by Jones, Isla
I stood up straight, body tensed. My hands shook at my sides, like leaves caught in a blizzard. The fullness of my bladder suddenly pulled down on my pelvis.
I couldn’t breathe.
The rotter jerked—its body twitched as it jolted forward. But it only moved one step.
My black plimsoll slid against the concrete; I backed into the Jeep, and my hand reached behind me to grab a tool. A plastic handle touched my palm; my fingers curled around it.
I pulled the tool closer to myself and spared a swift glance down at it. It was a screwdriver, gripped in my clammy hand.
A loud creak came from outside.
It distracted the rotter. Its head spun to the side, and it gazed at the cabin. Then, it turned and ran back into the woods.
“Winter!” shouted Castle. “Winter, where are you?”
Clutching the screwdriver in my hand, I staggered out of the shed and looked to the right, where the swing-door was. Castle stood in front of it, gun in his hand, eyes moving between me and the trees that the rotter vanished between.
“Are you all right?” he asked, jogging toward me. His eyes swept over my startled face, as if checking for any scratches or bites. “Did you see it?”
I nodded. “It just…” I frowned and glanced over my shoulder at the woods. “I was in the shed,” I said, looking back at Castle. “And I saw it just standing there—watching me. It didn’t do anything. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Castle ran his fingers through his hair; agitation was etched into the small lines of his face. “I have,” he said. “It’s not good. We need to leave, now.”
“What about the barrier—” I said, but he cut me off.
“Get to the car,” he said. “Bring it around to the front of the cabin.”
Castle turned and raced back to the cabin; he shoved the door open and disappeared inside.
My hesitation passed quickly. Before the door had even swung shut behind him, I hobbled to the shed. I snatched the toolbox from the bonnet and threw it into the back seat. The sound of metal falling out of the box clanged through the Jeep, but I ignored it and jumped into the driver-seat.
The keys were in the ignition already. My hand, shivering, snatched the keys and twisted. The engine purred to life. The door to the cabin swung open—the creak reaching me in the shed—just as I hit the accelerator. As the tyres ripped over the dirt to the cabin, Castle ran out, carrying my backpack, the duffel-bag with two guns in it, and a cardboard box.
I skidded to a stop at the cabin. Castle ran around the side of the car and swung open the door. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, eyes darting around the woods. Was the rotter watching us?
Castle shoved the bags inside. But before he could pack in the box, I saw it—I saw them.
“Get in!” I barked. “Hurry! They’re here!”
His head whipped around to face what I saw.
The rotter had come back. And it hadn’t come back alone. Three others stood with it; two of them were children. Little, tiny rotters. They couldn’t have been older than eight. And the third had been a man once. With a sick blow to the gut, I realised … they were a family.
The child-rotters snarled.
Castle froze at the sound.
But then the children scrambled towards us—towards Castle.
“CASTLE!”
He reached inside to grab the box—he had to take it out if he was going to fit inside. Just as he gripped onto the edges and yanked it out, they reached him.
My breath hitched on a cry.
The two rotters jumped on him. They all fell to the ground.
7.
I screamed his name.
Castle answered in grunts. The sound of bones crunching pierced through the car.
I lunged for the passenger seat. Tucked at the bottom was the duffel-bag with the weapons inside. My clammy fingers snatched the bag. I heaved it up onto the seat. My breathing picked up, matching my heartrate as I fumbled with the zip.
“Hold on!” I cried, and dug my hands into the bag.
Castle didn’t respond.
My legs kicked me further out of the driver’s seat just as I unearthed the handgun. I tossed it through the open door. It hit the gravel with a thud. I tried to crawl out further, but I was stuck. My shoelace caught onto the blinker-lever.
I twisted around and reached for my sneaker. My eyes swept through the windows, searching for the other rotters. The woman still stood ahead, just watching us. No—it was watching me.
