Den was trying very hard to make sense of the thing he was looking at. It had been right there when he'd opened his eyes. The thing looked like a sister, older, but definitely a sister. And no matter how hard he looked at it, it didn't stop looking like his sister, or start looking like it might be anything else. It opened its eyes and still looked like her. And that confused him.
Rory right there didn't make any sense. It wasn't that he'd expected her to be dead. Rory plowed right through things that were much bigger than she was. That was what she did. A zombie apocalypse wasn't going stop her. Dennis could believe she was anywhere. He just couldn't believe she was right there. That close to him. Almost as if..... He didn't go any further down that path. Maybe there was some clue in another part of the room that would explain what she was doing right there, but Dennis couldn't take his eyes off her to look. So he just stared at her, while he figured out the rest of it.
He wasn't quite sure where he was, but that didn't matter to him as much as the person right there. He knew he wasn't dead. Den felt the leftover pain from the night before still throbbing. He remembered the teeth. He remembered looking down and seeing the blood wash right out of him onto the street. And then everything had gone fuzzy for a second. And then there wasn't anything at all. And it had hurt a lot, but at the same time, in the darkest corner of his mind, he'd felt relieved. Now he felt sort of dizzy, and a little pained, and like he wanted to sleep forever. People said that pain let them know they were alive, but Den didn't know if he believed that. Who said the dead couldn't feel pain? Its not like they could tell anyone. No. That wasn't the reason. He knew he wasn't dead, because a few seconds ago, his eyes had been closed and Stacey had been there. Now they were open, and she was gone. Life was the one where she was gone. Maybe he did believe that pain let people know they were alive.
“There you are, Scrappy,” he said. At least Dennis had found Rory, like he'd promised he would. And she looked okay. He was relieved she looked okay. Even if she was a place that didn't make any sense.