Every other day(59)

“EKG is clean,” he says.

I know those letters. E! K! G! I know lots of letters. So does Mommy.

“DNA.” She says other things, too, but they aren’t letters, so I don’t listen much.

EKG. DNA.

I don’t think those are good letters. I want to go home.

“Almost done, baby.” Mommy smiles, tickles my chin. I reach up to tickle hers.

And that’s when it’s time for my shot.

I blinked, but the world around me didn’t settle into focus. Everything was bright and blurry and warped around the edges.

“I think she’s awake. Kali? Can you hear me?”

I tried to separate the sounds into words, but couldn’t do it. My body felt … heavy.

Without the Nibbler, you’d be dead.

Zev’s voice was low and serious, and I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that I’d lived through attack after attack, that I could have survived anything—but one bite from a zombie was enough to kill a regular person, and I’d been bitten, scratched, and clawed dozens of times.

Even my body had its limits.

“Dead,” I repeated out loud. The word came out sounding garbled.

“Dead? Dead? Oh, no. You don’t get to tell us something like that and then die.” Bethany put her face right next to mine, and it came into focus.

More or less.

“That’s not how this works, Super Girl. You don’t get to go to sleep. You don’t get to pass out. You don’t get to die. The only thing you get to do is wake up and tell us what the hell is going on.” Beth’s words were harsh, but her touch was gentle as she pressed something warm to my skin—a warm washcloth, damp and soft. “And then,” she added, working the cloth across the surface of my body, “we’re going to have a nice, long chat about lying to the Bethany. Surface wounds, my ass.”

My last thought before I drifted back into darkness was that Bethany appeared to be referring to herself in the third person.

This could not possibly be good.



“Do you know what this is, Kali-Kay?”

Mommy is in a good mood. I think. I look at the object in her hand and then shake my head.

“Nuh-uh,” I say. I stick my fingers in my mouth and give them a light chew. “What?”

Mommy gently takes my hand out of my mouth. “This is a gun. Can you say gun?”

“Gun,” I repeat dutifully.

Mommy takes my still-damp hand, brushes it over the surface of the barrel. It is cold and hard. It feels like a doorknob. It looks funny, too.

“Do you want to play a game, Kali?”

Mommy and I play lots of games. Secret games. I am her secret girl.

“Close your eyes and count to ten,” Mommy says. I close my eyes and count to four. I like four.

“Okay, now open your eyes.” Mommy smiles, but it does not reach her eyes. It makes my tummy hurt. “Where’s the gun, Kali?”

I can’t see the gun anymore. She hid it, and I don’t know where it is. I wish I did. I wish I could tell her. I wish I could be good.

“Find the gun, baby.”

I’m not good at this game, the secret game. I put my fingers back in my mouth. We have lots of secrets, Mommy, Mama, and me.



This time, when I woke up, the world was the right color and the right shape, and I recognized the person looking down at me instantly.

Vaughn.

It figured—the almost invincible girl gets hurt, and they call a vet. Given that the others had seen me tearing through a zombie horde like a wild animal, it seemed highly appropriate—if a bit insulting.

You’re not an animal. They’re human. You’re more.

Maybe I was just in a bit of a mood after being zombie chow, but instead of warming me from the inside out, Zev’s words made me want to roll my eyes. I’d never asked to share my brain with a two-bit motivational speaker.

I hadn’t asked for any of this.

“Your vitals are good. Your wounds are healing, and based on your body temperature, I’d guess your system is burning through the mortis bacteria instead of allowing it to shred your brain.” Vaughn paused, his brown eyes searching mine. “How do you feel?”

I felt fine, naked, and thirsty—in that order. I remembered the looks on my friends’ faces when I’d made my confession all too well. Physically, I was doing okay, but I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so open to attack.

So vulnerable.

So much for keeping my back to the wall.

“I’m fine,” I said, not meeting Vaughn’s eyes. “Thirsty.”

I very purposefully did not specify what, exactly, I was thirsting for.

Hunting without feeding is ill-advised, Zev told me, undeterred by my response to his last comment. Healing you makes the Nibbler that much hungrier. You’ll have to feed it soon.