Chapter 1

I felt as though I had lost something. The loss was more than family, friends, or freedom. It was deep and raw, gnawing through me. It left a hole where laughter used to be. This feeling had been growing for the past few weeks as I adjusted to my new way of life among strangers who I’m sure wanted nothing more than to see me eaten alive.

Those same strangers were staring at me as I lay in a heap on the hardwood floor of the overcrowded dining room. Someone had kicked my chair out from under me and my slow reflexes had prevented me from catching myself during that foot-and-a-half before I crumpled on the ground.

I ignored the half-hidden chuckles as I pulled myself up and pushed in my chair, giving up on eating altogether. I was in no mood to force food down my throat and it was clear that someone didn’t want me here anyway.

“Come on Nex, at least finish your dinner.”

I narrowed my eyes at Avin and shook my head. He knew better than anyone how I had been feeling. To ask me to stay among these people who clearly didn’t want me dining with them was a bit insensitive, even for him.

He was the one who had pulled me from the streets, saving me from the hoard. I never asked him to, hadn’t called out for anyone to come to my aid, yet he had risked his life anyway. There had been no questions asked since then about why I’d been where I was or how I had still been standing in my condition. That’s why I tolerated him.

The others here were too nosey. When we’d found the hotel, they had pummeled me with questions and judged me with narrowed gazes. Then they bickered over tossing me out, believing I was an unnecessary danger. After all, no one survived a hoard outside of militia groups and armed patrols. Even then, it wasn’t a guarantee.

“Yeah naps, sit back down and stay a while.”

I kept my eyes on Avin’s bright green ones and took a deep breath, trying to refrain from turning around to face the overgrown child at a table behind me. Despite my silent meditation, my body turned almost instinctively and his snarky grin burned itself into my eyes.

The hulking, dark male looked smug and I had to hold myself back from lunging across the table to strangle that expression off his face. Avin must have felt my struggle because he was suddenly at my side, trying to turn me back toward our table.

“Aw, c’mon. Let her out to play for a while.” He pushed out his lip and pretended to pout.

Avin stiffened. “I’ll come after you myself if you don’t stop, Lorris.”

“I dare you.”

It was an easy taunt and Avin had walked right into it. He wouldn’t do anything. He couldn’t. There was no fighting on the property. It didn’t matter who started it, everyone involved would be kicked out. If you wanted to throw punches then you stepped into the valley, which was not a place anyone went willingly.

Verbal arguments? Those were fine. Anything physical had you looking for a new place to hunker down, and there were very few safe places anymore.

The outbreak happened nearly a month ago and started slowly – a relatively minor explosion in a small city overseas. It had been so inconsequential in light of the political unrest and pointless rioting that had been going on in the major cities that the news hadn’t made it overseas, at least not for a few weeks.

If it hadn’t been for social media, we might have been completely unprepared but, even though the government had tried to hide it, posts of infected people roaming the streets had made it past the algorithm’s filters. It had taken a matter of hours from pointless everyday looting to turn to panic as people rushed to secure food and weapons.

Twenty-four hours in and most stores were cleaned out, if not destroyed altogether. That was when the official alert notified people that there had been an unknown outbreak and the nation was put in a state of emergency. The whole country was on lockdown until they could find a cure.

Days passed and the disease only spread. There were a few hours when every platform was filled with a flood of videos featuring people whose flesh was rapidly being destroyed until they were dead.

Then they weren’t.

Those same people, within minutes, became empty husks that only grunted and then became aggressive towards the people they’d been begging for help moments earlier. Once the person was bitten it seemed there was no way of bringing them back.

No one understood how the disease traveled so rapidly or why it made even the most adherent vegetarian cannibalistic but for those few hours, we were watching a live-action zombie movie. Then it all went dead.

Phones, TVs, computers; it was all offline.

“But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” The grin in Lorris’s words was unmistakable.

I never knew how far Avin was from his breaking point so I forced him to turn around and walk away. We headed toward the stairs and away from Lorris’s sickly cackle. I could endure his antics if it meant we got to stay here and be safe. I would even accept the fact that no one here approved of me staying.

I practically pushed Avin up three flights of stairs to our room, afraid he would lose all sense and go down after that aggravating pinprick, leaving us stranded with a person who would love to see us picked apart by a hungry hoard.

I liked to think that if I turned into a mindless freak, my last sense of self would be to take Lorris down with me.

