Page 25 of Reanimated Ruin (Hearts In Horror #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Julius

I WOKE UP in the morning still curled around Cat, our position not having changed much during our short rest. It felt like the past couple days we were all running on fumes, only getting at max four hours of sleep a night. I had to say, though, spending it next to her had me feeling more well rested than I had since the start of all this.

Watching her as she slept, she looked so peaceful I didn’t want to wake her. I could see the dark blue light coming through the shades though, indicative of the very first few of the sun’s rays making it over the horizon. As I leaned over her to gently wake her, I heard footsteps softly thudding towards the door.

I looked up to find Dom standing in the doorway, most likely coming up here to wake us up. When he looked from me to her sleeping form next to me, a crestfallen look fell across his face. He looked at her with absolute longing, then turned right around and went back downstairs.

I only wished she’d been awake to see that.

Maybe then she’d believe me when I try to hint at the fact that he’s also absolutely crazy about her. The problem is they’re both too much alike. Neither believed that they were good enough for the other when it was so far from the truth, it was laughable.

I could only hope that they’d get over their issues. Lately what the three of us had going on felt like a merry-go-round. As soon as one of us made up with her and stepped off, the other hopped right back on to take their turn once again. I hadn’t been able to picture it at first, but now that I’d wrapped my mind around it, the three of us happy together was all I wanted.

With all the terrible shit surrounding us lately, we had to indulge in life’s little pleasures when it was gifted to us. No longer was there time to waste on societal norms that didn’t pertain to us. Cat had been deprived of so much in her life, not experiencing nearly enough love and affection as she deserved. Who was I to deny her another person who absolutely adored her?

“Kitty,” I said softly and kissed her on top of her head. “Wake up, the sun’s coming up and we’ve got places to be. Little sisters to save.”

Cat shot awake, her face twisted in horror the instant as her eyes sprang open. She thrashed about wildly for a moment, shaking me off and trying to scramble away. She calmed down a split second later when she recognized her surroundings and realized it was only me.

“Sorry,” she gasped out. “I didn’t know it was you at first.”

I had tried to wake her up as gently as possible, not wanting to startle her, but failed miserably.

“No, I’m sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t mean to almost give you a heart attack.”

“It’s okay,” she responded, catching her breath. “I’ve just been forgetting where I am lately when I wake up and I get freaked out for a second. The nightmares certainly don’t help at all.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked cautiously.

“Maybe some other time,” she said dismissively. “I just want to get up, get ready, and forget about it. No time to waste anyway, I want to be on the road as soon as everyone’s ready.”

She got out of bed without another word and began grabbing her change of clothes. I decided to drop it and leave the room to give her some privacy. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the dreams that haunted her possibly consisted of.

Dom and Sadie had already packed the car while we were sleeping, so all we had to do was wake up, get ready, and head out the door. They told us that they hadn’t seen the truck circling at all during their watch and it had been two hours since either Cat or I had seen it before going to bed. We were pretty sure the coast was clear now, so hopefully we’d be able to sneak back out of the neighborhood unseen and be on our way.

Dom had gotten us out of a sticky situation with his driving skills yesterday, so we all decided he should drive again today. I took the passenger seat again with the girls in the back. We didn’t want to go broadcasting the fact that we had females with us if we were spotted by someone again. I was just praying that we didn’t run into anyone else on the way there, period. Cat would have a meltdown if anything got in our way of getting to her sister today.

We punched the address into the GPS and it showed up with a time of thirty-five minutes. We couldn’t be sure if the roads were clear, or if that was an accurate estimate, but we departed with high spirits, nonetheless. The trek out of the neighborhood went off without a hitch. It looked like our lucky guess that those creeps had lost interest had been right. Thank fuck.

We got a little further down the road, getting to the center of the small town we had laid our head to rest not even five minutes away from. We got closer to what probably used to be a cute little downtown area with shops and restaurants lining down the block came into view. It was probably where most of the locals would spend their free time out with family on weekends or perhaps couples on date nights. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it would have looked like when it was bustling then because now it was swarming with infected.

The second they caught wind of us, the soft rumble of the car’s engine enough to give us away, the horde started bounding in our direction. The GPS was telling us to continue straight through, to drive basically into them head on. Dom cursed and took a left, the direction that looked like we’d have the clearest path.

The little voice coming out of his phone called out ‘recalculating’ and then updated with a time estimate of forty-five minutes now with our alternative route. I looked over my shoulder into the back at Cat. She was staring out her window and wringing her hands nervously. I’d told her we’d get to her sister today. I really hoped that fate wasn’t about to make a liar out of me.

It ended up taking us an hour and a half before we finally pulled up to the small gated community of vacation homes where Cat’s parent’s cabin was located. There was no one in the guard shack manning the entrance and the gate was closed, so we had to park the car to carry on the rest of the way by foot.

Before we started the walk out there, we made sure that we all were ready and had our weapons out, not wanting to be caught with them stowed away like we had in the past. I looked down at the hammer in my hand and contemplated if I’d be able to use it finally when the time came. All the other times I’d simply frozen in fear, but there was so much on the line here. I knew I’d do whatever it took to get Cat’s sister back to her.

