“Dek doesn’t think everything through.” Hunter commented. “He’s too impulsive.”
“I’ve been thinking that I’d go to the hardware store,” Eby said. “The lumber yard is right next to it. There would be clothing for warm weather. And plenty of materials to build some kind of fireplace or stove, or whatever we decide on to keep warm. And there’s already an enclosed yard with a fence. We could make improvements to the fence. Not to mention there’s a supply of wood and enough materials to build a fortress. Men were building forts and castles long before modern technology. We can do that again. We can build sturdy enough walls to keep us safe. And we could eventually dig wells and grow gardens inside the walls.”
“We would need more people for that,” Kyle said.
“Yes, we would,” Eby agreed. “But isn’t that the beginning of any civilization? People working together to survive?”
“If someone else hasn’t already figured that all out, I think it might be our best bet,” Kyle said. “But not with Dek there.”
“No, not with Dek there,” Eby agreed. “We would have to go our own way. But we already knew we would have to do that eventu- ”
Eby never finished. Hunter had gotten to his feet. “You hear those birds? Something’s got them all stirred up.”
“There are so many of them,” Aili whispered as she stared out the window. “Do you think there is anyone inside that building?”
“If there is, they’d better stay inside,” Bresh answered as he stared out the window over her shoulder.
“They’re after something,” Aili said next.
Bresh agreed. They were always after something.
They’d learned a lot in the past few weeks. Like the fact that the deads, as they had started to call them, came from all walks of life. They’d seen them in office clothes, in police uniforms, in hospital garb. They saw them stark naked sometimes. They knew now that inflicting some kind of severe trauma to the head was the only way to stop them. But there was a lot they still didn’t know. Like how widespread this was and what had started it all. It was worldwide, most likely. The had pieced together all the news reports of the time leading up to the shutdown of communications. There was still no electricity. No TV. No radio. No internet. No newspapers. Nothing. Every form of communication had been wiped out. There was word of mouth. But even that, maybe especially that, was severely limited.
It had only been a month, but it seemed like they had been running forever. They had stopped asking: How could this be happening? It was happening. The horrors they had lived through the past two months convinced them of that.
Every day that went by was a slow torture for Aili. Where was Elan in all of this? They had seen so many of those things. Crowds of them sometimes. And they had seen so many victims of those things. Occasionally they ran into survivors. Like them. But there were far fewer survivors. Bresh kept telling her that there had to be more survivors than what they were seeing. That a lot of people were in hiding, trying desperately to do the same things that they were doing to stay alive.
No matter how discouraging it became, Aili refused to believe she would never see her son again. She knew that if there was even a chance of finding Elan, she, herself, had to find a way to survive. Fortunately, Breshen Southwell had the skills to make that happen. Things he had learned in the military. If she hadn’t run into him, she admitted to herself that she probably wouldn’t have made it this far. Not that the man couldn’t be impossible at times. Like when he insisted she workout for a half hour every morning. Or when he drilled her on Hap Ki Do and other forms of martial arts. That wasn’t the end of his intense survival training. What really got her was when he acted like a zombie and then came at her and she was supposed to “outmaneuver him” and then “take him out”. Bresh could be absolutely ruthless when it came to that particular skill. But it had saved her life on more than one occasion. It would probably save her life again.
Back when it had all started, Bresh’s car had run out of gas, so he had been forced to abandon it. That’s when he had run into Aili at Vedra’s house. They first took the truck to the police station, hoping to get some information there, but everything was in complete chaos and no one knew what was going on. Eventually they made their way back to Bresh’s house. Someone had broken in and stolen everything they must have thought would be useful. Guns, ammunition. Food. Bresh wasn’t very happy about that, but he had been expecting it. And it wasn’t like they didn’t take what they needed along the way. It was the only way to survive. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
It turned out that Bresh did have a hidden cache of guns and ammunition that the thieves had not discovered. Thus armed, the two of them went back to check for Elan at Aili’s house. He hadn’t been there and there were no signs that he had ever come home. There were no signs of Mead, either. There was still the blood stain on the wall and signs of a struggle. The crumpled rug and the shattered umbrella stand were just as she had left them that night. But there was no Mead.
“People will help each other,” Aili had said to Bresh in the beginning, wanting to believe that herself.
“Don’t bet on it,” he’d told her. “When food is scarce and you’re fighting for your life, fear can quickly turn into something very ugly. When it comes to survival, a lot of people are going to save their own hides first. And to do that, they’ll justify a lot. That’s just human nature.”
Bresh went on to explain to her how important it was to stay off the main roads. If everything was falling apart the way it looked like it was, he’d said, then the roads would become death traps. Ambushes would be set up by people wanting to take whatever they could from whomever was still alive and had the means to travel. He assured her that they were in danger not only from the undead, but from the living as well.
Bresh had seen things go bad before. Not from a zombie apocalypse, of course, but by civil unrest in third-world countries where the structure had broken down during coups or government takeovers.
