage in his dad's confidential files to know that they needed to barricade the doors and windows as fast as possible.

"No," she said. "We're okay. Karmen fell on some glass and cut her legs, but neither one of us were bitten. Are you saying you think those people are contagious? Do they have the flu?"

"There's no time," he said. Outside, the undead began pounding on the door. "We need to get the doors and windows barricaded. Then we can talk. Follow me."