Giggling, we raced down the driveway, down the sidewalk, not slowing until we’d turned the corner on our street. Ducking beneath the heavy canopy of an elm tree, I clutched my stomach, laughing.
“Oh my god, did you see her face? Your mom is too precious for this world.”
Lucas kicked off his shoes and began shrugging out of his too-small jacket. “I’m just glad your mom didn’t follow you over with her camera bag.” Lucas paused, placing his hands on his hips and lifting his chin. “How many times do I need to remind you kids that film is better than digital,” he scolded me in a comically high-pitched voice. “A phone camera will never capture all the details, and details are the most important part of photography, dontcha know.”
Grinning, I fumbled with the side zipper on my dress. “I promised I’d smile for the yearbook photo in exchange for not taking our picture tonight.”
Lucas guffawed. “And she believed you?”
“I can be very persuasive.” Wearing only my strapless bra and underwear, along with a pair of torn fishnet stockings and my combat boots, I handed my dress to Lucas. “Your gown, milady.”
When we’d gone shopping for our homecoming outfits, it had been me who’d picked out the suit, with my size in mind, while Lucas had picked out a dress that he could also comfortably wear.
Taking the length of satin, Lucas paused to look up and down my body with a sly smile. “Too bad you can’t go like that.”
“Ha,” I retorted, preening under his admiring gaze. “They’re all going to completely freak out when they see you in a dress—if I showed up in my underwear, too, we’d have a county-wide catastrophe on our hands. I can see tomorrow’s byline now—LOCAL SATAN WORSHIPPERS CRASH GOOD, GOD-FEARING HOMECOMING.”
“Satan worshippers,” Lucas snorted. “Don’t insult me.”
Having successfully switched clothing, we ducked back beneath the veil of wispy branches and continued on down the sidewalk, this time arm in arm. It was our first year of high school, our first homecoming dance, and we were determined to make a lasting first impression. Or rather, I was determined to make an impression, while Lucas was always content to do whatever I wanted.
Soon, we could hear the thumping bass and the din of a multitude of voices. Breaching the school property line, the path to the gymnasium had been fitted with an arch of green and gold balloons, our school’s colors. Small groups of students milled around outside the entrance, all of them stopping to watch our approach.
“Oh look, the circus freaks are here.”
“Logan, isn’t that your brother?”
Logan stood, the tallest among his smirking teammates, scowling in our direction. Like the rest of his varsity team, he wore his football jersey over his dress shirt.
“Oh look, it’s the homecoming court of assholes,” I sneered, pausing to do a dramatic genuflect. Standing straight, I met each of their gazes head-on, ending with Logan. “What’s it like to peak at seventeen, Your Majesty?”
As his scowl turned downright murderous, I hurried to retake Lucas’s arm and we ran into the gym, howling with laughter.
“You need to drink, Willow. Come on, just drink a little bit—come on, drink something, damn it.”
A voice reached me; sunken somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I grabbed hold of that voice, tethered myself to it, letting it pull me, coughing and spluttering, back to consciousness. Someone was holding me upright; a bottle was pushed past my lips, warm water was pouring into my mouth. Reflexively, I coughed again, sputtering as I tried to swallow. I felt myself being raised higher.
Muscle aches, the likes of which I’d never felt before, burned agonizing pathways through my body. Making everything worse, one second I was burning hot, feeling as if I might suffocate from the extreme heat, and then just as quickly, I was shivering and shaking once more.
“Lucas?” I rasped.
“Willow, you need to drink something,” the voice demanded.
I blinked, focusing on the blurry face before me. I knew that mouth. That nose. That unruly beard. Those hard eyes, which right now, burned with concern. Logan was concerned for me? I must still be dreaming.
“Where… are… we?” It took all my strength to say three measly words, leaving me exhausted and drifting off to sleep again. “Tired,” I managed to slur.
“I don’t care if you’re tired,” Logan snapped, nudging the bottle against my lips. “I need you to drink something.”
