Page 10 of Glass Rose (Where Roses Rot #1)

SEVEN

SOFIA

A dark laugh escapes him. “Maybe saving pretty scientists is part of my plan.”

“I’m not?—”

“You are.”

“A pretty scientist who tortured you.”

“You weren’t the worst.”

“High praise.” I shove the supplies back into the first aid kit. “Sorry if I don’t frame that testimonial for my non-existent office wall.”

“You talked to me. Like I was still human. When you ran tests, you'd explain what you were doing. Asked if I was in pain. Small things. Some of them…” He shifts behind me. “They’d cut into me like I was already dead. Small things are what kept me sane.”

I remember those sessions, how I’d narrate each procedure while my colleagues rolled their eyes. A pointless courtesy, they’d called it.

"That doesn't make up for?—"

“No.” His lips graze my ear. “But it made it different.”

“Is that why you saved me? ”

His eyes meet mine in the mirror. Not answering. The bathroom suddenly feels too small, his welcomed body heat radiating against my back.

“Don’t go all silent now.” I whip around. “You’ve been plenty talkative about everything else.”

“Would you believe me if I said I don’t know?” He steps back, giving me space. “Instinct. Muscle memory from before.”

“Why stick around then?” The question slips out before I can stop it. “With me, I mean. You could’ve gone anywhere after the facility.”

“Because someone needs to put a bullet in my head if I turn out to be something worse than what we’re running from.”

“What the—” My mouth hangs open. “You want me to kill you? That’s what this is about?”

“If necessary.”

“If necessary,” I repeat, the words hollow in my mouth. “And I’m supposed to, what? Just decide when you’ve crossed some imaginary line?”

“Are you ready?”

“For what? The apocalypse? Killing zombies? Putting a bullet in your head if you go dark side?” My laugh comes out broken. “No. Not even close.”

“To leave this house.” One corner of his mouth lifts. “We need to go.”

“Oh.” Heat crawls up my neck. “Right.”

He nods, and we move toward the stairs. Each step down feels like sinking deeper into quicksand, and the metallic scent of blood grows stronger. Photos of family vacations, graduations, and my parents’ wedding day stare back at me. Snapshots of a life that doesn’t exist anymore.

My lungs constrict, refusing air. Gavin’s hand finds the small of my back, a gentle pressure guiding me forward .

“We don’t have to go back in there,” he says.

“Yes, we do.” My voice sounds hollow in my ears. “There’s something I need.”

The kitchen doorway looks like the entrance to hell. One step. Another. Breathe through your mouth, not your nose. My mother sprawls on the floor, her stomach a mangled mess of tissue and bone.

I crouch down. The white-gold pendant my father gave her on their thirty-fifth anniversary glints in the morning light.

It’s a small heart with their initials engraved on the back.

She never took it off, not even to shower.

My fingers tremble as I reach for the clasp, struggling to unhook it from around her neck.

“Let me,” Gavin says.

My hands are slick with—I don’t want to think about what they’re slick with.

I move away, observing as his steady hands work the delicate mechanism.

He lifts the necklace free and places it in my palm, closing my fingers around it.

The metal warms against my skin, carrying the last traces of my mother’s body heat.

“She wore this every day since I was ten.” I fasten it around my own neck. “Dad saved for years to buy it for her.”

“I have something for you.” Gavin walks to the back door, rummaging through one of the canvas bags I didn’t notice, then pulls something out with unexpected reverence—my grandfather’s hunting knife, the one that always hung above the kitchen sink.

“You grabbed this?” I push myself up, legs unsteady.

“Seemed important.” He tests the edge with his thumb. “Good steel. Old.”

“My grandfather’s. He was a hunter,” I say. “Taught my dad everything he knew. He tried to teach me, but I was always more interested in what made the animals tick than in killing them. ”

“You’ll need it.”

“I don’t know how to use it.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“I—”

“You need protection.” He retrieves the leather sheath with a worn belt looping through the back, designed to hang from a hunter’s waist. Then looks at me. “Where do you want it?”

I stare at him blankly.

“Hip is visible,” he continues, “easier to access, but can be annoying while sitting. Ankle limits mobility. Back is hard to reach quickly.”

“I don’t?—”

“Thigh,” he decides for me. “Accessible and moves with you.”

He kneels before me, the knife and sheath in his hands. “May I?”

A nod is all I can manage.

His fingers graze my jeans, securing the knife to my thigh. The touch burns through to my skin, a point of heat in a world gone cold.

“Thank you,” I whisper, not just for the knife but for everything—for coming with me, for holding me together when I shattered, for not leaving me to face this alone.

