Warm Bodies: Awakening

Changing Everything

The darkness had hollowed him out once more, leaving behind something empty and desperately hungry for life.

It had the girl. It had crushed the one who attacked it, and freed itself from the machines.

The girl kept talking to it, but the words had no meaning. It wanted to take the life she had, needed to, but she kept fighting.

Then she touched its face. And her touch... her touch started to mean something. What did it mean?

She spoke again and her words...

Jul...ie?

Enough.

The darkness enveloped him again and he saw nothing, felt nothing, was nothing.

Until someone laughed. A beautiful, cascading melodic sound that echoed all around him in the dark. A laugh that drew missing pieces of himself from the darkness like a magnet, a laugh that started to rebuild him again from nothing.

A laugh he knew.

Mom?

With that one word, everything that had been stripped from him returned, and he knew what he was, who he was, and knew what had been done to him.

And he started to fight. He started to feel, every emotion he'd ever felt, he drew it to himself and struck back at the dark nothing around him, until he could see light.

Julie. She was there, she was reaching for him, and she was all light, and he held her hand, and pulled himself up out of the darkness.

He blinked.

And saw... her. Against a wall? She was hurt, blood trickling from her nose...

What...? No! Someone... choking her!

With horror, he realized the hand holding her by the throat was his. He jerked back, stumbling away, not believing, not understanding, and Julie dropped to her feet with a sharp gasp, then crumpled to the floor.

Julie! A terrible moan came from somewhere around him, and he realized the sound was coming from his own throat. Then he was reaching out for her, and he stopped, frozen by the sight of his arm... his hand...

Bloodless and grey. Cold.

Dead. I'm dead again. And I almost killed Julie.

No... that thing had almost killed Julie. The darkness that had entered him through the wound in his leg.

"G-get... o-out," he whispered thickly, struggling with words again, struggling against a dead body, a still throat, to speak.

A fire stirred in his heart, and he felt a warmth spread over his chest, the first tremor of movement, of life.

"Get... o-out... of... ME!" he growled, his voice growing stronger as he took in a breath, fueling the rage.

"GET OUT!" he roared, and in that instant his heart pounded back into life, his lungs soaked up the air like a bellows, and the fire spread through his body, speeding with every pulse, pushing back the grey, withering web of infection. His leg and neck started to hurt, but it was good to feel again, and as he watched, the dark ring of punctures on his ankle spewed the last bit of the poison that had stolen his life, and turned pink.

Astounded, he stared at his hands, now vividly flushed with life.

"I knew you'd... come back," came Julie's soft voice.

She'd propped herself up against the wall and was smiling at him. Ugly red bruises marked her neck where he'd almost strangled her. The sight made his heart clench, and a sob bloomed painfully in his chest.