As she was all of seven feet up, the fall wouldn’t have hurt her, it was landing among three zombies empty-handed that would be her doom. Only just then she had a strange flash, a vision of herself coming off the cage. She saw herself from above and saw that if she swung her foot just a few inches to the right, she’d have a shelf of sorts to stand on for just a second or two.
The shelf was the zombie’s blood-matted head and she stepped on it with far more daintiness than the creature deserved. She wobbled unbalanced, trying to find her center of gravity so she could attack the fence again. This moment suspended in the air allowed her to take a better grip on the axe, however her left hand was still swinging free when her shelf was blasted into by the other two zombies.
In their unconstrained desire, they slammed squarely into the chubby zombie and bowled him over, so that the three lay sprawled beneath her swinging body, gnashing their teeth and roaring.
The desire, the very strong desire to simply leap away from the cage and run was on her and she was very near to doing so when she had another flash of insight. With her glinting, shimmering eyes unfocused, she “saw” shadows racing along the narrow lanes. There were dozens more of the dead coming after her and every lane was filled with squirming frothing bodies.
“Up it is,” she said to herself, reaching out with her left hand and clawing her way to the top of the cage. It was a twenty-foot climb to a slanted roof made from the same close slick links as the rest of the cage.
She was just getting her bearings when the first of the creatures flew at the cage and slammed into it. The metal rattled but was sturdily built, at least sturdy enough to stop one of the undead. Unfortunately, there were close to two dozen below her. They were a dark writhing mass and even with her powerful vision, it was hard to tell where one started and another ended.
They did not have good vision and yet, with the clouds behind her, she was perfectly silhouetted. As though it was one great vile, stinking multi-armed creature, they surged at her. Hands, too many to count, reached and stretched, straining to get her and tear her into tiny pieces. They could no more climb the cage than they could fly, but they didn’t need to. The cages had been built to keep vandals and thieves out. These were neither and nor were they people, not anymore. They were rage-filled monsters with mindless strength, and she didn’t need second-sight to know they were about to tear the cage down with her on it.
There really was only one way to go, and she pictured herself racing across the top of the cage and hurling herself across the gap that separated her cage from the next one over. It would be an easy jump. The gap between the cages was only five feet, to which she would add an extra foot on either side just as a precaution. With the metal links slick with early morning dew, and a twenty five-foot drop to unforgiving cement awaiting any slip, the old, dumpy Maddy couldn’t have made the jump if her life depended on it. The new and vastly improved Maddy eyed the leap dispassionately, and felt the panic in her diminish. Earlier that night she had jumped from one building to another across a fifteen-foot alley over an eighty-foot fall.
That had been frightening.
Comparatively, this is nothing. The thought was just playing out in her mind when the cage shifted under her feet. It was like a carpet being pulled from beneath her, and she found herself being flung forward. The edge of the cage seemed to fly at her, and she crashed down with her face staring down at the drop. She clung catlike as her panic red-lined.
Seeing their prey on the verge of falling sent a surge of excitement through the horde and, to Maddy’s horror, they yanked the entire cage hard to the left, breaking the base off the metal poles cemented into the floor as though they were little more than tent pegs. Her first unreasoned thought was that the zombies had become stronger. This was simplistic and the rational part of her mind, although mostly buried beneath the rising tide of panic within her, managed to eke out a theory: Yes, each zombie possessed furious strength on its own, however, gathered together as they were somehow lent them access to an even greater well of power.
It almost seemed as though they were “thinking” with one mind.
As one, they heaved the cage over to the right, trying to dislodge Maddy. And it nearly worked. The cage crumpled and the perch she clung to was suddenly canted over.
There was no doubt the zombies would slam the cage back and forth until it disintegrated beneath her, and then she would fall, and after that…
Maddy suddenly found herself on her feet and, looking down, she saw that she was running even before she knew where she was running to.
I’m panicking, she realized. Really panicking. It was a horrible feeling, almost as if she were being controlled by a being outside of herself. For some reason, the impossibly handsome face of Daniel Magnus bloomed in her mind just as she came to the far edge of the cage. There was a gap here as well—this one twice as wide as the other. The cage began to shift away as the zombies started to heave it over. Metal clasps snapped twang, twang, twang and the entire structure seemed to melt under her, but by then she was in midair and flailing.
Just like when she tried to jump across the alley, she saw she wasn’t going to make it. The cage roof had been slanted against her and she had started her jump a foot and a half too far from the edge. She wasn’t going to make it and this time Bryce wasn’t there to catch her.
Chapter 4
A canyon seemed to separate her from the next cage over. As far as canyons went it didn’t appear so terrible, at least from the outside. A snapshot would show her suspended in the air, midway between the two cages, twenty five feet over a cement floor. If she missed catching the next cage, she would be looking at only a broken ankle…and then being devoured by a howling mob of zombies.
She had that snapshot firmly fixed in her mind.
