The Ending Series: The Complete Series

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Jake and Cooper plodded ahead of us, while Jack trailed behind, sniffing and exploring the unfamiliar wooden slats beneath his feet. His tail wagged happily, and his nose found its way back to the ground every few strides.

  “Holy shit,” Carlos gasped beside me. His arms were tense. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the reins more tightly, and his eyes were opened wide like those of a frightened child. I could see the sweat beading on his brow.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I don’t like heights.” Carlos cleared his throat and looked straight ahead, refusing to let his eyes wander.

  I’d never seen him afraid of something so normal. In an odd way, it felt good to know I wasn’t the frightened one for once.

  As Arrow and Wings stepped onto solid ground, Carlos drew in a deep, calming breath.

  Barren, rocky bluffs quickly gave way to dense shrubbery as we drew closer to the wooded hills. We searched for a shady spot within the trees that was large enough for all of us to dismount and concentrate on Carlos and his Ability.

  “Over here,” Jake said quietly. He’d stopped his horse beside a squat fir. He pointed through the trees to a farmhouse down in a narrow dell, letting his reins slacken momentarily while his horse gnawed on the bit.

  The single-story farmhouse was old, and junk was strewn all over the yard surrounding it. An overgrown, surprisingly bountiful vegetable garden filled multiple raised beds on one side of the house, and a few laundry lines were strung between trees on the other, a handful of chickens pecking at the ground and clucking between them.

  “Should we check it out?” Carlos asked.

  The place looked abandoned—the gardens were unkempt, there was no laundry hanging from the lines, and the chickens were running around freely.

  I nodded, having the same interest in the property that Cooper and Jack displayed with their excitedly wagging tails and anticipative whines. They were eyeing a rickety chicken coop beside a small stable. There were another handful of chickens clucking around inside the coop.

  “No,” Jake told the dogs sternly, a smile curving his lips. “You’ll scare them off,” he said, like the dogs might understand. “Stay.”

  I leaned down and patted Wings’s neck. “We should check the garden and the stable, too. It couldn’t hurt.”

  Jake nodded and we dismounted on the side of the road, tied the horses to a couple of firs atop the hill, and headed down into the shallow valley to catch some dinner.

  Unsure what to expect, we held our weapons at the ready—Jake and I with our pistols, and Carlos with Chris’s shotgun—moving silently and swiftly toward what appeared to be the back of the house.

  The place looked like a junkyard. We passed a few rusted tractors and a mound of bowling balls that had been there so long weeds had grown up out of the finger holes of each ball. Old, splintered doors were piled up in what might have been a burn pile at one time, and a pale pink bathtub from the fifties sat inside an upside-down truck hood, broken in half.

  I began to feel uneasy as we approached the garden. Letting my mind find the offending sensations, I realized there was someone inside the stable. Someone…wrong.

  Without hesitating, I grabbed Jake’s arm and pointed to the dilapidated structure. “There’s someone in there,” I mouthed. My index finger drew a few invisible circles beside my ear to indicate it was probably a Crazy. I looked back at Carlos to make sure he understood, but he was gone. Shit.

  “Stay here,” Jake mouthed, and I knew he was going to find Carlos.

  I shook my head and raised my pistol back up in front of me. I was going with him. I didn’t have the best aim, nor was I a strong fighter, but I wasn’t going to keep waiting behind the scenes to get attacked, or worse. I preferred to be with him, knowing what was going on, instead of guessing and hoping for the best.

  Jake gave me an exasperated look, but I ignored it and followed him. I could feel the emotions of whoever was inside the stable shift between blissfulness and anger before settling on excitement.

  Without warning, the person stepped out of the stable, and Jake and I crouched down behind a mound of stacked firewood a few yards away, watching the stranger through the cracks between the logs.

  It was a slender, young woman in a floral nightgown that looked like it was meant for a woman three times her age. Her golden hair was gathered on top of her head in a messy bun, and her nightgown was covered in brown smears. She was wearing a gas mask and carrying something at her side as she glided closer to us. I strained to see what it was—some sort of dark, fringey mass hanging from her fingers. I glanced at Jake, finding his eyes wide with disbelief.

