KATE
I don’t stop until we’re a mile out of town.
I pull to a halt beside a green sign with reflective white letters that reads, Mendocino, 10 miles.
I’ve been to this area enough over the years to know that it’s mostly unpopulated. There are miles of open land that snake alongside the ocean. There may be the occasional home or ranch interspersed along the highway, but there will be no more big towns to contend with.
Until we get to Mendocino. The town is a fraction of the size of Braggs, but it’s a tourist destination. There’s no telling how many undead we might encounter within those city limits.
My people stand in a loose circle in the middle of the road, everyone breathing hard from our brush with death. Caleb leans over his thighs, sucking in great gulps of air and wiping sweat from his forehead. Reed crouches on the far side of the road, puking. He’s never had a good stomach for running.
Ben stands off to one side, staring back in the direction of Braggs while he catches his breath. Watching him stirs the kernels of fear I felt earlier when he nearly died on the bridge. But the fear is small compared to everything else I feel for him.
I touch his shoulder. “Hey.” When he turns around, I step into his warmth. His arms come around me.
“I’m sorry.” I knot my hands in the fabric of the sweat jacket he wears and lean my cheek against him.
His arms tighten. He holds onto me like he’ll never let me go. It feels so good.
“I told you I wasn’t dropping this,” he says gruffly into my ear. “A little temper tantrum isn’t going to deter me.”
I laugh silently into his chest. When I look up at him, the skin around his eyes crinkles. I love the way he looks at me.
“Just don’t almost die on me again and we won’t have a problem,” I say.
“Ditto.”
I plant a quick kiss on his lips, trying to shake the fear of losing him. Despite my apology, it still looms large and scary in my mind.
We congregate with the others. They’re smudged with soot and look exhausted.
Reed swishes his mouth out with water and spits it to one side. “Dude. That sucked.”
“Could be worse.” I try to keep my voice light. “I once saw a man at an aid station who’d tripped on a root and snapped a bone in his foot. The bone stuck out of the top of his foot.” The story is meant to make everyone feel better, but I can see by the widening of eyes that it’s having the opposite effect.
“Let me guess,” Ben says. He leans against the road sign, shoulders hunched with fatigue. “The motherfucker still managed to make it to the finish line.”
I shake my head. “No. He had to ride a horse out of the canyon where he fell. We were miles away from a road.”
No one speaks. The distant keen of zombies fills the air. Where are crickets when you need them?
I want to kick myself. I should have lied. I should have told Ben the guy managed to drag his ass to the finish line with a bone sticking out of his foot.
“Mama,” Reed says, “you just ruined our ultrarunner illusion. I thought you guys were supposed to keep going no matter what.”
Maybe that hadn’t been the best story to tell. I try again. “There’s a race through the Colorado mountains called Hardrock. A few years ago, one of the front runners fell and dislocated his shoulder thirteen miles in.” That piece of ultrarunner history that had left me and Frederico awestruck for days. “Not only did the guy finish the race, but he won it.”
“How far is Hardrock?” Caleb asks.
“A hundred miles.”
“Maldita sea,” Ash breathes. “That is some crazy, fucked up shit.”
I rake my gaze over the group. “You guys are all ultrarunners. Every single one of you. You all ran thirty-three miles on the Lost Coast. We just ran another five to get through Braggs. You guys are all badasses.”
“And we’re not even done yet,” Ben mutters.
“And we’re not even done yet,” I agree.
“Does it count since we rode a car from Usal Beach to Braggs?” Caleb asks.
“Hell, yes. It’s called a stage run. It means we’re running in stages. It’s a different kind of ultra.”
They look at one another, exchanging slow, pleased grins. Thank God. So long as I can keep their heads in the game, we can get them to the finish line.
“It’s another ten miles to Mendocino,” I say. “After that, it’s a good seventy-five miles to Fort Ross. None of us are going to survive this trek if we don’t decide, here and now, that we’re going to finish. Understand? It’s mind over matter. Every single one of you has to make the decision that you’re going to finish. That’s all it takes.”
