She shrieked as he leaped into the tree, heading straight for her. Swinging her gun around, she fired.
Her aim was off. He was too fast. No one should be able to scale a tree that fast. He was like a gorilla on steroids.
This wasn’t a normal Russian.
Just as this thought registered, the soldier burst through the branches and came for her. He hit her just as she fired.
They tipped sideways, crashing through the tree. Amanda lost hold of her weapon, screaming as she landed painfully on a branch. It snapped loudly beneath her weight.
She kept falling, dropping down through a thick tangle of twigs and leaves. Another branch hit her across the stomach, knocking the wind out of her.
She landed face-first on the ground, momentarily stunned. The thick tree branch she’d broken was beneath her, digging painfully into her hip.
Her gun fell out of the tree. The Soviet was right behind it—and still alive. Blood gushed from a wound in his shoulder.
Amanda struggled to her knees, her hand closing around the sturdy branch.
The Soviet hit the ground no more than five feet away. He rolled onto all fours, baring his teeth at her in a snarl.
Amanda finally understood why his beard looked so shiny. It was covered in fresh blood. Droplets of it gathered on the end, flicking through the air as he faced off with her.
The Soviet charged. With a squeal of panic, Amanda wrapped both hands around the branch and swung with all her might.
There was a loud crack. The branch snapped in half. The Soviet’s eyes rolled back in his head. He swayed on his feet.
Amanda gripped the broken end of her branch, choking on a sob of fear. Tears ran down her cheeks as she prepared to take another swing.
Before she could, the Soviet collapsed at her feet.
Was he dead, or just unconscious?
Just as she grabbed her knife, she saw it: the big dent in his temple where she’d hit him. Blood gushed from the wound, pooling on the leaves beneath the body.
Amanda gaped. Had she really hit him that hard? That was a human skull, for crying out loud.
She got a good look at the branch in her hand. It was a solid three inches in diameter. A girl smaller than her wouldn’t have even been able to get a proper grip on it.
It sank in. She had killed a Soviet demon with a tree branch. She, Amanda Nielson, had delivered a blow powerful enough to smash in the side of his head. Granted, she’d gotten lucky with the blow; the temple was the weakest part of the human skull. But still, what she had done was not normal.
Her brain buzzed from a sudden adrenaline crash. Her ears rang. All she could think was that she should have played softball in high school.
Her hands began to shake. She clung to the broken tree branch like a lifeline as she took in the dead Russian.
The ringing in her ears subsided. She became aware of voices. There were people coming her way.
“Amanda! Amanda, where are you?”
Dal and Lena burst down the slope, running hard in her direction.
“Amanda!” Lena threw her arms around her, crushing her in a hug. Dal joined her, the three of them standing in a tight cluster.
Amanda dropped her stick and burst into tears, holding onto her friends as though her life depended on it. Her entire body ached from the fall through the tree. She couldn’t believe she was still alive. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t broken anything.
“Nice work.” Lena dried her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt.
“Damn, did you do that?” Dal knelt down to inspect the crushed skull of the Russian. “Or did he hit himself on the way down?”
“I hit him.” Amanda gestured to the branch at her feet.
Dal’s eyebrows nearly climbed off his forehead. “Damn. Imagine what you could do if you started bench pressing.”
Amanda decided she was going to start doing just that. And if there wasn’t a bench press at the Cecchino cabin—which there wasn’t—she would do something else. Push-ups, maybe. She’d figure it out as soon as they got home. Maybe she’d get Stephenson to start working out with her.
“There’s something weird about these guys.” Dal nudged the dead Russian with his foot.
Amanda nodded. “They moved fast. Really fast. I think these gray patches might be zombie rot. And their eyes were all red. And—and I think this guy may have been drinking blood.”
“Same with the ones who attacked us,” Lena said. “If you hadn’t warned us they were coming, they may have gotten the drop on us.”
“They’re all dead, right?” Amanda needed to hear them say it.
“We got them.” Lena squeezed her elbow. “The bastards are all dead.”
They headed to the nearest of the ATVs. Behind it were the two bodies that had been dragged out of sight.
Something had been done to the soldiers. Dal had hit only one of them in the head, but both of the skulls had been cracked open. It didn’t take a genius to know parts of the brains had been eaten.
Lena turned to the side, gagging.
Amanda stared, both horrified and fascinated. The sight of half-eaten brains didn’t bother her at all.
The pieces clicked together in her mind. The Russian’s bloody mouth and beard. His red eyes. The freaky way he had moved.
“It’s a new type of zombie,” she whispered. “A super soldier.”
“A what?” Lean leaned against the side of the ATV, refusing to look at the bodies.
“A new type of zombie. Look.” Amanda pointed. “Those soldiers that ambushed us ate the brains of their friends. They moved fast, too. Super fast. And they were strong.”
“But they weren’t like the other zombies,” Dal said. “They, you know, had an agenda.”
“Sentient.” The word tasted bitter in Amanda’s mouth. When Dal and Lena looked at her in confusion, she clarified. “They’re smart. Not like regular zombies or mutants. But they eat brains, so they’re definitely a type of zombie. That guy back there”—she jerked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the one she had killed—“spoke to us before he attacked. In English.”