She was in the front, leading as she knew the way to where we were going. I was behind her, Sadie behind me, then Dom bringing up the rear. We were deep in the woods of Efferville, about twenty minutes outside of town. Silence surrounded us in an eerie blanket. No sounds could be heard, not even wildlife, which was typically never a good sign.

Every tree we passed, I found myself anticipating for something to come jumping out at us. I was entirely on edge. I had to remind myself to keep my mind calm and focused. As much as I wished we could have driven in here, all the way up to the cabin in the car, maybe it was better that we weren’t drawing so much attention to ourselves.

As we got further into the neighborhood, we got closer to the lake and could now see the shimmering light of the sun glinting off the water. I wish we were here under better circumstances because I had no idea that somewhere this beautiful existed in the very town I grew up in. No wonder Cat’s father chose here to hide her away. We walked down the quiet streets until we got to the last one, a dead end road lined with houses that all were on the water. Cat’s eyes locked on the last one at the end and she took off running towards it.

“Fuck, Cat, wait for us!” Dom called out behind me.

I started running after her, trying to keep up with her, but fuck, she was flying. I could hear the pound of footsteps behind me, but they were farther back, and she now had her hand on the doorknob. She disappeared through it seconds later. I was running up the walkway about to step foot on the steps when I heard her scream echo inside the house. My adrenaline was surging and I could hear my heart pounding away furiously when I burst through the open doorway with my hammer raised in my hand. My stomach dropped at the sight I beheld.

William Bailey had Cat pinned against the kitchen counter. She had both her hands on his chest, trying to push him away from her while he clawed at her furiously and snapped his teeth. His back was to me, but I could see the blood covering his clothes. It was clear he was now one of the infected.

I saw that she had dropped her bat again in the struggle and didn’t pause for a second before I ran up behind him, striking and sinking the claw end of my weapon deep into the back of his skull. His body dropped to the floor between us, leaving us staring at each other for a moment, eyes wild and gasping for breath. She looked down at her father’s now still body, leaned over, and began retching.

Sadie and Dom then both came ripping into the house, looking all around wildly, and then their eyes fell on us. They looked at the slumped body on the floor, Dom knowing exactly who it was and Sadie being able to put two and two together. Their eyes filled with sympathy for Cat, and they approached us slowly. Sadie went over to her and began rubbing her back as she had for me when I’d gotten sick.

“I’m gonna check the rest of the house,” Dom murmured to me. “Whatever happened here, she doesn’t need to see that.”

I nodded and followed him, not wanting him to go by himself and get taken by surprise like Cat had. The first two bedrooms had their doors open. We cleared those and the bathroom easily enough. When we got to the main bedroom at the end of the hall, the door was shut and locked. I was almost positive I didn’t want to see whatever was on the other side of that door, but we had to know. We had to give Cat closure. While she shouldn’t see it, she deserved to know what happened to her family.

It was an old school lock that could be picked easily. All we needed was a bobby pin from the bathroom and we were in. We got into a ready position before opening the door, prepared for something to jump out at us, but when it swung open, nothing did. We entered the room and it took everything in me to not be sick once again. Deborah Bailey was laying in the bed and you could almost mistake her for simply being asleep. If it weren’t for the pistol in her mouth and the gore painting the wall behind her.

There was a piece of paper sitting next to her. I approached the bed to grab it and when I got closer, I could also see a bite mark on her arm. So she’d been bitten and rather than turn, she’d put herself down. Couldn’t say I blamed her. I think I’d do the same exact thing. I wondered if it was William that bit her and then it occurred to me, Rhiannon isn’t in here and we’ve checked all the rooms. Maybe she escaped when they’d been bit, but if she’d ran into the woods, the likelihood of us finding her now was so slim.

Just then, I heard a thump right above my head. It sounded as if there was a small animal that had gotten into the attic. Holy fuck, the attic! I took off down the hall back to where Cat was sitting slumped against the cabinets in the kitchen, sobbing quietly. Her head shot up when she heard me approaching.

“Did you find her?” She asked in a heartbreaking voice, like she’d already assumed the worst. “She’s dead too, isn’t she?”

“No, we didn’t find her.” I crouched down in front of her. “Cat, how do you get into the attic?”

“The attic?” She looked at me with confusion. “It’s more like a big crawl space.”

“Where is it? How do I get to it?” I questioned her.

“It’s in the hallway. There’s a string you pull and a staircase drops down. Why?”

I didn’t bother answering her. I just stood up and moved down the hallway quickly. There indeed was a string dangling from the ceiling connected to a rectangular panel. I pulled on it to reveal a folded up ladder attached to it, I extended it and took a flashlight out of my pocket. At this point, the other three had gathered around me as I ascended into the dark. When I got to the top, it was dark as I expected and I couldn’t see a single thing. Then I turned on the flashlight, illuminated the space and shined it around.

The beam fell on a sight that nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Staring back at me were two terrified, clear little green eyes set on a perfectly pink, healthy face without a single dark infected vein marring it.