Had he seen me? Even more peculiar, had he let me go? I don’t take the time to dwell on it.
My feet catch against the roots and rocks, forcing me to slow down. But I continue forward, willing myself to keep moving.
The sun creeps towards its apex and the rumbling in my stomach reminds me that I need to find something to eat. I have plenty of arrows, so I could stake out in a tree somewhere if I wanted to. The idea of hunting does not appeal to me in any way though.
A wave of disorientation washes over me. I steady myself against the nearest tree. I need to keep moving, but I’ve lost my sense of direction. Perhaps I need food more than I realized. I move forward, slower this time, one foot in front of the other.
Penny arrives in front of me, shuffling towards me through the trees. Her bright yellow dress stands out between the shadows.
I realize I have retraced my steps back to the ravine without even thinking about it. How long have I been walking? Her hand stretches out to me, beckoning with her staring, dead eyes.
I reach out and take her hand. My head swims. I can’t focus. Hunger overwhelms my senses. Penny guides me along to the edge of the ravine. I lose my footing, but manage to control my fall, sliding through the falling rocks until we reach the bottom.
I stand, brushing off my legs, but my hands and arms feel thick, clumsy. I need water. I need to eat.
Of course, the gathering horde, they don’t touch me. Only Penny, who reaches for my hand once more. She pulls me along the ravine floor, dodging between the others until we arrive at our destination.
She leads me to the edge of the ravine, and in the wall facing us a small trickle of water emerges from the side, caught in a crevasse before tumbling down the rock face.
I kneel and scoop handfuls of the water to my mouth. Despite tasting a bit gamey, it feels cool against my throat. I try not to think about the microscopic beings which may live within. I drink for several minutes, ignoring the movements of the creatures surrounding me.
With my thirst sated, I turn toward Penny. She stares blankly ahead towards where the others move, gathering around something a short distance away. Hunched over some newly dead animal like a bunch of vultures. A coyote, by the sound of the pack howling in the surrounding forest above us and the silver paws, the only recognizable parts of the bloody carcass, visible at the edge of the tableau.
The zombies drag around the body, gnawing at the meat. Strings of flesh, ripped and shredded, hang from their bloody teeth.
The copper aroma teases my hunger, strangely tantalizing to my empty stomach. Penny turns, beckoning to me with her dead eyes.
“I can’t eat this kind of food,” I say. My mouth feels heavy, my tongue leaden.
Turning back to the water, in hopes to satiate my growing hunger, I catch sight of my reflection in the still water. My skin appears pale, almost green. Perhaps nothing more than an illusion caused by the traces of algae within the water, I think.
But my eyes betray the truth of it. They appear milky and pale, vacant. With my hair matted with dirt and leaves, my lips cracked and pale, I realize what I look like.
I look like them.
“What has she done to me?” I whisper. The words come out as a garbled, incoherent growl.
Penny appears next to me, peering into the water as if curious. She places her rotting hand next to mine, resting on the edge of the basin.
Side by side, I see just how similar we have become, she and I. The only difference between us appears to be the decay around her fingernails. Mine have gone pale blue, hers dark gray. The thin, paper-like flesh remaining on her skeletal hands bears the same pale color as my own.
I give up fighting, at least just for the moment. Penny wants me to follow her, a strange act of empathy with my hunger.
She feels the same need. She seems to be… living somehow. Different than before. She died once, a violent, unexpected, unfair death, and she turned into this.
How have I become like her?
I glance over to the prone beast lying on the ground, nearly eviscerated by the few remaining zombies. Between them, I spot the skin peeled back, exposing the musculature of the dead coyote. The blood and flesh call to me. I move forward, shuffling on my knees and nudging my way into the horde.
Hesitating only a moment, I plunge my hands into the flesh, pulling out shreds of bloody muscle, scooping them into my mouth.
The taste immediately calms me. I no longer care or have the capacity to think about my actions, devouring… bite after bite, quenching my hunger.
Every day of my life, this feeling has been with me. Unrecognized but unwavering, satisfied only by this raw, naked flesh. We eat until there is nothing left.
I have become one of them.
I have become the undead.
Fourteen
My stomach feels tight and full. For the first time in a long time, I feel sated.
I crawl a few feet away from the carcass, my hands and face sticky with blood. The sight of it does not bother me like it might have in previous days. Now, I want nothing, except to sleep. Apparently, I am not the only one.
The others have curled up on the ground, a macabre nest, each resting on the other, fully satiated. Yes. I spot a corner of the clowder, enough room for me.
My limbs feel heavy. I cannot stand. On hands and knees, I make my way toward them, craving the warmth of their presence.
Penny’s head rests against the leg of another, her arms and legs drawn up to her chest, the very picture of a sleeping child. I mirror her actions, resting my head against her leg before giving myself over to the sleep threatening to consume me. Perhaps tomorrow I will think on this, but tonight I am satisfied.
My eyes flicker toward the starlit sky, sparkling gemstones against the void. We drift into slumber. I welcome the embrace of the horde.
Somehow, Donovan has won, I realize, with a smile drifting across my face. I don’t fight it. I welcome it.
