Mostly they saw people looking for other people. That never stopped. No matter where they went, they saw memorials. A lot of them. It was a sad world and it saddened them to see such things. But they saw courageous things, too. There were times when this apocalypse brought out the best in people. Sometimes it united them. And sometimes it strengthened them in a way that nothing else could. While some people let the darkness take over them completely, others clung to the light with even more determination.
Even surrounded by staggering loss and death, Aili and Bresh continued their search for Elan, the one and only thing that could give Aili her life back. By now he knew a lot about Elan. He knew what his favorite foods had been. His favorite games. He knew what he had looked like when he was born. She had even told him about the bad things that had happened to him later in his life. Like being abandoned by a cheating father. And the mental abuse by a bastard of a stepfather. Those were hard things for her to talk about, but little by little the story came out.
He came to know that there were a lot of ghosts in Aili’s past, things she did not want to have to re-face. It was enough to have to face, on a daily basis, the unavoidable fact of death that surrounded them in all its varied forms.
But in spite of it all, they were building something together, a friendship perhaps, in which they anticipated each other’s needs and each other’s wishes without having to express those things in words. And that, he knew, was a good thing because it meant that Aili was starting to trust him.
Bresh went downstairs and stood on the porch off the kitchen. A thick smear of red stained the horizon in the east, the first harbinger of daylight. It was a still morning, gone cold again. Even the birds were silent.
His eyes scanned the stockade fence that surrounded the yard. It had afforded them a measure of security last night. In ancient times men had built castle walls to keep themselves safe and to protect what they had and life was no different now. Walls were still needed. Fences still kept out threats. Men still fought. Wars were still waged. The history of mankind was often written in blood and he wondered if castle dwellers of the past had felt the same as he felt now as they manned towers watching for enemies. Were they suspicious of everyone and everything? Did they anticipate danger at all times and then plan each day around the possible threats that they might encounter? Were they always overthinking so that they could stay one step ahead of those threats? And did they feel confined and isolated within their barricades until the fortifications themselves became a prison?
There was no way of knowing, of course. But one thing he did know. Humans had always been ruthless and diabolically inventive when it came to mutual destruction. He expected no less now. There was no choice but to overthink everything.
They had stayed together with the Lee family. And another small group that they had run into recently. They were all decent people and they figured they had a better chance together.
He heard quick footsteps coming down the stairs. Aili stopped short in the doorway leading to the porch.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked breathlessly.
“You were sleeping so soundly.”
She ignored his explanation. “You’re going now?”
“Soon.”
“You never did answer me. What are you looking for exactly?” she asked him next.
“Just checking things out,” he replied.
“Are you sure you told me the truth when you said you won’t be in any danger?”
Yeah, he had said that. But there was always danger. She knew it as well as he did.
“You think there’s something out here that we should know about?”
He didn’t understand why she was pressing this so much.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she said, making an effort to avoid looking directly at him.
“Do what?”
“You shouldn’t just disappear without saying a word. Do you know how I would feel if you didn’t come ba- ”
Before she could finish, she felt his hands curl around her upper arms as he hauled her body up against his. Before she could even finish her surprised gasp, he was kissing her.
It was unplanned. Completely unplanned. When Bresh finally drew back, he looked as confused as she felt.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
He corrected himself. “Yes, I did. We need to talk about this.”
“About what?” she asked in a breathless voice.
“About what’s happening between us.”
“What’s happening,” she said carefully. “Is just the result of us being together so much. We’ve been through a lot.”
“It’s more than that and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything,” she said as she turned away from him and paced across the porch in her bare feet.
“Look, Aili,” he said to her back. “I understand that you’re scared. You’ve been burned twice before and you don’t trust yourself enough to think you won’t walk through the fire again.”
“Walk through fire?” she scoffed. “Don’t we do that every single day?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But we’ve learned a lot of ways to hide, too.”
“We have to hide to survive,” she said in a fragile voice.
“There are different ways to hide and you know that, too. I didn’t expect for that to happen,” he went on. “And I sure as hell know you didn’t, either. And I know you. You’re probably tormented with guilt right now because you want to have just one thing on your mind. Finding your son.”
He was right. She had enough to think about. She couldn’t deal with guilt, too.
“You’ve done everything to try and find Elan, Bresh. I’m grateful for that. I’ll always be grateful. I could never repay you for all that you’ve done- ”
“This isn’t just about gratitude, Aili.”
She was still struggling. Not just with guilt, but with so much more.
“Don’t judge the whole world by the bastards that made it their personal mission to make your life a living hell. That isn’t fair and you know it.”
“Maybe.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Maybe’s not a good enough answer. Right now there’s just you and me. If we can’t have total honesty between us, who can we have it with?”
He had a point there.
“If I can have a relationship with just one person on this earth,” he went on relentlessly. “I’d like it to be an honest one.”
