And that little squiggle of jealousy grinding into her belly? Well, she just would have to ignore that.
Just then, a loud shout filled the air. Filled with terror and shock, a woman’s voice broke into the lull of storytime. “She’s gone! I can’t find her anywhere!”
A little prickle ran over the back of Selena’s shoulders, and she heard the rumble of response from the others in bits and pieces: “Are you sure?” “Maybe she’s in the yard.” “Or the barn.” “Maybe she fell asleep.”
“No, no, I’ve looked everywhere!” The stress in Myra Tendy’s voice became hysteria. “She was talking about the river today. She wanted to go swimming.”
The prickling down her spine became stronger and Selena automatically looked toward the protective walls. Her fingers touched the thumb-sized crystal that hung low on its cord beneath her tunic shirt. If the little Tendy girl…what was her name? Hannah?—had somehow sneaked out of the walls, this was going to be bad.Her heart pounding, her palms dampening, Selena moved closer to the north side of the wall. She was aware that the audience had broken up and people were forming search groups. Maybe the zombies weren’t out yet tonight, hadn’t come close enough to see or smell the little girl. Maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with it.
Maybe she’d be lucky this time.
So far, Selena hadn’t heard any of their guttural moans, their desperate calls of ruuuu-uuthhh or arreeyyyy-aaaane. She peered through the glass window of an old truck that had been used as a monstrous brick in the protective wall. The glass was dirty and crusted with mildew, but Selena scratched it away and looked into the dingy night beyond the settlement.
The orange, glowing eyes of the zombies were bright enough that she’d be able to see them, even through the dirt, if they were out there. The river was on the south side, the far side from where she was. But Selena knew that the gangas would come from the northwest, from the direction of the ocean.
All the while, behind her, she heard the shouts, the calm voices of the organizers, the freaked-out voice of Myra Tendy being calmed.
And she hoped that she wouldn’t have to go out there tonight and risk exposure.
This was the core of her life: the hatred and disgust for the flesh-eating, mutilating zombies balanced with the knowledge that every one of them who died a violent death, without her help, was never truly free.
“Hey.”
The voice right behind her had Selena whirling around. It was Theo.
Great. Just what she needed now.
Yet, her heart gave a little jump at the sight of him. He stood there, the fingertips of one hand shoved into a front jeans pocket and a tight expression on his face. His jet-black hair gleamed in the light as if it was wet and his high, elegant cheekbones caught the iffy light like a magnet.
“You aren’t going to try to sneak out there through that car window are you?” he said in a flat, funny voice. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
And so the weirdness begins. “No,” she said. Not yet, anyway.
“Good,” he said. “Because after last night, that would be a stupid thing to do. Go out by yourself. And you’re not a stupid woman.”
Wanna bet? Selena bit back the words before they slipped out. She’d said enough tonight.
“I don’t know who you think you are—some misguided Buffy or Eowyn or something—but you can’t go out there alone,” he said. “You don’t even have anything to protect yourself with.” His eyes clearly skimmed over her from head to toe.
She didn’t mind the comparison to Eowyn. That woman was kick-ass, and she didn’t even have super powers. Kind of like Selena herself. “What a laugh,” she replied. “A kid like you telling me what to do.”
His jaw moved, shadows shifting over his face in Frank’s torchlight. “I’m not as young as you think I am,” he said. His voice was still flat and calm.
Selena smothered a snort. “You don’t look a day over thirty,” she said. “And you aren’t my father.”
“Damn straight,” he said. Her stomach flipped and her mouth went dry.
Before she could respond, she heard it. Faint, in the distance, but unmistakable: ruuu-uuuthhhh.
Damn.
Her palms went damp and her fingers cold. Selena turned away from the wall. If she was going to have a chance to intercept the zombies, she had to do it now. Quickly, before the rest of the search parties got beyond the walls with their sticks and bottle bombs and all the other weapons. Got to go.
