Rewriting the Apocalypse novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Hunger

Jo stood in the concrete garage and let the words land.

The first hollow.

She had been sure, for fourteen months in the dark, that the thing that ended the world had come out of her.

She had never once pictured it coming out of a man holding her hand.

"That's the hum," she said. "In your wrist. That's the burst."

"Yes."

"You've carried it since July eighth."

"Since the first life," Eli said. "I brought it back with me."

His jaw locked, and his shoulders began to shake again.

"You promised you'd never rewrite me. Hold to it. Leave me here and take Sam and run. I'll stay in this garage until it passes."

"It won't pass. Faulk said three days, and you've been out one."

"Then it'll be bad for two more."

"And then you'll come looking for me."

He did not answer.

That was an answer.

Jo crossed the last ten feet and knelt in front of him.

He flinched back against the pillar.

"I'm not going to hold you to a promise that's killing you," she said. "I'm asking, Eli. Do you take it back?"

His eyes came up, dark and huge.

"Yes," he said. "God, yes. I take it back. Rewrite me. Do whatever it takes."

"Then get up. Where do you live?"

He lived above the garage.

The garage was the ground floor of his own building, and his apartment was on the fourth floor, a bare room with a mattress, a table and no pictures on the walls.

She texted Sam, Stay in the truck. Watch the street. Don't come up.

Then she locked the door and turned around.

Eli stood against the far wall with his bare hands pressed flat to the plaster.

"Tell me what you need," he said. "I'll do it."

"Skin," Jo said. "Hands aren't enough. The hum goes all through you, and I need to reach all of it."

"Jo."

"Take your shirt off."

He did, with fingers that would not close on the buttons.

She put her palms on his chest.

The hum came up through them, loud and low and hungry, and under it the nerves ran fast and wrong.

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