Let her win.
As long as I have a full stomach and a place to rest after. This is all I want, all I need. Nothing else matters. Not anymore.
I don’t remember waking. I don’t remember standing or moving in any particular direction. The only awareness I have is walking.
One step. Another step. Another. Another.
Shoulder to shoulder, we move as one. The cold flesh of the others presses against me from all sides. It comforts me.
I am them.
They are me.
Our hunger grows and we walk. Through the ravine. Toward the forest.
There is sustenance in the forest. The living. A mother deer and her fawn, vibrant and pulsing with fresh, blooded meat. Waiting for us to consume them.
We walk.
Hunger consumes us. Growing painful. I crave relief.
We move through the trees, moving apart and together again. One step. Another. Another. Skin scrapes against the rough bark. Keep moving forward. Find something to eat.
We find the deer, curled up in a grassy grove, tucked into the cavern created beneath the roots of a large tree, with her spotted fawn nestled at her belly. They never even have a chance.
The first ones to reach them fall on them mercilessly. Even before I reach the grove, I smell the blood.
Enticing. Calling to me.
They kill her quickly. And the fawn. Nothing more than swash of a bloody carcass by the time I reach them.
We descend, consuming with abandon. Tearing flesh,hot blood pours over my lips and teeth, warming my tongue, my throat, my stomach.
Again, we sleep. Crawling into the corners of the forest, tucked away in relative safety of our numbers. Arms and legs piled together. Rotted flesh, fighting against the inevitable decay of passing time.
Again, we walk. Rising to find the nearest living. Further into the forest we move. Step after step. This time, a family of turtles falls prey to our hunt.
Everything. Even the shells, crunched up between skeletal teeth.
One of our kind gets stu
ck in the water. Trapped at an angle, his feet caught in the clay. We walk onward, uncaring about those fallen. We move as one unit, turning towards the food, consuming, and then moving on.
Days pass.
We come to a building, a distant outcropping at first. My words have long since left me. But the meaning of what I see still sneaks through the recesses of my mind.
Warehouse.
The others feel the presence of sustenance inside, the living. Just one. I don’t feel the same familiar pull as I would with a deer or wolf carcass like we find in the forests, but the others continue to move forward, drawn by hunger.
I can only follow. They’ve been doing this longer than I have. They must know something I don’t. We close in on it, a large edifice at the edge of an abandoned city.
Like them, I sense something inside the building, a living thing, moving, breathing, pulsating. But I am not compelled towards it. A buried thread of curiosity compels me onward, still one of the horde.
The explosions go nearly unnoticed. A zombie falls. The others continue onward, falling and shuffling over, around, toward the prey. Closer to me, another zombie falls, his head snapping back as dead blood sprays from the back of his head, before he crumbles to the ground.
I hear nothing, but clarity blooms within me. Someone is shooting at us. My life might be in danger. How can that be? These thoughts don’t connect. Disembodied. Drifting across my conscience.
Another zombie falls, blocking my path. The others around me stumble, building an obstruction of tangled body parts, still reaching, struggling forward. The weight of our horde presses forward. I step to the side, avoiding the fallen ones.
Perhaps this movement out of the shuffling march of the others jogs my awareness, perhaps the proximity of another human, I don’t know, but something shifts. The tiniest change inside me, I look up.
She is there.
A woman stands on the roof of the building. She holds a gun. A large gun with a sleek metal barrel, tucked into her arms, her eye lowered to the sights.
She fires. The recoil kicks into her shoulder, but her feet planted in a wide stance don’t move. She picks them off, one by one.
Does she see me? The idea that she could shoot me only feels like some distant annoyance. I need to get her attention somehow.
Just as soon as the thought drifts across my mind, it is gone. I am back to being one with the horde, nothing more than a creature surrounded by creatures, seeking, yearning, devouring. This woman, she is our prey. Nothing more.
The shooting pain in my upper arm knocks me back, tumbling into the row of zombies behind me. As usual, they ignore my presence, moving around me blindly.
I look up. The woman peers down at me with the gun lowered to her side, her expression clouded. She backs away, disappearing from view.
I push through the horde. The front edge has already met the side of the building and they press forward. I have seen this before.
Get enough zombies in a horde and they can take down a building. Maybe not one this size, but I’ve seen how strong they can be. I keep pushing forward, elbowing through them to try and get to the front.
The pain in my arm pushes through, a final grasp on my humanity. I clutch my right hand across the wound on my left arm, blood seeping through my fingers.
My head feels swimmy. This time I know it is not from lack of food. A flickering light gains my attention, shining from the far corner of the building.
Flash.
Flash.
Then nothing. And again.
Flash.
Flash.
None of them seem to notice. I push to the side, still clutching at my bleeding arm, shoving my way through before I get caught up in the pressing throng of bodies.
Somehow my awareness shifts to the stifling odor of decaying flesh. How did I not notice this before? I struggle to keep breathing steady. At last, I push through.
I see the woman standing on a platform, some kind of lift protruding from the outer wall. She gestures to me, waving her hand over her head.