  Looking back at the woman, I watched as she dropped the mass onto a pile of…are those…shoes…and hooves? Bile rose in my throat. And hair? The woman took a few steps to a nearby stump and struggled to pull out an ax that was wedged in its surface. Her arms shook and strained as she tried to manhandle the ax, but eventually her efforts paid off. She heaved it up to her shoulder and walked back into the stable.

  Jake and I exchanged glances, and his eyebrows lifted in curiosity. We continued creeping toward the house, hoping Carlos was inside.

  “Carolann!” a woman called from the far side of the house.

  Instantly, Jake and I crouched down again.

  “Carolann, I’ve got somethin’ fer ya!” she yelled and finally came into view.

  Carlos stumbled ahead of her, the barrel of a shotgun pressed between his shoulder blades. They were on the far side of the garden beds, their forms coming in and out of sight as they walked between cornstalks. It was difficult to see Carlos’s face, but I could feel his fear. As they passed the last cornstalk, I could see his right hand twitching to grab the knife stowed in one of his cargo pockets.

  “Shit,” I breathed, looking at Jake.

  He nodded and brought his index finger to his lips.

  I returned my attention to Carlos and the woman holding the gun. She was old, in her seventies or maybe even her eighties. Her hair was long and matted and appeared to have been white at some point, but was streaked with brown and deep red. She was only wearing a bra, a long denim skirt, and a pair of mud-stained slippers. Jesus.

  “Carol—”

  “Stop hollerin’!” the woman who must’ve been Carolann yelled as she came out of the stable. She pulled off the gas mask and set it on the stump, then wiped thick, brownish-red gunk from the ax blade onto her nightgown. Her pretty features brightened with excitement. “Oooh…where’d you find him?” she asked, her voice suddenly heady, like he was fresh meat and she was completely starved.

  “I was buryin’ the bones from this mornin’ for mulch in my garden, and he crawled right past me, just like one of them damn ground squirrels. I hate ’em, Carolann. You know I do.”

  Carolann waved them over to her. “Come on,” she said.

  When Carlos hesitated, the older woman urged him forward with the barrel of the shotgun. “Move it!”

  Carlos still resisted.

  In the blink of an eye, the woman flipped the gun, ramming the butt of it into the back of his skull as hard as she could, and he fell to the ground. “I told you to move, boy,” she grumbled.

  My stomach dropped at the sight of Carlos’s limp body. I felt the old woman’s joy, her sheer excitement that verged on lust.

  “Get the rope, Carolann.”

  The gaiety they felt made me livid. We couldn’t let them hurt Carlos. I nodded to Jake, and without hesitation, we both stood up and opened fire.

  Following two misses, I landed a shot in the old woman’s chest. She dropped to the ground before she could even get her shotgun aimed in our direction. As Carolann was trying to escape back into the stable, Jake took her out with a single shot to head.

  While our hearts still hammered, pumping adrenaline-rich blood, Jake turned to me. “I’m gonna check the house for anyone else.”

  I nodded. “Be careful.”

  Once he was gone, I approached the stable. I wa
s petrified of what might await me inside. More Crazies? Dead bodies? I didn’t feel any other twisted emotions, but I knew I needed to clear the structure…just in case.

  Hands shaking, I held the gun against my chest as I sidled up to the splintered wall. The putrid smell of rotting meat permeated the air, sending my stomach into somersaults. My gag reflex kicked into overdrive. Covering my nose with the crook of my arm, I took a deep breath through my mouth and held it. Hurry up!

  I aimed my gun in front of me and stepped inside with my finger on the trigger just like Jake had taught me. I didn’t sense anyone. Weak sunlight shone through the windows and the cracks in the siding. Riding gear, hay picks, and rakes hung on the walls and from the rafters, but there was no sound to alert me of anyone’s presence. I tried to read the shadows for anything that might prove dangerous, but again there was nothing.

