by Angel Lawson
His eyebrow lifts. “The Director.”
“You do know she’s not directing anyone or anything anymore, right? There was a coup.”
“What should I call her then? Ms. Ramsey?”
“You may want to start.” From what Jane told me, her former partner, Avi, isn’t going to be into her title anyway. Plus, it’s a giveaway if we encounter any enemies. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He glances over his shoulder to make sure we’re alone. “Truth? She’s scary.”
I laugh, covering my mouth to muffle the sound. “Scary? She can’t use a weapon. She’s never even faced an Eater before. There’s nothing she can do to you.”
“I guess she’s just intimidating. Like that smart chick from science class in high school that is three steps ahead of the rest of the class and the teacher.” He gives me a look. “You were probably that girl once upon a time, too, so you don’t get it.”
I ignore the semi-compliment. “She’s a genius, like, freaking smart as hell, who is also incredibly fallible. She needs people to stand up to her more than you realize. Don’t call her the Director anymore. She needs to learn how to be part of a team—not the fake leader of this one.”
A scream pierces the late morning quiet, and Green and I are on the move running through the leaves toward the house. Walker and Jackson meet us at the front steps, guns raised.
Jane is gone.
“Where’d she go?” Walker asks, eyes everywhere but particularly on me.
“She was just here.”
“Well, she’s not now.”
Another cry comes from near the lake and we run down to the shore. Jane stands on a wobbly dock with two Eaters moving toward her on the walkway. A boathouse door is open halfway down the lawn and more Eaters spill out of the narrow opening. They stumble and push their way past one another, focused on one thing: attacking one of us.
“I’ll get Jane!” I shout to the others, but Walker holds up a hand.
“No. You had your chance. I’ll get her,” she says, already halfway down the path. She kills two Eaters coming at her, quick and easy before going after the ones on the dock.
“Okay then,” I say, rolling my eyes. I flip the hatchet in my hand and brace for the closest Eaters. They’re disgusting, skin pale from the lack of sunlight. They reek of mold and decay. I’m not even sure how they’ve survived this long but as I swing my blade across the nearest one’s throat, I see dried blood on their mouths. They’ve been eating something. That’s for sure.
Jackson moves into action. He’s fast with a long, sharp blade he carries strapped to his back. In moments, heads litter the ground, rolling across the leaves like acorns. Green uses the butt of his gun, knocking one to the ground. She falls back but gets her fingers on his jacket, pulling him down. He lands on his knees, face to face with the drooling woman. Her teeth are yellow and rotten. I run over, hold my hatchet over my head and swing down, severing both of her arms. She releases him and screams, both of them falling on their backs. I stab my knife into her skull.
Three Eaters followed Walker onto the dock. Another two are between her and Jane. None of us can fire a shot at such a long distance. We could kill either or both of them. Jane is perilously close to the edge of the dock. She stands frozen, an unused hunting knife in her hands. She whimpers more than cries.
“Walker!” I shout, charging the dock. She’s busy being cornered. “Help Jane. I’ll take care of these.”
An emotion flickers over her face, but I can’t identify it. I don’t have time. The two Eaters look between us, I guess assessing their good fortune. Two break toward me—the other follows her as she moves in Jane’s direction. Why did I think this was a good idea?
I take a deep breath and run, slashing my blade at the nearest one and pushing him into the shallow water. My hatchet lands in the soft flesh but doesn’t come clean and I leave them both behind. I nearly shout for help, calling Wyatt’s name, but I clamp my lips shut and realize Jackson is only seconds away. I hear the splash as he dives on the Eater in the lake, finishing the job. I keep my eyes on the second one. He hisses low and menacing when he spots me. Dirty, dried blood coats his mouth and chin and he lunges at me. I don’t have much room on the narrow walkway. If I fall in the water those Eaters will turn on Walker and Jane.
I balance myself and wait for the monster to come at me again. I’m counting down in my head, ignoring his foul stench and the cries from my sister to wait for the right moment. The Eater pounces and a voice shouts in my ear, “Duck!”
I obey and hear the sound of a knife stabbing through flesh and bone over my head. Something lukewarm lands on my neck and slides down my collarbone. The body falls and I touch the ooze on my throat, nearly vomiting when I see the sticky dark blood.
I gag twice and then retch into the lake because oh, my God.
“One left,” Green says, plucking his knife out of the dead Eater on the dock. Walker lost her weapon along the way and is fighting the two Eaters hand-to-hand. I throw the last remaining one on the walkway into the water—too exhausted to take care of him. I have a feeling Jackson will do the deed anyway.
