The Strong Will Survive

Chapter Thirty-Five - Lilith [EDITED]

 Light. Painfully bright light. So bright that it was shining through my closed eyelids, turning everything red.

My eyes fluttered open. I blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

I was lying on my back on an uncomfortable metal table. A man was bent above me, picking meticulously through my hair and examining the strands. He was dressed like a doctor, with a white lab coat pulled tightly around him. The bright light positioned directly above me and pointing into my eyes was washing out the remainder of my field of vision. I closed my eyes as they began to water from the painful exposure.

I tried desperately to remember what had happened. Slowly, bits and pieces began to return to me, as did a dull throb in the back of my head.

Maybe I was in the hospital. I had been hit in the back of the head. When you got hurt, you went to a hospital.

No, no, that wasn't right. It was the apocalypse. No hospitals were open. We had been in the hospital...exploring...for medicine...was one of us sick?

Oh.

Oh.

We had been exploring the hospital for a cure, a cure to the zombie disease. Then we had been ambushed. And now I was here, my hair being examined by a stranger in a lab coat.

"Good morning," the man said pleasantly, moving the light away from my face and waiting for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I noticed immediately that the ceiling of the room was made of jagged stone.

The man above me had brown hair and matching eyes, and a kindly smile that seemed incredibly out of place in this terrifying situation.

"Where are they?" Talking took a monumental effort and the few words that I could manage to force out were laced with fury. "What did you do to us?"

"Simple. I lured you into an ambush using a carefully placed bug," the man said, articulating the final three words as he searched for something on a table of tools next to me. He grabbed one of the devices that doctors use to examine your ears and brushed my hair away from my cheek. I stiffened at the contact. His fingers were cold and strangely soft, as if he had done no strenuous work using his hands in the past six months. I clenched my own hands, feeling my rough palms and fingertips, once as smooth as his were.

"What do you mean, a bug?" I rasped.

The man smiled. "I can't tell you all my little secrets, now, can I? At least, not until we're all back in a group."

"Where are my friends?" I repeated, struggling to keep my eyes open. I was fatigued.

"They're being held in another room, and you're in no state to try and rescue them," the man pointed out. "Sleep."

And I drifted into a heavily drugged slumber.

*

When I awoke again, I was in a different room. It was pitch black, much as the hospital room where we had been ambushed had been. It brought back memories that I was less than fond of.

I shifted my weight back and forth. I was sitting on - tied to - a chair. My ankles were bound to the legs of the seat and my arms were tied behind the back.

I tried to move again and the back of my chair hit something. Another chair?

I tried to speak but found my mouth to be too dry. Wetting my lips as best I could and swallowing painfully, I managed a quiet, "Hello?"

"Lilith? Oh, Lilith, thank god." It was Benji, frantic, tied to the chair behind me. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. You?" It was a lie, but I wasn't dead, so it was true in some aspects.