Warm Bodies: Awakening

Letting Go

Mark jerked up in bed, still screaming, and thrashed against sweat laden sheets until reality dawned and he realized where he was. His room in the apartment, shadowed in deep blue, a single ray of yellow light falling across the floor from a solar powered streetlight outside.

"Oh my god," he whispered, and fell back onto the bed, an arm draped across his brow.

It was always the same. That goddamn dream. The memory that had turned into a nightmare to torment him over the years. He'd never be free of it.

It always started the same. Back at the bus, desperately searching for his son in the wreckage, hearing the screams. His son's prone body behind the glass. Thinking he was too late, but seeing the tremor of fear on his boy's face, waiting for the dead to come. Dragging his son out of the bus, holding him, so happy to see him alive, and so completely not understanding why he looked so lost, so shocked.

Such a fool. Such a goddamn idiot. If only they'd been quicker in getting him out, in getting to the rest of the bus. If only he'd insisted his son sit with them.

If only. Mark groaned and turned on his side, trying to free himself of the guilt. Even after all this time the if only's haunted him.

It was pointless. His son was dead. Might even be truly dead now, he hadn't been back to the airport for a little while. The last time he'd barely made it out alive, and hadn't even spotted the thing that looked like his boy. Brandon had exploded at him about that. Yelled at him for being unable to let go, for being a fool, suicidal. He'd said some really hard words. That he had a father who was more interested in a walking corpse of a son than the living breathing one he shared an apartment with. Brandon had apologized shortly afterwards, but that had really hurt.

He couldn't help it. He'd left a piece of his heart back at that place. He'd seen a trace of his boy in the corpse they'd left behind. Now it was walking around and eating people, and he guessed that was his fault too. How many deaths could have been avoided if he'd just let the soldier do his job?

Screw that asshole. It still made him shake, remembering that moment, coming around the side of the truck after the fight, and seeing that bastard over his son, boot on his back, moments from executing him.

The memory washed over him, stirring the old anger. Mark tossed again in bed, and rubbed his face, pushing against his eye sockets as if to obliterate the vision. It didn't work. He rolled to the edge of the bed and sat there, squeezing the metal frame till his knuckles went white, then got up to get some water from the kitchen.

Brandon's bed was empty. What a surprise.

It was a quiet night. They'd managed to get an apartment in one of the older sections of the settlement, and while it wasn't hooked up to running water anymore, or at least, you couldn't trust the water you got, it did have electricity, thanks to some adventurous wiring by one of the residents, who'd managed to tap into the large solar grid set up for the military. The water they used was collected rain, supplemented with tanker runs every other week, and stored in their own personal tank.

He filled a cup under the spigot and stared out through the window across the dark street, trying to shake the anger and grief.

The door banged open, and his son walked through, unsteady on his feet.

They exchanged a glance in the dim light. Brandon looked away first, and shuffled over to their ratty couch, falling into it heavily.

"Nightmare again Dad?" his son asked, with a tone that suggested he knew the answer. His voice slurred as he spoke, and he sat there, staring off at nothing.