Book Eight, Chapter 34: Scathed

We had to pull Cassie from her safe spot at the bottom of the boat so that she didn’t get soaked in Andrew’s blood. I must have been in shock because all I could think about was how inconvenient it would be for the blood to not disappear like it would at the end of a storyline.

Andrew’s body was nearly cut in two. The sword that Caleb Rowe had used was still lying right next to him. Our friend was now reduced to one more task on a list of morbid tasks.

“We have to get rid of his body before she wakes up,” I said.

The boat continued down the river smoothly, and all were silent on board. Anna cried without making a peep. Kimberly was reserved, and all of us were wondering if the cost of one good deed was too much this time.

“Maybe she’ll want to see him,” Antoine eventually said. “That was the biggest problem when Christian died with Rewind, and even before that, was that I couldn’t see him. That I knew he was out there somewhere, dead probably, but I would never get to confirm it with my own eyes.”

It was clearly a subjective matter because when my parents died, I did see their bodies, and those were memories I would pay to have surgically removed from my mind if I could.

“We can pull in here,” Camden said. “This is Carousel proper, on the north side of town. I don’t see the circus.”

We didn’t see much of anything because the river was set down into the earth, not quite inside a canyon, but it was a good start.

“Just a second,” I said as I quickly equipped my psychic background trope to detect if the ethereal pulse of the apocalypse was still near us.

“We’re good,” I said. We were far enough away from the circus that if Cassie woke up here, she probably wouldn’t cause an incident. But in truth, I would never be comfortable until we were back out of Carousel proper completely.

None of us were experienced at maneuvering a boat with oars, but luckily, it was a matter of Hustle and Mettle, and we had plenty to get the job done. We pulled the boat up against a small rocky shore.

For us to get up and over to where town was, it would be a fifteen-foot climb or so, but there were plenty of roots sticking out of the cliff that we could make it if we had to.

“Antoine,” Kimberly said in a soft voice, “I’m so sorry.”

He looked at her with deep concern and grabbed onto her hand, thinking that maybe she wanted help getting out of the boat. But after a glance, he knew that wasn’t what she was talking about.

“Kimberly,” Anna said, having picked up on it too. She didn’t have her Are You Okay in There trope equipped for fear that it might be a bit too psychic. Otherwise, she would have been the first to know.

I stared at her. Kimberly looked fine, if a little pale.

But then I saw what they had been looking at. The slightest, lightest flicker lit up on her Infected status. It disappeared almost immediately, but then a few seconds later it flashed again, and then again, ever so slowly getting brighter and stronger.

Antoine immediately took her up in his arms and started saying something soft and panicked, asking her what had happened, as if we didn’t already know. Tears flowed from his eyes in a stream, like they were always there waiting pour out.

All she had to do to show us was lift up her arm and reveal a tiny speck of blood. That’s all it really was, just enough for a zombie’s teeth to get through to the meat of her ribs. Just two or three teeth marks. A scratch, really.

“You should leave me here,” she eventually said as the reality started to set in for us. There was a panic in her voice, but a dreaminess too. She was already feeling the effects of the virus. Those zombies that “almost” got her back in the dungeon had gotten closer than I thought.

“No,” Antoine said. “We could clear the storyline, and you’ll be okay, right?” He asked, looking back at Camden and I.

He had to know the truth. She wasn’t bitten inside of a storyline, but by a zombie inside of its monster lair underneath the castle. Monsters in a lair don’t trigger their stories when they attack you. There was no clearing a storyline to protect her. She would need to be rescued.

“Antoine,” she said. “It’s okay.”

Immediately, Camden opened up his backpack and pulled out the Atlas copy that we had brought and started flipping through it to find the storyline that those fast zombies had come from.

Their movie had been called Dead Pursuit. In our time in the dungeons, it was second nature to try to get a look at what movies the monsters came from. Most of them were either fantasy horror or similar.

Whatever Camden might have found in the Atlas, he didn’t share out loud. He just looked up at Antoine and shook his head.

Now that the infection was starting to take hold, her status on the red wallpaper continued to blink faster and faster. Because these weren’t technically undead zombies that had infected her, her dead status wasn’t affected, but incapacitation was. She was losing the ability to think clearly, and suddenly she fell into Antoine’s arms.

Her ability to stand was going in and out.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

There was something we had observed about zombies outside Carousel: the Omens for their movies were almost universally the zombies themselves. Those in the castle’s basement were an exception because they were bound by Avery’s writ.

Occasionally, you would see some sort of biohazard mutant-type zombie that was triggered by touching a green goo, or you might find a mad scientist creating the undead, as we had experienced in depth. But for the most part, the zombies themselves started their storylines by attacking when you went into a dark alley that you never should have.

I quickly equipped I Don’t Like It Here, and my suspicions were confirmed almost immediately as Kimberly’s poster started to change, flickering in line with her Infected status.

“Be careful,” I said. “She’s becoming an Omen.”

“No,” Anna said, her eyes red and puffy from tears. “There has to be something we can do. We can’t just let her turn. Maybe we could…” She started racking her brain, trying to think of something that might be able to change Kimberly’s fate. She came up short.

She went in and hugged Kimberly. So did Camden and I.

“We need to be away from her when she makes the final change,” Camden said after a beat. “You understand that, right, Antoine?”

He repeated Antoine’s name a few times but didn’t manage to catch his attention.

Camden looked at me. “What’s the trigger? Obviously it’s a bite, but what’s the trigger for the Omen specifically?”

“The virus has to spread,” I said after glancing at the red wallpaper. “Bodily fluids.”

That could be trouble.

“Antoine,” I said, backing away, “you’re going to have to let go of her.”

And he tried to ignore me, too, but Kimberly wouldn’t let him. She pushed against him with all her might and walked up the rocky shores toward the cliff. She was spending her remaining energy holding back tears and staying upright.

“You have to go,” she said. “Go!”