Chapter Nine

The Return

We traveled for four days. Four days of walking through the streets of the eerily deserted city, occasionally coming across a group of normal Infected that were easily dispatched but energy-draining and time-consuming. Four days of catching vague, distant glimpses of the more altered ones, some with startling mutations that I did not recognize but could not study further as I was quickly, nervously herded away by my ever-watchful guardian. Four days of trying to keep up with a man who, now nearly fully healed and filled with a purpose, possessed more stamina and endurance than I doubted I could match even when at prime health.

Which I certainly was not at the moment, and most likely would not be any time soon. In truth, I was exhausted.

We adjusted our traveling method. I no longer waited for him to scout ahead unless he indicated immediate danger. Instead, he kept about a block ahead of me within my sight at almost all times, allowing me to constantly keep on the move. If he needed me to stop and hide, he would come and tell me. Although "tell" hardly said much. All he could do was make a wide variety of growls and snarls and yips and gesture a lot. But it was getting easier to read his personal language, whether because he was getting better at getting his human thoughts across or I was just getting used to it, I wasn't too sure and could have cared less. It was nice having someone to talk to anyway.

The best part about this new and admittedly obvious routine was that it didn't give me much time to think during the day, and when we stopped for the night, holing up in some second or third floor zombie-free office or apartment building, huddled together now so I could leech from his warmth—I had been hesitant about this at first, but the nights were growing colder, and even with scavenged bedding, his body heat was still my main source of warmth, and he at least knew now to not hold me so—I was often so exhausted that I fell asleep easily and did not awake until the crack of dawn.

That part was normal at least. I had always been an earlier riser, much to my new companion's displeasure. Whether it was because the virus made him prefer darkness or he had always been that way, I discovered rather quickly that he was not a morning person. It took a good deal of time and convincing (usually best achieved through food) to make him get a move on, and I would often receive several disgruntled snaps and growls in the process. His lack of ability to wake up early without complaint frustrated me without fail, but deep inside I was glad.

It was a very human trait for him to have.

Once he was awake, though, he didn't waste time. After a quick breakfast of what we had scavenged the day before, we were on the move and I would begin to wish I had let us sleep in. Until my thoughts began to creep up on me and I would walk faster, pushing my tired body to its limits and as a result pushing my thoughts and inner voice from my mind.

The drawback, however, was about the same—the exhaustion. I was a born and trained sprinter with a decent amount of endurance training, but nothing to compare to the Hunter. I required occasional breaks from the relentless drive, more than I would have with my slower-paced group of survivors. It also didn't help much that I was still weak. My companion may have been fully recovered from his wounds, but my strength was taking its time returning.

I could tell that he was trying to be understanding about it, but he was beginning to show a streak of impatience. When I would stop in my tracks, my body sore and aching, and gesture to him for a break, he would rest at my side, scanning the street around us from underneath the hood of the forest green jacket we had found for him the first day back on the street—and that I had ordered him not to get too dirty, although try as he might he was having trouble with that.

Within a few minutes, however, he would start pacing, shooting furtive glances at me. Eventually, he added whining to this show, first softly as if to himself, but then loud enough to warrant me glaring at him and sitting put until he grudgingly took the hint and instead start pawing at my leg and cracking his jaw. It wasn't until the fourth morning, when it took less time than before to get him up out of bed, when he did something that made me realize he wasn't always so irritatingly impatient. He was anxious. Nervous. Distracted.

I wish I had realized it sooner.

Shortly before noon on the fourth day, I called for the first break. My feet and legs were sore, and I was sporting a few blisters now that I was sure had ruptured. As per usual, the Hunter dropped down next to me, but instead of sitting at my side, he began pacing directly in front of me, his pale eyes fixed on my face. I eyed him, and when he started whining, I waved my hand at him, as if to shoo him away, while the other hand rubbed at my ankles. He eyed the waving limb for a moment, and then snapped out. Only this time, unlike all the times before, his teeth caught flesh.

Yelping, I yanked my arm to my chest and instinctively kicked out. My foot caught him in the side and sent him stumbling. He started growling threateningly, the most feral I'd heard for days, but the sound died almost immediately. A brief look of horror flashed across his face before he dropped to his belly, whimpering and whining, his tone and expression utterly miserable. And slightly fearful.

"What is wrong with you?" I snapped, cradling my hand. His bite had been powerful enough to leave some marks, but no skin had been broken. That didn't make me feel much better. I glared, angrier than I had felt in what seemed like a long time. The exhaustion only made my mood worse. "You idiot. You little half-Infected zombie freak! You...what, normal food not good enough for you? Looking for something fresher like the rest of your damn kind trying to eat me?" I pulled back a lip in a snarl mockingly similar to his own. "If you even think of trying that again I'm going to kick your ass to next week, you got that?"