I couldn’t untangle my shoelace from the lever. Instead, I yanked my foot back and kicked off my shoe. Then, I spun back around and rummaged around the bag.
Cool metal touched my shaky hands. Sweat slicked up and down my body; but it wasn’t hot outside. As I wrestled out the AK from the bag, a loud gunshot blasted through the lot.
I looked up, breathing hard.
One of the child-rotters, around six years old, flew back into the car door. Then, it crumbled to the gravel. The second child was thrown from the ground, just before Castle got up.
I spared a second for relief.
My hands fumbled with the magazine; I tried to fit it into the gun to load it. As I did, my wide eyes travelled back to the female-rotter. She was twitching now, but still stood there staring back at me. I didn’t know where the male-rotter was. I hadn’t seen him since before Castle was attacked.
The clip hooked into the rifle. A hitched laugh of relief escaped my lips. I slid onto the edge of the passenger seat and readied the gun. I needed a good aim, one that didn’t shatter the windshield.
Castle’s cry reached me; “Look out!”
I spun my head to the side and—the child-rotter lunged at me.
My arm shot up to shield my face; before I could scream Castle had tackled the rotter to the ground. I dropped my arm and looked down at them. Castle was on his back; he snatched the handgun from the ground—he must’ve dropped it in the struggle—and aimed it up at the rotter; the rotter with its back to me.
The blast exploded before I could duck into the car to avoid the rotter blood. I managed to shield my face, but the blood splattered all over my hair and back. At least it didn’t get into my eyes or mouth—that was one sure way of becoming one of them.
Castle jumped to his feet and stomped on the rotter’s head. It crunched and crunched. I had to look away. I fixed my stare back on the gun and cocked it.
Aiming the tip over the open window, I slid out of the car and locked my eyes on the still-rotter. My sweaty finger dampened the trigger—I’d never shot one of those guns before. I didn’t know how to, aside from how I’d seen others use them.
Before the barrel pointed at the woman-rotter, her head threw back and she released a savage, feral howl into the darkening sky. And I knew, right in that moment, she was the rotter who had howled the sad songs the night before.
Castle got to his feet and strode around the car; he aimed the handgun at the rotter. “I’ve got it,” he growled; the deep rumble of rage in his voice brushed over me.
I won’t lie. I was disappointed to pull away from the AK.
And just as I was about to release the gun, a shadow caught my peripherals. I stretched up on my tip-toes and looked over the hood of the Jeep.
With a gasp, I whipped my face back to Castle. “BEHIND YOU!”
Castle spun around, but the man-rotter had already sprung forward; decayed teeth bared, fingers curled into claws. They collided and smacked to the floor.
I aimed the gun again, this time at the rotter wrestling with Castle. But then I heard it. A rapid pitter-patter, getting louder and faster—and headed straight for me.
My eyes lifted and I straightened up. The rotter—the dead, infected woman of sorrow—raced towards me, fast.
I clutched the gun and dove into the car. The rotter collided with the car door before I’d even hit the seats, and the force of the impact slammed the door shut.
Breathing hard, I scrambled up and looked throu
gh the passenger-window. The rotter punched the glass. She punched and punched and punched—leaving smears of blood. I tried to see through the crimson streaks to Castle, but all I saw were blurs of movement.
The rotter head-butted the window. I winced and drew back. The glass wouldn’t hold forever, and what if Castle was dead? I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t see him—I almost, almost thought about leaving.
I’ve never lied about what I am. I’m a coward, and I know it.
But I couldn’t leave him, not after what he’d done for me.
I aimed the AK ahead. Slowly, I reached for the handle and unhooked the door. As I leaned back, fixing the gun against my shoulder and my finger on the trigger, I kicked out my feet. The door swung open and smacked the rotter.
Its hands snatched the edge and yanked it open farther. And then, its bloodshot eyes rested on me before trailing down to the gun. It hesitated.