No one answers. Ben looks like I just kicked him in the balls. Even Reed, ever upbeat, looks like I deflated his inner tube.
“Can we go back to that part about there being eighty-five miles between us and Fort Ross?” Caleb asks. “Are we going to run the whole way?”
I shake my head. “There are long stretches of open road. If we can find a car that works, we can drive. Or maybe we can find some bikes. But no, I don’t think we’re going to have to run the whole way.”
“Thank fucking God,” Ben mutters. The rest of the group lets up a collective sigh of relief.
So much for my pep talk. I had meant to inspire them. Instead, all I’d done was scare the hell out of them.
We take a reprieve to eat, drink, and relieve ourselves. We don headlamps and flick them on. Reed finds a stream that runs from the open grassland out to the ocean, which we use to refill our packs. No one asks if the water is safe. There’s no telling if water out of a faucet would be any good, either. All we can do is keep hydrated and hope for the best.
“Um, guys?” Eric pulls off his glasses and cleans them on the hem of his shirt. “Does it look like it’s getting smokier out here?”
Seven heads whip in the direction of Braggs. Eric slips his glasses back on and peers north with the rest of us.
The sun has set. The stars are obscured by the smoke that chugs into the sky.
The fire has grown bigger and more ferocious in the five minutes we’ve rested beside the road sign. In mounting horror, I realize the flames aren’t content to eat the town of Braggs. They’re chewing their way through the grassland flanking the side of the highway.
“But, it’s wet,” Ash says. “The grass shouldn’t burn.”
“The top of the grass is wet,” Caleb says grimly. “The undercarriage must still be dry enough to burn.”
Dammit. Fire isn’t even the worst of our problems.
Stumbling along ahead of the flames are zombies. Hundreds and hundreds of zombies. Where a short while ago they had marched toward the flames, they’ve now reversed direction.
And it’s obvious why. At the forefront of the horde are two alphas, clicking and keening instructions.
The alphas were smart enough to realize the flames are deadly. Now they’re leading a horde away from Braggs at a frightening pace down Highway 1 in a collision course with us.
20
Sprint
ERIC
If Reed or one of the other guys had asked me five minutes ago if I had another sprint in my body, I would have flipped him off. Our frantic tear through Braggs had left me ready to collapse with exhaustion.
But there’s something about a wall of flames and a horde of zombies that inspires a person to action.
We tear off in a frantic pack, Kate in the lead as we sprint south on Highway 1.
I once ran fast when I stole my brother’s car keys on the night of his prom. I was pissed that he had a date with a senior girl I’d been crushing on for months. The girl, of course, had never noticed me. I’d been three years younger than her, and nerdy at that.
Tom, of course, had dazzled her, even though he was only a junior.
I got my vengeance. I stole his car and went out to get ice cream. He’d been forced to drive our mom’s beat-up Volvo station wagon to prom.
I’d been grounded for a month. The worst part was that I’d felt like shit the whole time, knowing I was being a dickhead to my brother.
Until I met Kate, that was the fastest I’d ever run in my life. It had been a twenty-yard sprint from his upstairs bedroom to the bright red Honda Civic parked on the curb in front of our house.
Then the apocalypse had arrived, and with it, Kate. She made us do sprints around the track. She even made us run up and down the stairwell in Creekside.
It all feels worth it when we’d been forced to tear through those last few miles of Braggs. The training had paid off and saved our lives.
That near-death experience had been kitten’s play.
As we streak down Highway 1 with zombies and fire hard on our heels, I finally understand what it means to sprint.
Spit flies from my open mouth as I suck in gulps of air. My lungs feel like they’re going to explode out the front of my chest. My arms and back ache from the effort of swinging my torso back and forth in a desperate bid to outrun nature.
