I dash up the front walkway and barrel through the door. The first thing I notice is the smell of something burning, but the thought is quickly eclipsed by the sight in front of me.
A scream slips out. My brother River sits on the couch, his body slumped over his guitar, his pick on the ground next to him.
“No,” I moan, running over to him. There are more bodies—Nicolette and her husband Stephen are in the kitchen, their younger daughter in the highchair my mom keeps around for her grandkids.
At the sight of my tiny niece, I have to press a hand to my mouth to keep my rising sickness at bay. A horrified tear slips out.
I can’t bring myself to touch the bodies. I know they’re gone, but feeling their cool flesh will make it real, and I … I can’t do that just yet.
My brother Ethan lies on the ground in front of the stove, and there is the source of the smoke—the breakfast he was cooking sits charred in the pan.
I don’t know why I go to the trouble of removing that pan from the stovetop. Everyone here is already dead.
I stagger down the hallway, into my bedroom. Robin is inside, splayed out on the bed she used to sleep in before she moved out. Briana, my niece, is slumped against her, the picture book they must’ve been reading pinned beneath her small body. Their eyes stare sightlessly out and I choke on my horror.
We were supposed to be celebrating Briana’s birthday today, not … not this.
Owen and Juniper and their families haven’t arrived yet, so the only person still unaccounted for is—
“Mom!” I shout.
No answer.
Nononopleaseno.
She can’t be dead.
“Mom!” My heart feels like it’s trying to leap out of my chest.
I run from room to room like a madwoman, searching for her. She was here when I left this morning, already prepping for the birthday party, but now I don’t see her.
Gone is better than dead, I try to tell myself.
But then I glance out the living room window into the backyard. First I catch sight of the long wooden table already prepped with plates and utensils and some birthday decorations. Beyond that I notice the big oak tree that I used to climb as a kid. For a moment I’m able to trick myself into thinking that she was an exception, just like me, before my eyes land on the raised garden beds.
No.
My legs fold.
“Mom.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s too hoarse, too agonized.
She lays next to the raised beds, some gathered herbs strewn next to her.
I force myself to my feet and stumble towards the back door. I don’t know how I get it open, I can’t see clearly, my tears are obscuring everything.
I don’t want to believe this death. This woman saved me and took me in. She showed me what grace and bravery and compassion and love look like. To quote my second grade writing prompt, my mother is my hero.
And somehow, her incredible life is just gone.
I don’t know how I manage to get the rest of the way to her. Nothing feels right. I fall at my mom’s side. This close to her, I can see that her eyes, too, are open, sightlessly staring up at the sky as though it holds the answers.
A choked cry slips from me as I drag her body into my arms. Her skin feels wrong—warm where the sun has been beaming down, but cooler where it’s rested against the grass.
I still press my fingers to her neck; I can’t bear not to.
Nothing. No flutter of a pulse—nothing to challenge what I can so obviously see.
I close my eyes, bowing my head over her. Tears now freely slip down my face.
My entire family can’t be gone. They can’t.
I’m weeping and broken and I can’t process any of it.
This is what it must’ve felt like, all those years ago, when Jill Gaumond, my mother, rode into Atlanta against everyone’s pleas, looking for her husband. It must’ve felt unbelievable, seeing a city’s worth of dead and her loved one amongst them, taken by Pestilence’s plague. But at least then, the rest of her family had been in Temple, Georgia, safe from the Messianic Fever.
Now, that’s not the case. There’s no one left here besides me.
The longer I hold my mom, the colder her skin grows. And I’m still crying, and I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
They really are all gone. Mom and River, Robin and Ethan, Nicolette and Stephen and birthday girl Briana, and little Angelina. All gone the same instant everyone else was taken. And they’re not coming back and no amount of wishing will change that.
“I love you,” I say to my mom, brushing back her hair. It feels inadequate. And my mind is still reeling, and grief hasn’t fully set in because none of this makes sense, and I’m so confused how everyone could just be … gone.
And why, even after facing down Death himself, I’m still alive.
Chapter 4
Temple, Georgia
July, Year 26 of the Horsemen
Death and I are old enemies.
Well, at least I assumed we were enemies. Apparently, he doesn’t actually know who I am.
The thing is, I’ve never been able to die—or rather, I can die. It just never seems to stick.
Not when I fell from the tree and broke my neck. Not when I was robbed and my throat was slit.
And perhaps most notably, not even when Pestilence rode through Atlanta long ago, killing a city’s worth of people, my biological parents included.
I shouldn’t have lived then—not from the plague itself, and not from the days that followed when little infant me went without food and water.
The way my mother tells it—told it—she was riding back home after finding her husband dead at the hospital he worked at when she heard my cries.
I went inside the house, and there you were, scared, hungry, and howling like you didn’t survive at least two days on your own. You saw me and ran into my arms and that was that. I lost a husband, but gained a daughter.
I can hear my mom’s voice in my head even now, and it causes my throat to tighten. My strange origins were what led to my name, Lazarus.
