Alive

21

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~~~~~~⚫️Chapter 21⚫️~~~~~~
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I curled myself tighter into a ball, my knees pressing against my chest so hard it hurt, but I didn't move. I didn't cry either—not really. I was too angry for tears, too confused to unravel the twisted mess Koda had left me in. He was gone. Again. Just like that. Like I was something he could drop off like a package, like I was someone's responsibility and not my own person.

I was not his.

And yet, the way he spoke, the way he looked at me like I was something fragile and furious, like I was his burden and his secret and his everything in one breathless exhale... I didn't ask for any of it. I didn't ask for the half-lidded gazes or the protective snarls or the way his eyes flared whenever another man looked too long in my direction. It wasn't love. It wasn't hate. It was something else entirely—something raw and unresolved—and I wanted it gone.

Maybe I was better off alone.

My mind spiraled as I sat on the edge of the cot in that dim-lit room they called safe. I hadn't eaten. I hadn't drank. My body didn't seem to care. The human things were gone, or dormant, or replaced. The dead avoided me like I carried plague in my breath. I scared them away like some nightmare worse than their own. What the hell did that make me?

Drex strolled in just as the air went thick in my chest.

He had that lazy kind of saunter, like he belonged to the earth instead of walking on it. Dreads tied back with some leather band, sleeves rolled up, arms flexing as he tossed a metal can onto the floor. It clattered and rolled near my foot.

"Rations," he said. "Not gourmet, but keeps your guts where they should be."

I didn't even glance at it. "I'm not hungry."

"You ain't eaten in over twenty-four hours, Red. You gotta be hungry."

"I said I'm not," I snapped, sharper than I meant to. "I don't feel it. Just like I don't feel tired. Or sore. Or anything I'm supposed to."

He squinted at me, his hand resting on the doorframe. "You sayin' you some kind of walking miracle now?"

"No. I'm saying something's wrong with me."

He sighed, shaking his head. "Nah. Wrong's got nothin' to do with it. You just ain't askin' the right questions yet."

My jaw clenched. "Like what? Why zombies are scared of me? Why I feel like a goddamn ghost in my own skin?"

He pushed off the doorframe and came closer, plopping himself down on the edge of the cot with a grunt. "You ever think maybe the dead know what power smells like?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "So now I'm powerful?"

He gave me a lazy smile, like the whole world could be burning and he'd still be roasting marshmallows on the flames. "I'm sayin', there's worse things out there than walkin' corpses."