He looks up. “Too tight?”

“It’s fine.”

His eyes hold mine a beat too long, his touch lingering, before he clears his throat and stands.

“I gathered some supplies while you were showering.” He points to the bags. “Canned food, batteries, first aid stuff. Flashlight. And these.” He holds up a set of car keys. “Garage?”

“My dad’s truck,” I say .

“Options are good. We’ll take both if we can. You drive the truck, I’ll take the van.”

The practicality of it all, planning our escape while standing in my parents’ blood, strikes me as obscene. But what’s the alternative? Curl up and die beside them?

Later. I’ll fall apart later.

Gavin hefts the bag of supplies over his shoulder, leading the way to the front door.

I follow, pausing at the threshold for one last look at my childhood home.

Golden sunlight drifts through the windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air.

So normal. So ordinary. As if the world hasn’t ended.

“I’m never coming back here,” I say aloud.

He doesn’t contradict me, doesn’t offer false hope that someday things will return to normal. “Take what you need to remember. The rest is just things.”

I touch the necklace, feeling the shape of the heart pendant beneath my fingertips. “I have what I need.”

We emerge into the morning sun, shutting the past behind us.

“Six-oh-five.” Gavin checks the watch on his wrist. Is it from the guard? “We have fifty-five minutes to get back.”

“Will Alex really leave without us?”

“Yes.” No hesitation in his answer. “He’s a survivor. Selfish, but smart.”

“We have history.”

“What kind of history?”

I touch the knife strapped to my thigh, still uncomfortable with its weight. “The kind where you know someone’s an asshole but fuck them anyway.”

“You fucked?”

“It wasn’t serious. Just… convenient.”

“Convenient.” A muscle twitches in his jaw. “Code?”

“1234. ”

“Seriously?”

“It’s a cheap neighborhood, not a bad one.”

He punches in the code, and the door groans upward, revealing my dad’s pristine blue truck.

“You good to drive?” He tosses me the car keys.

I catch them, metal biting into my palm. “Yeah.”

The dashboard gleams with the care of a man who loved his vehicle, who washed it every Sunday after church, who planned to drive it for another decade at least.

“I’ll meet you at the store.” His hand remains on the door frame as I climb in. “If it’s compromised, there’s an old factory two blocks north. Brick building, blue door. I’ll look for you there. Don’t stop for anyone.”

“Not even you?”

“Especially not me.”

“That was contradictory.” I fight back the fear clawing up from my stomach. “Just so you know.”

“Yes.” His expression softens, and he reaches out, brushing his thumb across my cheek. The gesture is so unexpected, so gentle, so natural, that I forget to breathe. “It was.”

Then he’s gone, striding to the back door. My hand rises unconsciously to touch the spot on my cheek where his thumb left a trail of fire.

I’m going crazy. Aren’t I?

I shake my head, forcing my mind back to the task. The truck engine turns over on the first try. Of course, it does—my father maintained it meticulously. The thought brings fresh tears to my eyes, but I blink them away.

No time for grief now. Survival first. Mourning later.

I shift into reverse, glancing into the rearview mirror, and freeze.

A figure, a middle-aged woman in a blood-soaked bathrobe, staggers down the middle of the road, movements uncoordinated and limbs dangling.

Even from here, I can see the gaping wound at her neck, flesh torn away to expose glistening muscle and cartilage.

Her head swivels toward me, drawn by the rumble of the engine.

Mrs. Peterson.

She brought us cookies when Mom broke her hip. Her foot catches on the pavement, and she tumbles down to the hard ground. It’s like every Infected has a different level of IQ and strength. Does it have something to do with the person they were before?

It would make sense why my father didn’t notice us. He had a hearing problem.

Mrs. Peterson claws her way toward her meal.

Me.

Do I drive her over?

My brain screams at my body to move, to slam the gas and get the hell out, but it won’t cooperate. I’m a goddamn scientist frozen like prey before a predator that shouldn’t even exist.

That I helped create.

A crack splits the air, and Mrs. Peterson’s head snaps back, a spray of dark matter erupting from the exit wound as a military Humvee rumbles into view, its gunner still positioned at the mounted weapon. Four soldiers in hazmat gear spill out, rifles raised.

“Clear the area!” one shouts through his mask, voice muffled but authoritative. “This neighborhood is under quarantine.”

The front door of the house across the street flies open.

“What is all this noise?” Mr. Reyes steps onto his porch in boxers and a tank top, clutching a baseball bat. “Was that gunfire? What did she do? You can’t just kill an innocent elderly woman.”