One who cannot die.
There’s a sick twist of envy in my gut. Envy for the dead. Who even envies the dead? And yet here I am, wishing that death had taken me along with my family instead of forcing me to endure this crushing grief all alone.
Of all the futures I envisioned, this was never one of them. It should’ve been. This is the world we live in, one where nothing works anymore and people cling to religion like some sort of talisman that will keep the monsters at bay when it so obviously won’t.
I let my mother’s body go and back away from her. It hits me then: I am surrounded by the dead. Not just in this house, but in this entire city. I swear I can feel it in the air—death pressing in on all sides.
The ground beneath my feet begins to tremble. I glance down at the earth, my brow furrowed. In the distance I hear the deep groan of … something large. Several splintering sounds follow it, then—
Boom!
The ground shakes a bit more violently as something hits it hard.
I’m still trying to get my bearings when those same sounds start up again—only now, they’re coming from the walls of my house.
My gaze moves to the building before me, dread pooling low in my stomach. I begin to back up, even as the ground continues to shake.
Move, Lazarus.
I make it just beyond the oak tree near the back of the yard when my childhood home lets out a long, shrill screech. I turn around just as it starts to fall. The left side goes first, but as it begins to collapse, the right side follows.
BOOM!
I’m thrown to the ground by the sudden, close impact. A plume of dust and debris blows out over me, and I close my eyes, even as I breathe in the acrid air. A few final bits of building material clatter, then it grows quiet once more.
I stand, waving away the lingering dust in the air as I turn towards
my house.
Only, my house is no longer standing. It, and all the dead who resided in it, are now nothing more than a pile of rubble.
The entire town of Temple lays in ruins. I see bodies and debris. Nothing more. The landmarks—the coffee shop I went to, the grocery store I shopped at, my old high school—are all gone.
Gone, gone, gone.
At the sight of all the destruction—and all the people I recognize lying out in the streets—I begin to cry. I cry until my voice is hoarse from sobs. Then I simply stare at the sea of bodies.
Can’t stay here, I realize. There’s no shelter left—no people left.
I look desolately around me.
Where am I supposed to go?
Chapter 5
Eastaboga, Alabama
July, Year 26 of the Horsemen
Three nights later, sitting off to the side of Highway 78, I roll my mother’s old wedding ring round and round my finger as crickets chirp around me. It’s the only thing I managed to salvage from the wreckage of my house, though that’s because my mother was wearing it, and she was one of the only things not buried beneath the rubble.
I took it off her finger. Bile rises to my throat at the thought. I took it like some shameless grave robber. What I should’ve done was bury her with it. It meant a lot to her. But I didn’t, and honestly, my guilt is eclipsed by the relief I feel that I have at least something of hers.
Besides it, the only things that are truly mine are my purse and my bike, which I happened to leave at the farmer’s market way back when this all started. So now they’ve officially become my few prized possessions.
I return my attention to the simple gold band, trying my hardest to un-see all the images that my mind wants to manically replay over and over. It’s not just my town that has been destroyed. Bremen, Waco, Tallapoosa, Carrollton—all the towns I have passed through seeking refuge—they have been decimated, their inhabitants dead, their buildings leveled.
I’m still rolling that ring around when it comes to me.
He needs to be stopped.
And if I’m the only one who can survive Death … then I must be the one who stops him.
Chapter 6
Lebanon, Tennessee
October, Year 26 of the Horsemen
The second time I meet Death, it’s by design, not chance.
I sit against an oak tree off to the side of the road, a bow and quiver at my side.
It took three months, lots of running around in circles, and many, many devastated towns, but finally I think I’ve gotten ahead of Death.
The autumn sun hides behind clouds, and the trees down the road are changing colors. This is about the time that football season is in full swing, when there’s a sharp chill to the wind. With that comes the promise of holidays and sweaters and warm drinks and family.
My throat tightens. Living alone has been its own kind of hell. I’m used to noise. My house was always filled with singing, cursing, laughing, talking. There was comfort in all those sounds. You couldn’t walk five feet without tripping on someone else’s toes. Even once my siblings had all moved out, they were always over, and when it wasn’t them, it was neighbors and friends.
Now the only company I keep are the corpses I pass and the carrion eaters that feed on them.
That, and the lonely howl of the wind.
I think the loneliness might drive me mad.
The afternoon wears on, and I begin to fidget. Hanging out on well-traveled roads is just asking to get robbed at knife-point. That’s how it happened to me. I’d been on my way home from a patient’s house after being up for over twenty hours, assisting with a particularly long and troubled labor. The doula I was apprenticing under had sent me home to get some rest. I was falling asleep on my feet when I decided to stop a little ways off to the side of the road and lay down for a minute. I woke to my neck getting slit. The highwaymen stole all of my things as I bled out. When I came to again, I was bloody and alone.
Lightning flashes, rousing me from my thoughts.
Not a minute later, a swarm of animals rush down the quiet highway. I stare at them in disbelief.
He’s coming.
Dear God, he’s actually coming.