“Jennifer’s looking for you,” she said. “Over there.” She pointed east, over and beyond Theo’s shoulder toward the milling clusters of people, and when he looked automatically, she darted away. Slipped into the shadows.
“Selena!” he shouted, and she glanced back to see him looking at the wall of cars and garage doors and old roofs, as if she’d somehow found a way to slide inside.
Good. Let him look for her while she found another way out.
The search parties had begun to leave the protection of the walls by the time Selena found one of the smaller entrances. Her crystal on its long leather thong hadn’t begun to glow yet, but its temperature had started to rise. She felt its warmth against the hollow at the base of her breastbone. Not precisely a comforting feeling, but a familiar one, nevertheless. A peek down at it confirmed that it wasn’t burning, thank goodness.
The zombie moans had grown louder and by listening intently, Selena confirmed that they were coming from the northernmost direction. Fortunately, it was on the opposite side of Yellow Mountain from the swimming area of the river, which was where the search parties would head first, and then split into east and westerly directions.
But the fact that Hannah Tendy had dark hair, and the gangas had been programmed to kidnap blond people—and to do what they wished, which was to maul and feed on the flesh of others—gave Selena little hope that if the little girl was out there, things would end well.
And she didn’t really want to be the one rushing out to ease the zombies into the afterlife in the wake of something like that.
The small north-side gate opened easily to a set of steps that led to the ground below. Gangas couldn’t climb stairs, so all but the main entrance to Yellow Mountain were accessed thus.
Selena was just about to pull open the grate when a familiar voice came out of the darkness. “Selena, don’t.”
“Vonnie,” she said, turning to her best friend, her mother, her savior. “You know I have to.”
The older woman’s arm came down to block her from the gate, strong and solid. “Not tonight. Just…not tonight. There’s nothing you can do.”
“Yes there is. I can’t let them—”
“Have you forgotten Crossroads? They might see you.”
Selena’s voice rose and her throat burned. “Of course I haven’t forgotten—”
“Then leave it. Tonight. Just leave it. You’re still injured from last night, and if anyone sees you, Selena, if anyone sees you—it’s a little girl. A child. They won’t understand and they won’t care.” Vonnie’s voice cracked with emotion.
“I know the zombies are horrific, but they don’t know what they’re doing,” she replied. Her words were taut and the crystal was much warmer now against her skin, even through the small thick pouch that hid its glow beneath her shirt. “They’re trapped.”
“You can’t save them all,” Vonnie told her. “Selena. You can’t save them all.”
“But I can save some of them. And I have to save as many as I can.” She looked at Vonnie, blinking back tears. “I’m the only one.”
She loved Vonnie, she owed her everything, but the older woman would never understand. She couldn’t see the terror in the zombies’ eyes, she didn’t feel their desperation. She didn’t watch their human lives pass through their memory, and into Selena’s as she set them free.
She didn’t know that a human soul and mind was trapped inside each hulking, flesh-starving body for decades.
She wasn’t dragged out of her sleep by night
mares.
“I’m the only one. That’s why I have to go. Please, don’t make it any harder than it is.”
Her vision blurry, her stomach in knots, Selena ducked under Vonnie’s arm and pushed at the gate. She heard the last low cry of her name, and had to ignore it, blinking rapidly. The grate closed behind her.
Darkness surrounded Selena as she hurried down the stairs. In the distance, she saw orange lights shifting about with jerky motions, in pairs. The groans were laced with desperation as the gangas called for ruuu-uuuthhhhh: searching, always searching for a man named Remington Truth.
While Selena absorbed all of their human memories, these creatures who had been just as alive as she and Vonnie before somehow being turned into these horrifying beings, she didn’t know quite as much about their purpose. She did know that the zombies were programmed to walk the earth looking for the silver-haired man who had been one of the Strangers; a member of the Elite. And when they weren’t carrying off light-haired humans as candidates, they were tearing into dark-haired ones with their filthy claws and rotting teeth. That was how they fed. How they lived.