The enormity of this hit them. Amanda put a hand on the ATV to steady herself. She, Dal, and Lena stared at one another.
“Super soldiers.” Never in her life had Amanda been so distressed over being right.
“These guys are hybrid zombie super soldiers."
“How?” Lena said. “How is that possible?”
“Does it matter?” Dal said. “If there are more like these guys, we’re fucked. Big time.” He scrunched a hand in his hair. “We have to get the word out. People have to know what’s coming.”
26
Home
The ATV hummed below her as Amanda navigated up the steep slope of Pole Mountain. Strapped on the back were all the weapons they’d scavenged from the dead invaders. She’d even taken a tissue sample from a dead Russian super zombie. Too bad she had to mix it in the baggie with the other tissue sample, but it was the better than nothing.
Dal and Lena were on either side of her, each of them on their own ATV. They had decided to take three of them; no telling when the nimble vehicles might come in handy.
It was night. The beam of the ATVs cut through the darkness, lighting the way up Pole Mountain. It was the middle of the night.
They would have been home sooner if they hadn’t come across a mobile trailer in the pastureland. It had been packed with supplies and completely deserted. After gorging themselves on canned baked beans, Oreo cookies, and bottled water, they’d scavenged the extra food and supplies they found. The ATVs were packed.
Amanda could almost taste home. She couldn’t wait to take a shower. A short one and likely a cold one—Nonna didn’t like wasting propane to heat the water—but any shower would be welcome no matter the temperature.
They rounded a bend, drove up a rise, and at long last the Cecchino cabin came into view.
All the windows were dark. The lights of the ATV illuminated the cozy cabin and
the front porch.
The first thing she saw was a pile of dead mutants off to one side of the clearing.
Amanda slammed on the breaks and stopped breathing. She stared at the pile of bodies neatly stacked in the darkness. She hadn’t thought mutants could find the Cecchino cabin. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Stephenson. Nonna. Amanda tried to call their names, but her throat had stopped working.
“Holy shit.” Dal jumped off his ATV. “What happened here? Nonna? Nonna, Stephenson, are you here? Nonna!”
“Where’s Nonna?” Lena jumped to the ground beside Dal, panic straining her voice. “Dal, where’s Nonna?”
“I’m here!” Nonna’s voice sounded somewhere from the trees.
Amanda nearly collapsed with relief when a second voice chimed in.
“Lena, Dal, we’re here,” Stephenson called.
The two of them burst from the tree line. Nonna had a machine gun in her hands. Though she usually preferred her rifle, seeing the little old lady armed wasn’t an unusual sight. At least not to Amanda.
It was the sight of Stephenson that stunned her to her core.
She’d been friends with him since freshmen year when he joined the chess club. He did everything with her and Cassie, including the occasional sleepover. He was practically a blood brother.
On a scale of one to ten, if someone had asked how well she knew Stephenson, she would have given herself a nine.
She hardly recognized the boy who came out of the darkness with Nonna. It was Stephenson, no doubt about it. She’d recognize that disheveled, sandy hair and lanky body anywhere.
But it wasn’t the same boy she’d hugged goodbye two days ago.
For starters, he was covered in blood. He looked like he’d been in a wrestling match with a mutant. More than one of them, actually.
The fact that he was still alive was a shocker. The guy didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body. Or at least, not that she had ever seen. He’d survived the war this long through sheer dumb luck.
He must have undergone a transformation. When the chips were down, he’d found the strength to fight for his life. She hadn’t thought it possible, but here he was: proof that he’d found the courage to fight, to live.
But that wasn’t what had her feet welded to the ground in shock.
Stephenson, tall and lanky and covered with blood, with a gun in one hand, was dressed like a girl.
Part III
Survivors
27
Snow
“Help me, Valé!” Luca grabbed her around the waist and dragged her in front of him.
Valentina screamed as two snowballs smacked into her—one in the face and one in the chest. Cold powder singed her exposed skin and found its way past the collar of her jacket.
“Luca!” she screamed.
Her older brother burst out laughing as he released her. Valentina snatched up a handful of snow and flung it after his retreating form, but she didn’t have the strength to throw very far. Luca cackled and kept running.
“Sorry, Valé! I was aiming for Luca.” Her cousin Marcello sprinted past her in hot pursuit. “Come with me, let’s get him!”
Grinning despite herself, Valentina scooped up another armload of snow. The boys were twelve and she was only eight, but that didn’t stop her from trying to keep up. Her little legs churned through the frozen white in a futile effort to catch them.
Marcello was big and fast. He caught up to Luca by the blackberry patch. Luca tried to cut around the patch and dash through Mr. Spada’s olive tree orchard, but Marcello grabbed the collar of his coat. He and Luca fell to the ground in a tangle, wrestling with one another in the snow.
Luca, a stocky boy and strong for his age, managed to get Marcello on his back. A handful of snow went into Marcello’s face.
Valentina caught up with the bigger boys. She dashed up behind Luca and dumped her snow down the back of his jacket.
