A fucking bear. Now this I had to tell someone. Burns would die from envy.
Just another incentive to survive.
I had no way of knowing whether the bear survived or not, but my following of the undead kind dwindled down to three individuals. As the sky started to lighten behind me, just a little to my left, I dared stop for a few moments to take care of business again. My skin was covered in sweat but chilled if not outright cold. Walking was a feat, and I knew that if I sat down now I wouldn’t be able to get up again. So I didn’t, yet I felt like every single motion was quickly draining what was left of my reserves. But there was no town to go look for something to loot, and the few abandoned cars had been picked clean. The moment the sun came up and chased away the cold of night, my skin started to burn, my lips so cracked that I tasted blood when I licked over them. I knew that I wouldn’t survive another day and night of this. Either something happened in the next few hours, or I was dead.
I was just thinking that when I topped another rise, and paradise opened up before me.
Well, maybe not paradise exactly, but the endlessly stretching palisade around the settlement that lay in the plain ahead came very close to it. It was such a fantastic view that I halted and simply stared, unsure what exactly I was seeing.
And yet, something made my skin crawl, to the point that when I glanced down I saw goose bumps all over my grimy arm.
I listened around me, but except for the low, chuffing sounds that the last remaining zombies made I didn’t hear anything.
No, that wasn’t true. There was something. A sound so low my ears couldn’t quite pick it up, but I felt it, like vibrations low in my bones. It made me want to turn around, to avoid it. It set my teeth on edge.
What the fuck?
I must have stood there for a good five minutes, trying to force my sluggish mind to come up with a plan of action. The zombies should have caught up to me by then, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw that they had congregated in a huddle a good hundred feet back down the road, swaying to and fro, bumping into each other but not moving forward—just like they’d done in that room.
Strange.
Only that the moment I took a step forward—away from them—they surged into action again, fresh and energetic as if they hadn’t spent the entire night on their feet.
And, just like that, all the good I’d made in distance was melting like ice thrown into an open fire.
I was running before my mind could give the order, my body flinging itself into one last mad dash—down toward the palisade. I hadn’t seen a gate so I took the way of least resistance—down the hill on the road, and where it swerved to the side I plunged into the high grass, aiming straight for the high, wooden barrier. Sunlight crested the hill, streaming into the plain like fire but for once not killing my vision as it was coming from right behind me. Not that it mattered—all I could focus on was the palisade, and the distance to it that kept getting shorter and shorter.
And the people up there on the palisade, three guards that I could make out, stopping now that they caught something moving out there in the grass.
With the burst of adrenaline that had rocked my body into action a few moments ago clarity came. I had to come up with a story for why I was out here. Was the patch on my neck still there? Would they believe me if I claimed to be a trader? But if the palisade was any indication, they were with the people who’d much rather shoot me than listen to me explain what a scavenger was doing out there, without gear, without weapons. But would they believe me if they saw me sprint full-out, going about the speed a professional athlete could maintain over short distances?
Just as I thought that, my foot caught in a hole or something and I went down, the air leaving my torso in one painful rush as I hit the ground. I was scrambling up and started forward again before I could draw breath, but that certainly helped make me look a little less like I knew what I was doing. The zombies had almost caught up to me, screaming with their bloodlust, and a few haphazard steps later I finally drew breath again, waving like a madwoman as I tried to make my parched throat work again.
“Help! You have to help me!” I croaked. It came out barely intelligible, but it must have been audible enough in the clean morning air as two of the guards scrambled into action, disappearing behind the palisade. Only a hundred feet separated me from them now, which was close enough that the remaining guard could have easily shot at the zombies—but also me, so it was for the best that he didn’t.
Just as I started to feel dejection well up inside of me, sure they’d watch me getting torn to shreds, a rope ladder was thrown over the palisade, reaching almost down to the ground on my side. Mobilizing the last bit of my strength, I vaulted toward it, throwing all caution overboard where looking frail and incapable was concerned. People could move fucking cars if they were on an adrenaline high—they could very well jump, too.
My fingers closed around the last and second-to-last rungs of the ladder before my momentum sent my entire body smashing into the wooden beams, hard enough to make me bite my tongue and almost let go. But I held on for dear life and pulled my legs up just as the ladder gave a jerk upward as they started to reel me in, the zombies screaming below me. One of them tried to jump up, its claws raking over my shin, but then it fell away to remain at the bottom of the palisade, howling uselessly.
“Hold on!” came a shout from above. “We got you!”
It was almost more than I could manage. My grip was so frail that I would have dropped right down to the ground once they had hauled me up to the top of the palisade if the remaining guard hadn’t grabbed me at the shoulders and pulled me across. I fell onto the wooden walkway like a sack of potatoes, ending up on my back, staring straight into the sky. My breath came in wheezing pants barely deep enough to pull any oxygen into my lungs, making me see spots. No, those were faces, of the three men who had rescued me.
Or had they?
A wave of paranoia rose in me, fright gripping me so hard that my entire body started to shake. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t even stretch out my legs, let alone raise my arms to protect myself. If they decided to kill me, or rape me, or do God knows what to me, there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
All I could do was hope.