But Maddy wasn’t the helpless girl she had been, and in midair she flung her right arm out as far as it would go, stretching out her ice axe until it bit into the very edge of the cage. She had no idea if the curved edge of the axe would bend and send her screaming down and so she tried to grab the links of the fence with her left hand at the same time.
Flesh tore from her fingers and her left hand fell away. Luckily, the axe held. She dangled just long enough to get her bleeding left hand to the edge; she pulled herself up as the horde, howling like maniacs, raced around the remains of the first cage and assaulted the second.
Their hive mind was on greater display as they used their collective strength to heave back on the cage. Once more Maddy found herself charging up an incline composed of slippery metal links, with another frightful leap ahead of her. There was one great difference between this leap and the last: her panic had disappeared altogether. She had already proven she could make the jump even under the worst circumstances, and without even a whisper of fear she launched herself across the gap.
This time she landed on the roof itself! She went into a forward roll to channel her momentum and was up and running before the zombies knew that they had been cheated out of their dinner.
Another leap across a gap that was far narrower, and she was now climbing down into the empty maze at ground level where she became a shadow among shadows, slinking like an alley cat, using her heightened senses to dart out of the way of stray zombies.
Behind her, the crazed mob destroyed more cages and screamed in rage, but only for a minute. After that they went suddenly blank-eyed and began moaning softly.
Maddy was faced with the great temptation to escape the strange roofless structure and get out of there while her luck held. But, in a way, she was like the zombies. A minute after her near death, it was almost as if it had never happened. Far from being haunted by how close she had come to being eaten alive, she sucked her hurt fingers and went deeper into the maze.
The whimpering she’d heard earlier had ceased and yet something drew her on. What it was, she had no idea. Her senses failed her. She heard the zombies; behind her were two dozen, ahead of her were more. They moaned pitifully
, banged their heads or hands to pieces, and generally made such a ruckus that nothing but the occasional far-off gunshot or explosion could be heard.
Her sense of smell was likewise impaired. Her nasal passages were filled with the stench of zombies. There wasn’t one of them that hadn’t crapped their pants and those without pants walked about with the crusted-over remains of shit running down their legs. Many also had putrefying wounds that stank of rotting meat, and all had a sickening haze of death around them like an evil cloud.
Underneath that, the air and concrete were permeated by an industrial metallic coppery smell that made her eyes water. It was as if someone had been using the machinery to roast pennies for the last dozen years.
Only her glimmering grey/silver eyes were of any use. With her enhanced vision, she was able to see the zombies before they could see her. When she saw one, she would duck away, thinking it was better to avoid a fight when she could.
Deep into the mass of cages and machines, she found an actual building, squat and low, made of brick with tall metal doors. These had nearly been torn from their hinges and hung awkward and askew. They reminded Maddy of her one and only trip to Iowa. She’d been greeted by a tornado and every house in its path had shutters that looked much like the doors. Needless to say, she had never been back to Iowa.
The fury of the tornado was nothing compared to the fury inside these creatures that had once been just average men and women.
Seeing the doors and the twisted hinges made Maddy pause. If she went through them, she’d be trapping herself even worse than before. “Walk away. You’re supposed to be going to the hospital.” She did not leave, however. Without a doubt, the hospital would be far worse than this. It could wait, and so could Griff, at least for a little longer.
Besides, she had to know why the building was so important.
The doors opened onto a bay that was split down the middle with more caged machinery on her left, while to her right were rows of industrial shelving on which were stacked coils of rubber hoses. In the dark they resembled immense pythons waiting to strike. Maddy slipped in, darting down beside a strange cylinder that was, floor to ceiling, ringed by what looked like huge ceramic doughnuts. It was attached to a dozen others by a grid of wrist-thick wires.
Only steps away was a great dark splash of drying blood. Within it was what she at first mistook for a flattened rat. In seconds, her eyes adjusted to the near total darkness and she saw that it was most of a human scalp. At the sight of it, her stomach turned over and her breath hitched in short quick bursts. She was shocked to realize that she was about to scream.
She bit it back, angry with herself, angry that she was still…human. “What else would I be?” She was human and that was good. “Being afraid is human and right. I should be afraid.”
The stink of her own fear filled her nostrils. It had a coppery scent to it that was similar to the heavy metallic aroma that filled the air. Very similar. So similar that it was only then she realized there was another coppery-scented musk on the air and that she had been smelling someone else’s fear since passing the broken doors.
Someone weak. Someone human.
She growled deep in her throat and just like that her fear was gone once again. It felt like it had deserted her. “I’m about to trap myself,” she whispered to the dark warehouse, hoping to arouse the perfectly human fear once again. It felt strange not to be afraid, but she felt nothing but a growing ire. “I’m sure something will freak me out. This place stinks of death.”
Although her fear had died away, she knew better than to be nonchalant over the situation. The place did stink of death. She crept deeper into the building. Beyond the cages and the shelving was a hall that ran left and right. To the right were offices. To the left the hall ran all of thirty feet and ended at a door that belonged in a prison. Not only was it industrial grey in color, it was nearly unbreachable with its thick heavy bars and steel capped hinges.
