Something caught his eye. He looked harder, trying to focus in the darkness. Against the lighter-colored field, a shadow moved. He tensed, leaning forward even more, eyes straining into the murky layers of night. A single figure was moving through the field. It was barely a shadow in the fog from this distance, but it was definitely there.
He slowly tightened his stiff, frozen fingers into fists. His breath caught in his chest and he had to labor to catch his next breath. He saw with alarm that the dark figure loomed closer. It was gliding smoothly like a wraith, as if it were a part of the shadows. The pale face turned slowly and he imagined that it watched him with fixated eyes.
It terrified him. If he did not remain vigilant, if he came face to face with-
He shook his head, trying to clear it. He accepted that he had to deal with this on his own. No one else could do it for him. No one else understood the danger. But . . .
But the shadows were deceptive. He was weary and his eyes were tired. He closed them for several long moments. When he opened them again, he saw with alarm that the shadow had vanished. A kind of helpless terror gripped his heart. Too terrified to move, he sat as still as a statue, paralyzed with fear. He did not dare to turn around, not even after he heard the ragged breathing close behind him. His own breathing was shallow as he heard the slight, prolonged cracking of bone joints, imagined the decayed mouth opening wide in hideous mirth. The expected laugh came as he knew it would. It was a low, demonic sound that sent a stab of fresh fear through his belly. Now he trembled and drew a raspy breath himself.
Still, he did not look. He could not make himself face the thing that had been pursuing him all along.
“Look out at the empty darkness,” Beck heard. From the corner of his eye, he saw a grey, decomposed hand sweep wide beside him. “What do you see, Beck?” came the expected taunt. “You lost your faith and now where are you?”
Beck had no sane answer, so the ghoul answered his own question. “You’re caught in some netherworld between life and death. A place where the living aren’t alive and the dead aren’t dying.”
“Go to hell,” Beck muttered.
“We’ll do that together,” Wesh promised. As he leaned closer, cold, panting breaths fanned the back of Beck’s neck. Each slow exhale made a stream of foul mist in the air close beside his face. “If you hadn’t been so weak,” Wesh went on. “So afraid. If you hadn’t made the wrong choices, none of this would have happened.” His voice ended in a deep, rattling growl. “You let me become this. You didn’t even ensure that I would rest in peace. You condemned me to an eternity of living death.”
Beck now imagined that he, himself, was corpse-cold as the wind robbed the last of the warmth from his body. And with the loss of warmth, panic tried to invade his very soul, tried to rob every shred of self-control that he had tried so desperately to hold onto. The stench of death, so close behind him now, pressed against him, surrounded him. He breathed it inside his lungs and it became a part of him, surging with each heartbeat through all his veins.
“Where did you think you would end up?” his tormenter whispered, leaning closer still. “You’re responsible for all of it. Even when you murdered me.”
Chapter 4
“Hell,” Gage gritted.
He didn’t get any farther than that. The crashing sounds in the brush grew louder. He didn’t know if they had been seen, but he wasn’t about to wait around and find out. They had to try every means possible to elude their pursuers. There was no giving up. No naïve expectation of reason or mercy. It was a hard climb, but by grabbing onto brush and saplings they were able to pull themselves up to an overhanging rock ledge. When they reached the top, he asked the girl, “Are you all right?”
Too out of breath to answer, she nodded her head.
They still weren’t out of danger. Not by a long shot. What they needed to do was to climb higher, but that was a difficult task in the darkness. The woods around them were thick and black as a tomb where the moonlight did not reach. No telling what was out there besides Meng’s people. They heard rustling sounds again. Right below them.
“Where the hell are they?” a gravelly voice asked. “I saw ‘em come this way.”
As they shrank back into the shadows, Lathan held a finger to his mouth, motioning the girl to silence. But as she took another step backward, out of nowhere someone suddenly lunged straight for her.
Addy felt a sharp blow to the back of her head. There was an explosion of stars, a loss of focus. Then confusion followed and she reeled, almost knocked off her feet.
In the clarity that followed, she reacted with the instinct of any animal consumed with survival. She started to fight the man that was grabbing at her with rough hands. But he was a big man and she was no match for his strength. He jerked her toward him with a bone-jarring shake, spun her around and held her against his body like a shield. And then he held a knife against her throat.
“Let her go,” Gage warned through clenched teeth.
But Addy had been through too much to wait for someone else to rescue her. She had already learned that you had to know how to save yourself if you were going to survive in this world. Lathan had spent a lot of time teaching her self-defense moves. So she was able to catch the man by surprise by biting his arm and twisting out of his grip, then kneeing him where it hurt the most. He howled in pain and doubled over. Just one hard kick from the man with her unbalanced him. He fell over the rock ledge and landed heavily with a loud crashing of brush.
The other men reacted immediately and began climbing after them.
“They’re going to pay for that,” they heard someone snarl.
“There, up that way,” another voice yelled.