My feet, already covered with blisters, are blocks of pain. I can barely feel them as they tear over the pavement. They churn, propelling me forward as fast as they can.
Don’t be a loser, Eric.
Quit playing small, little brother.
I dig deep and make a silent promise to my brother and my dead girlfriend. I won’t give up. I’ll run as hard and as fast as I can until my body gives out or the fire catches up with us. I open myself up to the physical pain and embrace it.
The fire gains on us, leaping over the open grassland like demonic gazelles. It smashes through scattered buildings and swallows trees in whole gulps.
The zombies keen and moan. Many are devoured by the flames, but huge swaths of them continue to stagger forward and stay just ahead of the fire.
I do my best to block out the madness behind us, to narrow my focus on my breath, my body, and the road beneath my feet.
You could be faster than any of them if you didn’t half-ass it, Lila once said to me. It had been at the end of a particularly grueling workout in the stairwell. I think Reed had thrown up two times that day.
No more half-assing it. There is one point I’m very clear on: I don’t want to die.
Our group streams down the road in a pack. The waves pound against the cliffs to our right in a never-ending surge. I focus on the sound of the water, finding it preferable to the roar of the flames and the keening of the zombies behind us.
How ironic that a little over a day ago, I never wanted to hear the ocean again after nearly drowning in it.
Tom.
I picture my perfect big brother. He’s crystal clear in my mind’s eye. In his jeans and a tight-fitting tee, he carries a baseball bat. A baseball bat would definitely be his weapon of choice. It was his favorite of all the varsity sports he played. He can swing that thing hard and fast. It would be his perfect zombie weapon.
And he would take out a lot of zombies with it. Sure, some of them would be his fraternity brothers; that was inevitable. But he would save a fair number of them, along with some of the girls from the neighboring sororities.
Now they’d be holed up on their campus, just like I was with the Creekside crew. They would be discovering new ways to survive. Tom would be their leader.
“Don’t let up,” Kate shouts. She sucks in big gulps of air between words, trying to encourage us even as she struggles to breathe. “Whatever you do, don’t let up! This run is for keeps. You have to make it count.”
How she can talk at all is beyond me.
My eyes flick across the road before us. To the left is an abandoned barn, half of the roof caved in. In front of the barn is a pick-up truck with faded blue paint.
“Truck,” Reed gasps.
“No,” Kate snaps. “No time.”
She’s right. The fire eats its way south, devouring everything in its path. If we stop to try and get a vehicle, it will be on us.
“Breathe through the pain,” Kate says. “Don’t let up. Focus on the finish.”
A sob rips itself from Ash’s throat. She keeps up, but from the look on her face, I can tell she’s in as much pain as the rest of us.
Tom.
My brother’s face again floats before me. Tom would make it out of this alive. Hell, he is alive, somewhere. He’s alive, and he’s keeping his frat brothers and their sorority sisters alive.
I can do this. My brother was a golden boy, but only because he chose to be a golden boy. I chose to be a half-assed slacker.
From now on, I choose to be a golden boy like Tom. I’m getting out of this alive. Whatever it takes. I don’t care how much I hurt. I’m not stopping until it’s safe.
We hurtle past two abandoned cars on the side of the road. One of them has a zombie inside. The doors hang open on the other. There’s no time to look for keys.
“Five miles.” Kate wheezes at us as she glances up from her watch. “We’ve gone five miles.”
Halfway to Mendocino. This news might hearten me if the fire wasn’t gaining on us.
If we can just get to Mendocino. If we can just get there, maybe we can find shelter.
I don’t know why I think it will be any safer in Mendocino. I’ve never been there. Kate says it’s a small tourist town perched over the ocean. It sounds like a nice place. A safe place. A place where we can wait out of the fire.
But California wildfires are monsters in their own right. This one could burn for hundreds of miles out here. I’ve seen wildfires devastate thousands of acres, and that’s with fire crews fighting to contain them.