I’ve gotten the horseman’s location wrong so many times in the last few months that I almost believed I wouldn’t cross paths with him again. But finally it paid off.
Briefly my hand reaches for a bow I picked up a month ago. I’m not a good shot, and it was meant more for scaring off dogs and hunting game. (I’ve yet to succeed at that.) But perhaps I could use it to stop Death.
I grimace. I’ve never deliberately hurt anyone before, and while I might have reason to now, I’m … I’m not sure I’m ready to do so.
I mean, I’m the girl that deliberately stitches daisies onto my clothing, I like to save baby animals in my spare time, and for the last few years I’ve been studying to be a doula, of all things. Also, it’s been proven that, when drunk, I’m a hugger.
A lone figure comes into focus. He looks like a dark smudge against the stormy horizon. I can just make out those terrible wings.
Overhead, rain begins to fall. First one drop, then two, then several, until it feels like the sky has cracked itself wide open. The wind kicks up and I shiver against the chill.
The closer the horseman gets, the more I quake.
Did you really hope to stop him, Lazarus? He’s not just going to listen to reason. You know he’s not.
He doesn’t notice me, not until I get up from where I’m sitting and step out into the middle of the road.
The horseman pulls his horse up short, and though it’s a different city and a different day with different weather, it feels like I’m reliving our first encounter all over again.
“You,” he breathes, his voice filling the entire world around us.
He remembers me.
I shouldn’t be surprised, there probably aren’t many humans he can’t kill, but still. He remembers me.
The rain comes down faster by the second, and the wind whips my hair as I stare resentfully up at the horseman.
Death hops off his steed, his gaze fixed on me. In the shadowy light, his face looks especially tragic. Tragic and lovely—as though he’s haunted by the things he’s done.
That, of course, would be giving him far too much credit. I don’t think he cares at all about the deaths he’s responsible for.
Lightning spears through the sky. For an instant the harsh light changes the horseman’s features. Where a second ago there was a face, now I see a skull overlaying the horseman’s features, and where there was once armor and wings, now I see a skeleton.
Just as quickly as the lightning comes, it’s gone again, and Death is simply a man once more.
Oh God, he really is death. If I needed any more proof, I was just given it.
My knees go weak and fuck, I’m about to lose my nerve.
Death steps up to me, and my breath catches. He’s a being that was never meant to be beheld this closely. He’s wretchedly beautiful.
The horseman takes in my wet hair and rain-soaked body. “Every single creature runs from me—except you.” He doesn’t sound surprised or alarmed. The horseman is a complete mystery.
I lift my chin. “Am I supposed to be frightened of you?” Because I am. I am utterly terrified. I’m also too reckless to care.
He smiles a little, and I must be brave because I don’t piss myself at the sight of that grin, like any sane person might’ve.
“You took everyone from me.” My voice breaks as the words slip out. I hadn’t planned on opening with this, but once I start speaking, I can’t seem to stop. “My mother, my brothers, my sisters, my nieces and nephews, my neighbors, my friends. They’re all gone.”
The aching loneliness I’ve carried with me sweeps in. Grief is awful enough on its own, but now I also have to deal with this solitude I never asked for.
Death stares at me as rain pelts the two of us. “That is what I do, kismet,” h
e says, his voice gentling. “I kill.”
My grief claws at me, trying to get out. My entire life died that day Death came to my town, and he doesn’t give a shit.
Of course he doesn’t, Lazarus, a small voice inside me says. He wouldn’t be destroying the world if he did.
The horseman gives me another cursory look. Something ancient and alien stares out from the back of his eyes.
“What is your name?” he asks.
I hesitate. I shouldn’t give my name to a man I don’t trust. But what’s the worst that can happen? We both know he can’t kill me.
“Lazarus,” I finally admit.
“Lazarus,” he repeats, tasting the name on his tongue. He smiles, though again, it only manages to make him look like he’s about to eat me. “An appropriate namesake.”
Death begins to circle me, the tips of his wings dragging against the ground. The outer edge of one of those wings brushes against my arm, and the contact draws out goosebumps.
“Who are you?” he says.
“You’ve already asked me that question before,” I say, watching him warily as he comes to a stop again in front of me.
Lightning strikes off in the distance, and again I see a skeleton superimpose itself over him.
I shudder at the macabre sight.
“My will alone should kill you,” he says, ignoring my reaction. “It does not. My touch should rip your soul from your bones. It cannot. There is only one option left.” His ancient eyes seem … sad.
The horseman moves blindingly fast. He grabs me by either side of the head and with one swift jerk—
Snap.
I blink groggily, confused for an instant. Above me the sky is dark.
Where am I?
Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow moves, and I startle into action, rolling to my knees, only to come face to face with Death.
I suck in a breath at the sight of him kneeling at my side, his long wings draped over the ground behind him.
“You truly cannot die,” he says, the words spoken with a hushed sort of reverence.
I jolt at the sound of them, remembering my last few lucid moments.
Death (The Four Horsemen Book 4) Page 2