by Brant, Jason
“Let go of me, you fuck! There’s still time!” She kicked backward, catching him in the thigh. “Put me down, goddamn it!”
His grip tightened.
Brown reached out and took her hand. “Cass—”
“Don’t touch me! Get this dickhead off me and help—”
A shriek came from the forest.
The four of them fell silent and watched the trees. Cass stopped bucking against Colt’s arms, hanging in midair.
“Put me down.”
He eased her to the ground and let her go, his tentative arms staying close to her sides. “You aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?”
She spun on him, her despair morphing to rage. Before she knew what she was doing, her arm snaked out and she punched him in the nose. “You left him out there!”
Colt’s head snapped back several inches from the blow, but his facial expression didn’t change. He watched her silently.
“How could you leave him to die? He won’t make it through the night!” Cass fought the desire to reach back for her axe. She wanted nothing more than to kill the man where he stood.
“Cass,” Brown said. “It’s not his fault.”
“Bullshit! He took Lance out there and then left him.”
A dozen more shrieks resonated through the woods. The lights jutting from the field flickered to life. The guards by each of the woodpiles bent down and set them ablaze.
Cass’ stomach clenched as she looked at the woods and listened to the approaching infected. The cries of fury and hunger drew closer with each passing second. The realization that Lance would never come back began to sink in.
Her legs felt weak, and her knees wobbled. She took a staggered step toward Brown before she collapsed to the trampled lawn on her hands and knees. Dry heaves racked her body.
Brown knelt beside her and placed a hand on her back, beside the handle of the axe. “I’m so sorry, Cass.”
Tears stung her eyes. Her throat worked.
The first gunshot cracked from the other side of the field. Cass didn’t look up. She didn’t care about anything else at that moment.
Lance’s face filled her mind. She thought of how she’d found him, tied up and thrashing in a mound of garbage. She remembered how he’d carried her through the dying streets of Pittsburgh to the armored car.
He’d jumped in front of a knife meant for her.
And for what? To be dragged off like so many others?
They’d lived through so much together. They’d persevered when others had fallen.
She vomited as Brown and Eifort tried to comfort her. Her head swam as she spit bile into the grass. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t leave her alone.
“I have to go help with the defenses,” Colt said softly. “Are you good here with her?”
“Yes,” Brown said. “I’ll take care of her.”
Colt ran to the frontlines, pulling a pistol from his waistband. He stopped beside a group of his men and watched the trees.
“How?” Cass asked. “How could he have survived so much to just be dragged away in broad daylight?”
“I don’t know,” Eifort said. “I don’t know.” She looped her arm around Cass and helped her stand.
Cass’ legs didn’t want to hold her weight. She tried to fight back tears, but couldn’t stop them from flowing. Her chest hitched as Brown and Eifort dragged her to a lawn chair. They pulled the axe from its holster and let her collapse into the seat.
She held her head in her arms and cried as the helicopter’s rotors whirred to life.
The cries of the infected filled the air.
Gunshots rang out.
Cass ignored it all as she wallowed in grief.
Chapter 19
When Cass had fallen asleep, she didn’t know.
She awoke just before dawn. Twinges ran into her neck and back as she sat up. She was still in the lawn chair, bent over with her head in her arms.
Goop in the corners of her eyes resisted against her lids as she opened them. Her face felt warm and swollen.
She wiped at her face as she looked around.
The fires still burned, though they’d died down to little more than red-hot coals. The lights were still on. Guards left their posts and walked toward their tents and RVs, their shoulders slumped from a long night of fighting.
Rays of light crept across the sky as the day approached.
Brown stood fifty yards away, speaking with Colt. He moved his arms around in wide, animated arcs. Colt listened, but rarely spoke.
Eifort sat by one of the fires, staring into the coals. Tears covered her cheeks.
As Cass stood, she felt a fresh wave of despair wash over her.
Lance was dead. Dragged away and murdered by a monster.
And she hadn’t been there to keep him safe as she always had. She’d failed the one person who had managed to cut through her bullshit and see her for something other than a piece of ass. He’d cared for her, loved her, and now he was gone.
Fucking dead.
Her axe leaned against the side of the cabin. She lifted it up and examined the blade through watery eyes. After nearly a minute, she collected herself and put the axe in its holster.
Judging from the amount of people walking around the field, Cass estimated that they hadn’t lost too many during the night, if any at all. She should have felt guilty for not helping, but she couldn’t think of much beyond the ache in her chest.
She marched toward Brown and Colt. Her resolve grew with each step.
Brown saw her coming and stopped barking at Colt. “How are you feeling?”
“How do you think?” Cass jabbed her finger into Colt’s chest. “Take me there.”
“Where?”
“To the place where Lance was taken.”
“He’s gone, Cass. I watched the whole thing. You can’t save him.”
“I’m not asking. I want to see the tunnel.”
Colt exchanged a look with Brown and shrugged. “Fine. I’ll take you there after lunch.”
“You’ll take me right now.”
Brown said, “I’m coming with you.”
“Me too.” Eifort got up from her place by the fire and walked over. She put her arm around Cass. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “We all owe Lance more than we could ever say.”
