She was still watching him with those fascinating jade-green eyes. “Just because I’m a woman,” she began. “Doesn’t mean I have to always be waiting for permission from a man before I do anything.”
He realized that she was still fighting her own personal battle. And that she still didn’t get it. The women’s lib crap didn’t cut it out here. She had two choices. She could learn that from him, or she could learn that from experience. Unfortunately, experience could prove to be deadly.
He stared back at her, saw her watching him intently from beneath her lashes. He also noted that her hands were trembling, and that the knife was still in her hands, was still dark with blood. Her clothes, too, were splattered with it. She looked like a warrior that had just done battle but wasn’t sure if the fighting was over yet.
She had courage. He gave her that. They came close to death on a daily basis. She had demonstrated more than her share of bravery time and time again. She had even saved his life on more than one occasion. He wished he could give her back the son she was so desperate to find. He wished he could take away the shadows that haunted her eyes. For the first time in years, maybe in his lifetime, he felt stirrings of real tenderness and compassion rise up within him, emotions that he realized had never fully allowed before, emotions that he had not experienced even with Macy. Or any other woman. It took him by surprise. And it was not comfortable, he found, allowing himself to feel those things. Not only was it uncomfortable, he thought grimly. It was dangerous. Yielding to such sentiments would be a mistake, would be a weakness. And they could not afford weakness of any kind. Not now. Not in this world. It hadn’t taken long for chaos to reign and all hell to break loose as the fabric of society quickly unraveled. Things were already bad. Really bad. And they were going to get a lot worse before they got better.
In spite of all that, maybe because of it, he admitted, if only inwardly, that a passion to protect this woman had worked its way into his soul and that it refused to be dislodged, despite his best efforts to do so. He would go on protecting her, with his life if that’s what it took. He knew this as deeply as he could know a thing. For now, however, he kept that as his own little secret.
“How are you feeling? You need more water?” he asked with more solicitude than he had intended, yielding apparently for a moment to that gentler side that lately he seemed to have more and more trouble hiding.
“I feel like I just got dragged through a wilderness by a mountain lion who intends to make me his next meal,” she replied with a subtly ironic tilt at one corner of her mouth.
Ah, he thought to himself, there it was. Her normal resiliency was returning. She looked down then, as if only now becoming aware of the knife still clutched in her hand. She dipped her head further to look at the blood stains on her clothing.
The late afternoon light, still sifting through the window of the cabin, was a deep tint of yellow which now turned her hair into a blaze of shimmering gold. In spite of the blood stains, she looked- almost angelic with the light behind her like that. Even with the knife. He found himself distracted for a moment. He shook his head slightly, frowning in annoyance at the distraction. He knew better. He just had to remind himself to stay on track every now and then. That was all.
“Look. I understand that you have a son out there somewhere. And you want to find him. But you need to keep yourself safe first or there won’t be any finding. And you need to learn to listen to me,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to force harshness into his voice. “We have to do things on my terms. I’ve survived war zones before.” She needed to understand this, and he was the only one who could make sure that she did.
She understood war zones, too. Just a different kind of them. Unperturbed by his harsh tone, she studied him for a moment. “You mean I need to learn how to obey you,” she said very quietly without taking her gaze from his.
He met the challenge and stared back at her, not flinching either, ignoring the obvious scorn he detected in her voice. “If you want to put it that way,” Bresh drawled slowly. She hated being put in an inferior role. She surely did. He expected she had been forced into that role before, and by now he expected her to fight him over it. And she did not disappoint him.
“Because you’re the man?”
“Because I’m the man,” he replied as if that settled it.
And because, he added silently, he was much more experienced than she was at living a dangerous life. Because, despite the hard exterior she tried so hard to maintain, she was too innocent to fully understand all the dangers out there. And because he’d about die if something happened to her. That sudden, spontaneous thought both surprised and disturbed him. He paused and shifted his weight slightly. What was he going to do with her?
“Any objections?” he asked, now softly challenging her.
She didn’t argue although that’s just what he had come to expect from her. She kept her gaze averted and gave a noncommittal shake of her head, which told him nothing. His gaze narrowed slightly as he continued to study her face. Had he gotten through to her? Or was she saving this particular fight for another time? He was exhausted. She had to be dead on her feet. Maybe she wasn’t up to an argument at the moment. But like any other woman, he suspected that she was fully capable of putting an issue on the back burner until it was time to bring it up again. Women tended to save up ammunition that way and Aili had already shown him that she was no different.
“Did you get a good look at the bad guys back at that farm?” she asked, smoothly switching tactics.
She had caught him off guard. It wasn’t what he expected her to ask.
And bad guys? But didn’t that sound just like her. She tended to look at life in simplistic terms of good and bad.
“A closer look than I wanted to,” he assured her, hoping that would satisfy her.
Maybe if she had seen the group of men for herself, he thought as he sat across from her, she’d be more worried.
“Do you think they knew we were there? And do you think they would- bother us?”