“This is going to go downhill fast,” he had explained to her. “Real fast. We gotta do things smart and do things right.”
Aili hoped that Elan was with someone who had survival skills, too. Someone who could do things smart and do them right. Did she trust Breshan Southwell? Not completely. Maybe it wasn’t in her to fully trust anyone anymore. Somewhere along the line she had lost that ability, no doubt as a result of two abusive relationships. But there had been times, plenty of them, when she had to follow him blindly, trusting that he, at least, knew what he was doing, even if she did not.
Right now, because they had not been successful in finding their way inside, the deads were finally wandering away from the computer store across the street. Aili turned and caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror across the room. The past few weeks had definitely taken their toll. She hardly recognized the woman who stared back at her. But what did she expect to look like during a zombie apocalypse?
Bresh was still standing with his hands on his hips, looking out the window. Making certain, Aili was sure, that no one needed help. He wouldn’t have thought twice about helping no matter how dangerous it was. Bresh was like that.
As for Aili, she needed to remember to keep a wall around her emotions. Just like the walls that surrounded them now were keeping them safe, she needed to keep herself at an emotional distance. From Breshan Southwell. Even from her own inner turmoil. It was the only way she could go forward. It was the only way she could find the strength and the courage to face each day. The only way to have any chance at all of finding Elan.
Chapter 8
“We need to find a book on edible plants,” Eby was explaining. “They won’t be around in the winter, of course, but they could help keep us alive during the summer months. There’s no shortage of dandelions around. Did you know that a lot of wild weeds are actually very nutritious?
“Even though we have to go back to primitive ways of staying alive,” he went on. “The problem is that technol
ogy is still around for the people who can access it and who want what we have. So we have to think about that, too.”
“If we knew what caused all this,” Kyl said, voicing his own thoughts. “If we had some answers, we’d have a better idea of lies ahead of us.”
“We may never know,” Eby said. “But we just gotta keep hoping for something.”
They both turned to stare at Hunter who said out of nowhere, “I’m going back out to look for Dani. I’m going to try her house one more time.”
“You already looked there,” Kyl reminded him.
“Maybe it’s just taking her some time to get there. She knows I’ll look for her there.”
Maybe it was wishful thinking on his part, but Eby nodded slowly, agreeing. “Dani’s strong. She’ll find a way to survive.”
“Things are deteriorating fast out there,” Kyl said. “It’ll be dangerous.”
“What isn’t these days?” Hunter said.
“We’ll go with you,” Kyl told him.
Hunter shook his head. “No. It will be easier for me alone. And Eby needs you here. He still has a hard time walking.”
“I’m doing a lot better,” Eby started to protest.
“He’s right,” Kyl said to Eby. “You’d slow him down.” To Hunter, he said, “But you need my help. Who knows how many of those things you’ll have to fight off.”
“It’ll still be easier by myself,” Hunter said. “I’ll be faster and quieter. You need to stay here and make sure that Eby is safe.”
Keeping Eby safe meant keeping him safe from Dek. Dek had never liked Eby. Even when they had been in grade school, Dek had pushed Eby around whenever he got the chance.
“Take Kyl with you,” Eby started to argue again. “I’ll be fine here by myself.”
“You will if Kyl stays by your side,” Hunter said. “I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”
There was no arguing with his tone. Both Eby and Kyl knew that when Hunter made up his mind, there was no changing it.
“You wait here for me. I’ll come back. With Dani.”
Hopefully he would return with Dani. He wouldn’t let himself think any differently. “It’ll give Eby some more time to heal. Then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do from there. I think we all agree that it’s time to move on, but I can’t make any kind of long-term plans until I’ve done everything I can to find her.”
“It could take a few days to get there,” Kyl said as he thought it through. “Depending on what you run into on the way.”
“I know that. So keep that in mind when you’re waiting for me.”
“Dek isn’t going to be happy when he finds out that you’re gone,” Eby told them both.
“It isn’t Dek’s decision to make,” Hunter said.
“When are you going?” Kyl asked.
“As soon as I can get things together. There’s nothing else to wait for.”
“He’s right,” Eby agreed. “The longer he waits, the harder it’s going to be to find her.”
It was Kyl who said, “You realize you might have to deal with Desah.”
Desah. No one wanted to deal with Desah.
“She’s probably survived,” Eby said.
“Yeah,” Kyl agreed. “She’s too much of a backstabbing bitch to die.”
They all knew that Desah was ruthless and that she would do anything to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was Hunter. It was what she had always wanted.
She opened her eyes to see that there was light. A single faint, flickering light. Candlelight, she realized. There was a dusty, foreign smell in her nostrils, which mingled with a musty scent that filled her lungs with each breath. Even with the candlelight, the shadows were black as they pressed against her. It was as if the color had been stripped from the world.