  I moved quickly, still holding my breath. The gun was slippery in my sweating hand as I swept my aim across the four stalls. When my eyes settled on the origin of the stench—the decaying pile of human and animal body parts in the far-right stall—I turned and ran out of the stable as fast as I could. My eyes burned from the foulness, and I stumbled out into the open, into Jake’s arms. His eyes were wide, and his grip on my shoulders was firm and protective.

  “I’m okay,” I panted and spat, the disgusting smell making me salivate profusely. “There’s no one in there.”

  On the ground a few yards away, Carlos moaned.

  I pulled out of Jake’s hold and stumbled over to Carlos, falling to my knees and rolling him onto his back. “Are you okay?”

  He squinted in the sunlight. “Stupid crazy bitch came out of nowhere,” he mumbled. He brought his hand up to the back of his head and cringed.

  “They’re dead,” I said. “But we should get out of here. I don’t know if—” At the sound of footsteps behind me, I turned on my knees and reached for my gun. It was Jake.

  “You guys should see this,” he said, nodding toward the back of the stable.

  Fighting the urge to ask if I absolutely had to, I helped Carlos up to his feet, and we followed Jake around the stable to a muddy paddock stall. A thick, red rope was tied around the metal fencing. I followed the line of it toward the ground and spotted a white mass surrounded by tall, wild grasses. When I took a few, uncertain steps closer, Jake’s hand gently touched my arm, warning me. I glanced back at him, raising my eyebrows in question. He peered past me again, at the rope. I shifted my gaze back to it. The red rope was attached to a white horse…a bony, dead horse.

  “They starved it.” My voice was barely audible as I took a horrified step forward. The body was so emaciated its backbone protruded from its form, and the skin between its ribs was concave. I wondered how much of its condition was the result of starvation and how much was the result of the onset of decomposition. “If it was tied up, it couldn’t graze or…” How cruel. I looked back at Jake, wondering why he would’ve wanted me to see something so unsettling.

  He stepped up closer behind me and pointed into the next paddock stall. “Over there.”

  At first, I saw nothing but shadows in the sheltered portion near the back of the paddock. But then a yellow and black striped lead rope tied to one of the metal crossbeams of the fence grabbed my attention. In the shadows, I saw the whip of a tail, which was quickly followed by a soft snorting. It was another, living horse.

  The taut rope slackened and a large black body hesitated in the shade before stepping partially out. Although it wasn’t tied as close to the fence as the dead horse had been, it was still thinner than it should have been, and its face was raw from trying to tug free from its halter.

  I peeked over at Carlos, who was still rubbing the back of his head, looking disoriented, and then at Jake, who was staring at the horse, unsure what we should do.

  “We have to at least untie the poor thing so it can move around,” I said. The horse had eaten everything within reach, and it was only a matter of time before it either starved or died of dehydration.

  I walked over to a patch of tall grass growing beside the stable and pulled a hefty bunch from the ground, roots, dirt clods, and all, and took slow, timid steps toward the horse. As I opened the gate, I watched the way its ears moved and its pensive, sinewy muscles shifted anxiously.

  “Easy,” I cooed quietly, trying not to startle the starved beast. “Easy.” I took a step closer and gingerly tossed the grass toward the horse as a sign of goodwill.

  It eyed the offering hungrily. From so close, I could tell it was male. His mane was long, hanging in his eyes and matted into clumps against his forehead, temples, and down his neck.

  I looked around for water, but found no trough or puddles. There were a few bushes he’d nibbled down to twigs, and I assumed the only sustenance he’d received in a while was from their leaves.

  The horse’s head bobbed with anticipation as he inched toward the food. Getting as close as he could, he lowered his head and strained his lips to pull the blades of grass into his mouth.

  I took a few more steps toward him and stopped just within reach of the rope. Slowly, I extended my hand forward to untie it. The horse’s head reared back in panic, causing the fence to shake with each forceful tug and the rope to creak and groan as it tightened. His eyes were filled with fear, and he whinnied and snorted as he relentlessly tried to break away.

  “Shhhh,” I murmured, attempting to calm him. “Easy, boy.” But the horse continued thrashing, the rope rubbing against his already exposed flesh.