Bresh, please don’t do this to me.
“The point I am making, Aili, is that we still have to make the right choices. So let’s choose never to lie to each other.”
“All right. No lies. We have been through a lot together,” she said quietly as she continued to look down at the floor boards.
“Yeah. We have.”
In the beginning, she recalled that they’d had some knock-down-drag-out brawls. At least verbal ones. But she’d also learned a lot about Bresh, too. He did value honesty. He himself was too honest to be false. With other people, but mostly with himself. From the beginning he had asked a lot from her. But he was prepared to give a lot, too. His life if it came down to it. In her heart, she already knew there was no choice but to have honesty between them. But lessons of the past are sometimes hard things to shake. And maybe she was thinking about her past when she stared at the rising sun and said, “I won’t lie,” and then asked in a quieter voice, “Have you ever lied to me?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
She shifted her gaze in his direction. “Have you?”
“I lied when I said that fritter thing you made was good. If I wasn’t half starved to death, I wouldn’t have been able to get it down.”
“She should be dead.”
Elan straightened in his chair. Only then did he realize he had spoken out loud.
The truth was Dani should be dead. Only a miracle could be keeping her alive. Only a miracle had led him to her.
Elan had spent most of his search for
his mother in hiding. He had learned very quickly what a dangerous world it had become. There were many times he spent simply in hiding. Even whole days. Eventually he had made his way home, however, in one piece. He had been alarmed to find what looked like blood stains on the wall. And signs of a struggle. There had been the shattered umbrella stand, the badly-bent umbrella and the rumpled carpet. But there were no signs of Mead or his mother. As worthless as Mead had been in the past, Elan still hoped that Mead was keeping her safe. If he even had it in him to do that.
He had checked all of the houses on the street where they lived, but he hadn’t found his mother in any of them. After that, he didn’t know where to look. By now she could be anywhere. So he had gone back to see how Dani was doing. But that house was empty, too. There was no Desah. No Dani. He’d searched everywhere for her and then finally found the grave in the backyard.
She had been unconscious and covered in mud when he had discovered her. But he had been shocked to see that there was a faint flicker of life still in her. He had brought her here to a new house, cleaned her up as best he could, and wrapped her in blankets. Then he tried to make her comfortable and did the only thing he could do. He waited.
He had heard about snake-bitten animals burying themselves in the mud and surviving. Maybe being in the mud, too, had somehow saved her. Maybe there were healing properties in the soil. Maybe some people could beat this thing because they had some kind of natural immunity. Elan just didn’t know. What he did know was that none of the normal rules applied anymore. Especially not the old ones about life and death. You learned to expect anything.
He knew something else. He didn’t need this right now, he thought as he leaned his elbows on his knees and watched the steady breathing of the young woman on the sofa. This was not a safe place and there was barely any food left. But she was hanging onto life, not death like so many others around them. That was something he couldn’t turn his back on.
“Someone had buried her prematurely,” he murmured to himself.
Talking to himself. It was a habit he was falling into. Maybe that’s what being alone did to you.
“I guess it’s a good thing they don’t know what they did,” he said under his breath.
At least he hoped someone hadn’t purposely buried her alive. Of course, with Desah, he couldn’t be sure of anything. He’d seen a lot of terrible things lately, and burying someone alive probably wouldn’t be the worst of them.
Since he had to go on a run for food, it might be a good idea to tie her up. Maybe she wouldn’t turn. But there was no sense taking chances. He got up to get some rope.
Kyle looked back. “Not too much farther, Eby.”
Eby nodded weakly. With his bruised and bloodied face, not to mention a black eye swollen so badly that it was completely shut, he looked terrible. But at least he was able to walk, even though they had to rest often.
After he’d searched all over for Eby, Kyl had found him in the bus garage, beaten, tied up and tossed on a blanket in the corner like he was discarded trash. In the dark of night, they’d left the school together. Kyl’s priority had been getting Eby safely away from Dek. Kyle had wanted to go back and make Dek pay for what he had done, but Eby had pleaded with him not to do that.
They had a pre-arranged place with Hunter, just in case they got separated. When, and if, Hunter did return to the school and he found them missing, this is where Hunter would look for them.
So now that they were on their own, there was only one thing for them to do. To wait for Hunter.
Chapter 17
Elan cleaned up the disposable dishes from lunch. There wasn’t any food left. There never was. But it was important not to draw rats and mice. Or bugs. So cleanliness did matter. He finally understood the importance of that lesson from childhood. And who knew what the bugs carried these days. What with all the rotting corpses around for them to lay eggs in, they were the perfect disease incubators. The rats, too, had probably found a new food source in the living dead, and everyone knew that rats could spread disease.