I realized that the weird sound in my ears was them talking to me, or trying to. One of them was sane enough to hand me a bottle of water, and when it just dropped uselessly from my fingers he called something out to someone below before he hunkered down and held my head up while he put the unscrewed bottle to my lips. The water hurt where it sloshed into my parched mouth, but I swallowed greedily. He only let me have a few sips, which was likely a good thing but felt more like torture to me. The other one tried talking to me again, and finally the words got through.
“Can you tell me your name, Miss?” he was repeating, over and over again.
My name. It didn’t take a genius to know that I couldn’t very well give that, with a bounty on my head and all that shit. That and the fact that I was sure that Taggard—if he had survived—was monitoring communications. But coming up with something while my mind was turning to mush wasn’t exactly easy.
“Anna,” I finally managed to croak, coughing. “Anna… Hawthorne.” Hawthorne? Where had that come from? “Water, please?”
I got a few more sips while the other guy continued his questioning. “What were you doing out there? How did you even get here?”
I had to hand it to him, he didn’t give me a clue about anything, nothing to build on. Bastard. My silence seemed to go on for too long because he got tired of it, telling the guy with the water bottle to turn me over. I tried to put up some resistance but flopped onto my side, my limbs useless. I knew they were checking my neck.
“Single mark,” the third guy contributed, making me let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.
“What did you expect?” Water Bottle Guy said as he helped me onto my back once more. Some chuckles were traded that
I ignored; I could very well live with a bruised ego.
“Traders,” I managed to offer after another few sips. “My husband and I. We’re traders.” They seemed to wait for more so I continued to mumble the next best thing that came to my mind. “Were with some others. Got attacked. My husband told me to run. So I ran.”
They traded glances before the one who kept asking questions continued.
“When did that happen? And were you bitten or scratched?” He paused, giving me a quizzical look. “We can’t keep you here if you’re sick.”
I almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of the question, but then remembered that yes, I should have been worried about that, too, under different circumstances. I shook my head. “No. And a few days? Five? Yeah, five days. I think. I hid for a while. But had to leave. No food. No water…”
That got me a few more sips while they considered my words. Not that out of the question that a mere trader wouldn’t quite know how to get to food. And, if I was honest, I had had a hard enough time keeping myself fed as it was.
“Can you call Dispatch?” I asked, trying to sound whiney, and not having to pretend much. Shit, but I felt awful. “If my husband is still… if he survived, that’s where they will know. And they can send someone to pick me up. Don’t… don’t want to be a burden.”
More trading of glances that set my teeth on edge. “Don’t you worry about that, Miss,” Water Guy assured me, but I didn’t quite buy it. “You can stay with us until you feel better.” Why, oh why didn’t I believe him? Not the part about staying. I just didn’t buy the part about being welcome—or feeling like I was.
Voices got loud somewhere below us and I sagged back onto the walkway, exhaling slowly. I got some more water but the other two men got up and shouted something to those that must have come to the foot of the palisade to investigate. I could still hear the zombies grunting outside but they sounded much quieter already, now that their quarry was out of sight. The third man disappeared completely but I felt vibrations underneath me that made me guess that he was running down some ladder or similar contraption. A few moments later, several lighter voices answered his grumbled explanation, and steps came back up. From the edge of my vision I saw two women approach—or someone wearing long, flowing skirts. The skirts were pretty much all I actually saw. A warm, gentle hand dropped down on my forehead, making my eyes flicker open again. When had I closed them? The face above me looked older, fine lines and gray wisps of hair coming loose from a tight bun making me guess that she must have been twice my age. The other woman remained behind her, out of my direct sight, while the first briefly checked me over, stopping at my feet. I could take a guess at why she pulled air in through her teeth in a slight gasp. Over a year out there with lots of walking and running and seldom being without my boots had left quite the fair share of calluses on my feet but none of that had prepared them for the abuse I’d put them through.
Still better than what would have happened to me if I hadn’t done it.
I stopped trying to be helpful and just stared up into the brightening sky, my puffy eyes already starting to water again. They felt like someone had sanded them down.
Another woman’s face appeared above me, and that’s when I knew I’d started hallucinating. That lush blonde hair. Warm, brown eyes, so ready to sparkle with joy but now clouded with worry. Those lips, the upper one slightly plumper than the lower. Lips that had smiled at me a thousand times. That I’d kissed a thousand times.
Only that the details were wrong. There shouldn’t have been the hint of a scar on her chin. Her cheeks were still full, no signs of starvation, but the lines of her cheekbones and jaw were more defined, hard where softness had been before. But most of all that carefree look was gone from her eyes, leaving worry and tension there that shouldn’t have been in a vision that my mind conjured up in the last moments before it went out forever.
It dawned on me that the woman looking down at me wasn’t a figment of my imagination. No, she was real.
Breath left me as disbelief twined with guilt and astonishment cleared away some of the cobwebs in my brain. My voice was almost toneless as my vocal cords finally agreed to work again.
“Sam?”