She drew air inside her body and felt a strange, breathless sensation as she heard herself wheeze. Of all the things that were happening to her, the loss of memory was the most frustrating. In the shadows, at the very edge of consciousness, was a face, one that a part of her wished to see with a deep well of longing. But always the image blurred and Dani could not hold onto it. Still, it left her with a nameless yearning and a deep sense of loss.
She was too weak to even try to remember so she let it go. Adrift was a momentary regret, an uncertainty. The hollow pain turned inside itself. She retreated into darkness with the remnant of her strength, as if huge wings had enfolded her, and yet the enfolding itself was a terrifying thing. It was like falling into a deep, deep abyss. Her consciousness narrowed. It almost ceased to exist. She became aware of voices. Separate voices. Low, distorted and disembodied. She untangled them from the thoughts in her head, the very ones that drew her again and again. And as Dani lay there, her expression frozen in sadness, tears gathered in her eyes.
The candlelight touched her with an unearthly radiance. Her skin was pale as alabaster, as white as translucent pearl. Tiny vessels had ruptured just under the skin. The network of veins gave her an even more ghoulish appearance. But she looked bloodless. Deathlike.
Elan’s teeth clamped tightly together and his jaw hardened. He pushed that word out of his mind as quickly as it had come. She wasn’t dead. Although it was an inescapable fact that they were surrounded by so much death, he would not allow himself to believe that she was dying. She had fought so hard. It wasn’t fair.
As she turned her face towards him, he thought he saw, for the space of a heartbeat, a glimmer of recognition. But the spark was quickly extinguished. The vacant stare, the emptiness returned.
They had learned a great deal these past weeks. For one, they had learned that when you were bitten, you turned. Except that Dani was lingering far longer than anyone they had heard of. Everyone said you turned in a matter of days.
Elan wanted to take her away from this place. If she really was dying, this was not a good place for her to spend her final moments. But he knew that he couldn’t do that. Moving her would put them both at risk. And Desah had fought against it, though he suspected her motives had been only selfish ones.
So he was torn. He couldn’t leave Dani. Not yet. Because he didn’t trust Desah to take care of her properly. But he also needed to find his mother. It was a struggle for him, the hardest of his life. Dani had lasted so long that he’d begun to think that maybe she could beat this. But during the past twenty-four hours, she had taken a dramatic turn for the worse and he found his hope dwindling.
“We should tie her up.”
Elan stiffened, but he didn’t turn around. He merely shifted his gaze in Desah’s direction.
“She’s going to die, Elan,” Desah went on. “You know that as well as I do. And when she does- Don’t look at me like that. I’m only saying what you already know is true.”
“And you’ve said it plenty of times before,” he reminded her wearily as he noted the new bright color adorning her nails. Pink.
“What will we do?” she persisted.
Elan had never seen even a trace of the sadness and sympathy he would have expected to see in Desah’s eyes. He only saw cold acceptance. And a detachment that reminded him of the undead walking around outside.
“I think we should go now to look for a better place,” Desah went on. “We survived. There must be other survivors out there, too. More than just the few stragglers we’ve seen now and then.”
“And leave her here like this?”
“When she dies, she’s going to turn.” She had to put it out there like that. If he couldn’t accept what was obvious and inevitable, then it was up to her to keep trying to get through to him.
For a moment, Elan’s mouth grew taut with suppressed anger. He wasn’t at all certain that Dani couldn’t hear them talking.
“Everyone we talked to told us the same thing,” Desah reminded him.
Everyone they had talked to had been a total of three people.
True, Seth Damon had said that he had seen people turn with his own eyes. And he’d said that Dani ha
d obviously been infected from that bite on her shoulder. But that was obvious to everyone. When the tractor had dropped them off down the street from the house, Dani was already slipping in and out of consciousness, but Elan had managed to get her back to the house before she completely collapsed. And then he did what he could for her. With a minimum of help from Desah. When they’d started seeing more of those dead things, they had moved to the attic where they thought it was safer. Elan had not forgotten his experience in the loft. He just felt safer up here.
“There’s nothing more we can do for her. Is she even eating?”
“No,” Elan admitted.
“We should look for other people,” Desah tried again, relentless in her attempts to change his mind.
“Where would we even begin to look?” Elan asked.
“In town,” she said hopefully, thinking that maybe finally he was beginning to see things her way. “There have to be other people there.”
“Maybe,” Elan murmured. But there was no guarantee that they would be live people.
He looked back at Dani who was moaning very quietly. He didn’t want to admit it, but Desah was right. Dani probably didn’t have much time left. That’s why he checked on her so often. If she died, from what little they had learned, she would turn. He knew what he would have to do after that.
He finally told Desah what he had been dreading to tell her, “I have to go to my house. It isn’t far.”
“What? You’re not actually thinking of leaving me?”
“I need to look for my mother.”
“You’re seriously going to leave me here? Alone?”
Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood Page 8