Page 73 of Obliterated
It’s going to break him, if he isn’t already broken.
I push harder. Legs and lungs burning, arms pumping, my heart going haywire. My throat constricts and I can barely hear anything over the sound of my own breath and blood. Terror crawls up my spine and settles behind my teeth.
I keep running.
A little while further.It’s not far now, but why does it have to be so damn steep?Why couldn’t he pick a house on nice flat terrain?
I see the end of the hill,close, so close.I crest it and it’s right there.
The beautiful house is enormous in the daylight, the pool of horror in front of the back entrance still a deathtrap, but the sliding doors are open.
He’s here.
Even though it’s darkening, the clouds rolling in fast, I stop for a second and look up.
Fuck.
I take a stuttering breath, eyes wide at the blood-red sky.
And a single drop falls right between my eyes.
No. Fuckingno!
Panic eats me whole. It takes the last of the steady out of my legs and then pushes me harder, running like my life actually depends on it.
Too late. Too late. I’m too fucking late.
It starts to rain for real now. The drops on my skin like little knives, each one a tiny death sentence.
Chompy thrashes in his pit, high on the red rain. I don’t check to see what’s in it, if Max went on a spree and threw bodies in there.
I don’t look. I just keep running.
I push through the door, almost collapse on the floor, and tear at my skin in a wild panic. No, no, no, no. I’m soaked. I’m fuckingsoaked.
Touched.
I start shaking.
It can take minutes. Sometimes it takes mere minutes.
I’m trembling all over, throat raw and burning, and I stare at my hands like they might change. I’m half-expecting the red-streaked skin to sprout claws or something equally moronic.
I start counting. To ten. Twenty. Sixty. Then again. Two minutes. Three. Five.
I turn to the sliding doors, where the rain still hammers, and close my eyes, forcing myself to focus on my body, my breaths, and the dull ache in my legs.
I’m ready to run into that damn pool if I feel it, if I start to change, if the virus takes me. Let Chompy have me, because I’m not letting Max do this again.
He had to kill Tass; he ended her so she wouldn’t become a Walker, a shell of herself. If I turn, he’d have to kill me too. I’d rather die now than force him to do that. I’ll take whatever comes.
But nothing happens.
I'm not changing.
It’s not one of those quick switches people whisper about.
I force a breath in and exhale shakily. Another slow one. In. Out. In. Out.