He stared back at her. Oh, yeah. He had no doubt they would bother them. But bother was an understatement. One look had been enough to tell him what kind of men they could be dealing with if they weren’t careful. He wanted to avoid a confrontation at all costs. He knew very well what such men were capable of, even in the best of times. And these were about as far from the best of times as you could get. If they got their hands on Aili- He cut those thoughts short. He wasn’t going to let that happen. Not while he had breath left in his body.
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him. “What else did you see in that barn?”
He surprised her by giving her an immediate answer. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
Her eyebrows lifted, but to his surprise, she didn’t pursue it. As for Aili, she wasn’t sure any more that she wanted to know what it was he was trying so hard to keep from her. What he had already told her was bad enough. Something in Bresh’s eyes and in the tautness of his jaw muscles kept her from questioning him further. He had seen something terrible. He hadn’t denied it. But she’d been through enough for one day. She didn’t know if she could handle anything else at the moment. And she knew from experience that wild horses couldn’t drive Bresh if he didn’t want to be driven.
A covert glance at Aili’s downcast eyes told Bresh that she was probably imagining all kinds of scenarios for the blanks that he had not filled in for her. He wished he could put her fears to rest, but the brutal truth was that he couldn’t do that. He didn’t know if she could handle knowing that kids had been among the victims.
Bresh was, Aili suspected, feigning an indifference now that he didn’t feel. “Some people are like animals,” he went on offhandedly. “They don’t think like we do. They have their own set of rules and can justify anything.” He knew another fleeting moment of regret when he saw the worry finally register in her eyes. She was thinking about her son again. She had every right to be worried, he knew. And yet, in sp
ite of that, he tried to reassure her. “But we’ll head out when we can, check around some more for your son and try to find a safer place,” he said as he got to his feet.
“And where would that be?” she asked.
“Anywhere else. It’s too dangerous here.” He was standing in the doorway again, silhouetted against the light. “This place isn’t defendable.”
He straightened when he spotted movement out in the brush. More of the deads. A lot of them.
“I don’t freakin’ believe this,” he muttered to himself. He looked over his shoulder. “Sorry to have to tell you this, honey, but put your boot back on. We can’t stay here.”
The door slammed shut. In the darkened room, the woman continued to look out from behind the heavy curtains. Her husband heard her voice, full of tears and unsteady as she asked, “Do you think it will stay on him?”
He nodded, finding it hard to speak himself. Then realizing she wasn’t looking at him, he said out loud, “I think it will.”
It had been a miracle to even see him again, let alone safely reach him for the few seconds it took to attach the note. It tore the man up inside that he hadn’t been able to do more than that, but he couldn’t risk having something happen to him. That would leave his wife completely on her own. She was fragile enough right now as it was.
His own lip was trembling as he joined her at the window and laid his hands on her shoulders. He couldn’t take her pain away, of course, but he wanted her to know that he shared it.
There was a great crowd of the undead outside, but he was watching only one of them. The familiar orange hat continued to move erratically within the throng. Eventually the hat disappeared into the mindless, milling sea of the undead.
John Moore held his wife as she turned and burst into heartbroken, uncontrollable sobs over the loss of her only son.
Chapter 10
Kyl had tried to wash the blood stains out of his clothes, but he hadn’t been completely successful. He hadn’t been able to wash away the pain of loss in his heart, either. It went too deep.
He frowned into the deepening dusk, seeing ghosts from the past, wondering if he would ever find peace again. It seemed like a long time ago since he had learned that his family had turned. An eternity since he had learned that they had become human-like creatures that existed only to hunt and then devour the living. The memory of that night was almost too much for him to bear. If he had found them earlier, they might have stood a chance. But his parents, along with his two younger sisters, were gone now. He had to find a way to live with that.
His grief had been agonizing in its sharpness. For a long time, it ate away at his insides until there was nothing left but pain. Survivor’s guilt. He’d heard about it, understood it, but it didn’t lessen the pain.
He sat with his head bowed and his hands clasped tightly together between his knees. He was lost in thought, not even aware of Hunter’s approach.
Hunter realized that Kyl must have bathed in the pool behind him. He saw a bar of soap and a used towel. Kyl had changed his clothes, too.
“You washing your sins clean?”
Kyl looked up. Hunter could not help noting the anguished look in his friend’s eyes.
It had been a stupid joke. Hunter regretted making it and wished he could call it back.
“You all right?” Hunter asked.
Kyl sighed deeply. “I haven’t been all right in a long time. I had to kill some more of those things today.”
“We’ve all had to do that. I guess if you need to find a reason, they deserve to be at peace.”
“Once I started, I couldn’t stop,” Kyl went on in a hushed voice.
Yeah, Hunter understood all about that. Once you committed yourself to killing one of the undead, adrenaline just took over and you had a tendency toward overkill because you had to make sure it was dead. So it couldn’t get up and come at you again. They did seem like they got pissed off sometimes. It was like smacking a big spider ten times with a shoe to make sure that it was dead. A spider had fangs and could bite back. So could the undead.
