Radiation Point

Twenty Nine

*Warning: This chapter contains graphic violence.

I knew before turning that Miracle had changed. I clicked the light on and grimly turned to face her. Mia's screams echoed in the room when she saw Miracle.
Miracle was tugging fiercely on the leather restraints, pulling up with abnormal strength for a child her size. She ground her teeth together loudly, back and forth, her teeth snapping so loudly I thought she would break one. Foam was seeping out of her mouth as she stared at us with crazed eyes. The wound on her neck had a steady stream of blood dripping down her neck and shoulders, her violent thrashing reopening the wound.
"What is that?" Mia exclaimed. "Why was she strapped in here with us?"
I couldn't answer her. I felt overwhelmed. Miracle had changed-just like Tyler and Jackson said she would. She was bit and she changed. Always, Jackson had said when I asked about people changing after being bit.
As I stared into her crazed eyes, all the hope I'd held on to began to unwind. The truth resonating as I stared at the remains of this small child. Everyone changes after they've been bit.
Always.
And I'd been bit.
I'd been bit by a contaminated. The words I never let myself think, too hard to remember, or perhaps something I was afraid would become all too real. How long would it be before I changed?
Numbness flooded me and I fell backward into the door, my feet crumbling beneath me. Landing on my butt, I could vaguely hear Mia screaming my name. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from Miracle. As I looked into her child face, images began to surge through me.