No, I thought, reaching up, fumbling with the air before finding his hand. I attempted pushing him away, though he didn’t budge.
“Drink something!”
“Sleep,” I whispered, closing my eyes. And the world slipped away once again.
Lucas and I were stretched out over freshly cut grass, sharing a pair of earbuds. The overhead sun glistened on our skin; our backpacks and forgotten textbooks spread out around us. Two empty beer bottles and half a pack of cigarettes sat between us.
“That’s not ironic, Will!” Laughing, Lucas played with my hair, wrapping one of my braids around his finger. “I mean, maybe there’s some situational irony there, but that’s about it.”
“What? Come on! A ‘no smoking’ sign on a cigarette break—that’s ironic.”
“Nope. It’s only ironic if they didn’t already know the sign was there.”
Blinking over at him, I chewed thoughtfully on my lower lip. “Okay, so what about meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife—that’s definitely ironic.”
“Meh, kinda. I think that’s still situational irony. You wouldn’t expect to meet the man of your dreams only to then meet his beautiful wife, right?”
Making a face at the sky, I shook my head and said, “Can you imagine how shitty that would be? To meet the person of your dreams and they’re already with someone else.”
Lucas rolled toward me, pressing a soft kiss to my temple. “Good thing we found each other, huh?”
“What the fuck, Luke—I thought you said you were going to the library.”
Logan stood above us. His short blond hair spiked with sweat. He was fresh from football practice, a duffel bag brimming with gear slung on his shoulder.
Lucas scrambled to sit, hurrying to stuff the empty beer bottles into his backpack, drawing Logan’s attention straight to them.
“Are you kidding me—you’re back here, drinking?”
“It was only one beer,” Lucas mumbled.
“Yeah, and who does that sound like?” Logan demanded. “This is bullshit—you know better.”
“Hey, crazy,” I snapped. “He only had one beer—calm down!”
Logan’s jaw tightened. Ignoring me, he said to Lucas, “You keep fucking off like this, you’re never going to get out of here—is that what you want? To be stuck in this shithole forever, with her?” Not waiting for a response, Logan continued bitingly. “I’ll be in the truck—if you’re not there in five minutes, I’m leaving without you.”
“Oh no,” I called after him. “However will he make it home without you? What with you living three short blocks away and all.”
Logan’s shoulders stiffened, though he continued stalking away. I glared after him, feeling myself growing angrier. I didn’t understand why he hated me so much.
“Great.” Lucas flopped backward on the grass with a groan. “My whole family is crazy—can I move in with you?”
“Yep,” I said, settling back beside him. “And wouldn’t that be ironic.”
Lucas began to laugh. “No, Will, it definitely wouldn’t be—not even a little bit.”
I awoke to grunts and groans, scraping and scuffling noises. I knew those noises, I knew what they meant; only, just as quickly as my panic rose, my thoughts drifted away as my eyes drifted closed.
There was an audible thump to my right; my eyes flew open. A rotten stench filled my nostrils, making my stomach churn anew. The world was blurring in and out of focus, but there was something there, just to my right.
“Lucas?” I whis
pered, his name sticking in my throat. “Is… that you?”
My vision continued to blur in and out of focus, until I could suddenly see, and what I saw was Lucas, his beautiful face drawing closer, a smile splitting his lips. I lifted a quivering hand, reaching for him. As my vision wavered again, Lucas’s features began to morph into the decaying face of a Creeper. Growling, it grabbed at me, gripping a handful of my hair and painfully twisting it. Its jaws snapping like angry traps, its mouth a fetid black hole, it used its grip on me to pull itself closer.
“No,” I demanded faintly. Weakly, I tried to move, tried to push its hand away. Breathing hard, my muscles burning from exertion, my fingers closed around its arm, my nails digging into its scummy flesh. As its skin peeled away from its bones, my hand fell away with its skin. Too weak to do anything more, a strangled cry rose in my throat.
There was a blast—an explosion that ricocheted all around me. As the Creeper’s hold on me disappeared, Logan took its place beside me.