Avin plopped down on his bed and laid back on the comforter, letting a sigh of frustration hang over us. The longer we were here, the moodier he became. Even though I’d only known him for a couple of weeks, his fuse used to be a lot longer than a couple of nasty comments. I’d tested it. Thoroughly.

“When do you think we’ll be able to go on patrol?” I asked.

I didn’t mind staying in the hotel but it felt like a lifetime since I’d been able to walk around outside. The closest I got these days was going out on the balcony in the evenings and watching the hoards roam around, their collective groans making me twitch with irritation.

“Not anytime soon.” He looked at me sympathetically.

I groaned and flopped down on my bed, crumpling the comforter. As much as I wanted to get out and stretch my legs, I felt bad for Avin. He wouldn’t be stuck in here if it weren’t for me.

The rule was: if you came here together, you stayed together.

They didn’t trust me so Avin was forced to stick beside me and be miserable. That’s why we were both on housekeeping duty.

We were responsible for the entire third floor, including the bathrooms and laundry. Luckily, every floor had its own laundry room so we didn’t have to race to get there first. It still sucked, having to do other people’s laundry.

Every morning the other residents left a basket of dirty clothes outside their doors. We picked them up after eight in the morning and were in charge of returning the clean laundry before eight in the evening. Very few people chose to wash their own clothes.

It was a big task but somehow we got through it day after day. We had made a deal early on. I handled the laundry while Avin dealt with cleaning the bathrooms. Then, while everything was washing, we tackled changing bedsheets together while everyone else was out on their own assignments.

“I think I’ve proven that I’m not infected by now. It’s been a month!” I dug my palms into my eyes and screamed through my teeth.

“Until Paron says otherwise, we’re stuck inside taking care of the third floor.” He turned his head to look at me. “Just be happy we didn’t get assigned to the kitchen.”

I would have agreed with him but at least the kitchen would’ve given me a way to get back at people like Lorris without physically attacking him. That was the one place where everyone had to go.

Lorris’s room wasn’t on our floor so we had no control over how clean his living area or clothes were. Not that we could have done much with that, other than cause more work for ourselves.

“Have you seen Paron?” I asked.

He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. It wasn’t unlike her to be away for days at a time but it was still concerning when anyone was gone for more than a day or two.

Paron was the owner of the hotel and the last word on all issues. What she said was law. That was why Avin and I were allowed to stay even though everyone else had voted to kick us back on the streets. I owed her my safety which was the only reason I put up with the glares and whispers of the other residents and tried not to instigate any drama.

“Maybe I’ll talk to her when she gets back,” I thought out loud.

Avin slapped his hand over his eyes and groaned. “Not again, Nex.” He sat up and shook his head, his brown hair falling into his eyes. “You know she doesn’t particularly care for you.”

I stopped him before he could say anything else. “Because she has a thing for you.” I raised a knowing eyebrow.

“She does not.”

“That’s the only reason she let me stay. She took one look at you and thought, ‘he’s mine’.” I laughed lightly, though it didn’t feel funny. “But she knew that if she didn’t let me in, she’d have to kick you out too since I came with you.”

He scowled at me then got up and walked over toward the door to the balcony, staring silently out at the mountainscape.

“Does it bother you?”

He turned his head to the side but didn’t look over his shoulder at me. “What?”

“Paron.”

“No. Not really. I just wish she didn’t keep us holed up here.” He leaned his forehead against the glass. “I could be just as useful on patrol as Lorris, if not more.”

I stood up and went to stand beside him but, instead of looking out at the mountains, I turned my attention to the ground where the hoard was roaming aimlessly, bodies bumping into each other as they moved.

“But we can’t be useful.” I didn’t take my eyes off the brainless beings even when Avin’s head sluggishly turned.

“That’s not what I meant…”

“I know. It’s okay.”

He was my only friend now, if I could even call him that. We were more companions by force than anything else. I owed him my life yet the only thing he’d gotten out of it was being tied to me and stuck inside this hotel cleaning other people’s dirty toilets.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t-”

Just as I was about to express feelings that I’d kept inside since he’d nearly run me over with an armored truck, the alarm sounded. My eyes widened and I pressed my face against the glass, expecting to see something in the growing darkness of the evening but the figures below were just blobs now.

“Stay here. I’ll go-”

“No.” I turned around and reached out to grab him but he was already out of arm’s length.

“Stay. Here.” His voice was low and each word penetrated my chest. His eyes darkened as he took another step back. “You will not leave this room until I come to get you.”

I didn’t want to ask what to do if he didn’t come back but before I could argue any further he was across the room and out the door.

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