“What are you going to do?” I ask quietly, unsure if the words are right.
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I wanted to come with you. I wanted a minute on my own, away from Rose. Just to get my head clear, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, listen,” Alma says. “Don’t tell… well, don’t tell anyone just yet. But I wanted to say it out loud, just once. Okay?”
“Okay. I won’t.”
“Thanks, Ash.” Her eyes find their way to me, meeting mine at last. “I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me too, Alma.”
“You’d better get going before Ezekiel has a breakdown.”
“What’s with her?” Ezekiel says, nodding his head towards Alma. “It’s not like her to sit out on stuff like this.”
“She’s… not feeling well,” I reply.
“Huh.” His eyes dart out toward the forest on the other side of the fence line. “How many are there?” he asks.
“How many what?” I reply, focused on lifting the outer edge of the chain link.
“How many zombies? I’m sure the woods are crawling with them. I’m surprised we haven’t seen any yet.”
I pause for a moment, reaching out my mind into the forest, searching. “There aren’t any.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I haven’t sensed a single one for miles now. Except for yesterday.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat and turned his attention back to his task.
“Ezekiel, I didn’t mean--”
“No, it’s okay. I mean, it is what it is.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
We work in silence for a while, falling into an easy rhythm. I pull the fencing up to vertical. He hammers the posts into position. We walk five steps forward and repeat.
“Where are they all?” he asks. “They can’t have all cleared out to the mountains. I mean we saw half a dozen a week sometimes up there. Those fast ones especially. I don’t know. Something just doesn’t add up.”
“Yeah, so let’s get to the meat of it, Eze. Why did you bring me out here?”
“She’s got some kind of beacon at the compound,” he says.
“Beacon?”
“Yeah. I think it’s some kind of sound thing. Like a frequency. It draws them. That’s where they are I think.”
“If she can do that, why is she targeting your people?”
“That’s what we don’t know.”
“And that’s what you want me to find out,” I say.
He does not answer, but I see it in his eyes.
“You know, when I was out west, I saw them roaming in hordes all over the place. I hardly ever saw them in smaller groups or on their own. It almost seemed like they were drawn to each other somehow. Maybe she’s found a way to tap into that.”
“Could be,” he says.
“Look, Ezekiel,” I glance back towards Alma, still curled up on the porch swing, her knees drawn to her chest. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should go the rest of the way…”
“On your own?” he asks, completing my thought.
“Yeah. You and Alma can get this place up to working condition. Bring in the others. Make sure everyone is safe. I’ll go ahead, try to get a lay of the place. We have no idea what’s happened since we broke in and got everyone out.”
“Why do I think there’s more to it than that?” he says with a smirk.
“Because there is.”
“Unfinished business.” His smirk curls into a grin.
I ignore his obvious delight. We continue to pull the chain link around the next metal bar. He passes the fence up and over. “Yeah,” he says. “I think that’s a good idea. As long as you’re up for it.”
“I’m sure I am.”
I hadn’t told him about the basement, how it felt walking those few minutes through the horde of zombies, their cold, dank bodies shuffling all around me. Especially the mind connection, that old familiar tug, feeling it click into place to where I know I can control them.
I didn’t tell him that I also feel their hunger. They, no matter how grotesque or horrifying they appear, they are still in there, somehow.
I leave after lunch. The first layer of the fence has been completed, and Alma says she feels well enough to help with the rest. Ezekiel finds us some preserved chicken and tomato concoction in the storage pantry. We eat it cold, straight out of the jars. It tastes rather salty, but it has calories and I have a long journey ahead of me.
“I wish I could come with you,” Alma says, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
“I wouldn’t let you anyway.”
“Did you tell him about… you know?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Be careful out there,” Ezekiel says as he approaches from the house. He hands me a knife holster containing a couple of the blades he procured from the household stash.
I position this around my waist, careful that I still have access to my crossbow and backpack slung across my back. I leave without much ado. I know the two of them can handle themselves. Besides, I can sense there isn’t a zombie for miles.
It feels good to be alone in a strange way. Before I ran into Marcus and Rachel that one day, I’d been alone for the most part of four years. Now, after everything that has happened, I nearly consider SeaHaven as my home. The people there have created more than just survival. They have created a life.
But this solitude has its own benefits. I like being out here. The mere freedom of not having to look out for anyone else already makes me feel unencumbered.
Not until nightfall, when I set up camp, do I realize I am not fully alone. Just at the edges of my mind I sense them, one or two, close by. More further out.
They have no interest in me so far. I let my mind wander, ruminating on the day I had found my way back to the laboratory. The place where I had found the picture of me, a smiling child standing next to Dr. Donovan, beaming down at me like any proud parent. At least, carrying the semblance of one.
I still have the photograph, along with a few others, dog-eared and tucked into my backpack. Children standing in a row, in a classroom. A scrap of a sunset.
The sound of a scuffle brings me out of my thoughts. Movement up ahead in the trees and shrubbery.
