Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood

by Brandt, Siara

He held the book up slightly. “Without this we’re wanderers in a wilderness of death. We always have been.”

  The screams and the cries were impossible to ignore, even from a distance. Even though he had been ready to set out to look for Dani, those screams forced Hunter to make a hasty decision, the only one he could live with.

  “I said we’ll leave ‘em,” Deklin repeated as he got to his feet.

  Hunter ignored Dek’s rigid stance and said, “I can’t do that.”

  “Bad choice,” Dek warned as Hunter grabbed up a weapon. “You can’t reach them in time.”

  “You don’t know that,” Hunter muttered beneath his breath.

  Dek tilted his face to one side and squinted as he tried another tactic. “You don’t know what you’ll find out there.” His eyes darted back and forth as he lifted his head and searched the foggy terrain himself. No telling what was out there.

  “You don’t know that this isn’t some kind of trap,” Dek tried next. “You can’t even see what’s out there. With all the noise, that field is probably crawling with walkers by now.”

  It was true that the far edge of the field could not be seen under a thick, drifting layer of mist and the woods were already black with shadows. But a dying sunset still had the horizon aflame with a blood-hued smear of light. The screams were coming from a sprawling old cemetery. Headstones rose up like ancient megaliths through the fog.

  So far, the group had been relatively safe, but they had survived because they had all worked together on some level. Thanks, in part, to Dek’s latest decision, the group was now divided. Those that wanted to respond to the screams. And those that were hesitant about a rescue attempt.

  But Hunter didn’t need Dek’s permission to make his own decision. And he couldn’t wait any longer. A particularly piercing cry for help rose above the others.

  “They’re already dead,” Dek said.

  “They’re not dead. I can still hear them,” Hunter gritted back, his voice edged now with impatience, and more. The last thing he needed now was to waste time fighting with Dek.

  Dek was in no mood for a fight, either. Or this latest example of Hunter’s rebellion. He snarled back, “You can’t save everyone.”

  “Maybe not, but I can at least try.”

  That was more than Dek was willing to do.

  “I said no.”

  Hunter spun around. “It’s not your call.”

  Dek stalked forward a few steps. “I don’t want you risking the group for strangers. We don’t even know who they are.”

  “I didn’t ask for your permission. Or for anyone’s help,” Hunter shot a glance past Dek at the part of the group that hung back.

  “You go out there and you’re on your own,” Dek snarled with an aggressive thrust of his chin. “You can’t have the vehicle. It stays here.”

  One corner of Hunter’s mouth drew back in a snarl of his own. “I’m not asking for it.”

  Hunter was willing to do this on his own, but that wasn’t strictly the case, he saw. Kyl had decided to go with him. Kyl was willing, of course. Kyl always had his back. Eby was already on his feet. One of the other group members had stood up, too, but Dek shook his head and after a moment of indecision and internal struggle the man sat down again. Someone else, one of the women, had been about to go, as well, but when she saw the other man back down, she apparently changed her mind as well.

  So in the end, it was just the three of them. They had to run a gauntlet of the undead to get to the cemetery. Halfway across the field, the undead came at them from all directions. The rain-soft earth and the fog didn’t help any. It was like one of those nightmares where you try to run, but you can’t get anywhere. But if the mud slowed them down, it slowed the nonliving down, too.

  They finally reached the cemetery and saw that it was filled with corpses on top of the ground, not buried under it. More of the undead swarmed through the gate behind them. Like locusts, they were intent on devouring every living thing in their path. They were voracious feeders, and insatiable. You never encountered one of them that wasn’t hungry for a meal. Some sort of survival mechanism in their brain seemed to be stuck in overdrive.

  Hunter realized that there were no more screams. Only the sounds of feeding surrounded him. The tearing of flesh, the slurping, the gulping and the moaning sounds caused rage to rise up inside him. He struck with his knife, taking out one ghoul who was leaning over the body of a young woman and lapping up her blood. He stabbed again and again, until the sounds ceased. And then he slowly stood, drawing deep, ragged breaths through his mouth.

  He looked around. Bodies littered the ground everywhere. They were strewn about like bloody rag dolls among the marble statues. Men. Women. And the smaller bodies of children. His gaze rested on a motionless form slumped against a headstone. A teenage boy who was probably not much younger than he was. He could tell by the clothes. But the features were so eaten away you could barely tell it was human.

  Hunter turned his face away from the gruesome sight.

  He looked around at the other victims. It had been a small group, just like them.

  And all of them were dead.

  Or nearly dead.

  A man with his belly ripped open was still alive. The motionless form of a woman lay on her side next to him. Hunter could barely find it in him to put the man out of his misery, even though the man was pleading for that with his eyes. Hunter made it fast and then he turned away, sickened by what he’d just done, sickened by the carnage all around him, for the smell of blood and decay was heavy on the air and the silence seemed obscene somehow.

  “This didn’t have to happen,” he heard Kyl say as he came up beside him. “Dek sends patrols out all the time. He sent one out just this morning. He must have known this group was out here. We could have taken them in- ”

  Yeah, Hunter knew that, too. Dek had to know about this group being so close. They could have stopped all this. Thanks to Dek, that hadn’t happened. But there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it now. More of the undead, drawn by the screams were still staggering out of the woods.