“Does it bother you anymore?” Kyl asked.
“It just . . . has to be done,” Hunter replied. There was no other answer to give him. No words to make it any better or change anything. “I don’t think of them as human anymore,” he added. “Not usually . . . ” His voice trailed off. That wasn’t strictly true in all cases. Sometimes he did. Especially when they were kids. Or someone he had known. Or if they only reminded him of someone he had known.
“Look, Kyl,” Hunter began. “There’s no way you could have changed things. You know that.”
“I know that with my mind. But here . . . ” He pressed his hand against his heart. “How do I live with what I had to do?”
“You didn’t have any choice, Kyle. Somehow you’re going to have to forgive yourself. Even in this world, there is forgiveness.”
At the sound of a child’s laughter, Kyl looked up. He watched one of the new people playing with a child and his face softened a bit. “They’ll look to us for guidance,” he said.
Hunter didn’t say anything.
“This next generation. What we choose will change their lives,” Kyl added.
This time, Hunter muttered an answer under his breath as he watched the two playing. When he looked back, he saw that Kyl was looking down at a small Bible in his hand.
“You’re right. Forgiveness is about all we have left. My father was right. This isn’t just a book about dead people,” Kyl said as if only now realizing the full impact of some new revelation. “It’s still a guide for us today. It lives and breathes, changing with each generation and each circumstance, but the message woven through it all is still the same. It’s the only place we can find the truth. If we look for truth somewhere else . . . ” His words faded with the flow of his thoughts and he shook his head slowly.
Hunter was a little uncomfortable with the subject. Especially with Kyl who probably knew the book inside and out. Kyl had been raised in a Christian household. Dani used to talk with him about religion sometimes, and he did have questions. He wanted to have the same kind of faith she had, but he didn’t know if he could ever get there. She had been raised on the Bible, too, while his life, he suspected, had been a study in everything contrary to the Bible’s teachings. He had been taught not to believe. He had been taught to mock anything to do with the Bible or Christianity. For that very reason, he didn’t understand why he had always felt there was something out there, something that had mysteriously guided him all his life.”
“Faith isn’t always the easy choice,” Kyl said quietly. “But it’s what we have to choose.”
“You think all that still applies?” Hunter asked with a frown.
“I think it especially applies today. Hadn’t you noticed how dissatisfied the last couple of generations were becoming?” Kyl asked. “Maybe that’s because we were filling our lives with empty, meaningless things and forgetting what is really important. We got arrogant. We replaced the need for God with the need for technology and possessions. Those things became what we worshipped. And as a result, we were all dying inside and didn’t even know it. And I have to wonder- ” he continued. “If technology is what led us to this. If in the end, it got turned against us.”
Hunter thought that over. It was entirely possible. No one really knew.
“We cursed ourselves in the beginning,” Kyl went on. “Maybe we cursed ourselves again.”
Hunter looked up. Curse talk. It made him uncomfortable. He passed his hand over his beard-shadowed chin and asked, “You think we brought this on ourselves?”
“I can’t help but think that,” Kyl went on. “Every once in a while, throughout all of human history, a disruption in our very existence comes along. Something that gets our attention. Something we can’t ignore. Death intrudes and we get reminded of our mortality all over again.”
He contemplated the sky for a few moments. “But the sun still comes up every day just as it al
ways has. The moon and the stars are still out there. The rain falls and the grass grows. The birds still sing. Those things don’t change. Maybe those are reminders to us that something bigger than this plague is still in control. And, yeah, maybe it’s all a reminder of forgiveness. Which is what this book is all about.”
Hunter stared down at the ground between his boots and shook his head. “I don’t know. That all sounds pretty hopeful.”
“We’re still alive. That means there still is hope, doesn’t it?”
Hunter had no answer to give. He tried to cling to hope, but hope seemed like a fragile commodity these days. With a deep sigh, he stared into the distance. “What if we let ourselves believe that and then we find out it was all just a lie?” he finally asked.
“You mean what if we are too afraid to have faith?” Kyl asked back. “Then I suppose we have already yielded to the darkness and we’re no different than the dead who are walking around out there.”
It was a sobering thought. Hunter knew that he, himself, had lived a non-religious life, but did he really deserve this kind of punishment? Did any of them?
“You think this is some kind of divine punishment?” he asked.
Kyl drew a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “No. We’re perfectly capable of setting things in motion ourselves. Then we blame God for the outcome. We don’t know what’s going on out there. In other cities. In other countries. We don’t know what started all this. There might be answers out there. Maybe somewhere out there scattered remnants of society have held on to what is important and they are picking up the pieces. It could be that they’ve only just now discovered what’s important. Maybe they’re re-building. And maybe we will wake up from this nightmare someday and find ourselves in a better place. But right now? We’re all lost in the darkness. We were lost from the moment we started rebelling and crying for something better.”
Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood Page 10