Dead movement.
Shuffling, dragging.
I reach out with my mind. It only takes a second to connect, tucked in there behind the tree. I tease it out, goading the creature towards me. After several seconds it emerges out of the trees. A girl. Not much older than myself.
“There you are,” I whisper. “Hi there.” She does not move fast. I loosen my grip on the hilt of the knife as she shuffles forward. I can sense she means me no harm.
Yet.
On one foot she wears a tattered, worn Mary Jane buckled around dusty stockings. Her other foot is bare, her toes black with caked blood and dirt. The slight life from the heel of her shoe causes her to move with an exaggerated lurch, more so than her already unnatural gate of the undead.
“What’s your name, I wonder?”
Her only response is that dead-eyed stare. Her face remains largely uninjured. She wears a yellow sundress, ripped at the shoulder, exposing a still intact tattoo of a flying bird. Her mud-caked hair could be any color underneath the grime.
“Alright then. Maybe your name is Penny. Can I call you Penny?”
Her only reply, a mindless stare.
I continue onward. She shuffles along behind me, her head kinked over to the side. Watching her as we travel, I see no evidence as to how she could have died. No marks other than the usual symptoms of decay, sunken eyes, bluish lips stretched across skeletal teeth.
She walked along a bit behind me for a few miles, tethered by our tentative mental connection.
She shuffles past me, speeding up her uneven gait.
“What are you up to?” I muse. Her action prompts me to release my end of the mental hold just a bit, enough to give her some independent movem
ent. She veers off the path and into the trees. I follow a handful of feet behind her through the forest.
If I had been in front, I would have pushed aside the branches, but this lifeless creature just sludges forward as branches tug at her clothing and skin. I stay close enough to keep her in sight up ahead.
“Where are we going, Penny?”
Her answer arrives when we step into a clearing. She slows, but does not stop. Overhead, I spot the birds circling against the patch of sky, having spotted the deer lying dead across the grass, the same that beckons Penny.
“You hungry?” I ask.
She launches herself into the creature, diving into the guts of the dead beast up to her elbows, shameless in her consumption. For a split second, I feel what she feels, the hunger and the promise of feeling satiated.
I let go, breaking the mental connection and sitting on the ground, crossing my legs. She gorges herself, scraping the meat and viscera into her mouth.
Her performance is something I have never seen this close before. I know they feel wildly hungry nearly always, but seeing that hunger in action puts it into a new perspective.
Another small clutch of zombies emerges from the forest, about a half-dozen moving around me as if I am a rock in a stream. They lurch towards the remains of the deer, ignoring each other and settling into their own patch corner to feed, smacking and ripping flesh off the bones.
I find I am enjoying the solitude. Even though Ezekiel and I had formed a tentative truce, it feels nice to be away from that. We got along, but that was about the extent of it.
My mind wanders. Blue sky, purple heather, the wind in the tall green grass.
Something wanders in the trees, just beyond the clearing. I sense it walking along, circling the edge, hesitant to approach.
Not a zombie, but something else, an animal of some kind. Whatever it is, it does not seem to pose a threat just now, and within a few seconds, it moves away.
The zombies begin to shuffle off, one by one, the deer stripped to the bone. They wander into the forest. Penny, the first to arrive, is the last to move from her feast.
I can see in her movement the momentary feeling of satiation. Her tattered cotton dress is now soaked with blood, and the bright red circle around her mouth gives her a clownish appearance. Blood coats her arms, dripping from her fingertips as she moves.
She stands in stiff jerky movements, before following the others into the trees. My presence has apparently been forgotten. I rise and follow.
Moving through the woods, I find myself making far more noise than they do. I know stealth, having lived out here for the majority of my life, it being as much a survival requirement as air and water.
But even so, the branches break and crack as I move through them. The half-dozen who had feasted on that deer are now joined by others coalescing into a larger horde, one by one.
I do my best to keep a good distance between us. I don’t like being around large groups of them. It makes my brain feel… slimy.
But I keep on, careful of my steps, slowing down and speeding up to keep pace with them. Even with the distance between us, several yards at least, I sense them, more and more, the longer we travel.
They begin to vanish, I realize. Up ahead, somewhere. I don’t see it until I nearly fall over the edge, the huge cavern, a deep slope jettisoning out into thin air.
The hillside leads down to the massive horde. I stare down at them, collected in the natural indent of the earth, hundreds of them, unable to escape.
I take a step toward the edge, drawn to them in a way I cannot place. I squint down and spot Penny in the crowd. There she is, yellow dress, clown face, and one dusty black shoe.
She doesn’t frighten me. None of them do. If I joined them, they would all just ignore me. It would be the safest place for me, really.
All of a sudden, I hear someone calling my name. I turn and squint against the bright sky, trying to determine if I had imagined it. I see someone running toward me, but they are just a silhouette. I can’t make them out.
“Ash!” the voice calls again.