“Were you bitten?” he demanded. Frantic hands pulled at my clothing, roughly turning me this way and that. I tried to speak—I tried to tell him that I hadn’t been bitten—but my mouth refused to cooperate.
“Not bitten,” he said, sounding relieved. “Not bitten… not bitten… .”
Reaching up, I pressed a limp hand to my chest and tried to speak… only no words came. No words. No tears. Just nothing. I was a silent passenger in my own body.
“We gotta keep going, okay? Willow, can you hear me?”
As Logan melted away, I was left staring up at the sky, the heat of the sun beating down on me. I thought I saw a bird—a black shapeless thing that dipped and dove through the never-ending blue above me. I stared at it, envying its freedom, the ease in which it could rise above this world, utterly untethered.
Turning away, blinking sluggishly, my eyes feeling as if they had glue in them, I glimpsed the passing brickwork of a dilapidated home. Then another house with a faded FOR SALE sign hanging crookedly amid an overgrown lawn. Both were gone before I could blink again.
Eventually my eyes closed, the world winking into darkness once more.
Idly, I wondered if I would ever wake up again.
Logan
Cursing, I swung at the block of empty shelves, cursing again as my fist collided with solid wood. Shaking out my injured hand, I bit back a groan. My hands were a mess, my nails cracked, my fingers blistered, the skin on my palms rubbed raw after two long days of pulling Willow behind me in the kayak. Punching that shelf, splitting open the skin over my knuckles, had only succeeded in adding insult to injury.
I’d managed to drag Willow to Elkins Point, where I’d combed through every building, only to come up empty-handed every time. There was nothing here; the entire town had been picked clean of medicine, not even a box of bandages remained. There’d been very little to find along the way as well, with the exception of a small group of Creepers that had nearly gotten the drop on me. Recalling the one that had almost bitten Willow, I continued cursing. I was exhausted, in pain, and without a clue as to what I should do next.
Returning to the front of what had once been the town’s apothecary, I dropped down beside Willow, still secured in the kayak, and pressed my palm to her cheek. She was still in the thick of it, sleeping fitfully; the aspirin I’d been giving her only providing brief bouts of relief from her fever and chills. She still called out for Lucas, seeming to be completely unaware of what had happened only days ago. She wouldn’t eat; she drank very little, and her leg…
Jesus, her leg was a goddamn mess and getting worse.
As gently as I could, I unwrapped the sweat-soaked shirt from her calf, cringing at the sight of her swollen leg, still bewildered by how quickly it had gone from bad to worse. It only proved what I’d guessed all along—how precarious our situation had always been, and how unbelievably lucky we’d all been… up until recently.
Leaving Willow’s leg unbound, I sat back on my heels and dropped my face to my hands, wondering if I should attempt searching out the camp I assumed was nearby. But in what direction would I search first? I hadn’t come across a single map—not one single shred of fucking paper that might help me figure out where to look.
This was the end of the line—there was nothing more I could do. Willow would either get better on her own, or… an image of Lucas falling into that goddamn ravine came to mind. God only knew what had happened to him after that.
“No,” I growled, jumping up. She was all I had left in this miserable fucking world, and I wasn’t going to just sit here and watch her die.
After redressing Willow’s leg and slipping back into my gear, I gathered up the length of rope and dragged Willow inside the kayak out onto the street. The road curved left as we departed the main drag, the town quickly disappearing from view. Approaching a fork in the road, I made a split-second decision to venture right, a direction that took us through small clusters of homes among short stretches of wooded areas. Each neighborhood we traveled through I noted the distinct lack of street signs. It was subtle at first, only a few signs missing from their posts, and then it was on every corner, both post and sign gone.
They were smart, whoever they were. Leaving the town virtually untouched while strategically removing any information that might lead wayward travelers to their location. It was what I would do if I were them—if I had the good fortune of finding an entire town’s worth of resources and enough people to form a working community. At least, that’s what I was hoping they were—decent people with decent intentions and the materials needed to realize those intentions.