He settled back in the recliner and dozed a little, finally falling into a deep sleep, only to jerk awake suddenly in the middle of a nightmare where he was in the barn and it was starting all over again. It was the same dream he’d had many times before, but it never failed to terrify him.
He stared at Dani for a while to make sure that she was still breathing. She was.
For weeks, he had lived like a hunted animal. He hoped that his mother had made it to safety and was waiting for him somewhere. But there was no way of knowing. Wherever she was, he hoped she wasn’t living just like he was. Alone and hungry and desperately trying to stay alive by any means possible. He wondered how they were going to keep warm when the really cold weather hit. And it would hit soon. If there was a bright ray in all of this, it was that the weather had stayed unseasonably warm. Otherwise, everyone’s suffering would have been considerably greater. And Dani probably wouldn’t be alive right now.
He had improvised a sled and dragged her here. Here was a big farmhouse at the edge of town. It had been a long, grueling journey to get here. But he’d had no choice. Not if they were both going to survive.
He picked up a comic book from the table beside the recliner. He had found a stash of them one day and dragged them back here, too. He did make attempts to maintain some degree of normalcy, knowing that entertainment, or what now amounted to something to keep your mind busy, was almost as important as food and water. It kept you from losing it. It kept you from giving up. And sometimes it gave you ideas that could possibly save your life.
“Elan slowly turned another page. “Armor,” he murmured to himself. “Maybe I should come up with something like that. Might be a good idea.”
He looked at Dani again.
If you could be infected from being bitten, then whatever it was must be transmitted through blood or saliva. And that pointed to bacteria or a virus. If she had survived this long, it really was possible she had some kind of natural immunity. During any plague, a certain percentage of the population would be immune. He hoped that was the case with Dani. Maybe a vaccine was even possible. But if there had been any changes to her brain, as the other zombies seemed to have, would she even recognize him if she did wake up?
One thing he did know, he needed to get some fluids into her. And soon. If not, she was going to die of dehydration if nothing else.
He was wondering how he could accomplish it, when he frowned suddenly and looked at her more closely. Maybe he was just seeing things. The light was dim and he hadn’t been looking directly at her. But he thought he’d seen her hand move. And then he almost jumped out of his recliner when he saw that her eyes were wide open and she was staring straight at him.
Hunter knew he couldn’t rest until he found her. Or at least until he knew what had happened to her. He hadn’t heard of anyone surviving after being bitten. Not for long anyway. But there was no way of knowing for sure what had happened here. Even if Dani had somehow miraculously survived, he agonized over the thought that she had been buried alive. Or that she had crawled off somewhere and that she was dead now because there hadn’t been anyone to care for her. Just the thought of what he would have to do if he found her and she had turned put him close to the edge.
But that didn’t seem to be the case. There was a set of footprints leading down to the grave and then back up the hill again. And it was clear that her body, whether she was alive or dead, or undead, had been loaded onto some kind of crude sled and dragged off.
The heels of his own boots sank into the rain-softened dirt as he stood there pondering what might have happened to her. There was no way of knowing. Not without following the tracks to see where they led.
He lifted his head. On the top of the hill he could see two stiffly-moving figures. Two of the undead. Their snarls grew louder as they spotted him and immediately headed down the hill. One of them stumbled and came crashing down the hill in almost graceful somersaults, stopping
only when it bashed its head in on a rock. It didn’t get up again. He quickly took care of the other one and went back to examining the tracks.
Someone knew where Dani was. Someone had dragged her away from that grave. Had they dug her up, too? Or had she been alive and gotten out herself? Or had she turned after she had been buried? Which didn’t make sense. No one would drag off one of the undead.
He squinted into the surrounding forest. He knew only one thing for certain. She had been in that grave and now she was gone. She hadn’t walked away on her own. Her prints weren’t anywhere to be seen. While he agonized over the possibilities, afraid to hope, but more afraid to give up all hope, he set out. With one purpose in mind. That of finding the woman he loved. He didn’t know where the trail would lead him, but he would follow her to hell if he had to.
“Do you know what happened to you?”
Dani tried to shake her head but the movement caused an immediate, intense explosion of pain inside her brain. She closed her eyes, waiting for the shards of agony to settle back down again to a manageable level.
“You don’t have to talk,” she heard. “Just lay there. You’re safe here.”
Elan.
She recognized that voice. She didn’t know where she was, but she was aware enough to know that she wasn’t lying on the muddy ground in a field somewhere. There were no snarls and no growls to worry about. Wherever she was, it was quiet. Peacefully quiet. She was comfortable and she was warm and the voice nearby was soothing. That was enough for her at the moment. But she was thirsty. Terribly thirsty.
She opened her eyes slowly and surveyed the room she was in, within her limited range of vision, that is. The light was dim. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows. There were pictures on the walls, one of a meadow full of wildflowers. Another frame held a biblical passage done in cross stitch:
For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet
Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood Page 16