  He turned when he heard a vehicle approaching. It rolled up slowly, in no hurry, and even thumped over a few bodies before it came to a stop. The door opened and Dek got out. He didn’t say anything. He just headed for one of the walking undead and started hacking away. When he was finished, he moved on to another one.

  After a long time, when he was finally spent from the butchering, Dek was bent over one of the undead, slashing with the last of his energy. A string of glistening drool was hanging from Dek’s mouth all the way to the ground. His chest was heaving. He made several jerky movements of his head as if he was disoriented. It made him look like one of the undead himself. He sounded like one, too, as he drew a halting, wheezing breath into his lungs.

  And deep inside, Dek really was close to yielding to the darkness inside him. He was on the very edge. As far as he could go. Crouched there in the fog, with both hands in the mud to support himself, his gaze shifted and he looked up at Hunter. In that instant, Hunter had the impression that he was looking into the eyes of a feral animal consumed with blood lust.

  Forgetting Hunter, and with a hoarse cry, Dek suddenly swung his dripping machete, which was his weapon of choice now. He severed both arms of the unmoving corpse beneath him. The head was next to go. To Hunter, it looked like Dek was in a mindless state of bloodlust.

  One member of the group that had stayed behind, a man named Axton Krell, came along in the other vehicle just then. He stood for a while staring around at the massacre that surrounded them. Then he, himself, decapitated one of the undead bodies and rammed the severed head down on one of the cemetery fence posts.

  Some members of the group, who had come with them, reacted by turning their faces away in disgust. Some stared in shocked horror, not sure what to think. Or say. Or feel.

  As Axton stood looking impassively at the bodies all around him, he said after a glance at the writing on a tombsto
ne: “But the bastards don’t want to rest in peace.”

  Hunter asked Dek as he got to his feet, “What made you change your mind about coming?”

  Dek gave a short, terse answer. “The group can’t afford to lose you.”

  “That’s why you came?”

  “Yes,” Dek answered. “I need to do everything I can to keep us alive.” He shrugged negligently. “That’s what any good military commander does.”

  “We’re just citizens, Dek,” Hunter said wearily. “We’re not soldiers.”

  “But this is a war,” Dek countered. “And if we forget that, then we are going to lose.”

  “They were us, Dek.” Hunter couldn’t get the screams out of his mind. “They were just like us. There were kids- ”

  Dek cut him off abruptly. “We’re alive. That’s what matters.

  “We’ll take their weapons,” he heard Dek say next. “And anything else of value that we find.”

  And so, following Dek’s orders, the other members of the group systematically began to rob the bodies of the dead. At least the newly-dead.

  The bottle was almost half empty. Who knew how old it was or who had discarded it. Right now any kind of bottled water would do. Even the cheap stuff. Reeve Madsen was parched. He unscrewed the plastic top and tilted his head far back, then drained the entire bottle before he lowered it again.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he scanned the horizon. The weeks had taken their toll. His beard had grown out. So had his hair. His expensive suit was rumpled and torn and dirty. His blistered feet hurt. Fratelli shoes were made for board meetings, not for walking long distances down gravel roads.

  He had been barely surviving. For how long, he didn’t know. It seemed like an eternity. He survived by hiding and stealing, even by eating berries in the woods. Whenever he encountered one of those things, he ran away. It wasn’t that hard to do. They weren’t as fast as he was. And he usually saw them before they saw him.

  He had already made up his mind that Elan would have to take care of himself. He didn’t stand a chance of finding his son. He didn’t even know where to begin to look. He had already also decided that he was going to head back to the city where the authorities probably already had things under control. With the help of the National Guard, FEMA workers were most likely hard at work setting up shelters and passing out hot meals. And coffee. What he wouldn’t give for a good cup of hot coffee. Hell, maybe things weren’t even like this in the city. What he wouldn’t give to be in an organized world again.

  If this was widespread, he reasoned that the government would take care of this in the bigger cities first. Not like in this backwoods, godforsaken place where everything was slower.

  He was going to steal a car if he could find one with keys in it. Abandoned vehicles were everywhere. He just hadn’t found one with gas and keys yet.

  “Hey.”

  Reeve squinted into the glare of the setting sun. He finally made out the silhouette of a man standing on the ridge above him. The man was holding a rifle in one hand. As Reeve watched, a second man appeared.

  “Hey,” the man called again and waved.

  But Reeve had already taken off running. Breathing heavily, he kept to the leaf-littered center of the road, gritting his teeth against the pain because the blisters on his feet were already raw. With visions of Deliverance in his head, he pushed himself to his limit and hoped that he wouldn’t lose his footing because of the slippery soles of his shoes.

  “Too bad he took off like that,” Bryden Ayers said to the man beside him as the sound of hurried footsteps on gravel gradually died away. “He looked like he could use a hot meal.”

  “Scruffy-looking guy,” the second man said. “Nice-looking suit and shoes though.”