  Knowing he wouldn’t calm any time soon, I stepped closer and untied the rope as quickly as I could. I struggled to loosen it against his pull. As he seemed to realize I was trying to help him, he calmed, but I didn’t know how long his quietness would last.

  After a few seconds, he began pawing at the dirt and looking between me and the remaining grass on the ground. He quickly gave in to his hunger and went back to eating what he could reach. The slack in the rope enabled me to untie him, and the lead fell to the ground. I wanted to remove the halter from his head, but I knew he didn’t trust me enough to get anywhere close…and I wasn’t brave enough to try.

  His head flew up. “Easy,” I said softly and began to back away. He regarded me for a moment before deciding I wasn’t a threat and returning his attention to the grass; he couldn’t seem to consume it fast enough.

  I continued to back away, one steady step at a time, until I was standing beside Jake again. When the pile of grass I’d left the horse was gone, he took two strides to the nearest plants and began tearing the long strands free, his lips maneuvering each clump of nutrients into his mouth and letting the dirt and roots fall to the ground.

  “We should go,” Jake said softly, and I felt the warmth of his palm on my lower back.

  I nodded, again wishing I could remove the halter so the horse would be uninhibited, but I decided I’d taken enough chances for the day. Taking Jake’s hand, I started back up the hill toward Wings and the other horses. Before we were too deep into the cover of the trees to see, I glanced back down at the farmhouse. The shadow horse was still down there. He was no longer grazing, but was standing over the dead horse, nudging it as he stepped restlessly around its remains.

  “He’ll be okay, Zoe,” Carlos said. “He can take care of himself.”

  I hoped he was right.

  We hiked back up the hill, leaving our hope of a chicken dinner and fresh vegetables behind. Though we were tempted to collect the chickens, eating anything from that sick-infested place was enough to make our stomachs churn. We had no idea what the chickens had been fed, not to mention what had been used as fertilizer.

  Upon reaching the top of the hill, the animals excited to see us, we anxiously climbed into our saddles and trotted back toward the bridge. Although we still needed to practice Carlos’s EMP Ability before we returned to the ghost town, he was having a difficult time concentrating. Giving up, we headed back to camp, worried he might have a slight concussion and determ
ined to test his Ability another, less eventful day.

  We stepped onto the suspension bridge, and we’d made it almost halfway when a miserable groan came from behind me. I smiled back at Carlos. “You’re doing fi—”

  Beyond him, where the road ended and the bridge began, stood the black horse. He tapped his front left hoof on the wooden planks like a cat might do before walking over wet grass. His head sank low as he scented the planks. I could hear him breathing as he hesitated. His eyes were wide and his ears alert as he stepped out onto the bridge behind us.

  18

  DANI

  MARCH 20, 1AE

  Dr. Wesley was holding out her hand, her fingers crooked. “Come here, Danielle. I want to show you something.” She was standing in the shadowed doorway leading into my closet…at Grams’s house. Why is she at Grams’s house? Why am I at Grams’s house? And then it came to me: It’s a dream.

  The doctor turned and disappeared into the oppressive darkness, and tentatively, I followed. Like the small walk-in was actually a magical wardrobe into another world, I pushed through hanging sweaters and dresses—except instead of finding myself in a frozen, winter forest, I emerged into an enormous laboratory filled with a meticulously arranged sea of antique, metal-framed medical beds that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was as though an infirmary from the First World War had been transplanted into an infinitely expansive, modern laboratory.

  “Come,” Dr. Wesley said, walking away from me.

  “What…where…what…?”

  “Come.” Her voice surrounded me, a whirlwind of sound pressed into the single word.

  She stopped by one of the beds. It was empty, with crisp, white sheets pulled tight over the mattress. “You must choose. We can only make two more Re-gens, but we have three recently deceased to choose from. You must choose.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, looking away from her and back down at the bed. It wasn’t empty anymore. A body—a person—lay under the covers, the top sheet a shroud hiding his or her identity. When confusion drove me to raise my eyes, I found that all but three of the beds had disappeared and the walls had closed in around us.