Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood

by Brandt, Siara

  “They can talk all they want,” he said with a deep sigh of unconcern as he tilted the bottle up to his lips again and drank deeply. “You know as well as I do- ” He paused and after a deep, drunken belch, said flatly, “That he might not even make it back here.”

  Dek did not even see how his words affected Desah. How she went still and stiffened.

  “I’m the only reason everyone has survived as long as they have,” Dek went on. His eyes shifted over towards Desah with almost a hint of challenge in them. It was not directed towards her, of course. He was referring only to the situation.

  “You’re right.” She agreed. “You did keep everyone alive. They should be grateful for that.”

  “I can’t let anyone ruin things for us.” Dek was watching her more closely now and she was aware of a new heat in his gaze, a new intimacy in his tone. He never made her feel undesirable the way that Hunter did. She wondered if he was feeling as excited by their nearness as she was feeling. It was almost a palpable thing in the darkness. In fact, she had to close her hands into tight fists to keep from reaching out for him. The sexual tension couldn’t be one-sided, could it? Sure, he was just a replacement for Hunter. But if he touched her, just once, she was going to melt into a pool of liquid want at his feet. She wanted to feel something good, especially after Hunter had left her feeling so frustrated and alone.

  “Remember the last time we were together?” Dek reminded her in a low voice. “How we almost got caught? I’m glad you’re here now. There may be important things for you to do.”

  Hunter never treated her like this. Dek was talking like she really mattered, like she was part of his decision-making process. Like she was an important part of his past, his present and his future. True, Dek had wanted Dani, too. But that was in the past. Dek knew when to let go. He knew how to appreciate what was right in front of him. No, with Dani gone, he needed her now. He wanted her here with him.

  “We have to find a new place now. Before winter sets in. Or we’ll freeze to death. If we don’t starve first. I’ve decided on the airport. There’s a sturdy fence all around it. And metal buildings big enough to house everyone that makes it.”

  “What if someone else is already there?”

  “There are people there,” he admitted. “I’ve had Jordan and Crede watching the place. But there are people everywhere.”

  Desah knew that wasn’t strictly true. She had seen lots of abandoned buildings.

  “What do you plan on doing about the people there? What if they won’t let you- us in?”

  “Then we’ll do whatever has to be done. We’ll fight our way in if we have to.”

  “You might lose some people.”

  “We probably won’t have enough food for everyone anyway. I have to make some hard choices. It’s the only way.”

  “We both know how hard surviving can be. How uncertain,” Dek went on as his arm snaked along the bench behind her shoulders. “Everyone has to learn that lesson, too, sooner or later,” he said meaningfully as he held her gaze. “But not everyone understands that like we do. We’re fighting a war. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. But better them than us.”

  She did understand that. He looked deeply into her eyes and asked, “How far are you willing to go?”

  “As far as we have to go,” she told him. “As far as they make us go. If that’s what surviving means.”

  Chapter 14

  There were elemental pathways in her brain, connections made once upon a time. Of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, of mockingbirds and wonderlands. These had become a part of who she was. They influenced all her thought processes, even the now-ravaged ones.

  It is a profound truth that thoughts are as real as the neurons and the chemicals that produce them, as real as the emotions that are the core of identity. Because humans are survival-driven beings, and because she was unique, the healing of those processes had already begun. So she remembered that dragons could be slain, remembered that knights took sacred vows and lived by noble codes. She remembered, too, that princesses could be wakened from deep, deep sleeps . . .

  It was a slow awakening, one that came at dawn when the mist was yet covering the fields and the moisture was dripping from the trees. There were no bird songs to welcome the light. There was only a gradual seeping of grey into the darkness as the stars faded one by one.

  The earth was soft and still unsettled, in part because the grave was new and had not only been hastily dug, it had also been hastily filled in. The grave was shallow, as well, thanks to the obstacles of rocks and tree roots. More than these, in response to a prayer, perhaps, something else summoned her, reached down through the murky veil of contagion and despair that was covering the earth, and helped to remind her of princesses overcoming even death-like states.

