by Laken Cane
He shrugged and threw her a smile, reminding her of her Z. “Not sure.”
Shit. That meant he was doing awful.
She needed to feed, and Strad would be willing. But did she want to chance infecting him?
Maybe she’d already passed the infection out of her system.
Maybe she hadn’t.
A clump of black hair fell into her lap, and she brushed it into the floor. She couldn’t see all the damage, but she could feel it. It was bad.
She had to feed.
Strad pointed his chin at the road ahead. “Look.”
Zombies were spilling around the curve. The shuffling ones fell beneath the rush of the stronger zombies and lay like rotting slugs.
Her cell rang. Some of the crew had developed a habit of leaving their phones inside the vehicles before they went into battle. She’d put hers in the glove box when they’d first met up with the zombies. That seemed like a million years ago.
Strad maneuvered the SUV around and headed back in the opposite direction, followed closely by Raze and Jack.
“Ellie,” Rune said, after she saw his name on the display. “God, baby, I miss you.”
“What’s wrong? Are you all okay?” He sounded anxious, even more so than usual.
“We ran into some strange trouble,” she told him.
“What the hell happened, Rune? I’m not getting an answer when I call Rock County. Where’s Levi?”
She hesitated. “Ellie…”
“Oh no. He’s hurt. He’s hurt, isn’t he?”
“Call him. He’s here in the car with me.”
He hung up before she finished talking.
“I didn’t want you to tell him,” Levi said.
“He should know.” She punched in Raze’s number.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Do you have any grenades with you?”
“I brought one.” Raze almost always carried one for emergencies.
She’d been counting on it. “We’ll have to blast the fucks out of our way.” She turned to Strad. “Let Raze by. He’s going to throw a grenade.”
“You got it.”
After the thick knot of zombies had thinned out, they’d drive through them into town and get things figured out.
“You don’t want to blast the zombies blocking the road out of here?”
She glanced back at Levi. Denim was now holding the phone to his twin’s ear. “No,” she said. “There isn’t time. And we can’t leave Z and Owen.”
He pulled to the side of the road to let Raze pass them. As they sat there, he reached over and put a big hand on her leg. “Doing okay?”
Her leg jerked beneath the weight of his heavy, hot hand.
“Let me in, Rune.”
“Rune?”
“Yeah,” she said, and squeezed his hand gently before moving it off her leg. “I’m okay.”
He frowned but said nothing. He was somehow calmer. But at the same time, he seemed to radiate more rage than ever.
Did he want her, or did he want her bite? Both, she’d decided. He wanted both. Talk about fucking complicated.
There was no time to think about her relationship with the berserker. She couldn’t afford to be distracted.
But images pelted her mind—images so vivid and intense she could have closed her eyes and been back in that room, that bed.
She shook them off.
Not right now.
She had to help her crew stay alive. All of them.
Somehow.
They watched Raze drive on up the road, toward the zombies.
“Not too close, Raze,” she murmured.
But he kept going. He’d have to get decently close in order to toss the grenade into the middle of the monsters and clear out as many as possible.
Finally, he stopped, left the truck running, and climbed up onto the hood. The zombies seemed to hesitate, and then with a frightening speed, some of them ran toward Raze.
“Fuck,” Rune muttered, digging her nails into her thighs.
Jack had gotten out of the truck as well, and stood with his guns aimed at the zombies’ heads.
He began picking them off one by one, stopping the monsters from getting too close. But there were too many of them.
Rune jumped out of the car, pulling her own guns.
Strad was standing beside her before she even realized he’d left the SUV. But when she started to walk forward, toward Raze’s truck, he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said. “After Raze throws the grenade he’ll have seconds to back the truck out of there.”
It was true, but hard to stand and watch from a distance. She should have been up there with them.
Fearing that Raze was going to let the zombies get too close to him, she held her breath until finally, he threw the grenade.
A couple of zombies reached him but he dispatched them in seconds and he and Jack jumped back into the truck.
Rune and Strad ran to the SUV and climbed inside, and Strad made a tight turn, rammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and got them the hell out of there.
Raze was right behind them.
The explosion sounded after what seemed like five minutes but had actually been a few seconds. “I hope a lot of the fucking monsters are missing their heads right about now,” Rune muttered. “Get us to town, Strad.”
Raze and Strad slammed on their brakes, turned the vehicles around, and headed back toward the blast.
Chapter Six
The town of Shalegrove was eerily silent when they drove through it. There were no signs of life. The only movement came from a few scattered zombies roaming the streets.
“There are the townspeople,” Rune said. The new zombies. The lumbering zombies had been called from their graves, but the new, fast zombies were the fresh kills of old zombies and something more. They were full of the magic she’d tasted.
She let down her window and aimed her gun, picking off zombies as Strad drove slowly through the silent town. Denim took the left side, with Strad’s help.
Because they dealt with the monsters, Shiv Crew guns were loaded with silver bullets that exploded on contact, sending melting hot silver into the monsters’ systems.