Luca bellowed. Valentina shrieked in delight as he wrestled her to the ground and shoved her face into the snow. Marcello joined the fray. The three of them laughed and yelled and flung snow at one another.
They raced through their sleepy Italian village like wild dogs, chasing one another and throwing snowballs with tireless abandon. They didn’t even notice when snow started to fall and dusted the tips of their eyelashes. By the time they returned home to supper that night, they were muddy, sopping wet, cold, and full of smiles.
It was one of the best days of Valentina’s life.
Her birth name was Valentina Julietta Trione. As a girl, she went by Valé.
At the age of seventeen, she became Julietta Valentina Cecchino. On that day, Valé ceased to exist. She became Valentina, the name her husband always called her.
Today, she was known as Nonna. She liked this name most of all.
Valé had been a liar. An unfaithful liar who turned her back on family.
Valentina had been a coward. A coward, and a runaway.
But Nonna.
Nonna was made of stronger stuff. She was everything Valé and Valentina were not. She never let fear dictate the decisions she made. She took care of those she loved. No matter what.
She ran a strong household and had raised a damn fine son. In due time, she’d helped raise three fine grandchildren. She’d even killed zombies when they threatened her family. Nonna was glad the world had made her strong.
Being strong meant she kept a cool head when Anton, her youngest grandson, got it into his mind to sneak away on a hopeless mission to Rossi.
She knew what waited for him in Rossi. She held out hope the young idiot would get his head on straight before he blundered and got himself killed or captured.
Being strong also meant she didn’t weep when her eldest grandson rode away on a mission to blow up a bridge.
Nonna was no fool. She knew there was a chance she night never see Leo or Anton again. Even though the very idea made her insides clench, she didn’t let it show.
As she watched Dal drive away in her son’s old brown pick-up, her granddaughter Lena by his side, she stayed strong. Knowing her grandchildren were dispersing across the county while war boiled around them was was not easy to bear.
A weaker woman would have wept. Nonna didn’t waste tears on possibilities. She saved her grief for the times when it really counted. Tears were reserved for moments of finality.
Except for Stephenson—who had become her constant companion in the past week—the Cecchino cabin was now deserted. Stephenson stood beside her on the deck of the family cabin, staring at the empty dirt road after Dal, Lena, and Amanda had disappeared in the brown pick-up.
The idiot boy was in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt. He shivered in the foggy, crisp morning air, trying to balance on the ball of one bare foot. He went shoeless much of time while in the cabin. Nonna wasn’t sure if that was because Cassie had shot off his little toe, or if it was because he just liked being barefoot.
“What are we going to do today?” Stephenson asked. “Make pasta? Reorganize the supply room?”
Nonna looked him up and down. He reminded her so much of her brother, Luca.
It wasn’t his looks. Stephenson looked nothing like her stocky, muscular older brother with thick dark hair. All the village girls had swooned over Luca when he’d been alive. He could have had any of them.
Stephenson was long and skinny, more bones than muscle. His hair looked like he combed it with a cheese grater. The boy hid behind her apron strings. He spent his days living in stark terror of himself.
And that was precisely why he reminded her of Luca.
“Today, you’re going to learn how to shoot a gun,” she declared.
Stephenson flinched, eyes widening. “But—what about lunch? And dinner? Who’s going to get food ready for everyone?”
She poked him in the shoulder. Hard. “You need to learn how to defend yourself.”
“But . . .” Stephenson cast his gaze around the porch, as though he might find a suit
able excuse under the eaves or on the picnic table. “But everyone else knows how to shoot. We don’t really need one more gunman, you know? But food—everyone needs to eat and—”
“Stephenson.”
“Yes, Nonna?”
“My grandson and Tate Craig went to Rossi.”
Stephenson’s brow furrowed with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Nonna.”
He didn’t understand.
“Have you thought about what’s in Rossi?” she asked.
“Um. Russians. Zombies. Probably mutants, too.”
“That’s right. The Russians have the Craigs. Have you thought about why the Russians took them prisoner?”
“They think they have a connection to the Snipers. To us.”
“That’s right. If Anton and Tate don’t watch where they step, they’re going to end up prisoners, too.” Nonna was careful not to let it show just how much this potential reality hurt her. Being weak wouldn’t do an ounce of good for anyone. “If the Russians have four of our people prisoner, it spells bad news for us, Stephenson.”
The boy was already pale. In the weak dawn light, he went two shades lighter.
“Do you think Soviets are going to come here?” he whispered.
“Are you ready to learn how to use a gun?” she replied.
“Uh, yeah.” Sick realization stole over his features. “Yeah, I think I’m ready to learn how to shoot.”
“Go inside and put some shoes on. I’ll get the guns. Oh, and Stephenson?”
“Yeah?” He paused in the doorway to look back at her.
She saw Luca shining out of his dark eyes. It made her throat tighten. “You can put on the clothes I left out for you.”
He froze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can put them on anyway.”
“Nonna, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The kid was a bad liar.
She’d seen him out in the living one night when he thought everyone else had been asleep. He hadn’t accounted for the fact that grandmas had weak bladders and had to get up in the middle of the night—multiple times, usually—to use the bathroom.
Scattered (Zommunist Invasion Book 3) Page 14