  It was a lonely awakening. There was no one to hear the sudden, gasping breath. No one to hear the quiet whimpers that followed. Those sounds were muffled by the damp earth that entombed her.

  In the fog of her hazy, disconnected thoughts, she did not know where she was. It was better that way. She was only vaguely aware of her immediate surroundings. There was darkness and there was pressure holding her in an impersonal, cold embrace. At first she could not move. There followed a frantic, instinctive effort to free herself.

  There was no coffin. Only a sheet had been hastily wrapped around the body, and by the grace of that gesture, one that had been almost an afterthought, she fought her way upward. The hurried mourners who had left her behind had made other choices that now worked to her advantage. For one, there had been no need to insure that she would stay dead. After all, she had not wakened while they were there to see her.

  One hand first broke the soft surface. Then the other. Finally she sat up and fought her way free of the mud and the clinging, makeshift shroud, monumental tasks in her weakened state. And then, exhausted from her efforts, she sank back down into the slight indention in the earth and curled into a fetal position. She was as near to death as it was possible to go, but she drew regular, if shallow, breaths into her lungs and her heart continued to beat with a faint, but steady rhythm. And more importantly, her memory had been restored. She knew she had a reason to live.

  A single bird began its aubade in the trees above her, filling her mind over and over again with a reminder of new beginnings. She lay there unmoving while the sunlight grew, banished away the mist and wrapped her in its healing warmth.

  There were buzzards circling overhead. Some were already in the road, pecking at a heap of decomposing flesh that had once been a life. A life that had been brutally cut short.

  Hunter drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Maybe going back was his way of holding on to the past. A better past. Maybe it was his way of being close to Dani. Hell, he knew it didn’t make any sense, but he had to go. He had to find her.

  Something that he could not explain, even to himself, drove him. He had to have a place where he could go to mourn her. It needed to be fixed in his mind so that in some strange way he would not lose her entirely. He had nothing, absolutely nothing, left of her, not even a picture, and she had been the one bright ray of sunshine in his life. She had taught him how to love. Really love. Could he just accept this world of death as his only reality? He could not. He had to know where her last resting place was. He owed that to her. He owed that to himself. He needed to tell her how much he had loved her, how much he still loved her.

  She had chided him on more than one occasion that he needed to have more faith. Well, faith was hard to find in the present darkness. Almost impossible. But deep down, he wondered if maybe it really was faith that had kept him going all this time.

  He missed Dani. Like he had never missed anything in his life. He carried her in his heart. He always would. Until the day he died and her memory died with him.

  “Don’t go back there,” Desah had said to him before he left. “It’s better this way.”

  But it wasn’t better.

  Over the next ris
e, he saw a barn. A big one. He eyed it carefully for a long time. You never knew what might be inside. But he felt hopeful, too. Because if there was a barn, maybe there was a loft and he would be able to sleep safely for once, high above any dangers. Because if he didn’t, he was going to drop soon from sheer exhaustion.

  He hadn’t seen any of the undead in the past hour or so. That was a miracle and right now he would take all the miracles he could get. He’d had some close calls today. Too many of them. The undead were everywhere. How they survived so well, he didn’t know. He didn’t know why they didn’t just die for good. They were half-rotten corpses. They should be in the ground. You could smell them when you got close to them, and anywhere they had been they left their stench. And he swore they were hungrier now than they used to be. But weren’t they all?

  He had been chased out of a shed by a group of them. And several houses. There simply was nowhere to hide that they did not eventually find him. There was no refuge where he could let his guard down. Even for a moment. He shook his head. How long had they lived like this? How long could they go on the same way? And how long could he go on until hunger and exhaustion claimed him? If grief did not. He shook his head as he contemplated that survival was a strong instinct. But it could be a brutal one, too.