If one could call what they did living.
Selena’s throat burned. It was difficult enough to guide the souls and ease the pain of normal humans as they passed on, but to take on the pain and anguish of these other horrifying, cannibalistic ones…it was often too much. The battle between her horror for what they did, and the need to save them because they weren’t in control of their urges, was a nightmare.
Yet, Selena couldn’t stop. She knew that every one she saved was one less soul, trapped in limbo—or worse—forever. Even one soul saved was worth the danger, worth being ostracized, worth the constant internal battle she fought.
Selena blinked away the tears. Now was not the time to be distracted. They might be damaged creatures, deranged and mindless, but they were lethal in their desperation.
The terrain in front of her was clear and open, purposely, so that any approach could be seen from the walls. But less than a hundred yards out, trees and the buckled concrete of roads from days past made the ground uneven and provided shadows in which to hide. The overgrown remnants of an occasional building made low, unnatural humps in the land, tall grass shooting up and filling in amid the rubble.
Selena gripped her crystal, pulling it out from beneath her tunic to let it hang free. She wasn’t ready yet to slip off its protective covering, and allow the rose-colored stone to glow in the night. Not until she got closer to the band of zombies.
By counting the lights of their orange eyes, which looked like staggering fireflies from her vantage point, she guessed that there were fewer than a dozen tonight. She’d dealt with more, but any number over five was frightening and chancy.
The familiar fear clogged her throat and her hands went clammy. Selena was suddenly acutely aware of the breeze that had been so refreshing earlier, but now felt like an icy blast. The last bit of warmth from the wine that had made her so loose had disappeared, leaving her taut and edgy and her heart pounding.
No matter how many times she did this, no matter how important it was, how critical…Selena still felt the fear. As if to remind her of the dangers, the wounds on her chest tightened and ached. And the gash along her back, the one that had healed long ago, twinged.
But she went on.
Now she could smell them in the air: the musty, death smell of old flesh and the putrid rot of their breath. Like swamp and garbage that had been sitting in the sun, baking, for days.
But this was nothing. When they got closer, she’d hardly be able to breathe for the stench.
Selena’s hands were cold and clammy and she automatically curled one around the crystal. It was hot now, like a stone that had been tucked amid the ashes of a fire and then withdrawn. The thick pouch protected her from the heat, but soon she’d remove it so that the rosy glow could beam through the night.
She stopped in a shadow about three hundred yards from the wall, and even farther from the troop of gangas. The blossoms from the small cluster of apple trees had already dropped their petals and tiny bulbs had begun to form. The crushed and rusted form of a car sat a few feet away, and what looked like an old sign leaned against it. It was too dark to read the faded letters, but she knew there was a large fancy R on it.
The creatures were somehow taller than the humans from which they’d come—taller and broader and thicker, as if their original bodies had been stretched and stuffed to make them larger, causing their skin and skeletons to protest the mistreatment and begin to tear and protrude.
Selena counted eight gangas. Too many.
She shuddered and swallowed. Time to move closer.
From behind her, then, suddenly in the night came a loud clanging sound.
Selena froze and turned, her heart skipping a beat. A great beam of white light shot into the air from behind the walls, accompanying the ringing bell.
That was the signal. They’d found the girl. Hannah.
Selena felt a wave of relief so strong that she nearly doubled over, her fingers brushing the rough bark of a tree next to her. They’d found her. She was safe.
An answering light shone into the dark sky in the west, and then another, to the south. The search parties: acknowledging the message and confirming their locations. Far from where Selena was in the north.
The searchers were coming back, and Selena could—
Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard the sound of hoofbeats.
He was riding across the expanse of field, clearly outlined by the slice of moon and the glow from the torch he held high over his head.
Selena watched as he galloped madly toward the cluster of zombies, the fire blazing a stream in the dark blue night above him.
