Page 14 of Reanimated Ruin (Hearts In Horror #1)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cat

I ROLLED OVER onto my back in the room I was now alone in, used then left broken and discarded on the ground like a cheap dollar store toy. Growing up the way I did, I was already well aware how horrible humans truly can be, but this was a new low. Even for me. My head was swimming from the three cups of jungle juice I’d drank, the ceiling above me was starting to spin and it felt like my body was rocking away on a boat in the middle of a rough sea. I moved to sit up. The second I did, I went running to the bathroom and barely made it, almost emptying the contents of my stomach all over the floor.

I cleaned myself up and pulled my phone out of my skirt pocket to check the time, then stared at the screen in horror. There was a notification for a group chat sent from an unsaved number with a little bubble that read one hundred plus people added to it. All I could see without opening it was ‘video message’.

My stomach roiled once again, but I swallowed thickly before opening the text thread. What I saw would forever be burned into my memory, coming back to haunt me during my worst moments and long, sleepless nights. Scott had edited the footage of what he’d done to me in a way that my fighting had been cut out, and all that was left could be mistaken for a consensual encounter.

Once I had opened the thread, I could now see all the responses flooding in, things along the lines of how big of a slut I was and how home wreckers deserve to get their asses beat. The only thing on my mind was finding Jules or Dom and getting the absolute fuck out of here before anyone decided to make good on that threat. I had barely made it to the door when once again I saw Alicia playing her part as an accomplice to all this. I appeared at the threshold the second she pointed right at me and the person she was directing towards me was Jules.

He started making his way over to me and I rushed down the steps to meet him, stumbling down the last two, almost falling to the ground. He grabbed me by my upper arm, righting me, then took one look at my current state and made a disgusted face. Finding I was very obviously hammered, he started dragging me away to the car. People around us were looking our way and gossiping in hushed tones, making it clear who the topic of discussion was. The video had made its way through the crowd like wildfire before I returned to it. Didn’t people have anything better to do at a party than check their phones?

“Dom’s been looking for you for a fucking half an hour. Imagine my surprise when a video gets sent out of exactly how you’ve been occupying yourself,” he said through gritted teeth as he pulled me along.

“You don’t understand he-,” I tried to get out, slurring my words, but he interrupted me. I thought throwing up would have sobered me up some, but I feel even drunker now than a few minutes ago.

“Save it, Cat. I don’t even want to hear anything you could possibly have to say right now,” he cut me off. “You’re unbelievable, you know that, right? I knew this was going to happen if you joined the cheerleading squad, you’d get a bunch of cool new friends and turn into someone completely unrecognizable. Is that what you want, to be just like Mallory? Pretty and popular, but ugly on the inside? Is that why you went and fucked her boyfriend? Why Scott? Do you even like him or are you just so desperate for attention you’ll open your legs to anyone?”

I think it would have hurt less if he had reached his palm out and physically struck me. Instead, he used his words to cut me deeper than any knife ever could. Is that really what he thought of me? What I was capable of? A steady trickle of tears had been falling ever since leaving that bedroom, but now I had a torrential flood cascading down my cheeks.

“Jules...what...hold on wait, I didn’t-,” I was cut off once again.

“Just stop, god fucking DAMMIT!” He yelled at the sky. “I already said I don’t want to hear it. It’d all just be a load of bullshit, anyway. And cut it out with the waterworks. Your little ‘poor me’ act won’t fool me anymore. You know I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think you might actually like me, but really you were just willing to throw your virginity at the first actual taker, huh?”

“I do actually like you,” I said in a small, barely audible voice.

“Well, I’d say you have a real fucked up way of showing it, but I don’t even believe you really mean that. You just don’t want to lose me as a friend and honestly you should have thought of that before you went and acted like a slut,” he spat at me and I’d never heard him sound so hateful.