I spot the mirror in her hand, sunlight glinting off the surface. I return the wave with my uninjured arm. She leans down, crouching onto her knees and throws a rope over the edge of the platform.
How am I going to climb that with one arm, I wonder? But I get there, and I grab hold, planting my feet on the knot at the base. The immediate tension signals that I don’t have to worry about climbing. She pulls me up, as close to the metal edge as possible, and helps me onto the surface.
“You bit?” she asks in a thick, raspy southern accent.
“No, I’m not bit.”
“Sorry I winged ya,” she says. “How the hell’d you do that anyhow?”
“Do what?” I reply.
“Come on. Let’s get inside. Getcha cleaned up. We got plenty a time to chat.”
I follow her in. The opening doesn’t appear to be a door or a window. Just some kind of square hole in the middle of the wall. Up on this level, I spot about six more of them down the length of the building.
“What is this place?” I ask.
She walks over to a collection of couches placed in a circle. In the center sits a small burner, with a pan of thick bubbling liquid in the middle.
It smells like… food.
Actual food, not the raw meat I had been consuming for the past… how long had I been out there? “Well, it used to be a distributing warehouse. Now,” she gestures for me to have a seat, “it’s my own home sweet home.”
Collecting supplies from a shelf, she approaches me. First, she hands me a bottle of water. I feel disoriented, so I don’t argue when she begins to tend to my arm. She pours a clear, strong smelling liquid over the wound, sending a sharp pain ricocheting through me. I suck in my breath, tensing at the unexpected sensation.
“Sorry about that.” She lifts my arm, placing a white gauze over it and wrapping a white bandage around my bicep. “This ought to do ya.”
As she completes the task, I take a look around us. This corner appears cozy and homey. Pieces of newspaper strewn about, a collection of paperback books piled in a disheveled stack next to the overstuffed chair. They all looked quite dog-eared and well read.
On the other side, a mountain of bottled water, most of it still wrapped in plastic, covers the adjacent wall.
But on beyond, in the dim shadows, I can see just how large of a building this is. Rows upon rows of shelves, stretching further than I can make out, towering toward the ceiling. I cannot even see the back wall.
“Forgive me for sayin’, but you look a right mess. You want to get cleaned up? I was just about to have a bite, but it will keep long enough. Come on. I’ll show you the shower.”
I follow her, downing the water she had given me. Perhaps I was more thirsty than I realized. She leads me to another open area, a patio of sorts, but the railing had been built up with wooden fencing, creating a closed-off space open to the sky. The far corner contains a hanging contraption, a series of rubber tubing connected to a rain barrel.
“Here you go,” she says. “If you pull here, the water comes out here. It’ll be a mite cold, but there’s not much else we can do about that. I’ll put you out a change of clothes.”
“You have clothes?”
“Honey, I got just about everything in here.” She shrugs, her lined face falling into a tragic expression for a brief moment.“Just about.”
With that, she leaves me alone. I glance around. The sound of the horde just below the patio wall makes my skin crawl. I realize, looking down at myself, how much gore and blood covers my body.
How long had I been like this? Like them, I wonder? I press my face against the slats of the wall, focusing on the moving creatures below. They look the same as ever. Rotted, broken.
I peel off my clothes, stiff and sticky, throwing them in the corner of the patio. The shower does me wonders, and when I emerge, I find a folded robe, undergarments, a sports bra, a large white tee shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Fine
for now, but I’ll have to find something more suitable before I go.
“There you go,” she says, when I return to the living area. “You almost look cleaned up. Come and eat.”
A bowl of the thick broth sits on the low table. The other bowl she holds in one hand. She gestures for me to sit.
“Feel better?” she asks.
“Much better. Thank you.”
She doesn’t speak to me as I eat. Ignoring the metal spoon, I pick up the bowl and inhale the rich broth, practically feeling the nutrients pouring into my body.
Once empty, she takes my bowl, returning to the burner and refilling it. After consuming this second bowl, this time a bit slower, I place it back on the table, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
She hands me a paper napkin. “Alright,” she says. “I’d love to know how you pulled off a trick like that.”
It takes me a little while to find my words again. Now that the adrenaline of the gun shot has died down, the inevitable fatigue sneaks up on me. The hot meal and clean clothes do their part. My eyes grow heavy.
“Oh, you poor thing!” she says, standing up and moving toward me. “You just lie down now. We can sort this all out later.”
She leads me the few steps to the couch, placing one of the pillows under my head and covering me over with the yarn blanket. I manage to find my voice just before I drift off.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“Know what?”
“How do you know I wouldn’t kill you?”
She chuckles, a throaty, honest sound. “Sweetie, I’ve seen a few things in my day. I had you spotted a few miles off, to tell the truth. Besides, if you was going to kill me, you’d a done it already. Now get some rest.”
I barely realize I have already fallen asleep.
Fifteen
When I open my eyes, it takes me a minute to remember where I am. The sun streaming through the opening bathes the living space in a golden square of light.
The Rising Ash Saga | Book 2 | Falling Embers Page 10