The hordes behind us have disappeared, devoured by the flames. There are a few stragglers, but not enough to worry me. Our true enemy is the flames.
Fear pumps through my veins. It fuels me, pushing me through the pain. It propels me down the road on a headlong run for my life.
“Zombies.”
My eyes flick up. The sky is dark. The beam from my headlamp cuts through the smoke that swirls around us.
It illuminates another horde of zombies—this one coming straight for us. They march north on Highway 1, drawn to the sound of the fire as surely as the zombies of Braggs had been before the alphas led them away. This new horde cruising in our direction has no alpha to turn back.
We’re going to be sandwiched between fire and two hordes of the undead.
“Kate,” I call, panic tearing through my bloodstream. “Kate, what are we going to do?”
She throws me one anguished glance. Her eyes rake over our small contingent, wild with fear for our safety. Then I see her jaw set.
“Ocean,” she barks. “Now.”
Fuck me.
I don’t argue with Mama Bear, even though the idea of going into the ocean makes my legs want to collapse. Not to mention there are sheer cliffs between us and the water.
We stream off the road and toward the precipice that snakes along the coast. We skid to a stop at the edge, staring over a sharp bluff that plunges straight down to the water.
“Over the edge,” Kate orders. “Drop down to that ledge.”
That ledge she refers to is a good ten-foot drop. Shit. My discomfort with heights clogs my throat. First the bridge, then another bridge, and now over the edge of a cliff.
“Are you going to be a golden boy, or are you going to be a dead loser?” I mutter to myself.
My muscles scream as I crouch down and lower myself over the side. I dangle there, digging my fingertips into the earth. I kick at the sandstone bluff, trying to find a toehold for my shoes.
The fire rips by overhead, burning the tips of my fingers.
I shriek, sliding down the face of the cliff. My nails snap off as I try desperately to dig them into the hard surface. My feet search for even the smallest toehold.
I’m going to fall. I’m going to fall into the ocean and die.
Thank God Tom is still alive. There’s still someone to carry on the family name.
I’ll get to see Lila. I never really t
hought much about what happens after death, but in my gut, I’m sure I’ll see Lila again when I die.
Someone grabs the back of my pack and yanks.
I land on a small, uneven ledge, sprawling on my back. Ben leans over me, breathing hard.
“You have a bald spot on your forehead,” he remarks. “At least your whole head didn’t catch on fire.”
I have no words. I remain sprawled on my back, sucking in air and staring at the world above me where fire burns.
21
Nails
JESSICA
I lay on my side, eyes closed, aching from the inside out.
I’m swathed in the tightest clothes I could find in the tiny closet I shared with Shaun. Tight clothes are the hardest to get off. I don’t plan to make it easy for the next asshole who comes in here.
With several hours to go before sunrise, I have no doubt there will be another one. Since Rosario poured out all the booze, there isn’t much else to entertain our captors. The ones not on watch sit around campfire rings feasting on our hard-won food stores. I listen to them dice and tell exaggerated stories of bravery.
“Jessie?”
I jerk upright at the familiar voice.
“Alvarez?” His face is a dark silhouette in the window screen. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you okay?” He presses a hand against the screen, as though trying to touch me.
I inch up to the screen. “They’ll kill you if they catch you.” I don’t add that they’ll kill someone else, too. From inside the RV, I can see the guards patrolling the Rotchev prison. “How did you get out?”
“I crawled out through loose floorboards. I waited until the patrol passed then slipped over here. Are you okay?”
The pity and anguish in his voice makes me recoil. “I’m fine.” I don’t want or need his sympathy. “How are Steph and Bella?”
“The girls are okay. They’re scared for you.”
“Tell them I’m fine. Tell them to take care of themselves. They should make a break for it if they get the chance. Get as far as possible from this place.”
“Jessie ... ?”
I shake my head at his unspoken question. There’s no reason to talk about it. “Alvarez, we have to fight. Sooner rather than later. I know we lost the booze, but—”
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