Jane has curled into a ball, hunting knife useless on the dock while Walker fights for their lives. The two Eaters are fueled by rage and desire—the need to spread the infection to another body is stronger than anything else. Walker kicks the nearest one in our direction and I stare into his dark, spidery eyes before I reach for the back of its head, grabbing onto his greasy hair. With all my strength, I smash his forehead into the metal loop jutting out to secure a boat. One, two, three times I beat him senseless, blood pooling on the wooden dock. I look up and Walker has killed the final one—Jane’s pristine hunting knife sticking out of the dead Eater’s temple.
I sink to my knees and catch my breath. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in an Eater fight. “I guess we better get used to the fact we’re in the Death Fields again,” I say, looking at my newly tested teammates.
Walker says nothing as she passes the rest of us, heading down the dock and back up the hill.
“What’s her problem?” Jackson asks, pulling himself out of the lake. Water pours off his clothes like rain.
“No idea,” I reply and take the hand he offers me. I wave him off, instead kneeling over the edge of the dock to wash my hands in the water. Green struggles to his feet and I nod for the two of them to head back up.
I wipe my wet hands on my pants and look at my sister. Her eyes are wide and part of me wants to drop-kick her into the lake and leave her there. Instead I turn to walk away, only stopping when I hear my name. “Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“I had no idea you could do all that.”
I think back over the last ten minutes. It was a total blur of death, pain, and blood.
“Do all what?” I sort of want specifics.
Jane stands and walks over, the floating dock giving her the look of a deer on wobbly legs.
“You’re totally bad ass,” she says, her tone serious. “Like a complete and for real Fighter.”
I stare at her for a second. “What did you think we were doing out there this whole time? Because that was nothing.”
She doesn’t reply. I don’t think she has the words and I’m too tired to get into it with her anyway. At the edge of the dock, just past the two dead bodies that have floated up to the shore, I hear the sputtering of an engine and whoops from up by the house.
“Come on,” I tell her. “I think our ride is ready.”
Chapter 2
The following two weeks may be the hardest in my life. Not because of the apocalypse. Or the lack of healthy food, or a warm shower or even a safe place to sleep at night. I’ve experienced all of those. I know I can do without. I’ve been tested, but not like this. Not by something as all-consuming and annoying as my sister. She’s not just a bother—she’s a liability. It’s hard enough that I have to push aside my feelings about how all of this is her fault. That she’s the one respon
sible for the death of my mother, even though I pulled the trigger. She tore our family apart. Destroyed millions of lives. She altered the fabric of reality, yet here I am, helping her. I don’t feel like I have a choice when she’s one of two people left in the world that can get us out of this mess.
God help us all.
That’s what I’m thinking at the moment. We’re near Lexington, headed east, searching for winter clothes at a thrift shop. I think Thanksgiving was last week. Or maybe it’s this week? I have no way to keep track.
There’s no calendar but the weather lets us know winter is coming, and thankfully this entire place has been left unbothered. I guess people only want new clothes when hell takes over? Jane may be one of those people, because nothing on the racks suit her desire.
Green and I didn’t want to come this close to a city the size of Lexington, but there’s a large swath of national park land between here and Catlettsburg, making it risky to go that far away from additional provisions. Oh, and Jackson and Walker were intent on coming to Westchester, the town where they make the guns. At this point on our apocalyptic road trip, nothing surprises me.
The truck only has enough gas to get us another fifteen miles, which means we walk or find some fuel. Walker parked it two buildings down from the thrift store. I agreed that if we got winter clothes, we could hit the gun outlet store—then find the gas. Not that there would be much left at the gun store. It had to have been one of the first places hit during the crisis.
“Pick a coat,” I tell her, gleefully stashing a pair of long underwear in my bag. I also found some wool socks and gloves. We woke up this morning and found hard frost on the lawns. Walker sniffed the air like a squirrel and declared snow was on the way.
Green and Jackson picked out new winter clothes quickly and moved to stand watch by the front windows. The area seemed quiet enough on our way in, but we’ve been fooled before in the uncleared areas, and not just by Eaters. The people we encounter are getting weirder and more volatile as time passes.
There’s a difference now in the way we travel. The first time I left my house for the road, survivors had two options. Hide in their homes or go to the evacuation centers. The few of us that were forced to move independently encountered pretty awful stuff. But in hindsight, the infected seemed more manageable, but maybe that’s because we had better supplies and they seemed…less organized? Over the last few months they’ve formed massive roaming packs.