It was too strong for ten zombies combined to tear it down. They were trying, nonetheless. A mob of them crowded in, but with the hall so narrow only two or three could get at the bars at a time, while the rest crushed inward. Their numbers and their eagerness unnerved Maddy, which she thought was a good thing. Maybe I will flee, she thought. I’ll run screaming into the night. Apparently, her feet were un-impressed. She neither fled nor ran away, and the feeling of being unnerved had evaporated, leaving nothing behind.
The creatures had their backs to her and were completely engrossed in what lay beyond the bars.
It was a good guess that there was a person beyond the door. A person frightened out of their mind. A person doomed. There would be no saving the person, not without putting Maddy’s own life at terrible risk. To save the person, Maddy would have to make enough noise to get all of the creatures to come after her, but not too much noise because it would be all over if even one zombie outside heard her. She’d be well and truly trapped. And wouldn’t that be scary?
It would be, but she had no intention of putting herself in that situation over a nobody; the risk was too great.
A nobody? Do you mean a human? Maddy was getting tired of the voice. With a sigh that should’ve been only internal, she tiptoed forward, drawn on by guilt.
Fate seemed to have a hand in the moment because, as short as she was, she would never be able to see over the mass, only just behind the mob was an overturned handcart and something that resembled a kiln. It was sturdy enough that it easily held her weight as she stepped up on it.
There was a person beyond the dead and the bars holding them back. Amid great coils of heavy copper wiring sat a woman with long straggling dark hair hanging in front of her face. Her clothes were torn and bloody. Another sigh escaped Maddy. The woman was doomed. She had been bitten or scratched and the disease would eventually turn her.
Unless you blood her like you did Griffin, the same damned voice within her whispered. Although it was her only chance, arguments against this rose up quickly inside Maddy, all scientifically and realistically valid. All of these arguments had a counterpoint one that had little to do science. She turned away simply because she didn’t know the woman. Perhaps she wasn’t a good person and the idea of bestowing the…
The word gift floated through her mind.
It was an odd word, especially as Maddy and Bryce had experienced torturous pain and the great likelihood of death for the so-called gift. Still, it felt like a gift just then, and one that shouldn’t be simply handed out on a whim. Griff was a good, honorable man and deserved the chance. The woman was an unknown and could very well be evil, and wouldn’t an evil person spawn one of the demons?
She knew her logic was tenuous and based on a great deal of supposition, but even the voice within her couldn’t come right out and say what the real reason she had for leaving the woman.
Maddy was now special.
Because of her weight and her unfortunate looks, something she had never done anything whatsoever to enhance, and because of her snotty, smug, ill-used attitude, Maddy had been looked down upon all her life. Now she was different in a good way. She liked telling herself that she was still human but knew deep down that she was also better than human. She was special, but what if everyone became special? Deep, deep down where no voice would blab her worst fears, Maddy worried that if everyone became like her, she would end up being the least special.
This selfish line of reasoning was so pathetic that she couldn’t voice it and yet it dragged her down, nonetheless. Feeling weighed down with guilt, she turned away and began to hurry back towards the open warehouse. Ahead of her was the hall of offices. They appeared to be little more than lightless cells and she was sure they held nothing of value. Yet, she paused. The smell of fear coming from the hall was strong and isolated. With Maddy’s fear pheromones fading to nothing, the terror of a young…boy…was pungent in her nostrils.
She couldn’t leave the boy to die alone and yet, there was danger in a hurried rescue, a great deal of danger
. Would he scream when she found him? Would he cling, holding her down right when she needed her hands free to fight? Would he simply be a burden? Would she get killed saving some nobody? There was that word again.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath as she edged away from safety and followed the scent of the child down the hall. He was behind the third door and when she turned the knob, he let out a squeak. The sound was a barely heard squeak, which she decided to take as a good sign. His panting was not. It increased in tempo as she opened the door and glanced into a shabby little office, square with a low ceiling.
Although there was a great deal of stray paper and oily smelling boxes scattered everywhere around the room, there was only one place for a child to hide. Even without the smell of fear and the squeak, she sensed his presence.
“I’m not one of them,” she said in the loudest whisper she could afford, which was, in truth, not very loud at all.
He poked his head out from behind the desk for all of a second before ducking down again. All she really saw of him was an angular face and a mop of curly brown hair. “Then why do you look like that?”
Maddy looked down at herself; she had forgotten the rags that draped her body. “It’s camouflage. Do you know that word? It’s so I can blend in better.”
“I know what camo is and it’s supposed to be green, like a forest.” He came up again and appraised her with shrewd, red-rimmed eyes. She appraised him right back and liked what she saw. Beneath a heavy coat he was thin as a blade, and she guessed he had that shocking speed little boys had at a certain age when their body fat hovered around one percent and they seemed to have the energy of two grown men. Including the mop of hair, he stood just below the level of her shoulder.
What impressed her the most was that he had his fear in check. It was there, running through his body like a like current and yet there was something holding it down.
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