Shannon, Joe, and Merek were supposed to be staking out the apartment building in front of them. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the action in front of Ralphs.
“Whoa, did you see that woman get clocked in the face with a bag of frozen peas?”
“Shannon, if you really want to help, keep your eyes forward, not on the store.”
Shannon sighed and directed her attention to the grim, boxy apartment building they’d been watching for forty minutes, hoping to spot the member of an ancient cult who might have information on how to fix the (zombie-less) apocalypse.
“Still no movement,” Joe said, his eyes on a second-floor window of the building. “I’m going to check inside.”
“We’ll go with you,” Merek said from the backseat.
“I’d prefer if you stayed in here for now—”
Shannon started to protest, but Joe cut her off. “I’ll let you know if I need backup. But if I get up there and find more of what I’ve been finding at these Knights’ homes . . . there’s no need for you to see that.”
Shannon thought again of the dead man in his living room, the brown blood on the walls. She nodded, staying put as Joe got out of the car.
Merek sat back in his seat, wiping sweat from his forehead onto his shirt. “I never knew it was possible to be this hot.”
“Yeah,” Shannon said, lifting the ends of her hair off of her shoulders. Even with the air conditioner running, the inside of the Jeep was stifling. “Who knew saving the world would involve so much sitting around in our own sweat?”
The heat outside made Shannon feel tired and slow. Her thoughts were slow, her movements were slow . . . it was amazing she’d been able to sneak out of the garage fast enough to not get caught. Not that she had any idea of whether she’d be able to sneak back in—but that was a problem for later.
“What is that?” Merek asked, his voice suddenly sharp.
Shannon followed his gaze to one of the second-story windows of the apartment building. It had been shut and dark before, but now it was thrust open. A tall man in high-waisted jeans and tortoiseshell glasses began shimmying out of it, onto the balcony.
“That’s the apartment, right? What do you wanna bet that’s our Knight?” Shannon asked.
As she spoke, the tall man lifted one leg over the balcony ledge, gripping the railing with his hands.
“Holy crap, is he gonna—”
The man swung his other leg over the ledge, until he was hanging, his legs dangling in the air. He released his grip, dropping to the ground.
“—jump?”
Shannon and Merek exchanged a quick look before flinging their car doors open at the same time. Several feet away from them, the tall man had already started running away from the apartment building, toward the Ralphs.
“Follow him!” Shannon yelled as she pulled out her cell phone.
Merek took off after the man, Shannon running behind him. The man turned his head, saw he was being chased, and raced ahead. With one hand, Shannon called Joe.
“Shannon?” he asked, his voice echoing through the phone.
“He’s out here, Joe! He’s running!”
Ahead of her, the Knight dashed down the length of the Ralphs, dodging a tipped-over vending machine. As Merek neared him, the man jumped toward a loading dock door and flung it open, running inside and slamming the door behind him.
“Hurry!” Shannon yelled into the phone before hanging up.
Merek jumped toward the loading dock door, opening it again with a bang and racing inside. Shannon started to follow him, but then stopped in her tracks, her feet skidding against the concrete. If Merek was about ten seconds behind the Knight, the fleeing man might make it out the front door of the store before Merek could reach him. Shannon quickly doubled back toward the Ralphs’s entrance.
When she got closer to the main door, Shannon started pushing through the line of people waiting to get inside. Some hands reached out, grabbing at her clothes, pulling at her arm, but she slipped away before they could stop her.
“Hey, she’s cutting!” someone yelled to the cop. But he was busy pulling apart two men who were fighting over an open handicapped-parking space.
Shannon finally slipped inside, but if anything, the chaos was worse here. People raced past her, some with carts and baskets, others just filling bags as they went. They grabbed everything they could find—cans, packages, boxes of food—often without even looking at what they were taking. One woman reached out an arm and swept an entire shelf full of graham crackers into her cart before heading toward the checkout line that extended to the back of the store.
Shannon stopped, looking around for the Knight in the tortoiseshell glasses. But it was hard to spot any one person in this madhouse of panicked activity—like the most messed-up game of Where’s Waldo in the world. But then, Shannon heard a loud crashing noise and looked up to see the Knight barreling toward the glass door behind her. Merek skidded around a corner and ran after him. Shannon was dismayed to see, even from this far away, that the bandage over Merek’s collarbone was turning red. He must have reopened his cut in the chase.
“Hey!” Shannon yelled at the man. “We just want to talk to you!”
She positioned herself in front of the door, planting her feet on the ground.
The Knight raced toward her, past an overturned bin of browning daisies, past a man stacking his basket with batteries. People looked up as the running Knight passed, but none moved to stop him.
And then the running man was so close that Shannon could see the brown of his wide, panicked eyes behind those tortoiseshell glasses. Only one person stood between him and the exit.
And he wasn’t slowing down.
“Stop!” Shannon yelled, her heart racing. She put out both hands, as if they could stop this man before he collided into her, before he ran right through her.
