Death's Awakening

Chapter Forty: Parrish

No one spoke for a long time.

Parrish did her best to try and calm Karmen down. It took ten minutes just to get her up and out of the kitchen so she could get her cleaned up. Parrish guided her to the bathroom and used one of the hand towels to wipe the blood splatter from her legs and arms and face. The blood was dark and thick and sticky.

Without power, she had to use cold water, but Karmen didn't complain. Karmen didn't say a word. She just sat on the end of the toilet seat, staring forward, her body still shaking with fear.

Noah stayed in the kitchen until the sun came up.

Parrish thought that maybe she should try to get rid of the body, but she wasn't really sure what Noah would want her to do. If he needed time to sort through his feelings, she wanted to give him some space. Killing your own zombie father had to really mess with a person's head.

Once the sun was up and some light had filtered into the house again, Noah finally appeared in the doorway of the living room where Parrish and Karmen had spent the night. His eyes looked tired and red from crying.

"I'm really sorry," he said. His hand gripped the edge of the wood. "I put you both in danger by keeping him here. I never really thought of what might happen if we lost power and he got out."

Karmen was sitting on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her body. She pulled it tighter. "That thing was your father?" she asked. "That's what you were hiding in the basement this whole time?"

Noah walked into the room and sat down in the recliner across from the girls. His shoulders hunched over and his lips turned down in the corners. "I should have told you about it," he said. "I knew it was crazy to keep him down there like that, but I just couldn't let him go. I guess there was some part of me that was hoping for a miracle. Like maybe one of his buddies from the CDC would show up saying they had a cure or something. I mean, I realize how stupid that sounds, but—"

"It's not stupid," Parrish said. She was sitting on the floor, her legs stretched out across the carpet. She wanted to move to him. To put her hand on his and tell him it was going to be okay. But she wasn't used to comforting people. She didn't really know how to put herself out there like that.

"It is," he said, an edge of anger in his tone. "There's never going to be a cure for something like this. These people are dead. Whatever it is that's made them come back to life, it isn't natural. It isn't something that can be undone and we all know it."

Parrish ached for him. Pain soaked into every word he spoke and there was nothing she could do to take it away. They'd all lost people who were important to them, but losing someone you loved was very different from killing someone you loved. How could she possibly comfort him after something like that?

"What are we going to do?" Parrish asked.

"What do you mean?" Karmen asked, shaking her head. "What can we do? We follow the plan. Evacuate to whatever safe zone they have set up for us. It's the only way we're going to survive this."

"I didn't say anything earlier, because I didn't want to argue about it, but I think we've got to talk about this."

"About what?" Noah asked her.

"About what we're really thinking, deep down. No matter how crazy it might seem. I think my sister might still be alive. I don't have my cell phone, so I haven't been able to try and call her, but I talked to her a few days ago. She was fine. What about her? Am I just supposed to abandon her?" Parrish asked. She turned to Karmen. "What about your parents. Your brother? Don't you want to try to find them? If we go to the safe zone, we might be cut off from everyone we love for the rest of our lives. We'll be giving up all our freedom."