A short, desperate climb brought Gage and Addy to the top of the cliff. He grabbed her hand and they were plunging recklessly through the darkness once again. Branches lashed at them viciously, drawing blood. Thorns raked across their flesh and snagged their clothing. Addy bore it all as silently as she could and followed the man like he was the only light in a very deep darkness. She cried out when her hem was caught by a thorn bush. The man turned and, with a single jerk, tore the fabric free with his bare hands. Without a word, they continued on with their desperate flight.
Panting with exhaustion, Addy stopped when the man stopped. She leaned against the rough bark of a tree and turned to look behind them. Her breathing was labored. Her breast was heaving. They could still hear the shouts of their pursuers but they were far away now. They could see torches moving through the trees but these, too, were at a distance. For the first time, Addy took a good look at the stranger in the moonlight. There had been no time to question him. No time to even guess at his motives, or to ask where they were going or why he was even helping her in the first place. But now those thoughts now came into her mind.
“What’s your name,” he asked, breathing hard, too.
“Addy.”
“I’m Gage.”
There was no time for more lengthy introductions. He took his coat off and draped it around her shoulders. “I know you’re tired, but we have to keep going. I don’t like going blindly in the dark like this, but we don’t have any choice.”
She nodded, agreeing with him. “You’re right,” she said as she eyed the torches. “We need to keep moving,”
They made good time for a while and didn’t stop until they reached a rushing stream. There was a sharp drop-off and Addy shook her head dubiously when she saw how steep the bank was that led down to the water’s edge. But careful wasn’t an option at the moment, so they started sliding recklessly downward.
It was the last hours before dawn and the fog had thickened. They waded the shallow, icy water and then began to climb the muddy opposite bank. But Addy’s heart sank when she heard the snapping of branches right in front of them. Expecting more of Meng’s men, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks.
The mist lay low to the ground so it looked as if the flesh hunters had materialized from the fog it
self. There were three of them. Moonlight sifted down through the branches of the trees above them, touching the hunters with a ghoulish radiance. Their skin was pale, bloodless, the color of death. The ragged grey flesh hanging from white bone was a startling contrast to the black, clotted blood that clung to mouths, cheeks and chins. Colorless eyes gleamed with a bluish, milky sheen in the moonlight as they turned with snarling rage, becoming aware of them instantly.
Addy remained frozen. Paralyzed by uncertainty, she didn’t know what to do. She had no weapon and there was no way of knowing what lay in the deeper shadows that surrounded them. There might be more hunters out there.
The next moments were a blur. Gage plunged a knife, a big one, into the head of one of the hunters. Out of the corner of her eye, Addy saw him thrust the knife into the head of the second hunter. But not fast enough. One second Addy was standing there, the next she was lying in the mud as the third hunter pushed her down. It dropped right on top of her, pinning her to the ground.
She rolled halfway to her side and tried to crawl away, desperately searching for something she could use as a weapon, but all she had was her bare hands. Her robe was caught under the knees of the hunter and she couldn’t get it free. She heard the vicious snarls right above her. She felt cold panting breaths against her face, expecting any second to feel teeth close around her flesh in a tearing bite. But what she heard next was heavy breathing and the crunch of bone as Gage dragged the hunter off of her and drove the knife into its forehead.
As Gage held his hand out to her and helped her to her feet, he was the one panting now. The moonlight was shining on the wind-blown strands of his long hair as he shook his head at her. He was clearly shaken. “You just scared the hell out of me,” he breathed. He blew out a long stream of foggy breath and took a moment to recover before he held his hand out to her and said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“It was a dumb move.”
Macayla turned to look at Dalin Young questioningly.
There was a bright saffron glow on the horizon where the sun was about to rise. The rest of the sky was a blending of deep blues and purples. Macayla stared at Dalin’s strong profile, saw the hard line of his unshaven jaw that was still discolored from the bruises and the clear grey of his eyes as they gazed at the distant sunrise.
“What was?” she asked.
“Trusting me.”
“Oh, that. I untied you. I didn’t say anything about trusting you.”
He stared at her with his dark brows drawn together into his habitual frown. But though he looked like he had something more to say, he didn’t comment further, so she said, “Sometimes you don’t have any choice but to listen to your instincts.”
“You’d be cursing those instincts right now if I ended up raping you and stealing everything you have.”
She swallowed hard but she was determined not to let him know just how scared she really had been deep inside.
“You don’t know me. If I was some kind of deranged psycho, I could have done anything I wanted to you while you were sound asleep.”
She didn’t tell him that for days she had barely slept a wink worrying about that very thing. She’d seen enough to know that a zombie apocalypse could bring out the worst in some people.
He followed her with his eyes as she crossed the room and stood before the window. Still determined, apparently, to make a point, he said, “Haven’t you learned not to blindly trust anyone in this world? You wouldn’t stand a chance against me. You realize that, don’t you?”
He was right. She wouldn’t stand a chance against him. He was a big man. Tall and powerfully built.
Maybe he meant it as a warning. Maybe it was some kind of twisted cat and mouse game. It was true that she didn’t know anything about him. Maybe he was a deranged psycho, but she still wasn’t going to let him see how much he affected her.