But the Knight didn’t stop. He dropped one shoulder down low, and it took Shannon a moment to recognize the movement—one football players made before they bowled down an opponent—
The man smashed right into Shannon’s outstretched hands, hard, knocking her back and sideways into the metal edge of the store’s front door. She felt different points of her body connect with the metal—her head, her elbow, her hip. For a moment, her vision went red, then black. When full color returned, the man was gone, and Shannon was on the ground. Merek kneeled over her, his eyes wide.
“Are you hurt?”
Yes. Shannon didn’t even need to look herself over to know something was wrong. Not just where she’d hit the door, but where the Knight had hit her. He’d collided into her hands, snapping back her wrists, and now—
The pain in her right hand was sharp. When she tried to move it, she let out a cry.
Merek winced as he looked over Shannon’s hands. He didn’t even seem to notice that he was injured, too. He gently moved one of Shannon’s arms over his shoulders and heaved her up. There was no sign of the Knight at the door, and the police officer allowed a new group of people to enter the store, as if nothing had happened. One running man hadn’t been enough to catch his attention in this chaos.
“Did he get away?” Shannon squeaked.
Merek just grimaced, his eyes going dark as he glanced, quickly, over the heads of the crowd and out the door.
“Not for long.” His voice was steely, no trace of its usual sarcasm.
Shannon pulled her damaged wrist close to her body, whimpering every time it jostled. “Well, this’ll teach me to try to be an action hero.”
Merek’s eyebrow twitched. “You were brave to stand in his way like that. Stupid, possibly, but brave.”
The half compliment took Shannon off guard, and she barely knew how to respond. No one had ever called her brave before. She’d never thought of herself as brave before. And really, all she’d done was try to stand in someone’s way, and fail. “Um, thanks.”
“Just like Ripley,” Merek added. He looked back toward the parking lot before h
e could see the smile spreading across Shannon’s face.
Outside, it was impossible to see one man amid all the confusion. By the time Joe reached them, the Knight was completely gone, like he’d disappeared into thin air.
THE RESCUERS
The castle was a surprise, to say the least.
Of course, Liv had seen plenty of castles in her time. They were all in movies, sure, but at least she thought she knew what to expect. Stone walls, check. Turrets, check. Moat, check. But what she hadn’t been prepared for, at all, was the sheer size of the building before her. It turned out those movies and television shows couldn’t really capture the scope of such a thing.
Which was why she’d been staring at the castle for the better part of the afternoon, even though she was supposed to be helping Rafe and Cedric keep track of wrath scouts. The castle was made of a dark gray stone, much of its lower half covered with dense green ivy and moss. It was so large that it cast a shadow covering nearly half the city. Silhouetted against the bright white sky, it was impossible to take in all at once. And Liv couldn’t keep her eyes off it.
“There are two more,” Cedric whispered from her right.
The three of them were hiding behind a rock outcropping just outside the city walls, and for the last few hours had been keeping track of when wrath guards passed in front of a small side entrance.
“It still does not make sense,” Rafe said, shaking his head. Liv bristled at the sound of his voice, just as she had every time he’d spoken on the rest of their journey here. “Why would there be only two at a time, every half an hour or so? In every previous attempt our forces made this close to the city walls, we encountered wraths in groups of no fewer than ten, sometimes even fifteen. Why would they thin their numbers?”
“Maybe they suspect something,” Cedric said.
“Maybe it is a trap.”
“Or maybe we just got lucky for once?” Liv chimed in.
Neither boy responded. They kept their eyes on the monstrous creatures that passed underneath the city wall a quarter mile away. Looking at Cedric and Rafe, Liv couldn’t help but notice their similarities. Both fighters, both strategists. Both possessing the kind of jawlines so strong that some might describe them as “unfair.”
But that’s where the similarities ended. After the encounter with the professor, Liv could see more clearly now the differences between them. And she could never unsee those differences, just like she could never unsee the specks of blood that had dried on the professor’s white beard, just above his slit throat.
“I say we go after these ones now,” Cedric said in a low voice. “Use Liv’s strategy to get through the gate before any other wraths join their number.”
After a beat, Liv nodded, trying to ignore the knot growing in her stomach. She looked up at the immense, imposing castle again. Her brother was in there somewhere. Waiting.
“Just to be clear,” Rafe said, “we are all agreed this strategy is a bit . . . insane?”
Rafe’s tone was light, but Liv still bristled. “I’ve seen it work,” she said, defensive. “Many times.”
She neglected to mention that those “many times” had always taken place in movies, but there was no need to explain that to Rafe. He looked to Cedric. “You are sure about this?”
Cedric didn’t hesitate as he met Liv’s eyes. “Definitely.”
Rafe shrugged, outvoted. They made their way toward the castle as quickly and as quietly as possible, staying low to the ground and hiding behind trees and rocks. If they were spotted now—either by other passing guards or by any wrath who happened to be watching from the battlements—it was all over.
Cedric and Rafe sneaked up behind the pair of wrath guards who were stationed in front of the wall. The creatures were speaking to each other in low voices and didn’t seem to hear Cedric and Rafe as they moved low through the tall grass. They had to be quick in this attack—if the guards had time to signal for any kind of help, they’d be outnumbered in an instant.