Chapter 28
I knew that she recognized me before she whispered my name—“Bree?”—but I was still too dazed to react at first. It was only when one of the men spoke up in a gruff voice that I finally managed to shake myself out of it.
“That’s not the name she gave us,” he said, accusation heavy in his tone.
Sam’s eyes remained on me for another second before she looked away, likely at the source of the protest. “Short for Brianna. What did she say it was?” More grumbling ensued, but of a somewhat mollified nature. Sam looked back to me, doubt crossing her face but leaving it after she squinted at me again. “It really is you,” she whispered, and I didn’t miss the hint of… was that derision? Scorn? Or just that same disbelief that my mind had yet to disband?
“Daniel calls me Anna,” I murmured, clearing my throat to get a little strength back into it. Daniel? Close enough that I would hopefully remember. Nathaniel… Daniel… all the same in the end. Why my mind had skipped right on to the author of The Scarlet Letter I didn’t want to analyze, nor had the brainpower to.
“Daniel,” Sam echoed, a frown appearing on her forehead.
“Her husband,” the guy from before supplied, almost as a taunt. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”
Ah, so much for guessing what secrets to keep, and which not. But I immediately rectified that guess when Sam just gave a hint of a shrug, as if that hadn’t been directed at her. Or us. “We used to be close in college but kind of lost track of each other.” That was one way to describe it, but I held my tongue, also because Sam was kind enough to get the water bottle for me. With her help, I managed to sit up and lean against the palisade. The older woman continued to look at my feet but didn’t touch me anymore. The quizzical look she gave Sam made me guess that not everyone was as easily deceived as that guy.
Sam and deceiving anyone. Except for her rampant infidelity, that was a concept that was almost as unbelievable as… her not dying when the shit had hit the fan.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Sam offered as she nodded at the other woman, and together they pulled me to my feet. My sense of balance was way off, and when they realized that I wasn’t helping them much, the woman ducked away in favor of letting the man who’d given me the water before help. I tried to protest but was swiftly ignored as they carried me down the stairs that led into the settlement proper.
From the outside the settlement had looked larger than it really was, with only a few fields surrounding the center, not like in Aurora or Harristown. Even so they seemed to have a good hundred people here, if not more. How they could sustain themselves was beyond me, but it was entirely possible that I was missing something. I hadn’t exactly paid that much attention in Aurora, and in Harristown I hadn’t walked more than fifty yards from the gate.
Damn, but I was really sick of these settlements.
Once down on the ground I managed to remain standing, although I still needed support to walk. I tried to protest again that I needed to get to a radio first but the older woman told me in no uncertain terms that there was “always time for that later.” I didn’t care for that at all, but seeing as I couldn’t have stood my ground—literally—I let myself be shooed off to the bathhouse, as Sam called it. The older woman came with us, followed by another who looked to be in her fifties.
“Inspection first,” the older woman barked as Sam helped me sit down on a low bench. I didn’t have it in me to protest. And it didn’t come as much of a surprise. I was somewhat glad they hadn’t insisted on me removing my clothes in front of everyone.
Sam gave her a scandalized look. “Mary, please. She can’t even stand on her own. Can’t you show her at least a little bit of compassion—“
The younger of the two matrons shook her head but did so with a c
onflicted look on her face. “You know the rules. And you know that they are in place for our protection. If she’s been scratched, she could endanger all of us. You know that.” It sounded more like a token reminder, which made diffuse unease rise inside of me. Thinking wasn’t easy with my mind on autopilot, demanding only three things—water, food, and rest.
Sam tried to protest but this time I shut her down. “I understand,” I told her, briefly looking up at the others before I focused back on Sam. “Besides, these aren’t even my clothes. If you have anything that fits…”
“Of course,” the woman whose name I still didn’t know was quick to interject. “Once we have made sure that you’re not infected, we will leave you to clean up. Fresh clothes will be provided for you. After all, we’re not animals.” She ended that with a laugh that was too shrill and sharp to comfort me, but Mary gave her a look that made her stop. Who was in charge here was impossible to miss.
“Would you mind getting me something to eat first?” I asked, not having to act to sound desperate. “I haven’t eaten in“—hours, actually, but my body had long since run itself empty—“forever. Nuts, jerky, or an apple maybe?”
All three of them looked at me with puzzled expressions until Mary replied, “You can eat breakfast with us after you’ve cleaned up.” So much for that.
It shouldn’t have been that hard to shirk my clothes, but one day and night had been enough to either plaster them permanently to my skin, or turn them into rags. Sam gasped when the shorts hit the floor, and it took me a moment to remember the impressive amount of scar tissue high up on my thigh. Or maybe it was because of the bruises that had had enough time to bloom all over my body, mostly from where Taggard had kicked me. At least the hematomas from where they’d drawn blood had faded. Just thinking of him made my gorge rise, and I couldn’t hold back as I puked up bile and water. I felt pathetic and small as I was crouching on the floor, retching, but when I looked up again, there was only compassion left on the women’s faces—a bonus, I decided. Sam was quick to wipe everything away with my rags before she helped me get rid of the remainder of my clothes.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 65