I almost gaped at the thing. It hesitated. Rotters didn’t do that—they weren’t cautious, they weren’t afraid. They were mindless, maddened creatures, infected and crazed.
A part of me wanted to lower the gun. A part of me thought that there was something special about this rotter, or that maybe it didn’t want to hurt me. But I couldn’t afford maybes.
I squeezed the trigger; my eyes clamped shut at the same time.
BANG.
The pain was instant. It exploded in my shoulder—my bad shoulder—and stabbed along my bones. Who would’ve thought firing a gun would hurt so much? I hadn’t.
My eyes opened, slowly. I didn’t want to look, but then I rested my teary gaze on the rotter and—I shivered. It stood there, looking down at the blood pouring out of its stomach. Then, it twitched and snapped its eyes back up to me.
The look in its eyes contradicted everything I’d doubted—this rotter definitely wanted to kill me now. It cried out, a sound that filled me with horror, and dove into the car. But I squeezed the trigger again.
Nothing happened. No bullets came out of the barrel.
The rotter reached me; it landed across my legs, the hot tip of the gun an inch from its forehead, and drew back like a cobra. A cobra ready to strike.
“Fuck,” I cried, and cocked the gun again.
Just as the rotter’s teeth came soaring down for my leg, I pulled the trigger. The blast sent blood and brains spraying through the Jeep. The rotter collapsed.
I grunted and kicked its caved in head for good measure. It slid off the seat and landed on the gravel outside.
There wasn’t a second to spare. I scrambled out of the car and onto the lot.
Castle was on his back, a few metres ahead. The last rotter was on him, a mere inch from his face. Castle had its hands in his grip, twisted around the rotter’s back to keep it from scratching him. But there was nothing blocking the rotter’s gnashing teeth; each bite seemed to draw closer to Castle as he lost his strength. His head turned to the side, his arms outstretched to hold the rotter off.
Our gazes locked as I hobbled closer, the AK aimed at the rotter.
“Hey, you!” I shouted. “Asshole!”
It flinched, but it didn’t stop trying to bite Castle. I needed it to be still; there was no way my aim was good enough to hit a moving target.
My lips pursed together and I whistled; the way I did whenever I summoned Cleo.
The rotter jerked up and looked at me.
I aimed. My hands shook, knowing the pain to my shoulder was coming again. And I shot—I didn’t mean to close my eyes; it just happened. But when I opened them again, I found myself looking at Castle covered in blood with a motionless rotter on top of him.
I choked on a sigh. As I lowered the gun, my lips spread into a lopsided grin. “Gotcha.”
Castle was on his feet. He scooped up the handgun as he marched towards me. From the brewing storm in his eyes, I suspected he wasn’t impressed by my awesome shooting skills.
I turned and shuffled back to the car.
Before I could consider getting into the driver’s seat, Castle stormed around me and climbed in behind the steering wheel; he slammed the door so hard behind him that the Jeep rattled.
I rolled my eyes and jumped into the passenger seat.
When I reached out to close the door, it caught my eye. The cardboard box laid on its side a few metres from the car.
“Hang on,” I said, and hopped out of the Jeep.
I grabbed the box and dragged it across the gravel to the backseat. Once it was in with the rest of the luggage, I climbed back into the quiet car and closed the door.
The Jeep sped out of the lot, Castle’s bitter flavour of anger filling up the car. I could taste it on the palette of my tongue. And then, when he finally spoke—or snapped at me—I knew why.
“Next time you shoot in my general direction,” he spat, “don’t fucking close your eyes.”
8.
The map I held up concealed my grimacing face from Castle.
He was still angry that I’d shot at him with my eyes closed. Well, I’d shot his way but not exactly at him. I think he was overreacting. He should’ve been happy—I’d saved his life. Not to mention we’d taken on four rotters and survived.
I wouldn’t let the ever-annoyed dictator ruin my mood.
