Warm Bodies: Awakening

The Healer

Consciousness came back to him slowly, as a high pitched sound teased at his awareness, drawing him up from the dark. His alarm? No. Not an alarm. Someone... yelling, screaming? What the hell? He was trying to sleep and someone was screaming. I've got classes this morning, dickheads! God, his dorm sucked. People were always doing stupid shit way too early.

The screaming grew louder, more frantic, and it wasn't just one person, it was... something else...

What... is that?

Turning his head to the sound, he tried to open his eyes, but everything felt slow, wrong. Something crunched loudly under his head, and the surface beneath him was cold and hard.

This... isn't my bed.

Confused, he opened his eyes, and immediately squeezed them shut, groaning against the supernova that had just gone off in his brain. Owowow... too much too much... He tried to turn away to his other side, but a sudden twisting pain flared in his right knee, and he fell back to the hard floor. Something was wrong with his leg. What the hell's going on? Opening his eyes as slits, he blinked up to darkness at first, a darkness that slowly resolved to a blurry mass of shapes as he turned towards the light again. Something, many somethings were moving there in front of him. Faces? Were they the ones screaming?

Were they waving at him?

Frowning, he tried to rub his eyes to clear them, but his hand came away wet, and his face started to sting fiercely. What... the...?

Blinking back towards the light, the moving blurs gradually coalesced, and he found himself staring into the dead-eyed, gore-smeared faces of two corpses, screeching as they smacked and clawed at the window in front of him, desperate to get in.

With a sharp cry, he jerked back, thrusting out an arm out to defend himself. But while the dead gnawed and punched at the glass, they couldn't get in, and that's when he noticed the large shard of glass sticking out of the back of his hand. Blood seeped from the wound, running in rivulets through his fingers.

Stunned, he stared at it, not quite understanding what he was seeing. It... doesn't hurt, why doesn't it... oh shit... owowow... Head swimming in shock, he grasped the shard with a shaking hand and pulled it out, grunting against the sharp agony as it came free.

Everything snapped into focus with the pain - he was in the bus, they'd crashed, everything was upside down, the dead were trying to get at him, his dad...

Where was his dad? Where was Brandon? Twisting frantically, he tried to get up, to get away from the window, but fell back on his side again with a cry - his leg was pinned under... something, throbbing painfully. For a moment he thought he'd been grabbed by a corpse, and kicked out, only to find that one of the seats had collapsed from the ceiling, trapping him. Hands slick with blood, he tried to push the seat up, but he had no leverage, and cursed loudly when it wouldn't budge.

Movement caught his eye beyond the seat. Towards the back of the bus, surviving passengers were trying to help each other up, and wailing over others who weren't moving.

Are those people dead? Holy shit...

The red haired lady was weeping softly across from him, and he realized with a shock that she was holding her dad, his head misshapen and bloody against her chest. As he stared at her, at the horrific mess of her father's head, his mind reeling from the sight, there was a sudden movement through the windows behind them.

The windows the bus had landed on. Shattered and open to the outside.

"Look out!" he yelled, and she looked up at him through swollen eyes, not understanding, as emaciated white arms thrust through the opening and clamped onto her.