He lowered his head before resting his chin on the ground and crawling closer on his stomach. The whining continued, still resolutely trying to apologize the only way he could. I shot my foot out a few inches as if to kick him again. He danced away, dropping into a low crouch and continuing to look miserable after he realized I had had no intention of kicking him a second time.

"Don't give me that," I snapped. "You think after biting me like that I'm just going to forget it and forgive you? How do I know you aren't going to do that again, huh?"

He lowered his gaze, staring at the ground in front of him.

"Nothing to say?" I asked, my tone dripping in mocking and sarcasm. "Oh right, I forgot—you can't talk like a normal person, can you?"

The Hunter jerked his face away. After a moment he retreated a few feet against the wall to my side, just within my reach, and pressed up to the brick, huddling down into a ball, his head and gaze lowered so his upper face was cast into shadow. But he didn't leave. A part of me knew it was because he wanted to make sure I remained protected, but another part of me suspected he was afraid I would walk off without him, turning away from the path he was leading me down. He would not force me to follow him. Somehow I knew that, and that thought made me feel a bitter sense of victory and control. I remembered how he seemed always so willing to please me. He didn't want to give me more of an excuse to want to leave him.

A flurry of new hurtful words related to those thoughts filled my throat, words that sounded so far over the line, even to me in my furious, exhausted state, that I paused.

Shut up while you can, Eden. You're hurting him more than he hurt you. It was just an accident.

An accident. Right. An accident that he was starting to act like the rest of his damned kind. An accident.

It was just an accident. You know it was. This isn't like you. Well, the anger is, but not your behavior. You don't treat your friends like this. Especially after how you treated him in the last safe house.

You made the choice to stay with him, remember? You knew the risk of that choice.

The thoughts sobered me up a bit. I felt like shouting more insults at him, but I forced myself to close my eyes and take several deep breaths, reminding myself of that night in the last safe house when I had also let my anger get the better of me. Of course, this time it was his fault. This time...

It took me a few minutes and a quick glance at his sagging, dejected form, patiently waiting for punishment, before I was ready to admit that it really had been just an accident. It wasn't his fault. But what had caused it to happen?

I rubbed at the fading bite mark. He had not been watching what he was doing. After all, he had done the same action to me many times before. It had become habit, one of his few means of communication, although I had never really waved my hand in his face like that. Something was distracting him. Making him unusually impatient. Now that I thought about it, his impatience was something I hadn't begun to notice until leaving the last safe house. If it was from a danger stalking us, surely he would have indicated that to me as he had always done before. So if it wasn't that, then...perhaps it was whatever lay at our journey's end. Nothing dangerous for me, I was sure of that, or at least nothing more dangerous than anywhere else in the city. But that was it then, the only thing that made much sense.

Wherever he was taking me, the closer we got to it, the more agitated he became. And that agitation was distracting him, enough so that he had bitten me.

See? It was just an accident. Of course he would never hurt you on purpose.

A twinge of guilt shot through my system. I opened my eyes to stare at my feet. In my peripheral, he raised his head, almost fearfully. Resisting the urge to look at him in case my anger was not quite gone, I pulled myself to my feet, stretching my sore, tired limbs. The anger, as it always did, had drained what little strength I had left now that it was retreating. But regardless, I wanted to get moving again. The sooner we got to this mysterious place, the sooner things would get back to normal with him.

Or as normal as anything could get in a zombie apocalypse with a zombie at my side.

At last, I crouched down. His body shifted slightly back, as if he wanted to pull away, but he held still, his eyes rising to stare at me in the face once I was low enough not to give him a crick in the neck.

"It was just an accident," I muttered. I felt like an idiot. My face and neck were hot with embarrassment. I also felt strange. I had never apologized this much to any one person before. It was becoming a habit I hoped would not be lasting long. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I acted like an asshole. Again. You wouldn't hurt me on purpose. I know that."

He searched my face. A let a small, apologetic smile pull at my lips. In response, he whimpered and pushed himself into a similar crouch to mine, uncertainly picking up my hand, the one he had bitten. He looked down at it, his rough, calloused fingers carefully brushing across the faded bite marks so as not to cut me with his claws. With each pass, his expression twisted more with regret.

"Well, you're certainly easy to forgive."

He ignored me and continued his strange routine.

"It's all right," I said, shrugging, resisting the urge to pull my hand away from his coarse grip. "No harm done. Nothing permanent."

