Chapter 20

Dalton, Ridley and the others parked the car right outside the door to the apartment house. They figured the risk of parking tickets minimal, and it would be better if they needed to get away quickly. They opened the trunk and carried Eryn inside. Anybody could see that she was exhausted.

As they entered the apartment a smaller chaos broke out. To begin with, Asher and Mac were happy to see Ridley and Sasha back in safety. Then they were stunned when they realized who the person Dalton carried was.

“Eryn!” Asher cried

“Oh my God! What’s happened to her?” Mac asked

“Let me in, so I can put her down.” Dalton said and walked towards the living room. Just as he passed through the door Kingsley stumbled and fell on Dalton’s back. Dalton, in turn, fell over and knocked the poor Eryn’s head into the door post.

“Dammit!”

“Oh my God! Is she alright?” Sasha asked

“What happened?” Ridley asked (he was standing behind Lance and did not see Dalton fall over)

Dalton got up and carried Eryn to the couch. Then Kingsley stepped in and they started examining her. To their great relief she was breathing steadily. She was, however, unconscious.

“Ok, at least she’s breathing. That was a pretty hard hit she got on her head.” Kingsley concluded

“Should we try to wake her up?” Mac asked

“We should check if she’s just unconscious or in a coma.” Lance said

“Give me a flashlight.” Kingsley said. Asher went to his room and fetched a small but bright flashlight that he handed to Kingsley. Kingsley took the flashlight and pulled up Eryn’s eyelids, one at a time. “It’s ok. Her pupils are responding just fine.”

“Her eyes are all red though.” Lance pointed out

“Yes. They are.” Kingsley said

“What do you think it means?” Sasha asked

“Technically, it means that the blood vessels in her eyes have burst.” Dalton said

“Which happens, for example, when you haven’t slept for days.” Ridley said

“Exactly.” Dalton said

“So we should let her sleep.” Kingsley said

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Sasha said. “She might have a concussion.”

“True enough.” Dalton said. “Let’s wake her up then.”

And so they did. But Eryn remained unconscious. She did stir a couple of times, but she did not wake up. Finally they decided to let her sleep and hope for the best.

Twenty hours later Eryn finally woke up. Her eyes were still bright red, but she seemed much better, somehow.

“Ehrr.” She mumbled

“Eryn is awake!” Mac called to the others, who were in the kitchen

“Water.” Eryn said hoarsely

Mac went to the kitchen and filled up a glass of water, which Eryn emptied eagerly.

“It’s… such a relief… to be able to talk again.” She said after a while

“What do you mean?” Kingsley asked

“I couldn’t talk. It was so strange; I could think perfectly clear (at least in the beginning, before I got too tired) but whenever I tried to speak I just couldn’t. All that came out was random sounds.” Eryn explained

“Sounds like your speech center stopped working. Can you tell us what’s happened to you?” Dalton asked

Eryn started describing her past twelve days. When the infection first started spreading she had remained healthy. Unfortunately she had been infected after a week or so. She did not notice right away, but she started having trouble sleeping. Eventually she found that she could no longer talk, and she could not get more than a couple of hours of sleep every day. She ate what she had at home, and when she ran out of food she started going out to try to find some.

But by now she was so exhausted from sleep deprivation that she could no longer think clearly. She started following other people around, in the hope that they would find something to eat eventually. The crowds grew larger and larger, and everyone was infected. Once she’d found something to eat she would go home and try to sleep until she got hungry again. But never getting a good night’s sleep.

“That’s horrible.” Asher said

“But now you have probably infected us too.” Kingsley said

“Probably.” Eryn said sadly

“We’ll have to wait and see.” Dalton said

“But what will we do when we can’t sleep?” Ridley said. “We can’t just hit each other in the head all the time.”

“Is that what happened?” Eryn asked. “That explains the headache. By the way, where’s Drew? And Kenzie and Jackson and Boris?”

“Jackson is probably with his parents or something, and I have no idea of where Boris is.” Mac said

“Drew and Kenzie, apparently, decided to ditch us and go to some safe zone that Drew’s father is running.” Ridley said

“Bastards.” Asher muttred