  Half an hour later he was busting open a bale of clean, dry straw in the barn’s loft. He was hungry. There was nothing he could do about that. But he could relax his vigilance. At least for a while. Tomorrow he would concentrate on finding something to eat after he set out again.

  He came instantly alert. He heard snarling somewhere down in the field outside the barn.

  Damn. How many were there this time?

  “So, you’re curious?”

  Eby whirled around.

  Dek’s lips twisted into a cold sneer. “You just couldn’t keep your nose out of my business, could you, you useless freaking geek.”

  Eby ignored the insult and asked right out, “You keep the bus garage locked and you’ve told everyone this place is off limits. What are you hiding that you feel you need to black out the windows now?”

  Dek gave him an evil leer. “Maybe my deepest, darkest secrets are in there.”

  “This group should be led by someone who doesn’t have to keep secrets.”

  “The world doesn’t work the way you think it’s supposed to work anymore,” Dek informed him and then added, “Not that it ever did.”

  Disregarding Dek’s cynical philosophy, Eby said, “About the move to the airport, it’s a bad decision. You shouldn’t have made it without talking it over with everyone else.”

  “I can make it,” Dek told him. “I have no choice but to make it. Everyone will just have to decide to go along with me. You don’t question orders when you’re in a war.”

  “You really do see yourself as some kind of indispensable general fighting a war, don’t you? The truth is, you’ve always been nothing but a bully with an overdeveloped sense of- ”

  “Shut up.”

  "You're hiding something in there. It’s something you don’t want anyone else to see. It’s something that would make the others question you even more than they do now. Isn’t it?”

  After an ugly sneer, Dek answered Eby’s question with one of his own. "And if I am?"

  “If you are, it’s not going to be a secret much longer.”

  “What? Are you going to tell everyone what you’ve seen? Which is exactly nothing.” Dek took an aggressive, threatening step forward.

  “People who live by the sword- ” Eby began.

  "Spare me your preaching, you little prick," Dek interrupted him, lifting his gaze momentarily to stare at the brick building behind Eby.

  "Because you think you have no need of it?" Eby asked.

  Dek glared back at Eby. "Because it won't do either one of us any good at this point. Because you need to learn to shut your mouth. And if you can’t do that, I’ll shut it for you."

  Dek's smile was feral, wolfish, almost promising violence.

  "Is this how you choose to solve all your problems?” Eby asked. “With violence?”

  “Sometimes violence is necessary.”

  “Is murder necessary, too? You’ve done that, haven’t you?"

  There it was, out in the open and it hung heavily on the air between them.

  Dek didn’t bother to deny the accusation.

  "Someone who kills as readily as you do- " Eby began, but Dek interrupted him before he could finish.

  "Survives in this world. And for your information, there is no such thing as murder anymore," Dek answered with no trace of emotion in his voice. He even shrugged one shoulder negligently.

  "You really believe that?"

  With his eyelids hooded, Dek nodded slowly. "I do believe it,” he admitted. “And, yes, I have come to accept that death, not murder, can become a solution in this kind of world. I won't let myself be weak. I've seen where weakness leads."

  "Have you thought that mercy, also, takes strength?" Eby asked.

  "Mercy is a dangerous option. I know first-hand that it can be a deadly one."

  “You’ve been leading this group into darkness. Somewhere inside you know that.”

  Dek let his breath out in a short, ugly laugh. He narrowed his eyes as he kept his gaze fixed on Eby. Just like a predator focusing in on its prey. "I'm surprised that you had the guts to come out here without your bodyguard," he said in a quiet, dangerous-sounding voice. “Where is Kyl?”

  “You know as well as I do where he is. You’ve been trying your hardest to keep him away from me.”

  Dek didn’t bother to deny that, either. After a long silence, he asked, “Why don't you?"

  "Why don't I what?"