Though Cass felt thankful that they wanted to accompany her, she kept her glare on Colt. “Let’s go.”
They left the compound a few minutes later with Brown at the wheel. Colt sat beside him in the passenger seat, staring through the window. Eifort and Cass were in the back, each holding their favorite weapons in their laps.
“Where are we going?” Brown asked.
“To some restaurant that Lance said put coleslaw on burgers.”
“Primanti Brothers,” Eifort said. Her voice was small and husky. She glanced at Cass before looking down at her rifle. “Adam said he’d seen a tunnel behind the Primanti Brothers in Greensburg.”
They rode in silence for most of the trip. A few times, Cass thought she saw Brown’s throat work, but she never saw a hint of tears.
The major watched the scenery fly by. Cass kept her eyes on him, wanting to see how he reacted as they got closer. If he had any signs of guilt or apprehension, she planned to shoot him with Eifort’s rifle on the spot.
She just couldn’t buy that Lance had been so careless that he’d been taken in broad daylight. It didn’t add up.
Lance had tried to warn her that something was wrong with Colt, and she hadn’t listened. Had the major gotten him killed? Had he done something to Lance? Guilt washed over her as she ran through their conversation in the garden. She’d called him jealous.
Her self-hatred returned with a vengeance.
The coolness of the morning had begun to dissipate as they climbed out of the Jeep and walked behind the restaurant. Cass held her axe in both hands and stayed behind Colt. She wanted to embed it in his back, but she had to be sure that her suspicions were accura
te.
He led them to a patch of grass connecting two parking lots and stopped in front of a wide hole.
Long, wide footprints were stamped in the dirt surrounding the tunnel, leading inside.
They heard an odd noise coming from the darkness below.
Cass ignored it.
“This is where it got him,” Colt said as he stopped a few feet away. He pointed at a red patch on the ground. “That’s his blood. It dragged him in there.”
Cass’ pulse pounded as she crept to the edge of the hole and looked down. Her eyes followed the curve of the tunnel as it disappeared. Another large area of blood was at the edge of the shadow leading into the earth.
So much blood.
She stared at it silently, fighting a fresh wave of emotion.
Brown took hold of her elbow with a tender grip. “We need to back up. It got him exactly where you’re standing.”
“I don’t care.” She tore her arm free and continued looking at the bloody spot. “It just came out of the tunnel and grabbed him? With the sun beating down on it?” She turned back to Colt. “It didn’t care?”
“It only took a second before it had him pulled into the darkness. Its skin had barely blackened.” Colt nodded at the hole. “By the time I got to the edge, it had already dragged him inside. I saw his legs disappear, and then he was gone.”
Cass squeezed the handle of her axe. The thought of Lance dying, frightened and alone, in a tunnel with one of the infected, made her want to scream. It took all her willpower to keep herself together.
“What is that sound?” Eifort asked.
Colt explained that he and Lance had been discussing that very thing when the Vladdie had taken him. He went on about how he thought they were learning to communicate verbally again.
After a few seconds, Cass tuned him out. She knelt down at the edge of the hole and peered as far inside as she could. Irrational fear overtook her as she wondered if she might see Lance’s body down there. The Vladdies would have taken him, of course, and she saw nothing.
Just the red stain in the dirt remained.
All that was left of the love of her life.
The father of her unborn child.
“—explains how they’re smart enough to throw rocks at your lights.” Colt pulled a cigar from one of his cargo pockets. Cass wanted to make him eat it. She loathed him. Even if he spoke the truth, she hated that he had lived and Lance had died.
Brown ran a hand over his head. “I’d thought that the daywalker phase was a sort of cocoon stage for what we’ve been fighting the last month, but it appears that I was wrong. They’re still changing, still mutating. It’s as if their minds are a computer rebooting after a crash.”
“We can’t wait around to see what happens,” Colt said. “We have to eradicate them before they get any smarter. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to get around a couple of campfires.”
Eifort, Brown, and Colt argued over what to do next while Cass stood at the hole, transfixed by the sound coming from the darkness below. She considered hopping into the tunnel and seeing how far she could make it before they took her.
Then she could be with Lance again. She could experience what he had. It would give her one last moment of closeness with him, however macabre and horrible that moment would be.
Her hand brushed across her stomach then, and she shoved the suicidal thoughts aside. Lance would have lectured her for hours if he knew what had crossed her mind.
Would have called her Cassie.
She turned to Colt. “What do you have in mind? I’m in. No matter what it is. Let’s kill every single motherfucker down there.”
Chapter 20
Arguing voices welcomed Lance back to consciousness.
Pain.
Everywhere.
Trying to open his eyes felt akin to deadlifting a truck. Light spilled into the slits he managed to pry open, making him slam the lids shut again.
Was he dead?
If so, why did Heaven have people arguing in it? Maybe he was in Hell. He’d killed men before, after all. And he’d enjoyed premarital sex.
A lot of it.