He didn't seem convinced. He stared down at the injury, if it could even be called that, softly rubbing it with his sandpaper fingers over and over again, as if attempting to remove all trace of it, as if to prove that he wasn't all teeth and claws, that he could be gentle, too. I smiled and delicately lifted his circling hand away. His gaze remained fixed on the mark until I wiggled the hand from his reluctant grasp and hid it between my drawn up legs and my stomach.

"It's fine. I didn't mean anything I said. I was just angry because I'm tired and kind of worn out, all right? It won't happen again now that it's happened once, because we'll be more careful. So let's get going. Put it behind us. Sooner we get to wherever it is you're taking me, sooner we can rest, yeah?"

The Hunter blinked and reluctantly pulled his gaze away from the direction of my injured hand. I stood and he followed, towering over me as usual even though he had a little steeper of a stoop. Smiling again, I flicked him in the shoulder. His head moved as if to snap at me as he always did when I did that, but he stopped just in time, hastily turning away and jumping up to the rooftops.

I sighed, then gathered up my things and started after, trying to ignore the sharp pain in my feet and the weary weight in my mind.

It was well past midday before I was forced to stop and break again. Wincing, I sat myself in another doorway, head rested back, eyes closed. This was getting ridiculous. It was embarrassing to have to stop this much. Maybe we should find another safe house, hole up for a little bit while I worked myself back to shape. Even though I had a feeling the downtime would drive him insane. He was not the type of creature to cope well with being indoors for long periods of time with as much energy as he had. Maybe after we reached this mysterious destination, then.

There was a soft thump as shoes landed on concrete in front of me. Something brushed up against my side. I opened my eyes to find the Hunter squeezing in his larger form to sit on the step beside me, abandoning his crouch for the more human position he rarely used without a chair. I didn't have to wonder why. He was trying to make up for the bite earlier. Trying to prevent it from happening by behaving more human.

I didn't want to think about it. Or let him think about it either.

"Want some lunch?" I asked, peeling off my backpack. He looked somewhat longingly down the street in the direction we had been traveling, then turned his pale eyes to me and shrugged. After a moment of rummaging through our meager supplies, I pulled out a bag of Doritos we had scavenged from a convenience store the day before and popped the plastic open, scooping out a handful and dumping the orange chips into his eagerly outstretched hands. The typical ghost of a smile twitched at his features. I couldn't help smiling in response. Another thing I had learned was that he loved those chips. It was one of the few junk foods he cared for. The only other was a good Snickers bar or a package of Oreos.

"We'll just stop for a few minutes. We'll be back on the road in no time."

The furious crunching noise told me that he didn't seem too concerned about traveling right then.

I glanced around the street we were on as we ate. It was a wide three-lane thorough way lined with older buildings that seemed vaguely familiar. But they seemed to be everywhere in this city so no surprise there.

Curiously, I let my attention trail down the street towards the direction we were headed. I hadn't paid much attention to what was further than one block ahead, too focused on the Hunter, my immediate surroundings, and my various aches and pains. My eyes skimmed the deserted pavement, skipping over the huddled masses of rotting flesh that were now showing bleached bones from prolonged exposure. The smell was terrible, but I had become so used to the underlying stench of rot and decay and death saturating the city that it no longer registered. I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

I let my gaze travel further down the road. More old-fashioned buildings with the scattered occasional alleyway. Nothing I hadn't seen before. And a little farther was the start of a spacious parking lot where the small businesses and residential buildings gave way to some sort of strip mall. Great, more things to raid. Of course, the often meant more Infected too, depending on the type of stores. If I squinted, I could just make out the signs indicating the usual: one of the many chain grocery stores, an electronic store, a few restaurants, and...

My heart skipped a beat. A large green sign with white lettering spelled out the name of a store I knew well. An outdoor recreational store. One I had an unsettling feeling had mysteriously held an AK-47 several weeks before.

The three-lane street. The row of buildings.

I snapped my gaze around, skimming the street with a new purpose, frantically searching for what I already knew was there. There was a thin sliver of blackness almost directly across from the parking lot. An alleyway. My mind supplied the picture of the fire escape, the dead bodies of Infected investigating the sounds of four survivors trying to make it to the roof. I pictured some of the decayed corpses with their heads blown off, others with viciously sliced sword marks.

I shook myself furiously, angrily.

Impossible.

It couldn't be. What were the chances...what...

How, how of all places, had we ended up here? So close to the beginning?

Then new images flashed and flickered. The Hunter. The side room of the safe house where we had first become friends. A bloodied, ripped shirt with the university logo and name that I knew well.

The chips fell from my hand. I stood up, my body seizing, breath trapped in my throat.