  "Why don't you ask me again what’s in there? You came out here expecting to find something.” Again, Dek’s gaze flickered briefly to the structure behind Eby.

  When confronted with all that Dek stood for, Eby felt something rise inside that almost sickened him. It was always that way with Dek, but things had grown worse since the incident at the cemetery. And now that Hunter was gone, Dek’s previous restraints seemed to be melting away even more rapidly.

  Thunder growled ominously in the distance. The already-overcast sky grew darker by almost-perceptible degrees. The air grew noticeably heavier.

  “A nosy geek like you always has something, or someone, he’s wondering about. Since his own life doesn’t amount to much.”

  There were plenty of things Eby would have liked to ask the man standing before him, but he wasn't used to confrontations with violent men. He slowly shook his head. “I have nothing to say."

  "No? You don’t even want to defend yourself?"

  Dek was definitely a man who was looking for a fight.

  “Would it do any good?” Eby asked.

  With bold-faced honesty, Dek shook his head no.

  "I'm not sure what all this- " Dek suddenly waved his hand and spread his fingers wide. "Has taught you. But I've learned one thing. When someone threatens my authority, I have to eliminate the threat.” Dek’s gaze was unwavering. "No matter where it comes from."

  "I'm not a threat to you." Eby’s voice sounded surprisingly steady in the face of Dek’s growing hostility.

  Dek looked to the side. "That's where you’re wrong,” he suddenly spat out as he looked back and leaned forward, so tense now that the cords in his throat stood out. “Dead wrong. As I see it, you're one of the biggest threats right now. Just like you’ve been all along."

  “How am I a threat to you?”

  Dek turned away as if in disgust, then immediately spun back around. “You’ve been questioning me, doubting me behind my back from the very beginning.” His voice tightened with his rising fury. “Haven’t you?”

  His question was answered not by Eby, but by a spattering of raindrops on the blacktopped parking lot around them.

  “You’ll run your mouth off about this the first chance you get,” Dek went on. “Won’t you?”

  “When Hun
ter- ” Eby began.

  “Hunter’s not here. He left you behind.”

  Dek had already decided that Eby had to be silenced. And somewhere deep inside, Dek realized that he was looking forward to seeing the fear in Eby’s eyes. So, without warning, he grabbed a fistful of Eby’s shirt front and dragged him across the parking lot and closer to the bus garage, all the while gritting out his personal grievances, a whole store of them from the past.

  Eby’s choking sounds did not move him. Sacrifices had to be made for justice to be served. That was the reality of this world. Dek had gone so far that now it was easy for him to guiltlessly justify any actions, even before he slit a man’s throat or gutted him. Both of which he had done without thinking twice.

  There was no going back. He had crossed too many lines already. If he had to silence Eby, then right here was the perfect place. It was the only place. Let everyone wonder. Let everyone believe a rotter had done it. No one would question that.

  “You’ve always had it easy, you worthless little bastard. You’ve always had a nice safe little life where you didn’t have to get your hands dirty, or take any risks whatsoever,” Dek said behind clenched teeth, furious at the imbalance. “But that’s all ended now. We all have a price to pay.”

  Dek’s contempt and his hatred were crossing the boundaries. So was his unleashed rage. He could have let Axton do what needed to be done, but he wanted to take care of this personally. Loose ends were untidy things that could come back to haunt you.

  “Someone will realize what you’ve done,” Eby choked out, realizing what Dek intended.

  Dek’s lips curled into a jeer. “No one’s going to find you.” He leaned closer to Eby. “And there’s no one around to stop me.”

  To prove his point, Dek hit him and his head snapped back. He hit him again. And again. The blows were emotionless and cold at first, and then Dek began feeding on something deep inside him.

  Eby fought back as best he could, but he soon sagged to his knees, trying ineffectually to avoid the blows to his already-battered face. His nose was bleeding, possibly broken. His lip was split. Blood stained his shirt.