“If your crazy ass thought I was going to let my husband die while we sat here and watched, you’re out of your mind. I get that you think you’re Switzerland or whatever you’re calling yourself now, but I’m not sitting on the sidelines like you are. I couldn’t let him die out there.”
Though the voice was faint, as if it came from another room, it definitely belonged to a woman.
“Being neutral n’at is what’s kept me alive this long,” a man replied. He had a thick Pittsburgh drawl. “Bringing people up here is gonna get you killed. And me too, damn it.”
Lance forced his eyes open, sucking in a harsh breath as he adjusted to the light.
A bulb hung from the ceiling above him. It was rigged there with an extension cord. The walls were a shiny metal with maps and diagrams taped to them.
Workbenches lined the walls. Cables crisscrossed the floor. The soft, low rumble of an engine came from somewhere unseen.
The room was maybe ten feet by ten feet. It was small, but not prohibitively so.
Lance lifted his head and saw that he was on a cot with blankets covering him. Sweat ran down his forehead as he looked around. Where the hell was he? How had he gotten there?
He tried to sit up, but a stabbing pain in his chest convinced him otherwise. Agony pulsed up his leg in synch with his heartbeat. His limbs felt heavy, impossible to move.
When he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out. His dry tongue lolled against his teeth, sticking to them.
“How can you stay neutral after we just saw him get shot for no reason at all?” the woman asked.
“Cause I got nothing to do with it. I don’t know why he did it, and I don’t care.”
“You’re a cold-blooded bastard.” The woman’s words dripped with venom. The angry tone had a familiar quality that Lance couldn’t quite place. He struggled to focus on their words, his mind sluggish from sleep and dehydration.
“I saved you, didn’t I? How cold blooded was that, eh? Look, I get why you wanted to save him n’at, but what happens if that big ol’ muscled bastard finds out that we have him? He’ll come here and put a bullet through my ass, that’s what.”
The woman cursed at him some more.
Lance spotted a glass of water resting on a milk crate beside his cot. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest, he lifted his right arm and reached for it. Getting the limb free of the blankets draped over it sapped most of his strength.
His fingers brushed the glass and knocked it over. It clinked against the crate, spilling water on the floor.
The arguing in the next room ceased.
Footsteps approached.
Lance watched the door, wondering what would happen next. Did it even matter? He doubted he would survive much longer anyway. He’d been shot in the leg and dead center in the chest. Without medical attention, he wouldn’t last long.
Liz walked into the room, her eyes growing wide when she saw him. “Lance? You’re awake!” She rushed over to the cot and knelt beside him.
Lance blinked hard.
If Bigfoot had lumbered into the room, Lance would have been less surprised than he was to see his ex-wife. The last time he’d seen Liz, she was a complete wreck. She’d been living at the compound run by Ralph.
The man she’d left him for, Don, was infected. Lance had fought him to the death in a pit behind the cabin.
Liz had fled the camp, disgraced and broken. She’d wandered out of the compound without a weapon or vehicle. What had passed unspoken between them suggested that she planned to commit suicide by vampire. She would walk in the wilderness until nightfall and finally succumb to the eaters of men.
And yet, there she was, kneeling beside him.
A ghost from another life.
A man stepped into the doorway and stopped, leaning against the jamb. He had a gnarly bear
d that had never seen a brush. He was thin, with gangly arms and a wiry neck. A Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap rested on his head, pushed back so far that it looked as if it might tumble off backward.
He wore a sleeveless shirt and torn blue jeans.
“Can’t believe this shit. I broke my own goddamn rules and save one woman and now yinz are multiplying like fruit flies. Christ Almighty.” He waved at Lance in a dismissive gesture and shook his head.
Lance worked his mouth, but he couldn’t form any words with his parched throat and tongue.
“What?” Liz leaned forward. “I can’t hear you.”
“Water,” Lance whispered. “Water.”
“Oh, sorry.” Liz grabbed the glass, which still had a few fingers worth of water in the bottom, and brought it to Lance’s lips.
It tasted like the nectar of the gods. Lance swished it around his mouth before swallowing, savoring the cool sensation that went through his chest.
“Don’t give him too much,” the man said. “I don’t need him puking all over my shit.”
“Oh, shut up.” Liz rolled her eyes. “He’s being pissy because I made him help me get you out of that hole.”
Lance finished the water and licked his lips. He looked from the man to Liz and back again. “Where am I? Who is he? How are you still alive, Liz? How am I still alive?”
Liz put her hand on his forearm. “Relax. You’ve been through a lot and need to rest.”
“He needs to rest so he can get the hell outta here,” the man grumbled.
“Hush up, damn it.” Liz tucked Lance’s arm under the blanket again. Her hair, which had been knotted and straggly when Lance had last seen her, was brushed and pulled into a ponytail. Her face was clean and relaxed. She looked as she had before their hellacious stay in the hospital.
“You’re at my super-secret location,” the man said. He puffed his chest out. “I’m the Wildman of Monroeville.”
Lance tried to sit up instinctively and grunted when the pain in his chest ignited.
“What are you doing?” Liz asked. “Stay down.”
“You’re the man on the radio?” Lance inspected him. “You aren’t what I expected.”