  Chapter 11

  Aili heard a slight crack in the darkness. It sounded like someone stepping on a stone. When the sound came again, she flattened against the brick wall behind her and stayed there in the shadows of the bushes. She wasn’t alone. Someone, or something was out here with her. She tightened her grip on her knife, then did the only thing she could do. She waited for Bresh.

  A silent shadow suddenly appeared out of the darker shadow of the trees. Bresh. Aili breathed a sigh of relief. Thinking they were safe, she started forward, but Bresh pulled her down with him to the ground. With his mouth against her ear, he whispered, “Stay down.”

  The past twenty hours or so had been grueling. They needed rest. They needed food. And she hated travelling at night more than anything else they were forced to do. But sometimes it became necessary.

  She looked at Bresh with a silent question in her eyes.

  She rose up a little, following his pointed finger and saw a dark heap on the ground outside the bar and grill. A man was lying face down on the sidewalk. A faint light shone through the windows. Candlelight, she realized. One of the man’s arms was doubled up under him. His legs were outstretched. And a dark patch stained the concrete under him.

  She looked to Bresh again.

  “It wasn’t deads,” he breathed close to her ear again.

  By now she had learned some military signals and when he flashed one at her, she didn’t question him. She stayed down.

  A hooded figure came out of the front door of the bar and grill and stood looking down at the body. Two other men came out of the bar and joined him. Suddenly, the hooded man spun around and froze as if searching the shadows. In the exact place where Bresh and Aili were hiding. Long moments passed, but the man in the hood showed no sign that he was aware of them.

  But deads were aware.

  Aili felt Bresh’s hand tighten on her arm as he shifted his body and pressed her behind him.

  There were two of them. Both of them had the same look, skin albescent, eyes unnaturally pale. They were like something straight out of a horror movie. One of them was completely naked. One was shirtless.

  A briar-like web of shadows from the tree branches dissected the cadaverous faces. Colorless eyes gleamed with a bluish, milky sheen in the moonlight as they shuffled forward, heading straight for them.

  Without warning, a gunshot rang out. It tore through the forehead of one of the deads. The naked one. As the dead pitched forward, Aili held in a scream when it landed right next to her. She scrambled away from it. Another shot rang out, hitting the tree beside her and sending a shower of splinters in her face.

  She crouched lower, ignoring the dead with its sightless eyes staring straight at her in the moonlight and its still-oozing head wound.

  She heard shouting from the people in front of the bar and grill. They were obviously doing the shooting. “Did you get them both?” someone asked. “I don’t see anything anymore.”

  “No, there’s another one out there somewhere. There it is.”

  “Maybe the one you shot got back up. I told you, Billy, you need some more target practice.”

  The other dead was still staggering around, its attention now focused on the men making all the noise.

  Another shot zipped in their direction. The dead dropped stiffly to the ground with a loud thunk.

  “You got it,” Aili heard.

  “Wait. I see something else. I think there’s some live people out there.”

  “Go check it out, Billy.”

  The group didn’t bother to hide their intentions. They talked openly about what they would do with anyone they came across. There was no doubt they would kill Bresh. They would rape her.

  Without saying a word, Bresh pushed Aili farther back into the shadows. And then he disappeared.

  Fighting the urge to panic, Aili brought a hand to her chest and forced herself to breath. She was certain that Bresh had a plan. She just didn’t know what it was.

  Before long, she realized that Bresh was fighting two of the men.

  Aili knew what she had to do. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t even think. She just reacted. Desperately searching for something she could use as a weapon, a bigger weapon than her knife, sh
e found a good-sized branch lying on the ground. She picked it up, raised her arms over her head and swung the piece of wood at one of the men’s head. It made a terrible sound against his skull, but it was effective. The man staggered to one side and collapsed on the ground.

  By now, Bresh had disabled the other man with his fists alone. That man was lying motionless on the ground as well.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Bresh said, wasting no time as he guided her through the darkness.

  Under the porch overhang, Aili looked out over a deep hollow that was softened by the last traces of morning mist. The mist drifted in ghostlike layers between the fringed branches of the pine trees that swept up to become a dense forest on all sides of the isolated cabin. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the sweet scent of pine. She gripped the porch railing in both hands, leaning a little forward as she imagined for a moment that the world was right again. That a happy reunion with Elan was going to happen that very day.

  She straightened and sighed, coming slowly back to reality. This would be a short respite, she knew. It always was. But Bresh had not wanted to leave the cabin until they were well rested, well fed and up to putting a full day of travel behind them.

  They had covered a lot of territory already. It was a ravaged world where entire towns had been abandoned, though usually not entirely by the deads. Some towns had burned completely to the ground. The smell of smoke was everywhere, even after all this time, as the scorched debris smoldered endlessly. Woods had caught fire, too, so that there were many miles of burned-out forests.

  But this place seemed untouched by all that. They were comfortably settled here in this remote log cabin, far from any other dwellings with only a vast wilderness surrounding them. It was like a hedge between them and the rest of the world. It was a beautiful setting, a tranquil, serene place where she thought she might have been happy staying forever if things had been different. And maybe, one day, they could come back here. With Elan.