Chapter Ten

After a while, Jane left the room sniffling. Isaac whispered something to Lani and she handed him her gun. Isaac headed into the room and Jane asked wildly, “What are you doing?”

He sighed, clearly not wanting to be in this position. “I need to destroy its brain before it can reanimate.”

“No,” she breathed out.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured and closed the door. In less than a minute, he came out into the living room and handed the gun back to Lani.

“There was no gun shot,” Jane whispered.

“It has a silencer,” Isaac explained.

I looked and there was a silencer. My eyes quickly narrowed in suspicion.

“Why are you so prepared?” I asked.

Isaac froze, his eyes quickly darting to Alex. Alex said, “You could say we’re… experts on this.”

“You said this was your fault, what were you talking about?” I asked.

Lani stood by me, her arms folded across her chest.

“I said,” Alex said through gritted teeth, “that it was my brother’s fault.”

“Still—“ I was cut off when the door knob shook and there was a huge thud. Terrified, the five of us retreated to the other side of the living room. In moments, Lus quickly burst through the door and smiled apologetically.

“Sorry, I twisted the door but it was stuck and I couldn’t stop myself so I bumped into the door,” he smiled sheepishly.

I started cracking up because Lus ran into the door and also because I was so scared. My laughter soon turned into a loud and long yawn and I blinked the water away from my eyes.

Lus instantly went back into “Alpha mode”. “Okay, I say we sleep now and wake up in the morning and… I guess, figure out where to go from there.”

“We can go to my house,” I piped up. “I have a ton of food there.”

Lus nodded. “Okay, that’s a start.”

“What about me?” Jane whispered tearfully.

“You’re coming too, of course,” Lani said, putting an arm around Jane protectively. I think Lani was just glad she wasn’t the weakest one there.

Jane nodded. She walked to her room and before closing the door, she said to Lani, “Don’t leave me, okay?”

Lani smiled. “Of course we won’t leave you. We’ll call you when it’s daylight.”

I shook my head and whispered, “It sure was nice of her to leave us blankets to sleep on.”

“At least we have somewhere to sleep,” Lani said exhaustedly.

Lus and Lani slept on one side of the floor with their arms wrapped around each other and I didn’t know whether to sigh in adoration or scoff in disgust. I lay down on Jane’s couch and didn’t realize how tired I really was until everything just hit me. One second I was sleepily blinking at Alex and the next second I just conked out.

I woke up and I didn’t feel as if I didn’t get any sleep at all but the sun shining through the kitchen window was telling me otherwise. I got up and stretched, my muscles feeling even sorer then they did last night.

I looked around the room and Lani and Lus were still entangled into each other and I smiled. Isaac was sleeping in a corner and Alex was sitting by the door, a blank stare on his face. I walked over to him and waved my hand in his face. He blinked and looked at me.

“You didn’t sleep?” I asked.

“I couldn’t…” he said sadly.

“Why?” I sat in front of him.

He shook his head slowly. “So many dead people…”

I frowned and reached out to hold his hand and he looked at it, a smile tugging on his lips, but, strangely, it disappeared as soon as it appeared.

“I can’t, Melly,” Alex whispered.

Brazenly, I leaned in and said, “But you want to.” And kissed him.