I continued down the road, the clusters of homes growing farther apart until there were no more neighborhoods to circle through. Until I’d run out of road and was left standing in front of a crumbling concrete road barrier and rusted sign that read: DEAD END. Beyond that, trees as far as I could see.
Panicking, I dropped the rope and turned in a circle. “I missed something,” I muttered. “I must have missed something…” Glancing at the setting sun, I knew there wouldn’t be enough time to head back to town before darkness fell. Looking at Willow, still sleeping in the kayak, blissfully unaware of the danger I had just put us in, I knew she didn’t have that kind of time either.
“Fuck,” I said, shaking my head. “Fuck.”
Running my hands through my messy hair, I stared at the DEAD END sign, my frustration turning quickly to anger.
“Fuck you,” I spat, pulling the gun from my tool belt. Aiming for the sign, I unloaded the entire clip. Once it was empty, I whipped the weapon as hard as I could, slinging it at that goddamn sign. It clanked hard against the metal post before falling out of sight.
Laughing through a sob, I sat down hard on the ground beside Willow. “I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. I really liked that sign.”
I jumped to my feet—a bit of black leather and a long blonde braid were visible between the trees, as was the double-barreled shotgun aimed at my face. Reflexively, my hand went to my crowbar.
“Now, don’t be doin’ anything stupid, son.” A new voice emerged from behind me, deep and definitely male. Never mind the blonde’s shotgun; I was outmanned. Letting the crowbar clatter to the ground, I put my hands in the air.
Meanwhile, the blonde had exited the trees, pausing on the side of the road. Twirling her shotgun like a baton, she said, “Stupider, you mean—’cause he’s already been doin’ stupid stuff, Davey-cakes. What do you call shootin’ up a sign and wastin’ valuable ammo? It ain’t exactly smart.”
The man behind me—Davey—snorted. “You got me there, Britta.”
Britta twirled her gun straight up into the air, catching it with one hand and then shoving it into the holster on her thigh. Her heavily lined eyes narrowed in my direction. “You got any more guns on ya, sugar?”
I swallowed. “No, I’m just—”
My words cut off as I was grabbed from behind and a th
ick arm encircled my neck, tight enough to reduce my air flow but not cut it off. I struggled at first, gripping the arm at my neck, only to freeze the moment I felt the hard press of a gun to my ribs. Releasing the arm, I lowered my hands, holding my palms out.
“Smart,” Davey murmured, tightening his hold.
Britta rushed forward and began patting me down. “Good gravy, he’s got more blades on him than Edward Scissorhands,” she said, pulling out the strap of knives I kept tucked into each of my boots. “And all these tools—you into some kinky construction shit, Eddie?” Laughing, Britta divested me of my tool belt, adding it to the growing pile of weapons she’d already taken off me.
“Listen,” I said, gasping between words. “My-my—” I gestured in Willow’s direction. “She’s sick… she needs… doctor… antibiotics… please.”
They both ignored me—Britta remained busy sorting through my tool belt while Davey roughly pulled my pack from my back and tossed it to Britta. Britta dug briefly through the bag before setting it aside and glancing curiously up at me. “Don’t exactly have a whole lotta gear on ya, do ya—y’all got a camp nearby?”
“No,” I wheezed. “Lost… gear…”
Rising, Britta folded her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side. Clicking her tongue to the roof of her mouth, she murmured, “Davey, you keep Eddie here in check—I’m gonna search the girl.”
“Don’t… fucking touch… her,” I said, my fight renewed. Davey instantly tightened his hold, cutting off my air and forcibly turning me away from Willow. I kicked out, my legs hitting nothing.
“Calm the fuck down,” Davey growled. “Actin’ like a fool ain’t gonna help your girl.”
My blood thundered through my ears as I fought for both air and calm. The moment I stopped struggling, Davey’s grip on my neck loosened, leaving me sagging in his hold, gasping for breath.
The Blood that Binds (Thicker than Blood Book 3) Page 9