Besides, we had more important worries to concern ourselves with. The tank was only half full and we were in the middle of the forest, and night had come. The sky was dark; midnight blue with shining stars littered all over it. Night wasn’t a good thing in this world. More rotters would be out, roaming the woods, and they’d be travelling in bigger nests than the ones back at the cabin.
If we stopped, chances were the rotters would’ve already heard the Jeep engine and were following us. If we kept going, we’d run out of fuel before the morning sun rose. Our only option was to find somewhere safe to park the Jeep for the night.
The dirt roads that wound through the forest seemed endless, and none of them had signs. It made it difficult to know where we were on the map propped up against my knees.
“Find anything?” asked Castle. His voice was as flat as a sheet of ice.
“A bunch of roads we could be on,” I said. “Until we see a road sign or landmark, I won’t be able to find our position on the map.”
“We don’t have time to waste. Look for the lake and the cabin.”
“There are about a dozen water marks on this map,” I said. “I don’t know which one our lake was. And I can’t find any cabins on here, either.”
I saw the shadows of the dark lick up his profile. He frowned and exhaled a long, drawn-out breath. His patience for me was thinning.
My eyes moved back to the map as I snatched another damp-cloth from the packet between us. “We just have to keep driving until we know where we are, or find somewhere safe to stop for the night.”
I wiped the cloth along my jawline, scraping off the rest of the blood. There was only so much wipes could do for dried blood, but I had to get as much of it off of my face as possible.
The road curved off around a bend and stretched out ahead into more trees. We kept driving, and I silently decided that I hated trees.
“What was that back there?” I asked.
Castle spared me a curt glance. “Those were infectees.”
I made a face at him. “You know what I mean, Castle. That woman—she wasn’t behaving like rotters do.” I looked up at the side of his face. “You said you’ve seen them like that before. When?”
Castle turned left onto an asphalt road; one that held the promise of old towns and an escape from the forest. “When we—the group—were in Arizona, we were separated.”
I remembered. I wasn’t there, but I’d met Leo’s branch of the group not long after.
“It was a nest that broke us up,” he said. “There were only a dozen of them, but they were organised. Nothing like we’d ever seen before. They operated like those back at the cabin—a few attacked to separate us, some stalked, and a few hid, waiting for their moment to attack. The f
irst move was a distraction.”
“The child-rotters,” I said. “They moved against you first. But they didn’t come for me.”
“They were decoys,” he said. “They were only meant to break us off from each other. It would leave you unguarded for the other one.”
The image of her standing still, watching me flashed in my eyes. “The woman.”
He shook his head. “The man,” he said. “The alpha of the nest was the one watching you. The man was waiting for its moment to take you.”
“Take me?”
“They do that,” he said, “when they want to take someone back to their nest.”
I grimaced at the thought. Before, I’d just thought rotters took people to their nests to feast on them slowly. But then Castle told me the real reason, and it somehow seemed more terrifying than what I’d thought up myself.
“It’s their way of recruiting. The nests compete against each other for food—the larger the nest, the better their chances.”
“That’s what they wanted with me,” I said, frowning. “But why me?”
Castle’s jaw ticked; the shadows deepened on his face. “Because you are weak,” he said. At my scowl, he added, “It noticed your injuries, saw them in the way you moved. It knew that you’d be easier to take to its nest than …”
“Than you,” I finished for him. As I touched my gaze back to the map, I said, “When I shot her, she turned on me. She tried to attack me.”
“Infectees are still what they are,” he said. “Infected. It thought of you as an easy recruit, but when you injured it you became prey again; a threat.”
“I didn’t know they could work like that.” The disbelief clung to my whispered words.
“Stop thinking of them as mindless rotters, and see them for what they are—an infected pack of wolves. They have their hierarchies, strategies and needs. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
“How do you know all of this?” I asked, eyeing him with unveiled suspicion.
Castle made to reply, but his gaze then sharpened and he tilted closer to the steering wheel. I traced his gaze through the windshield and squinted.