The bullets might not destroy zombies, but they would slow them the fuck down. Almost before she’d finished the thought, a zombie she’d shot fell to the ground, then battled the silver to regain his feet.
She heard Jack and Raze shooting zombies from behind them. “Might as well save your ammunition, boys.”
Owen and Z...
Where are you guys?
Levi had begun throwing up before they’d entered town. He’d hung his head out the window behind Rune, and she flinched every time she heard him expelling what sounded like buckets of blood.
No one, no matter how strong, could battle the zombie infection and win.
I did.
Yes, she did. But she was…
Different.
Her symptoms were gone. She was weak and tired and her muscles ached. Maybe her mind was a little sluggish. But she’d perk up once she fed.
She’d been bitten by zombies.
Maybe she carried the antidote to the bite inside her now. In her blood.
“God,” Levi screamed, his voice startling and loud in the silence, “I can feel it. I can feel myself rotting.”
Rune pushed her knuckles against her lips, hard. They began to swell and bleed immediately.
Strad reached over and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “We’ll fix him.”
But if her blood couldn’t heal him, he was gone. And she wasn’t confident in her blood.
Z might already be dead. Her Z.
“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck no.”
A zombie ran at the car and she shot it with savage glee. She shot it again as it fell. It lay twitching but not destroyed. Another zombie wandered close to examine it.
She shot it, too.
“Should we have Elizabeth report this?” Lex asked.
/> “No,” Rune answered. “They know about the zombies by now. We just need to get out before they find out about us, too.”
“As soon as we find Z and Owen,” the berserker said. “We’ll have RISC contain us until we’re cleared. If we’re lucky, no one will know we were here.”
Rune wasn’t going to bet their luck was that good, but they had no choice. The way she figured it, they had a few hours before military ground troops descended upon the county.
The ones who’d abandoned Rock County would try to keep their secret—after all, their lives were in danger if they talked. But probably at least one of them was infected.
Those things happened fast.
“We have to hurry,” she said. “We have to fucking hurry.”
And in order to help her crew, she had to feed.
Not just because she wanted to try saving Levi and Z, but because…
Her hand shook when she lifted it to her head. She pulled gently at a lock of hair and it came away easily.
She’d lost her blood. She had to feed. She had to feed her monster.
Without feeding, she was just another human. A weak, starving, sick human. And without her monster, they didn’t have as good a chance of getting out of zombie hell.
Her cell rang. “Elizabeth.”
“Ellis was just updating me,” her boss said. “I’ll do what I can, Rune. Who’s hurt?”
“Z and Levi. Both were bitten.”
“How far along in the disease?”
“Levi is…he’s bad. I can’t find Z. Owen went to look for him, and now they’re both missing.”
“Owen?” Elizabeth’s voice sharpened.
“We’ll find them. This place was gone by the time we got here. Taken over. I’m sure some of the people escaped, and they’ll need to be traced before they do too much damage. But until we can get out of here…”
“You won’t have much time. Find Owen. I’ll do what I can,” Elizabeth said again, and hung up.
Owen was Elizabeth’s cousin. She was the one who’d brought him in and had given him a place in RISC.
Rune knew little about their relationship, but she knew if Owen died, Elizabeth would blame herself.
And maybe she’d blame Rune, too, but no more than Rune would. As leader of Shiv Crew, it was her responsibility to keep her people safe.
“The fucks are hanging around houses,” Denim said. “These are some freaky zombies.”
“New zombies,” Rune said. “The townspeople. Those called from the grave are slower, but there are a hell of a lot of them.”
“We have to find a place to regroup,” Lex said. “Levi needs a bed.”
Strad pulled into the yard of a small yellow house. “This one is as good as any. I’ll go in and clear it.”
But Rune was already climbing out of the car, gun in one hand, blade in the other. “You can carry Levi in,” she said, “after I’ve checked the house.”
“Rune—”
“I’ll be careful.” She waved to Raze and Jack and ran to the door. It was locked so she knocked out the window beside the door. She hated making noise and alerting any nearby zombies, but she was in a hurry.
One of the crew could board up the window once they were inside.
The house was quiet and she ran through the rooms quickly—if there were any zombies they wouldn’t have been hiding under beds or in closets, so she didn’t bother doing more than a cursory check of the rooms.
There was no basement and no second floor. The kitchen was small and clean with what were probably breakfast dishes in the dish drainer. Whoever had lived there hadn’t been killed there—he’d simply walked out the door that morning for work and had, most likely, been attacked.
She unlocked the door and after a quick check of the yard, jogged back to the SUV. Strad stood on guard beside the car, waiting for her. She hadn’t really expected him to stay inside the vehicle.
The other men and Lex obeyed—usually—a direct order from her. The berserker did not. It was frustrating, but she couldn’t get too angry. She’d known what he was when she took him on.
“Someday,” she muttered when she reached him, “I’m going to fire you.”
He grinned.