“Do you always take such chances?”
“Damn it,” she finally exploded as she turned to face him. “If you’re going to rape me, rob me or murder me, just do it. Why waste your breath talking me to death first?”
She had surprised him with that. One dark brow lifted as he stared back at her.
“See what I mean?” he drawled in an irritatingly calm voice. “You really think it’s smart to piss me off?”
She still refused to let him intimidate her. She held his gaze and asked, “If trust is such a mistake, then why do you trust me?”
He narrowed his gaze slightly as he waited for her to explain.
“How do you know I didn’t poison that cup of tea you’re drinking?”
“Why would you? You just spent two days keeping me alive.”
“Maybe I’m a deranged psycho.”
She thought she saw, for the briefest of moments, a smile begin at one corner of his mouth, but the movement was gone as quickly as it had come.
“You probably don’t want to admit that drinking that tea was a big risk on your part.”
He let his breath out in a low, scoffing laugh. “You wouldn’t poison it, because food is too scarce a commodity to waste. Even tea.”
“Maybe I don’t like tea. Have you thought of that?”
“If that was the case, you wouldn’t have empty tea cups setting around the house.”
She eyed him suspiciously and asked, in a slightly exasperated tone, “Just what did you do in your old life?”
No sense in not telling her. There was no need to keep a low profile anymore. “I worked for the government. Special ops.”
“That explains a lot. If you’re telling me the truth.”
“I’ve got no reason to lie about it.”
“You’ve got no reason not to lie,” she fired back. The man was truly exasperating.
He tilted his head slightly as he considered her. “Well, whether you decide to believe me or not, here’s the truth. I had just flown in from overseas when this all started. I was assigned to a new specialized terror task force.”
“Is that what started all this?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her. “A terrorist attack?”
“Hell if I know. I’m not sure if anyone knows for sure. But all those coordinated attacks in the beginning have to make you wonder. Especially when there were groups that wanted to bring about Armageddon. There are still radical groups out there now, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I noticed. Were you part of that group out there?” She asked cautiously, watching him closely as she waited for his answer.
“You mean that crazy death cult? No, I wasn’t. You think if I was a part of them, they would have done this to me?” His gaze narrowed as he stared back at her. “How the hell did you manage to keep from being captured by them? We’re still obviously in their territory and they’ve got patrols out everywhere.”
“Just luck,” she answered him. “I’ve been able to avoid them because so far I have managed to see them coming before they see me. Mostly,” she added so quietly that he barely caught the word.
“That’s surprising since you took such a foolish risk with me. You didn’t see me coming. Admit it.”
“All right. No, I didn’t see you. How did you get caught?”
He hesitated only a moment before he admitted frankly, “I didn’t see them coming.”
“I first saw you with that other group the night of the attack,” he said. “How’d you end up all alone?”
She wanted to say, “It was a mistake.” She wanted to say, “There are people looking for me right now.” She wanted to say a lot of things. In the end, she told him that being with a bad group in a zombie apocalypse was worse than being with no group at all. That’s why she was alone.
Meng.
It was a bad-ass name. The name of a leader. Strong. Decisive. Forceful. Yeah, it had a commanding ring to it. He had chosen well. The name suited him far better than Bertram. That person, the one he had once been, had died a long time ago, and the past had died with him. But now-
Now he felt invincible. Powerful. The
two prisoners who had escaped would pay for defying him. They would grovel at his feet. They would be an example that no one would ever forget. If it was a harsh and unforgiving world, that was not his doing. That was, as he saw it now, fate. His fate.
In this world where the undead far outnumbered the living, people wanted- No, they needed, a leader like him. People were weak. On their own, they could barely think for themselves. They were like cattle. They needed to follow someone. So he would give them what they needed.
When he had been terrified and on his own, something had changed inside him. He had done things that had changed him. He had crossed lines, stepping further and further each time, and over time he had found that he could have things he had never dreamed of having. He could have the revenge he’d always wanted, too. Without the messy complications of consequences or censor. Or conscience. And then, when people had miraculously obeyed his first commands, he had known a euphoria he had only imagined existed.
But somewhere in the evolving pattern of his self-image he made his first mistake. He began to think of himself as invincible. It was the first of several lethal mistakes. He also began to crave being worshipped. Above all else. He had dyed his hair from mousy brown to stark black. His wardrobe had undergone some dramatic changes as well. He stood now before the huge, full-length mirror, turning this way and that, admiring his new flowing gown. Purple. The color of royalty. He nodded at his reflection. It was true. Clothes really did make the man. He was convinced now that this had been his destiny all along. He was carving out an empire, and this zombie apocalypse had afforded him the opportunity to do that.
Of course, he was not the only ruthless person in this world. The past and his broken nose were proof of that. And he knew there could be no hint of weakness if he was going to maintain his position of authority. People far and wide had to know of his power. They had to know that this was his exclusive domain. They had to hear of the name Meng and respect it. For that to happen, he had to make people afraid.
Deadrise (Book 4): Blood Reckoning Page 4