She realized in an instant what he was about to do, and she had to move.
Dashing out of the trees into the open, the crystal swaying and bouncing against her, Selena shouted and waved her arms. She was exposing herself and him as well, but her biggest concern was to stop him before he tore into the zombies and tossed the blazing fire onto them.
At the sound of her shouts, he looked over. In an instant, he wheeled the horse expertly, front hooves flailing briefly against the sky. Then suddenly they were barreling down toward her.
Upright and steady in the saddle, he held the horse’s mane in one hand and the fiery torch in the other, looking like some primitive warrior. As one, they leapt over a small crevice in the ground and then over a pile of old tires. He barely shifted in his seat, his hair gleaming from the flames above.
It wasn’t until they came closer that she actually saw his features, but somehow she’d already known it was Theo, even from a distance. She’d never seen anyone ride a horse like that, except on a DVD. And even then, she’d been warned by Vonnie and Frank that nothing on DVDs was real, or ever had been.
The mustang stampeded up toward her without slowing, and Selena realized he wasn’t going to stop. She started to dart out of the way, but the next thing she knew, the large, pounding animal was upon her. The ground shook and the hoofbeats filled her ears.
What the hell—
They tore past her, hardly slowing. A hand swept down and curled behind her and under her arm, lifting her quickly and fluidly into the air without straining the gashes on her chest. Selena found herself jolted onto the muscular, undulating back of the horse in an unstable sidesaddle position. Instinctively, she grabbed the dark mane in front of her with both hands as she tried to settle her heart and stomach—as well as her rear end—into place. Out of breath, startled and angry, at first she couldn’t speak.
Then she was terrified.
As the shock eased, she became aware of the flickering light above them from the torch he still held, and the strong band of an arm that curved from behind her to a clump of mane above her two-handed death-grip. And the very young, very hard thighs that veed and jolted right behind her. And the solid torso she’d bumped back against when she got settled in her seat.
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“You busted idiot!” she managed to gasp, realizing that he must only have been holding on to the horse with his legs when he reached down to grab her up. “You might have killed both of us!”
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he shouted back, the wind whipping his words behind them.
She realized they had made a wide turn and were barreling back toward the cluster of zombies in the distance. “No!” she shouted back at him, twisting in the half-embrace and nearly falling backward off the side of the galloping horse. She gasped and clutched harder. “Go back to the walls!”
The crystal on the long cord bounced and jounced against her stomach, heavy and hot, but still covered by its heavy pouch. She bent forward to try and subdue it because there was no flipping way she was going to let go of that mane. Especially since her ass was shifting and bouncing like a popcorn kernel in hot grease.
“I’ve got to take care of them first,” he replied in a determined voice by her ear. “Got to find that girl.”
“No,” she shouted, chancing to turn once again in her seat. She nearly clipped his chin with her temple, and he gave her a quick downward glance. “They found her! Go back, Theo!”
“They found her?” The tension eased a bit from his torso, but still they shot toward the zombies, his bracing arm solid as before.
The crystal was getting warmer and the heat seeped into her belly where she’d bent over to cup it close, and she worried that the temperature might bother the horse. And the zombies, few as there were, would soon sense it, if she didn’t get Theo to turn around. “Please! Go back! It’s too dangerous!”
He eased up on the horse at that moment and she felt him shift away to look down at her. “Are you hurt? Are you all right?”
“Take me back. Please,” she said, avoiding the question but clearly leading him to believe that she was hurt. “They found her. It’s not worth it.”
Her teeth were chattering now; somehow, her body was supporting her in the misleading of Theo. Selena gripped the mane more tightly and felt his legs shift as he eased up on the horse. The creature responded, slowing, and turning to head back to the settlement. The mustang was by no means walking or even trotting; they were still going along at a gallop—but at least it wasn’t at breakneck speed.
Night Beckons Page 8