Jack and Raze hadn’t remained inside their vehicle either, but patrolled the street, ready to cut down any zombie that wondered near.
“Come on, you guys. Let’s get into the house.”
Before they reached the porch, they spotted three zombies trying to get inside a house across the street.
“They’re so fucking fast,” Rune said. “Inside. Hurry.” For all she knew the fuckers could spit and infect a human.
Once inside, Strad put Levi down on the couch and went to find a hammer and some boards to cover the broken window.
Lex and Denim tended to Levi while Strad and Jack secured the house. Raze stood staring silently down at the twins and Lex, and Rune went into the kitchen to make them some dinner and a pot of coffee.
Z. Be okay. For me.
The thought of never hearing him say “sweet thing” again was nearly too much for her. He was one of the original Shiv Crew.
She couldn’t lose him.
Even Owen, though she hadn’t known him long, was special to her. The cowboy was so insanely calm and laid back she sometimes wondered how he could move as fast as he did.
And now Levi, former COS member and the love of Ellie’s life, lay on the couch, infected. Dying.
Before she even realized she was going to, Rune rammed her face into the refrigerator. Her nose shattered.
The pain was sharp and immediate, but even as her eyes watered, something inside her sighed with relief.
Because she was half monster, half freak, half who knew the fuck what, she would heal quickly from such a small injury as a broken nose.
“Rune.”
She turned quickly at the whispered voice, groaning inwardly at the horrified look in Jack’s eye. His other eye was covered with an eye patch. He’d lost that beautiful blue orb when they’d battled the Dark Others in Hawthorne.
There was nothing to say. She grabbed a dishtowel and held it to her face, mopping up blood she couldn’t afford to lose.
Yeah, she was fucked up, but since her stay with the shrinks she was doing a hell of a lot better. So what if she cut herself up once in a while or rammed her face into the refrigerator or sought out a little danger?
It wasn’t like it would kill her.
Jack didn’t know what to do or say, either. He started to touch her, then withdrew his tentatively outstretched hand. He opened his mouth, then closed it.
Finally, he just turned and walked away.
She made sandwiches and hot coffee. They had to eat.
And afterward, they would figure shit out.
Chapter Seven
The zombie bites lay in strips of hot, raw pain upon her body. Her nose had not quite mended by the time she stuck her head into the living room to ask for help carrying food and coffee, but she could feel it trying to right itself.
Strad had busted up a heavy bookshelf and was busy nailing the pieces over the broken window. He glanced at her, did a double take, then dropped his hammer.
He walked toward her, his tread heavy and deliberate, his face expressionless.
Jack and Raze stood at the other windows, watching for zombies. As Strad strode toward her, they left their posts with narrowed eyes, fingers on the hilts of their shivs.
The berserker had that effect on people. They knew he wouldn’t try to hurt her. Wouldn’t even threaten her.
Still, Shiv Crew was aware of what Strad Matheson was capable. They were familiar with the rage inside him, the infamous rage that made him the berserker.
His long, silver spear peeked at her over his broad shoulder, and his black hair streaked over his chest. He looked like the warrior he was. A badass fighter who’d killed more men than even she had.
She held her hands up as he approached, palms toward him, as if that might halt his lon
g stride. “Berserker.”
He didn’t care that they all watched. Didn’t care that she flinched from him with memories of Jeremy still too fresh in her mind. Didn’t care that she had an unyielding distrust of people, of men, of touch.
He didn’t hesitate.
He pulled her off the floor and into his arms.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured.
She buried her face in his neck, her hands clenching and unclenching against his chest, her body stiff and tense.
He waited for her to relax, one big arm wrapped around her waist, his other hand at the back of her delicate skull. His fingers lay against the strips of naked scalp where her hair had fallen out in clumps. “The burden is not yours alone. Let your men bear some of it.”
“Her crew,” Lex said, vibrating furiously. Then her voice broke. “We can’t stand it when you hurt yourself, Rune.”
Sometimes she fucked up.
She was nearly too ashamed to lift her face from the berserker’s neck.
They’d never understand, but they weren’t required to.
And after all, she’d hidden what she was her entire life. She could do it again.
If she had to.
At last she pushed away from Strad and he let her down, not, she was relieved to notice, with extra gentleness or careful eyes. She didn’t want her crew treating her like she was delicate. Or insane.
But he watched her. The look in his eyes was too intense to be called tenderness, really, but for the berserker, it was tenderness.
“Let’s eat,” she said.
After the crew had settled in with their food and coffee, she left them there and locked herself in the bathroom.
She stared into the mirror over the sink for the longest time, unmoving and blank. Black crescents had formed under her eyes, and her nose had shifted a little to the side. What hair she had left clung to her skull in long, dull strands. Her lips were puffy and the stain of blood still colored her face.
She was hideous.
Suddenly angry, she began pulling out the clinging strands of hair until her scalp was bare.
It was an improvement.
What the fuck happened to me?
The zombie bites had infected her, an infection she’d healed from…sort of. The devastation had left her different. Inside and out.