Reborn before the outbreak, Now they beg at my gate

CHAPTER 6: THE VOICE BEHIND THE DOOR

Vanessa's fingers were already on the deadbolt when I caught her wrist.

I held it the way she had held mine that afternoon, hard enough to leave a mark, and for once I did not care how it looked. She stared at my hand, then at my face, and I watched the sleepy confusion drain out of her expression and something sharper take its place.

"Let go," she whispered. "Leo, what is wrong with you?"

"Do not open it."

"It is probably the neighbor. Or a delivery." She tried to pull free. "Nobody knocks like that unless they need something."

"That is exactly why."

The phone was still pressed against my ear, and Nora's voice came through it, low and fast and perfectly steady. "Leo. Talk to me. What is happening?"

"Someone is at the door," I breathed, as quietly as I could. "It is him. The patient."

"Do not open it. Is there another way out of your apartment?"

"The fire escape, off the bedroom."

"Good. Stay away from the door and stay on the line with me. I am in my car. I am ten minutes away." A pause, and then, more softly, in a voice that did something strange to my chest, "Leo. I am coming."

I almost answered her. Then the courier spoke again, and every word I had been about to say died in my throat.

"Three heartbeats," said the voice behind the door. It was dreamy and amused, like a man reading a menu. "I can hear them from here. One is afraid. One is angry. And one, I think, is very pleased with himself."

Brandon had pushed himself up from the sofa. His hair stuck out on one side, and his face had gone the color of old paper. "What the hell is that?"

"A prank," Vanessa said at once, too quickly. "Somebody is playing a prank."

"It is not a prank." I let go of her wrist. "Both of you, move away from the door."

Neither of them listened. Of course they did not. They had never listened to a word I said unless it was something they wanted to hear. Brandon crossed the room in three strides and bent to the peephole, and I saw his shoulders go rigid.

"Vanessa," he said, and his voice cracked. "His eyes. There is something wrong with his eyes."

"Let me see."

"Do not touch the door!"

The courier chuckled. It was a wet, rattling sound, and it went on a beat too long, as if whatever worked his lungs had forgotten how to stop.

"Lovely," he said. "They are all awake now. Good. I would hate to speak to a sleeping audience." The wood creaked as his weight shifted against it. "He sends his regards, Leo Hart. He wanted you to know how much he admires your preparation."

My mouth went dry.

"Forty cases of water," the dead man went on, almost fondly. "Twenty pounds of rice, six sacks. Iodine tablets, every box. And the antibiotics. Such a thoughtful man. He says it was very kind of you to gather everything in one place."

Vanessa turned slowly. In the gray light from the hallway, her face looked carved out of wax.

"Leo," she said. "What is he talking about?"

I said nothing. Through the phone, Nora had gone completely silent, and I knew she was listening to every word.

"What supplies?" Brandon demanded. He straightened up from the peephole and stared at me with the first real suspicion I had ever seen in his eyes. "You said you were at the pharmacy all day. You said you were hopeless with money. You told us you could barely afford the rent."

"I never said that."

"You let us think it." Vanessa's voice had dropped to a soft, dangerous register, the one she used when she was calculating something. "Where is it all, Leo? That much food, that much water. Where could you possibly keep it?"

Because she was not asking out of fear. I understood that suddenly and completely, standing in my own hallway with a dead man's laughter seeping through the door. She was not frightened of the thing outside. She was frightened that I had something she did not know about, and she wanted it. Even now. Even with the end of the world rattling at the lock.

Six years, I thought. Six years, and I had never heard her sound so honest.

"There is nothing," I said. "He is lying."

"Is he?" said Brandon.

"Oh, I do not lie," the courier answered, and his tone was so warm, so reasonable, that the hair on my arms stood on end. "It is one of my few virtues. Ask your friends what they do when the lights go out, Leo Hart. Ask them who they would leave behind."

Nobody moved.

The silence stretched, and in the silence I heard Vanessa swallow, and I saw Brandon's eyes slide toward her and away again, and I felt a cold, quiet certainty settle over me like snow. They had already started thinking it. In this timeline, in this living room, with a full month and a half before the first real outbreak, they had already begun to wonder what I was worth.

"Leo," Nora said in my ear, very low. "I need you to listen. Whatever he says, do not answer him. Do not give him anything. I am two streets away."

"Understood," I murmured.

I did not see the blue panel unfold until it was already hovering in front of my eyes, and the light it threw across the floor was not blue anymore. It was red.

WARNING: External intrusion detected.

Source: the Variable.

Target: your storage space.

Unauthorized access in 00:10.

I stopped breathing. Somewhere far away, I heard Brandon ask what I was staring at, and I heard Vanessa say my name twice, but all of it sounded thin and tinny, like a radio playing in another room. The numbers in the corner of my vision were already changing.

00:09.

00:08.

On the other side of the door, the dead man laid his palm flat against the wood again, gently, almost tenderly, the way I laid mine against a case of water before I stored it.

"He says you may want to hold on to your things," the courier whispered. "He is coming to collect them."

00:07.