That’s when I realize they are being chased. A clutch is moving after them. Whoever this is, Ezekiel I’m assuming, they’re in danger.
This isn’t like him, to get stuck in this kind of situation. The clutch behind him, they move fast, motivated by hunger. He is in obvious danger.
“Ash!” he calls once more, finally clearing the glare. I see him. I see his face.
“Thorn!” Dammit! “What are you-- Thorn!”
I run towards him. I have to get to him before they do. I can’t let him die. I reach out with my mind, struggling to push them back, to slow them down even just a little bit. I lean forward and tackle him at a full run, knocking him to the ground.
“What the hell, Ash--”
“Shut up and stay down!” I snap through clenched teeth.
I plant myself on top of him, masking his body with my own, arms and hands clutching wrist to wrist, elbow to elbow. He lies flat on his back, face to face with me, stunned.
The feet shuffle past us. He falls silent as he realizes the danger he had escaped.
I sense unrest from them. I hold my breath that my presence is enough to shield Thorn from their interest. Fresh blood, coursing through his veins, calls to them. I know it does.
Finally, they pass, vanishing over the edge into the canyon. I don’t move until the very last one tumbles over.
I relax, pulling myself off of him, letting go of his wrists and letting him sit up. He rubs his hands against his wrists.
“Why did you do that?” he asks.
“I just saved your life!” I snap. “What are you even doing here?”
He glances away, crossing his legs and resting his elbows against his knees. A shock of hair falls across his forehead, into his eyes. Irritation rises within me.
“I asked you a question, Thorn.”
He glances my way. His expression remains unreadable.
“If I hadn’t been here, they would have eaten you, you know. Eaten you. That’s not even a metaphor. They would have literally eaten you. Do you even get that?”
“Yeah, Ash. Yeah, I do.”
“I don’t know that you do.” I turn away, brushing the sweat off my forehead, raking my fingers across my scalp. “So, what are you doing here?”
“I followed you. I’ve been shadowing you since SeaHaven.”
“What? Why?”
“I had to see you.”
“What?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t like how we left things. I hate fighting with you.”
“You came all this way just to apologize?”
“Maybe. So what?”
“Dammit, Thorn. You could have been killed,” I reply softly. I don’t know if I like the way I feel right now with him looking at me like that.
He stands up, brushing the dirt off his legs. I let him take my hand to pull me to my feet. “What’s over there anyway?”
“Come on.” I motion him over. He gives a low whistle at the sight of them.
“How many are down there do you think?” he asks.
“Hundreds at least.”
“What do they want?”
“They want to eat,” I reply. “That’s all they ever want.
Thorn turns to me, peering at me the way he does. My heart still races from the adrenaline of the close call moments ago. I find I want to ask him something, but I cannot form any words.
I kiss him.
Square on the mouth, one hand wrapped around his head, holding him steady, fingers curled through his hair. Eyes closed.
I had only ever read about it. So far, he is the only one I ever wanted to try it with. The best part is he kisses me back.
His hands finding their way to my hips, thumbs hooked into my belt loops, pulling me into him. He is whole and perfect, and I realize I don’t want anything else.
“Look,” he says when we finally part a bit. “I know I’m not very good at being out her
e, but I’m coming with you to the lab. I know my way around there. I can help you.”
I take a step back, trying to catch my breath without being so obvious about it. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be glad of the company to be honest.”
He replies with a half-grin.
“But as long as we’re out here, you do exactly as I say. You got it?” I keep my glare steady.
“Got it,” he replies with a nod. His fingers curl into mine. “I don’t want to make a habit of you needing to save my life.”
“You’d better not. We still have a lot of daylight, you know.”
“Lead the way.” He gestures. I try to hide my smile as we make our way, hand in hand, back to the road.
Nine
Back at the road, the landscape remains relatively zombie free. We walk side by side on each side of the double yellow line in the middle of the asphalt.
“You shouldn’t have come, you know,” I say. “You could have been killed.”
“I get that,” he replies with a smile. “But I couldn’t leave things the way we did. I don’t like us being mad at each other.”
“Yeah. Me either.” I return his smile.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean it.”
“No, it’s true though. I am weird.”
“Maybe so. But not for that reason,” he grins.
I shove him in the arm. He laughs in response. Against the horizon I spot the distant walls of the compound, a small gray blemish on an otherwise perfect landscape.
The birds go silent. The once cheerful surroundings become desolate. The trees to the left of us become bare, spindly branches reaching to the empty sky.
“Why is it so quiet?” he asks.
“Animals sometimes go quiet when predators are close by,” I reply.
“What about--?” He stops, averting his eyes away from me.
“What were you going to say?”
“No, don’t worry about it. Never mind.”
“Thorn!” I stop and cross my arms until he looks at me. “You can ask me. It’s okay.”
He glances to the ground between us. “What about you?” he asks. “Can you sense when there’s predators around?”
The Rising Ash Saga | Book 2 | Falling Embers Page 6