I knew where we were.

And I had a pretty damn good idea where we were going.

"Where are you taking me?" I demanded, rounding on the Hunter. He stared up at me blankly, obviously sensing that something was wrong but uncertain how to respond to it. But I thought I saw a flicker of something that seemed to confirm my fears.

I broke into a run. Down the street towards the store. Down the street towards my memories. Driven relentlessly by the need to know for certain, the need to find out for myself.

A shriek erupted behind me, filled with surprise and fear and frustration. I ignored him, my head filled with a strange buzzing. The chances of this being the same store, the same block, the same part of the city where my fellow survivors and I had been all those weeks ago...how could it be? How could I even consider?

Yet as I rounded the final corner of buildings to pad out onto the open tarmac of the vast parking lot, my eyes skimming the side of the large gray building for the employee entrance that I knew to be there, my hopes that I was mistaken were dashed. I skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. Yes. We were here. I was in this place where I thought I would never be again in my living days.

There was a heavy thump behind me, and it startled me out of my stupor enough that I took a hesitant step forward, not out of fear, but out of a strange desire to keep running, to explore this place I knew so well and wished I didn't.

The Hunter growled. A vice-like grip grasped my wrist, pulling me around to face him, to see the worry and confusion edging his haggard features, my backpack and weapons, which I had carelessly left behind, slung over his shoulder or tucked awkwardly under his arm.

My throat felt raw, my mouth dry, but I forced the words out anyway. "We're going to the university. Aren't we?"

He searched my gaze, as if trying to gauge how I would respond. Then he lowered his eyes and nodded.

"Why?" I asked, shakily clutching the cloth over his arm. "Is it because...are you starting to remember something? About your past life? When we first met...you were wearing a university T-shirt. You said then that you couldn't remember if you were a student or not. Do you...remember now?"

He released my wrist, staring off in the direction of the distant university. Then he slowly nodded, his pale eyes flickering. My grip on his jacket tightened.

"When? When did you start remembering?"

His eyes looked down into mine. Then he pointed straight at me, the claw of his pointing finger pressed lightly below my collarbone.

I let go of him. Faced away, searching the familiar cityscape. Searching. Waiting. I'm not sure what for. Maybe a part of me hoped for some sign of my friends. Some sign that this was all just a sick dream, that if I stood and stared and waited long enough, everything would go back to how it used to be. After several long silent moments, listening to his breathing behind me, I bowed my head and rubbed my face with my palms.

"I know that you want us to get wherever it is you're taking me, but...but I need to stop somewhere first. Just for a few minutes. Just to see...it's an apartment building in the residential block." I looked up at him. "Think we can do that?"

He nodded without hesitation. I held out my hands for my equipment and he gave me back the gun and the sword, choosing to strap the backpack over his broad shoulders. I frowned. "Are you sure that's not going to...hold you back or anything?"

He gave me a faintly condescending look, as if wanting to act insulted but not quite able to, before taking my arm and leading me a few steps towards our mutually understood destination. Once my stumbling steps of uncertainty giving way to my usual brisk pace of purpose, he took the lead. We walked past the stretch of stores and restaurants, long since raided or abandoned, down the street to a place that had once been so familiar, but was now merely an unrecognizable echo of a world long since passed. Onward, until we were standing before one of the many apartment buildings situated along that small stretch of road, one of the many apartment buildings that had once housed teeming throngs of university students, all with their hopes, all with their dreams.

All gone now. Except for me.

What are you doing, Eden?

The voice had returned in that moment of uncertainty. I was too tired now to keep it at bay. Ironic, since my exhaustion had been the barrier I had relied on these past few days.

But I knew what I was doing. I was facing the beginning. Facing the moment when my entire world went to hell. I pictured the scene. The carpeted hallway, the twisted bodies, the open door leading into the room where it had all began. I stared up at that building that I had once looked on with excitement and pleasure, the place where I had seen nothing but a bright future filled with my own doings, my own choices, something better than the wonderful world I had foolishly left behind.

It didn't look very welcoming now. The windows, many of them broken, peered out like gaping, soulless eyes onto the city that would no longer bring it its inhabitants. It looked sorrowful, if buildings could look sad.

I suddenly wanted to turn away, to tell the Hunter to take me to his destination, to force me to leave this haunting place. But this place was my home. Had been my home. Once. Until the day I had left it for what I thought would be the last time. Until the day I had ventured out into a new world.

Until the day I had killed my friend.

And now I was back to face my memories. To face what I had become on that day. I needed to. All for some reason that I could not comprehend.

