R I S E N

Chapter 13

The gun fires when I pull the trigger. Her body jolts a little from the impact, her head tipping back as the bullet goes clean through her forehead. Spatter of blood and pieces of her brain cover the black island wall behind her. Blood begins to emerge around the bullet hole, her eyes blank. Felicity falls onto her back and her head lolls to the side.

Effy stands behind me with her hands covering her mouth as the room falls silent after, while the distant pounding of the dead continues to sound in the background.

I lower the gun gripped in my hand and move towards the kitchen cabinets, going specifically to the one that looked like it would be the medicine cabinet.

A few still moments later you can now hear the dead banging on the wood that concealed and confined the windows in this room.

I grab the first-aid kit and set the materials I needed down in front of me. I grab a bottle of water out from the fridge as well.

I begin slowly pouring the water over the bite over the sink to clean it. I wasn't going to let the banging on the windows deter me from what I now had and needed to do. Unless the infected were breaking in, I didn't care.

There's about a third of water left in the bottle once I'm done using it. I lightly go over it with an antiseptic wipe to make sure it's clean of anything that might infect it. I chew on my lower lip as I dab at it due to the stinging. I grab the needle and string next to stitch the bite up. A light string of blood squeezes through when the skin pulls together.

"Aubrey.." Effy speaks up, perturbed by the surrounding noises and the fact that I wasn't batting an eye to it.

I had gotten used to Elizabeth, it sounded so foreign hearing Effy call me Aubrey but that's what she knew me as.

I continue to stitch up my arm, trying my best to get through it as quick as possible. In a different time fixing my own arm up like this would've made me queasy but not now. I've experienced far worse, stitching was nothing.

"Aubrey, what are we going to do? They're going to get in."

I cut the string at the end of the stitch and dab at the blood with a wet cloth.

A sudden knock on the door makes the both of us turn our heads. Effy looks uncertain of how to react. I hold my finger to my lips to warn her to keep quiet.

"Elizabeth..is that you?" A female voice.

I've never heard that voice before but in a way it sounded familiar. Nobody in this building that I've spoken to sounded like that or knew my real name.

I think back to when I stepped off that elevator when I left Ethan and Kaleb. That girl I saw in the hallway who seemed to look right through me. She looked familiar and it looked like I did to her too. Maybe it was her.

"The gunshots led me here- I think pretty much everyone in this building heard it but then I heard your voice and thought that maybe there was a chance it could be you. It has to be. I swear it was you I was looking at in that hallway. You look so different now.."

Effy looks at me with a puzzled look.

I slowly shake my head at her and creep towards the bedroom. I scan my surroundings trying to look for some kind of dresser. There had to be spare clothes in here. This was where Felicity was staying and where a lot of the supplies were stored. I saw her soldiers constantly hauling things in here that they scavenged.

The girl at the door kept talking.

"Kaleb and Ethan told me what happened. They said you were still in the building somewhere- then again, where could you go? Where could any of us go? We're trapped here until Lance gets here."