At the moment, Dom walked up behind Jules with a furious look on his face. For a second, I thought maybe he was reacting to what Jules had just said to me and was upset on my behalf, but that was short-lived. Jules let go of my arm without another glance in my direction, got into the front passenger seat, and slammed the door behind him.

I took a step in Dom’s direction, hopeful he’d hear me out and be able to help me make Jules see reason. He just put his hand up in a stop motion, stealing the words from my throat, then fixed me with a disappointed glare.

“Get in the fucking car and don’t even dare say a single word,” he barked at me, then held the backseat door open for me, unable to look me in the eye any longer.

With that, any hope of being able to confide in my two best friends was fucking gone. Never in my life had I ever felt more alone than I did in this moment. I’m sure at this point the complete school had turned against me. I never had my family to rely on and now my only friends had abandoned me as well.

I really didn’t see the point in trying to defend myself any further. When had begging for bad things not to happen to me ever worked? It reminded me of how it was with my dad. When no matter how much I apologized for a perceived slight, pleaded my case incessantly, the beating still came one way or another. Apparently, I was forever destined to be misunderstood and painted in the most horrifically inaccurate way.

I was being shaken awake abruptly and someone was trying to say something to me, but with my mind fuzzy from sleep, I was having a hard time processing what was going on in the dark. I could have sworn Jules’s voice was still ringing through my ears, remnants of the flashback nightmare I was just stuck in.

As my lucidity started to return to me, I could hear a bunch of screaming coming from somewhere. It sounded echoey, like the noise was bouncing off concrete before reaching my ears. It had to be coming from the outer part of the stadium, and that thought snapped me out of the rest of my sleepy haze. My eyes adjusted to the light and Jules was standing over me with both his hands on my shoulders, shaking me hard.

“Cat, you need to get up right now. I don’t know what going on but there’s infected inside the stadium and we need to leave. Now!” He said, eyes alight with fear.

I looked to my left. Dom had already woken up Sadie and she was over by her bed, scrambling to put her shoes on. Jules thrust my own pair at me, grabbed my backpack, and slung it over his back. I didn’t have time to argue about wanting to be the one to carry it. Cindy and Rachel weren’t in their cots, so I could only hope they were making their way out as well. Even though I didn’t know them well and they’d been kind of standoffish, I still didn’t want to think about them meeting a violent, untimely end.

We moved to the exit of the tent, Jules and Dom in front, with Sadie and me close at their backs. The screams were still far off, but who really knew what was happening out there until we were shoved into it? I was terrified to step out into the chaos, but I knew we couldn’t just stay here like sitting ducks to await our fate.

Dom poked his head out, then motioned for us all to follow him. Once we were out of the tent, I could now smell and see smoke coming from the doorways to the outer parts of the arena. While I was looking in that direction, I could also see people frantically running in ours with others covered in blood hot on their heels.

“Oh fuck, look, we need to move faster!” I pointed out what I was seeing to the others.

As more smoke billowed out and fill the dome, it caused the fire alarm and sprinkler systems to be triggered. A loud wailing siren filled the air, but the same system that set this off also set off bright flashing lights at all the emergency exits, making an escape path easier to identify. With the system engaged, all doors should unlock now as well, so we shouldn’t have to worry about finding a non-barricaded door.

“This way, follow me,” Jules said and took off toward a door people were now beginning to file out of about fifty feet away from us.

Dom took off right behind him, grabbing me by the hand so I had no choice but to keep up with him. He had an iron grip on me like he was ensuring there was no possible way I’d leave his sight. I looked behind me to make sure Sadie was there, grabbing her hand too, when I found her there. There were panicked people going in every direction. The last thing I wanted was to get separated in the pandemonium.

Just then a middle-aged man cut into our path, slicing right through the gap between us and Jules. We skidded to a halt to not collide with him, thankfully so or else we would have been directly in the path of the infected woman that dove after him. She tackled him to the ground and immediately began tearing at the first visible patch of bare flesh.

