More Than Human
1410 Words
Branson and Scott were still standing away from me, staring at me with distrust in their eyes. It hurt to see this look on Branson's face. I remembered our brief kiss and the moment that we shared before this disaster. I could still feel the burn from his touch.
"Branson, please." I looked to Scott, who was still pointing his weapon at me. "Scott, can you stop aiming that at me? I'm not a threat to you." I held my hands up in surrender but Scott didn't move.
"Drop it, Scott. If she wanted us dead, we'd be dead already I suspect. Although, I'm not sure the gun would do much to her anyway." Branson said this in an even voice, never looking away from me.
"Thank you." I took a step forward and Branson stepped back, throwing his arm across Scott's chest and bringing him along. I stopped in my tracks, feeling a stab right through my heart.
"Well, I aint stayin in here with her-it-whatever the f**k she is!" Scott turned and exited the room leaving Branson and I alone.
"Branson, I'm not gonna hurt you. I promise." I sat down on the ground where I stood. He stayed standing for a moment before he too sat down. He set his gun down in front of him like a warning.
"I'm not sure if I believe that." He said. "I can believe that maybe you don't want us dead yet... but I just watched your buddy turn Sheila into some crazy zombie and use Josh as a puppet. So let's say, hypothetically, that I should still trust you. Why?" I wasn't sure how to answer that and I think he picked up on that because he asked another question. "What are you? You aren't one of them."
"I don't know.. Before today I would have said I was human, but I saw the same things you did. I've never had that happen and I have zero explanation for it. I know I'm not like Levi though. I could feel him...he was corrupted. He felt like a zombie..but different." I trailed off as I tried to grasp what had happened.
"You felt him? What does that even mean?" Branson was still giving me a strange look, but curiosity was evident in his expression.
"Like I said, I don't know. It was like an extra sense." I shrugged. "As soon as he started to appear, I could feel that something wasn't right." Branson studied me for a moment.
"What was that light? Why did you have wings?" It seemed like he was just asking evert question in his brain. I had many of the same ones.
"Look, Branson, I don't know. I literally don't know anything more than you do. All I know is that I had a dream and I was told to come West. Apparently now we know why. I promise I won't listen to my dreams again."
"Wait, so you had a dream and didn't tell me?" Branson seemed to be angry and it's not like I could blame him. "We almost slept together and you didn't trust me enough to tell me about any of this? You know, you're the first woman I have actually trusted since my marriage fell apart. I thought you were something special and it wasn't because you had some strange abilities, it was because you were genuine and smart. Keeping a dream, that dictated all of our lives, to yourself isn't what I expected from you." He shook his head and stared at the ground.
"I'm sorry, Branson. I thought I was crazy and I didn't want you to think there was something wrong with me. I don't know what happened, I don't know who that was, and I should have trusted you enough to tell you something weird was going on." I could feel the knife in my heart twisting with everything he said and I needed to apologize.
"There IS something wrong with you! What the f**k just happened?!" He leapt to his feet and began to pace back and forth furiously. "I feel like you're telling the truth about not knowing any of this. Scott may not have seen it, but I saw your face when you realized what was happening too. you were terrified. I can't believe you kept that dream from me though." I held my breath as he stopped his pacing to look at me again. He walked forward and squatted down to my level, where I was still on the floor. "I don't know what you are, but I just have this gut feeling that we need you." Branson grabbed my hands in his and stared deeply into my eyes. "You can stay with us if you can make me a promise."
"What promise?" I asked him, not agreeing until I knew the terms.
"I need you to promise me that you won't keep anything else from me. We're trying to survive and we can't have secrets weighing us down." Branson seemed so sincere and I was just glad he had decided to forgive me.
"I promise I won't hide anything from you again." I told him with a hopeful smile.
"Good." He dropped my hands suddenly and stood. "We should probably try and figure out what the hell just happened then, if you don't have any answers." Branson walked to the door and called out for Scott, who entered the room very warily. He was watching me the entire time.
"We gonna waste her?" Scott asked hopefully. A glare from Branson silenced him quickly.
"No, we're gonna figure out what happened. Scott, tell me what happened with Josh." Branson said, getting straight down to business.
"Like I was sayin, I went to take a leak and the kid was sleeping. He'd gotten real bad once we got here. He was all sweaty and kept pukin everywhere. Sheila was complaining about his moaning and groaning and everything seemed okay. I was coming back when she started yellin up a storm and I ran in here and saw Josh standing there. I could tell he had turned into one of em, but I'm not sure how. I don't think that fella had enough time to put a ball thingy in his mouth before I got back. Then y'all burst through the door and you know the rest." Scott leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I don't understand why Josh turned. It took weeks before the sickness made people into these things. He didn't even seem sick yesterday. What was different with him than with us?" Branson didn't seem to be talking to anybody in particular and I thought about what he had said. Like a light bulb had gone off in my brain, I thought of something.
"He got bitten." Branson glanced, sharply, at me when I said this. "Josh was bitten by a zombie. I don't know how we didn't think of it before. The bites turned him." I stood up as it really hit, what had happened.
"You got some bites too, are you gonna start tryin to eat me now too?" Scott asked smartly. I rolled my eyes at him and Branson answered.
"She's...something different. I don't think anything affects her the way it does us. Her wounds have even healed faster than they should have." When he said this, I was confused. I looked at him, puzzled. "I noticed it uh...earlier." He said while grinning. "I thought I was just seeing things in the weird lighting or you were just a fast healer, but it's a bit more than that I guess."
"So, I'm immune to the bites and I heal fast." I put down two fingers as I counted off the list of new abilities I seemed to have. "I can resist Levi's compulsion, I can float, I light up, and I apparently have wings of some type." I tried to think of what all of that could mean but I came up blank. Branson too, looked confused. It was Scott that figured it out.
"Holy Mother! You're a f*****g angel!" We all stared between each other in silence as we let that sink in. It kind of made sense. The more I thought of it the more right it felt. The white light, the extra senses, and the wings. What else could it be?
"I think you're right." I said slowly. "I'm an angel."
- Writer
