Light Amidst the Darkness

Chapter Five: HB

Harper Banks

I wake up quickly, sweaty and clammy from an especially vivid nightmare. My dead, zombified mother screamed at me, her eyes rolling in different directions, her mouth open, drooling saliva. The last time I saw her. I wipe the tears from my eyes and look over at the boy from last night, who's already up and cracking his back, grunting in exhaustion. He looks over at me.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Okay," I manage, sitting upright and surveying the shop that we're in, now that it's light. It's a small ice cream shop, with a single counter, glass door, and a room in the back for making the ice cream. "You?"

"Same," he says, the bags under his eyes suggesting otherwise.

A silence.

"So, what's your name?"

"Harper," I say. "Banks."

"Harper Banks," he repeats. "I'm Caden Richard." He holds out his hand, and I tentatively shake it.

There is a silence. I decide to break it.

"So," I say. "I might as well say this now. Were you following me last night? I hadn't seen you before, and suddenly you were pulling me away from the zombies."

"I picked one person to save."

"And the rest..." I mumble.

"Are probably dead," he finishes bluntly. "Yeah. I know. It's not a win-win. But you're alive, and I'm alive, right? And that's all we should focus on now."

"Yeah. All we should focus on," I agree distantly, thinking of Mom.

I look around the shop and decide that I hate it. All I can see are clean counters and polished floors, nice little round tables. The exact opposite of the chaos that is going on inside of my head. It's too cheerful. It has to be sad, like me. But not too sad. That would be offensive.

"Did you lose anyone?" As if he knows. He probably does, considering that my eyes have become glazed with tears without my noticing.

"My mother," I say immediately, as if trying to remove something painful from my body. I tear my eyes away from the table in front of me to focus on my knees, my vision still blurred with tears. "She...she died in the original attack." My voice cracks. "Two days ago." It doesn't work. The weight increases. Killed to died to dead is a big shift. I guess I just can't deal with the fact that she's gone. She's dead; she's ceased to exist; she's never coming back. She's never going to smile at me, hug me, or kiss me good night. She's never going to complain about my current friend or ruffle my hair in that way of hers, loving and playful and kind all at once. She's just...gone.

"Oh," Caden says. He reaches for my hand--not romantically, just to comfort me in my grief. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks," I say, but I feel hollow.

"Yeah," he says. "So...father okay?"

"I think so," I say cautiously. "I don't know anything about any other members of my family. My dad was at work when--when my mom got bitten...I fled without my phone. And my brother is vacationing with his girlfriend in Paris, so hopefully they're okay. My other brother is, thank God, vacationing in Hawaii."

"Oh," he says. "Well, I hope they're okay, too."

"Thanks." Mom. Oh, Mom. God, I miss you. This wasn't supposed to happen to you. "And you?" I ask, not actually caring for the answer. "Any casualties?"

"No family," he says, shrugging. "I'm an only child, my mom left me when I was young, and my father died when I was eighteen. I haven't been able to contact any friends, though. Which is tough."

I lied to myself; I do care. "Sorry," I say, with unfeigned sympathy.

"Yeah."

We sit in silence for a moment. Silences with him are not awkward, just quiet.

"So," he says. "I'm sorry, but we should leave this place ASAP."

"My father?" I ask.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "If we stay, we're dead."

Mom's gone. Not Dad. Absolutely not.

"I can't," I choke, "I can't leave him."

"Odds are he either fled somewhere else, or..."

"So, he fled," I say firmly. "But if we didn't--"

"Look," he pleads. "I--"

"I'm going to call him," I interrupt, moving past him and locating a store phone hooked to the wall. I grab it and dial in my dad's cell. One ring, two rings.

"Hello?"

"Oh my gosh--Dad!" A million emotions flood through me. Grief, desperation, relief. Frantic relief.

"Harper!" he cries. "Oh, thank God you're okay, I was so worried. I went to the apartment, but it looked like it'd been ransacked, and I left it. I called your brothers and they're fine, but I haven't been able to reach your mother. Have you?"

My stomach sinks. "Dad," I whisper.

"Is your mother okay?" my father asks. He sounds like he dreads the answer. He should.

"I'm sorry," I say, a tear sliding down my cheek. "I'm so, so sorry."

I think of all of their moments when I thought they weren't looking. The wedding album that I would go through all the time when I was little, until I memorized all of the pictures. The look that they had between them when one of us did something cute.

"Harper!" my father demands.

"No," I sob, "no, she died." I bury my head into my knees to punish myself for my failure--my failure to save her, my failure to be a good daughter and tell my father some good news for once.

On the other line, he begins to cry, and I begin to cry, in the back of a store, with a boy that I don't know, and there are dead bodies in the street, and zombies all over the place, and for a moment I just want to die, I want to die, please let me die.