Jules had stopped and turned around. He was just gaping down at the carnage before him in shock. We barreled into him, pushing him forward, encouraging him to keep running for the exit, as we were now only a few steps away. There were more terrified people at our back pushing us forward now, so we had no choice but to keep moving. We had just made it through the door when gunshots started ringing out from inside and the sounds of screaming got louder.

“They’re shooting everyone, not just the infected! Run!” Someone cried out.

As we got outside, it was still dark out, though I couldn’t be sure what time it was exactly. Dom was still dragging me and Sadie along, following after Jules. I had no idea where we were running to. All I knew was I wanted to get far as fuck away from here. We got another fifty feet or so away from the building when we heard a gunshot ring out from the area of the roof and someone in front of us dropped to the ground.

As we ran past them, there was a huge gunshot wound in the back of their head, clear as day. Dom and I shared a look of horror as it was completely obvious this man was alive, or at least he used to be, not one of the infected. We ran until we couldn’t see the stadium any longer. The situation inside must have been worse than we thought because once we were a decent distance away, there weren’t any military personnel. They must have all been called in to fight, so the path was clear at this point.

There had to be at least two hundred people among us who had managed to get out before they started shooting, and now we were all just walking down an eerily quiet city street. The stadium was located on the outskirts of the city but still in a developed enough area that there should have been at least signs of other people, even if they were sheltering in place. I, at minimum, expected a heavy military presence, but we were just met with silent, empty streets.

There was a huge condominium development on the right side of the road and a shopping center on the left with plenty of cars still in the parking lot, but not a soul to be seen. Everyone was keeping their voices down for the most part, not sure if it was even safe to be out walking around out here.

The four of us huddled together, walking down the street and just following the crowd because safety in numbers seemed like our best bet right now. The drive over here was only fifteen minutes, so I would bet we could get to where my car was parked in under an hour’s walk. I opened my mouth to suggest this, but before the words could even pass my lips, a car alarm started going off.

Everyone froze, looking around to see where it was coming from. There was a teenage boy with his hand on the door handle and a surprised look on his face. The lights of the blue sedan were flashing, and it was making an ear splitting honking noise.

“I didn’t mean to make it go off, I swear. I just saw the keys on the seat and thought it’d be a whole lot safer to drive than walk. I didn’t know it was locked. Why would it be locked with the keys in-,” he was interrupted by a cacophony of animalistic screeches heading our way.

It sounded like so many of them I couldn’t even put a number to it. All I knew is that every cell in my body was screaming at me to run.

“Oh fuck, quick, we need to get inside somewhere. Let’s go to one of the houses over there. Just start checking for a door that’s unlocked. Don’t waste time knocking,” Dom ordered, and we broke off into pairs to start quickly trying to get into the homes.

Luckily, the second door Sadie and I checked was unlocked. We called over to the boys, and they sprinted over, diving inside after us, then immediately locking the door behind them. They pushed a big, heavy wooden coat closet in front of the door seconds before we started to hear pounding and snarling from the other side.

The way these condos were set up, the first ground floor was dedicated to the garage and basement. The walls were entirely concrete, without a single window on the entire level. Also, being in a high traffic part of a crappy city, you couldn’t simply lift up the large overhead door of the carport, it needed a remote control to open which was in the car still parked in here. There was room for two and one was missing, which I was really hoping meant no one was home. We took a second to catch our breath before moving up to the second level of the home.

Dom put his finger up to his lips once he got to the door at the top of the stairs, motioning for us to be quiet. He rapped on the door three times loudly, then put his ear to the door and waited. After a good minute with nothing coming from the other side, he gave us a thumbs up and opened the door and we all filed through slowly behind him. The condo was way nicer than any house I’d ever been in.

The kitchen looked like something you’d only see on one of those TV shows where there’s some shmoozy couple house hunting: the wife is a full-time artisan basket weaver; the husband has a wallet full of daddy’s money and their budget is five million dollars. In the living room, one couch alone looked like it cost more than my car and the television like it belonged in a movie theater.

