Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 37

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the rope dangling inches away from me. I shot my arm out and grabbed on anything I could hold on to. The coarse fabric burned through my skin, and suddenly, I stopped falling, but the pain, it was enough to cry out so loud my voice echoed through the concrete valley of the buildings like a megaphone.

I looked down. The vector narrowly missed the bus's roof, and the man was a bursting Picasso of blood and guts under one of the streetlights. Suddenly, It hit me. I was bitten.

Looking around again, I realized I was next to the twenty-first balcony. I swung the rope a little closer and grasped the rails. I quickly pulled my sleeves up to my elbows and stared at the spot where the vector bit me. I was afraid to look.

I didn't want to look that I almost burst into tears.

Please, god. Dear god. Please. Not like this.

I started praying. I knew I was disingenuous. I rarely prayed in my entire life, at least three or four when I was younger, but no, I shouldn't feel ashamed that I am begging to a higher power--if ever there was a higher power--and if he or she was up there, then it wasn't fair that they made people suffer like this. I mean, what kind of crap is this? If I just followed my mother to church like a good little Catholic, then I wouldn't get fucking bit, and that I wouldn't end up in this godforsaken city of death.

I continued pulling up my sleeves.

Fuck.

It hurt like hell.

And there it was, the bite.

Or a teeth mark. The skin didn't break, but the man's teeth indented onto my skin. I looked over my sleeves, but there was no torn fabric, no teeth-to-skin contact.

I let out a shaky breath, a mix of a cry, a laugh, and a cough. I felt my heart pummeling against my rib cage. Thanks to any higher power for heavy-duty jackets!

"Bren! You okay?" Logan half-shouted and half-whispered at the same time.

I put out a thumbs up with my free hand. I saw his head and his shoulders slumped, relieved.

As I turned to grab for the rope, it was then I noticed them.

Across the street, two elderly people stared out of their window from their apartment building, their hands both held over their mouths as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. It occurred to me that there were more of them, people by the dozens staring out from their respective apartments, watching me, watching my struggle with the vector not a minute ago.

More survivors.

We were not alone. Many of them were smart enough to hide in their homes and barricaded themselves. But still, it angered me to no end that the government just lied that these people—healthy people—were already evacuated.

They were not.

They were alive, stuck in this living hell of a concrete jungle.

We were alive.

I waved at them. Some drew their curtains back (like the old couple), while others waved back. A few didn't bother, went on to what they were doing earlier, whatever they were. None, however, bothered to point out that next to the balcony I was clinging to, a dozen vectors were looking out from the window, watching me silently like lions in the zoo.

I threw up my middle finger at them.

They didn't respond.

I wasn't sure if they understood what it even meant.