Revenant's Kiss | ONC 2022 Shortlister ✓

S E V E N

"The fuck!?" I kept my pistol raised, gripping it in my glass-pierced hands as shock overtook every other feeling in my body. What kind of shit show was this? Revenants couldn't talk, yet this yellow-eyed thing had a voice. My jaw clenched and I kept my aim steady. "Show yourself."

A muted click broke the silence and immediately light flooded the room. I winced and squinted at the silhouette standing in front of me as the brightness sent a wave of pain through my head. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust on whoever turned on the lights, but once they did, the hair on my arms rose and my skin prickled with uneasiness.

A male in his late twenties or earlier dressed in a tattered t-shirt and jeans held his hands up, showing himself to be no threat. His shock of red hair contrasted with the dark brown of his brows, and his chocolate eyes watched me carefully. He took a tentative step forward. "Miss-"

"Don't you fucking move!" I ordered, my chest heaving softly as everything inside me screamed out in alertness. No, I wasn't going crazy. I knew I'd seen yellow eyes, so what the fuck was this? I kept the barrel leveled on his head and I swallowed dryly.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he stated softly, lowering his hands to his sides.

The way he kept eye contact told me he was being truthful, but I knew what I saw. Until that was cleared up, I wasn't going to touch him with a ten and a half foot pole. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. "Where's the revenant?"

He tilted his head, glancing over me for a moment before bringing a sincere gaze to my face. "There ain't any in here, ma'am."

"I know what I fucking saw," I argued, gritting my teeth. Sweeping my gaze around the small room, I noticed the cot tucked into the corner and the cans of food sitting on a crate. Nothing here spoke of infection, but it couldn't shake me from what I'd seen all too clearly in the dark. "Care to explain that to me?"

The muscle in his jaw rippled as he clenched his teeth, accentuating his jawline. He dropped his eyes to the floor like he was weighing options and scuffed his shoes against each other. After a moment, he stared straight at me once more, raising his hands and turning around slowly. He grabbed at the back of his hunter green shirt and pulled it up at the nape of his neck, exposing his back to the clarity of the light.

A dark pink bite mark carved its ugly face into the tanned flesh of his left shoulder blade, webbing the surrounding area in thin black veins.

The breath filling my lungs lodged in my throat at the sight. I trained the pistol at the back of his head, my heart racing. "You're infected," I said matter-of-factly, an accusing edge seeping into my tone.

"Yes, and no," he responded more calmly than I expected. He stayed completely still, his hands holding his shirt up and keeping his back on full display. "If you were closer, you would see the wound is eighteen months old. Unlike yours."

So he saw mine, huh? Oh well. If he thought he would distract me by talking about my infirmities, then he was wrong. Very wrong.

I walked over toward him, pressing the barrel of my pistol to the back of his head and making him stiffen. My eyes wandered over the unevenness of the mark cut into his shoulder. It looked old, healed even, but I wasn't about to take any chances. Reaching out with my free hand, I pressed my fingers to the marred bite and his muscles flinched at my touch. It felt bumpy under my fingertips and, from what I could tell, it matched the timeframe he gave. "How did this happen?"

"I was freeing my neighbor from a garage when her infected husband attacked me. He took a bite out of my shoulder before I could get free." He let out an even breath. "He bit her too when she tried to help me. She turned in a few hours, but I never did."

"I can't believe this." I laughed. It was joyful, relieved, and a note of hope rang through. The noise was foreign to my ears, but I couldn't stop it. My eyes burned and I shook my head, taking a step back and lowering my gun. "You're. . . immune."

He nodded, letting his shirt fall back down. "Yes ma'am. You can say that."

Immune. He was immune.

After years of searching for something - anything - to help combat this God awful, government-funded pandemic, the hope for a cure was standing in front of me. It wasn't some fungus growing outside in a diverse part of the earth somewhere, but a living and breathing person with a mind of his own and a will to live.

There was so much I wanted to say to him, but words failed me. I'd been dragged through hell and back and lost it all, yet this immune man was a beaming beacon of radiant sunlight at the end of my seemingly endless tunnel. With him, the world could thrive again. The infection could be cured. Life could continue as before, without fear of being attacked by a throng of revenants.

My head swam with the weight of it all and I stumbled forward into him, holding my side as all at once the tiredness devoured me like a ravenous beast.

He looked at me, a frown of concern wrinkling his otherwise handsome face. His large hands gripped my shoulders and held me steady as I tottered on my feet like a baby standing for the first time. "Are you okay?"

I shook my head to assure him even though his face blurred before my eyes and everything swam with blackness. The steady beat of my heart drowned out his words, but his voice hummed in my ears like a fuzzy radio speaker even though I couldn't make out what he said. The heaviness I'd battled for so long was finally catching up with me and, despite how hard I tried to focus and fight on, everything faded slowly away to calm and silent nothingness.