Dom went over to the big bay-window that faced the street, peeling back the curtain and looking out. There weren’t any lights on in here, so it was safe to do so without being spotted outside. Screams from both the living and the dead, along with that damned car alarm, could still be heard crystal clear.

The look on his face spoke volumes of the blood and gore he was witnessing without having to take a gander out there myself. His throat bobbed and his eyes were wide, but he calmly returned the curtain to its original position, then turned to address us.

“Until the battery of that car dies, I don’t think we’re going anywhere. The sound is definitely still drawing those things in. There have to be hundreds of them out there,” he said solemnly. “And I definitely recognize some of those infected from the stadium, so I think it’s safe to say more of them are turning as we speak.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Sadie asked. “The people running the quarantine zone said they weren’t keeping us in the dark, but I’m feeling pretty fucking blindsided right now. They didn’t tell us the entire city outside the zone was overrun. I feel like that’s pretty important information to leave out. Why didn’t they try to evacuate us out?!”

“What if there’s nowhere left to evacuate to?” Jules questioned darkly.

I didn’t even want to begin to consider that. I couldn’t let my mind wander there. Rhiannon had to be okay, she just had to be. I wouldn’t be able to continue going on without her. She was everything to me. I couldn’t fail her, not after everyone in my life had failed me so terribly. I had to take a couple of deep breaths to try and keep myself from having a panic attack. Hating feeling so out of control. Sadie noticed my quickened breathing and turned to comfort me.

“Are you alright? Take some deep breaths, my gosh your heart is racing,” she started fussing over me after giving me a hug. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Rhiannon is fine. We just have to wait for the car battery to die and maybe the car in the garage has enough gas in it to make it to Efferville. We’re gonna make it to her, I promise.”

“You’re trying to make it to Efferville? Why? And who the hell is Rhiannon?” Dom asked me, confusion laced in his voice.

“Rhiannon is my younger sister. My parents had her after we moved. She just turned four. And yeah, my family has a cabin on a lake there. It’s just a weekend place. We don’t really spend a lot of time there,” I lied, trying to play off how often I’d been just under their noses without them having any clue.

“You’ve been back and didn’t reach out?” He choked out, not missing the detail I prayed that he would overlook, of course.

“I wasn’t really allowed to leave the cabin while I was there. My parents didn’t want us to draw any attention to ourselves. My dad said we were there to spend time in nature anyway and if we wanted to go into town, we could have just stayed home in the city.” I pleaded my case.

That part wasn’t a lie.

“Whatever,” he spat dismissively, clearly not completely satisfied with the reasoning I’d provided. “I’m gonna go check the rest of the place to make sure we don’t have any surprises waiting for us anywhere. Care to join me, Jules?”

Dom went to the kitchen, rummaged around the drawers, pulling out the two largest knives he could find. He slapped one into Jules’s hand, then breezed past him without another word, disappearing further into the dark condo. Jules gave me an apprehensive look before following after him, not saying anything either. I couldn’t tell if the look he gave me was because of the tension still pulled tight between Dom and me, or because he, too, had been upset by the little tidbit of information I’d let slip.

“I am so sorry. That was totally my fault. I had no idea that I wasn’t supposed to say that,” Sadie rushed out, turning to me.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. How were you supposed to know?” I brushed it off.

I really hoped that didn’t set me back with the guys, though. It was just beginning to appear that there was a reality where the three of us were on good terms. I couldn’t blame Sadie in the slightest. It was my fault for never going into detail about exactly why they were so upset with me.

I didn’t want her to view me like everyone else did. I just wanted one person whose mind wasn’t tainted with the knowledge of my past. I didn’t feel like the same person anymore, I just wish everyone would let her die and recognize the new me that was trying desperately to rise from her ashes. She was all that was left anyway, whether they liked it or not.