My mom's face had been so pale, barely concealing her panic at the blocked exit. Screams echoed in the room, the dying screams of people being eaten alive. And mixed with it were the groans and growls of the contaminated, pressing into the room. They were the predators, and we were their prey. My dad's body had already been pulled away by them; surrounded, then simply gone.
People at the front of the room were fighting a losing battle. Shooting round after round at predators that were once family and neighbors. The contaminated pushed through the doorway, squeezing in and lunging violently at their victims.
Biting, tearing, ripping.
Killing.
And we would be next. My mom, Mia, and I were standing at the far back of the room, having pushed through the masses of panicked people in search of another exit. There wasn't one. We were trapped.
"We'll have to run," my mom said, staring at the overrun door. She seemed lost, as if seeing my dad get shot again as she looked at the door. Blinking furiously, she shook her head and repeated, "We're going to have to run. That's our only chance."
"No," I said, terror filling me. "That's insane. We'll never make it."
"What other option do we have?"
I swallowed and looked down at my gun. We did have one last option-going out on our own terms.
My mom saw my eyes shift and understood what I was thinking. Maybe, for a split second, she had thought about it, too.
"No," she said, her voice firm; the fighter in my mom coming out. She knelt in front of me, gripping both of my shoulders firmly. "You girls are going to survive this." Her face was fierce, her eyes unblinking. The tears swimming in her eyes the only hint of weakness. "You have to survive this, do you understand me?"
I blinked back tears of my own and nodded.
"Say it," she insisted.
"We'll survive this," I whispered.
She wrapped me in a firm hug, motioning Mia closer to include her in the hug. When my mom pulled away, the tears were gone from her eyes. She simply looked determined.
"We're going to have to run straight through them. Don't allow yourself to be pulled down or sidetracked. Just keep running. If we get separated, keep going. We'll meet up in the woods afterwords. Then we keep moving until we get out of the contaminated zone, do you understand me?"
"No," I pleaded. "How will we get through? They'll kill us instantly!"
"Then we'll have to use shields," my mom said, not meeting my eye.
"Shields?"
Then I saw where she was looking. Bodies littered the floor. People who had the same idea I had. People who shot themselves to avoid being eaten alive by contaminated. I suddenly felt sick as I began to understand my mom's plan.
"We'll each use a body as a shield. I'll take the front, pushing them backwards with," she paused. "With my shield. Nessa, you take the left and block our left side so we can get through. Mia, you take the right and block our right side from biters. Do you understand? We're going to make a triangle formation with our shields. You girls are going to walk back to back. I'm taking the front. And we're all moving as fast as we can."
We nodded our understanding, and began to look for shields. If it weren't for the panic and adrenaline, I don't think I would have been able to, nausea and squeamishness taking over. As it was, I moved as quickly as I could to find the lightest body that would cover me. My mom did the same, quickly assessing which body would be easiest for her to carry and plucking it up. Finding Mia a shield was the hardest. Mia was crying silent tears as she looked at the bodies scattering the floor. We ended up finding her a small, frail looking body, someone only slightly bigger than Mia herself. Her tiny fingers wrapped around the body, trembling and convulsing in fear.
My mom gave us both a final kiss, her eyes sad. We carried what we could on our backs, me carrying a shotgun over one shoulder, a duffle bag over the other. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to move fast enough with the added weight, but if we survived this, we would need whatever supplies we could carry out.
As we moved forward in the room, it became more crowded. There were people standing their ground and shooting at the masses of contaminated and other people trying to push their way past the madness. I stared in horror as the recently contaminated moved with spryness and lunged at those people, knocking them to the ground to be devoured, their screams getting lost in the chaos at the door.
Tears filled my eyes. My knees were knocking and my arms felt weak. The body I was carrying suddenly seemed a hundred pounds heavier. I would have stood frozen like that forever, until the contaminated surged forward and claimed me, if it hadn't been for my mom.
"Stop thinking-just do what I told you. Move quickly and don't stop."
Her voice was strong like flint. When I looked at her face, I saw a glimpse of our dad in her, our mountain unmovable. It was as if he were watching over us, using our mom as our avenging angel, to get us out of an impossible situation.
We moved slowly forward, struggling to maintain our formation. We were only missing spears, or else we'd look like Spartans moving in on the Persians. A fact I knew thanks to watching 300 with my parents. It was a silly image to have, but I held strong to it, pretending I was a warrior moving through the masses.
When we neared the center of the fighting, my pulse quickened. It was the moment we would find out if our shields worked.
I felt the weight of contaminated push against the body, pushing, then pulling it towards them. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping my feet moving. We quickened our pace, fear propelling the three of us through the masses. I felt a pressure on my foot and was horrified see the top half of a contaminated clawing it's way to me, scraping it's nails desperately to reach me, her teeth gnawing in anticipation.
I kicked it back with a shutter, and kept moving, keeping up with my families surprisingly swift pace. If we were going to survive this-and we had to survive-we had to keep up that pace.
As if by our dad's guiding hand, we made it through the thicket of contaminated, so preoccupied with gorging on the easy prey that they didn't give us chase. Only when the groans of the contaminated were behind us, did we drop the shields and run.
As we pushed open the doors to the outside world, cold air hit us like a ton of bricks. Even with the frigid coldness of the air, it was still a glorious feeling.
We made it.
We survived, just like my mom said we would.
I had thought the horrors were over.
It was when we stopped to take in the air, relief washing over us that Mia screamed. A newly turned contaminated moved from the trees. It had been a guard not long before, but now, he was a swift moving contaminated. The confines of the contamination not slowing him down yet. He moved so fast, as if in a blink, and was surging forward towards my sister.
My blood pounding in my ear, it was as if I had forgotten how to move; how to react. It was my mom who reacted. She whipped out her knife and jumped in front of Mia, grappling with the contaminated, slashing wildly in front her, trying to find purchase with his head.
But he was too strong.
He pushed her to the ground and bit her shoulder. My mom's scream still haunts me. The pain of having teeth tear into her flesh and muscle, ripping a primal scream from her.
It was her scream that made me move; lunge towards the creature.
I could see, even in my mom's pain, her forming the words, "No." She didn't want to see her baby get hurt. But I couldn't leave her. Not to that fate.
With all the force I could muster, I plunged my knife into his eye, killing him. But not before he bit my arm with such force that my scream matched my mother's.