Cedric suddenly jumped up from the grass, sword high. He brought it crashing it down over one wrath’s head, while Rafe simultaneously plunged his sword into the other’s back. The second wrath let out a snarling yell before falling, and both boys tensed up. They looked around the small clearing in front of the side gate, but no one approached.
Liv hid underneath the gray city wall, which cast an enormous shadow over the surrounding grass. Cedric dragged the body of one of the wraths toward a small, wooden door that was set into the bottom of the wall. His muscles strained under the bulk of the creature until Rafe came up alongside to help.
The boys thrust the wrath forward between them, and Rafe pounded a series of four knocks into the wooden door—the same knock they’d seen wrath guards use to gain entrance a few hours earlier.
A small wooden plank lifted away from the center of the door, its edges held by a set of thick, black claws. One black eye filled the hole. Rafe and Cedric both propped the dead wrath up so its chest was at the eye level of the wrath on the other side of the door.
“What is it?” The creature’s voice was somehow both guttural and screeching, like someone randomly plucking the strings of an out-of-tune bass guitar.
Rafe and Cedric looked at each other briefly. From her hiding place next to the door, Liv could see beads of sweat coursing down their faces as they held the dead wrath up. Carefully, Rafe removed one of his hands from the body and knocked on the door again, four times.
The black eye blinked, and then backed away from the hole. Liv heard the sound of something heavy sliding around on the other side of the door. Then it opened a crack.
Just as the wrath guard on the other side of the door stepped back to let the new wrath through, Cedric and Rafe pushed forward, shoving the body roughly through the door. It landed on top of the wrath guard, knocking him to the ground.
Rafe used his sword to quickly dispatch the wrath guard struggling on the ground before he could call for help, then pulled both bodies behind a nearby trough. Cedric closed the door in the wall so as not to alert any passing guards that something was wrong.
“I can’t believe we actually pulled off a Weekend at Bernie’s move,” Liv said, peeling herself away from the stone wall and going through the door before Cedric closed it. He gave her a questioning look. “And by that I mean I had total confidence it would work the whole time.”
The city inside was entirely different from the wild lands just outside the stone walls. Wooden houses, shops, stands, and stalls surrounded streets of densely packed dirt. Some of the buildings had colorful signs attached to their doors, advertising candles or linen or pastries. But every door was shut. Not a single person walked down the streets or into or out of any building. It was like a ghost town.
They took cover in a small alley between the city wall and what seemed to be a butcher shop. A crude wooden cutout of a pig hung over the door. Cedric took the walkie out of his belt and held it up, pushing the button.
“Kat?”
After a few moments, the walkie buzzed in response. “Cedric? Are you inside?”
“Just.”
“We are in position, just out of sight of the northern gates. My father’s men are here, almost all of them able to fight. But . . . the Duoin villagers warned us there would be several wraths, and we have only seen a few.”
“Us too. But we have no time to worry about that now. Liv and I are headed to the castle. Rafe is on his way to the southern gate to open it from the inside for the Duoin fighters.”
“Then we will strike in a half hour to lure the wraths north.”
“Be careful, Kat.”
“You as well.”
Cedric lowered the walkie, and Rafe put one hand on his shoulder. “You will have little time to retrieve our families before the wraths realize we are surrounding them on all sides.”
Cedric nodded.
Rafe started to turn away, but then faced Cedric again. “I know you think I wanted to undermine you for my own glory,
but truthfully, I simply did not believe you were capable of doing what needed to be done.”
Cedric raised an eyebrow. “Is that . . . your version of an apology?”
“It is the truth,” Rafe responded. “But nothing that came before matters at this moment. That is my family in there, Prince. Get them out.”
Without waiting for a response, Rafe turned and took off, running quickly through the back alleys. Cedric watched him for a moment, then started heading in the opposite direction, indicating that Liv should follow. They stuck close to the alleys behind buildings, always checking before crossing the dirt roads. Every now and again Liv thought she would see someone—a shadow crossing the street just out of the corner of her eye, or a figure ducking behind a window just as she turned toward it.
“Where are all the people?” she whispered as they drew nearer to the hulking castle.
“I wish I knew,” Cedric responded, his voice strained.
Eventually, the castle walls grew closer. Cedric led her to a small opening in the stone where the turret met the wall.
“Excellent,” Cedric said. “I was hoping the wraths would overlook this.”
“What is it?”
Cedric ducked inside the opening, and Liv followed. Immediately, she felt like retching. The smell of spoiled food—and something worse—was overwhelming in the small space.
Cedric put his hands up over his nose, his eyes watering.
“It is a refuse passage out of the kitchens. Our staff always kept it clean, but it appears the wraths did not have the same scruples.”
Cedric sucked in a breath and began picking his way around foul-smelling piles. Liv tried not to look too closely at them, but when she spotted a suspiciously human-sized bone lying on top of one of the mounds, she started to gag.
They moved quickly until they came out of the passageway and reached a large, circular room with walls of stone. It was surrounded by wooden tables, cabinets, and four fireplaces. A handful of women and men moved among the tables in the room. They were thin and pale, from the old woman who stood hunched over a giant pot to the young girl—she looked to be no older than twelve—sweeping in the corner. Their clothes were ragged, falling to pieces, and their hands were bound with chains.
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