The Hunter nudged me in the back, whimpering. I drew a steadying breath and stepped forward, katana held at ready and senses stretching to their limits. But the only thing that met us as we pushed through the doors was overpowering stench of fermented death. I almost lost my meager lunch then and there. I pulled my shirt up over my lower face and pushed ahead, pausing only for a moment to withdraw the flashlight from the backpack still strapped to the Hunter.

There was death everywhere. Soaked into the floor. Into the air. I tried to ignore it. There was only one image of death burned into my mind. Three floors up. And as I shouldered open the door leading from the stairwell to the hallway of the highest residential floor, I found with a jolt that it was still there. It was like returning to the scene of a heinous crime of my own making. Only it hadn't really been a crime. It had been self-defense.

Right?

The body of my first kill lay stretched out on the floor before a gaping dark doorway. Or what was left of her after weeks of being locked up in a building with no air conditioning and hordes of hungry monsters.

This time, I really did lose my lunch. All over the ugly brown carpet.

My friend whined and rested his hand on my back as I heaved. After a moment, I wiped my mouth and pushed forward into the room next door, trying not to look too closely at anything else. Trying not to remember.

Then suddenly I was there. Standing in the entrance to the apartment. Staring into a sight so familiar it made my heart ache. I stood on the edge of room that had somehow avoided being touched by the horrors of the outside world. It sat exaclty as I had left it when I had seen the terror outside my window, had gone next door to investigate frantic screams with my katana in hand, only to find that first scene of death.

It was like walking into a memory. Like walking into the past before this whole mess had started. Everything was in its place. It was as if nothing had happened. Nothing had changed. My apartment. My home. For a moment, I could even almost fool myself into thinking that nothing was wrong. That I was just returning home from that last day of class before everything went to hell. That everything was...

It was too much. My knees buckled and I fell to the floor. The flashlight and katana rolled away with a clatter. Behind me, the Hunter cried out and grasped my shoulder to steady my dangerously swaying form.

"I'm home," I said weakly. The words felt foreign, strange, and the sound shook me, forced me awake. I shook my head, blinking around, taking in the familiar sights of my things. My belongings. My former life as a simple university student.

There was that couch that we had lugged across half a state, the one I had always loved in my aunt's basement, a going away gift. There on the table near the kitchen entrance was a row of neatly organized frames, each filled with face of the people I loved. My mind pictured my modest bedroom, the laptop propped open on the writing desk next to my small but comfortable bed, probably unmade. The pictures and movie posters hung on my wall. Everything that had made this my place. My home.

But…no. This wasn't right. This wasn't my home. Not anymore. This was a part of my life that I would never get back.

I brushed my fingers across my companion's hand. He whimpered again, and the sound slid down my throat like an elixir, burning away my weakness, my fears. Strengthening me. And a part of my mind dragged itself from the darkness, firmly and securely squeezing into place. The weight that I had only begun to realize was there lifted.

I looked at the apartment with fresh eyes. I didn't want this life back. It had never really been meant for it. I was holding onto something old, something that no longer suited me. But I wanted it to be preserved. Untouched. Until the building fell down and buried the last of my past. Until the city crumbled and nothing remained to remind me of what I had lost.

Nothing but my memories, anyway.

They would be enough.

I picked up my things and backed out, shutting the door behind me and facing the Hunter in the darkness. From the reflective light of my flashlight, I could see him staring at me, both hands held now at his sides. He knew that this had once been my home. He understood. He was waiting for my reaction. Waiting for me to break down, to give out in the face of my memories.

But that wasn't going to happen. Something had changed in me. Something for the better. Even without an extreme response, even without the mental and physical breakdown I thought would occur in this place. For the first time in weeks, I rested my hand on my companion's shoulder and felt at peace. That old life had been real. But this…this life was real, too. This life with my friend. And it was right here. Right now. There was a whole world of adventure out there. An entire world of freedom. The freedom I had always wanted but had not seen in the light of all the loss and pain and fear.

I took a slow, deep breath.

"My name is Eden Pride. I was born on June 14, and I'm eighteen years old. I have three older brothers and awesome parents who love me to death because I'm their youngest child and only daughter and my mother always wanted a daughter. My favorite color is brown, my favorite food is pasta, I love history classes, and I was the top sprinter in my track team in high school."

I reached over and slid my hand into the larger, rougher hands of the Hunter. He grasped it tightly, his pale gaze searching mine, trying to find the reason behind my words.

"And I'm a girl who survived a zombie apocalypse. I'm a girl with a Hunter for my best friend."

I smiled then, brightly, childishly. Smiled and laughed at the bewildered look on his face, before gesturing to the stairwell, onward to the destination I now understood.

"And now it's your turn."