“Why don’t they just die?” I ask Jane after one particularly harsh battle. She spent it locked in the back of a VW Jetta we were siphoning gas from, cowering on the floorboards.
“They should,” she said, taking in the carnage. “But it’s a glitch in the virus. It’s why we started testing the Hybrid vaccine in the first place. I wasn’t looking to create a new army. I was trying to fix a mistake.”
“By making a bigger one?” Because, yeah, the Hybrids were worse than the Eaters. They had mental awareness, even if lacking of independent thought. They had control of their bodies and actions with an added bonus of aggression. “That’s insane!”
“I had to replicate science to figure out what went wrong. I followed protocol, but there’s something about the parasitic nature of the virus that overrides death. It makes the Eater’s survival rate much longer than an average person in a similar situation.”
I stared at her for a good minute trying to figure out what to say. In the end I walked. It made me too angry—and I knew she still hadn’t learned. She still wanted to figure out and test the science, using people as her guinea pigs. People like Chloe who would become a bigger problem than the initial one. All the rest of us want is to walk down the street without a deranged cannibal eyeing us like lunch.
“She’s taking too long,” Walker says from the shoe aisle of the thrift store. I walk over and find her picking through the boots, checking sizes. She has enormous feet.
“I know. I told her to hurry.”
“If she doesn’t pick something I’ll do it for her.”
Her tone is hard and snappy and I’ve just about had it with her. I’m at my wit’s end with my sister, who may be a genius but has the life skills of a chimp. She spent her life in science classes and space camps. She never had to deal with people, or frankly, reality. “Good. Do it. I’m tired of micro-managing her every move.”
“You?” Walker rolls her eyes. “You’ve been nothing but trouble since I pulled you from Erwin’s little torture chamber. If I had only known what that mission involved.”
“You’d what?” I turn to stare at her. “You would have left us? No one asked you to save us, Walker. I know I didn’t. I didn’t ask to be a part of this game at all. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of walking away. Trust me. I’ve tried. You’re the one that signed up for this shit-show.”
Walker’s hand hangs by her hip and I see her clench it into a fist. If she hits me she will pummel me to pulp. I take a steadying breath and ask, “What is your problem with me? Something is different.”
I expect her not to answer. It’s the Fighter way. They keep their emotions buried deep under all that armor and muscle. Trust me, I’m used to it. But she narrows her eyes and says, “You left me there. We were a team and you left me there.”
“What?” Her accusation takes me by surprise. I think back. It seems a lifetime ago. “At the Vaccine Center?”
“I hid you in that bunker and you guys ran. No one told me a word. The Hybrids showed up and tore through that camp looking for Paul and then the rest of you.”
“Wyatt said he wasn’t sure who your allegiance was with and,” I clarify when I see her hackles raise, “we didn’t want you to have the burden of knowing anything. It was the smart move to make.”
“Wyatt?” She snorts. “You know better than to trust a word out of his mouth, right?” When I don’t reply she shakes her head. “He’s a mercenary, Alex. He fights for no one but himself. Never forget that.”
There is no way I’m talking to her about Wyatt. I can barely bring myself to think about him these days. “I’m sorry you got left behind, but where we went wasn’t any better. We were on the run, ambushed by the Hybrids and later Chloe herself. We barely made it out of there alive and to do so we had to join up with Erwin. The last six months have been hell.” I realize I’m close to yelling and lower my voice. “You know better than I do that this is about survival. We’re surviving. Day to day. There’s no room to lay blame.”
Her fist unclenches and I wait for a response but her eyes shift over my shoulder. I turn and find Jane walking up holding two jackets. One has purple puffy fabric. Another long and fur lined. “Which one looks best?”
“It doesn’t matter which one looks the best—you need the one that you can run the fastest in, fight back against an attacker, and will keep you warm.”
She looks between the two as though she can’t figure out which fits that criteria. I glance behind me at Walker but she’s gone.
I roll my eyes and point to the purple coat. “That one.”
“Really?” She wrinkles her nose at the jacket.
“Yes. Put it on. We’re burning daylight.”
As she changes, I notice Jackson tense by the front door. I call it a door but the glass was already broken when we got here although the lock was still in place. He slips into the shadowy space out of view and presses his back against the wall. Green does the same on the opposite side. I search for Walker but can’t find her, then I hear her shoes squeak on the hard, tiled floor.
“Get down,” she says quietly, a couple of rows over. I duck, dragging Jane down with me. “There’s someone outside. The guys went out the front door to check.”
I’m hit with dueling emotions. Fear—humans are worse than the Eaters out here. Everyone is paranoid. It’s best to stay entirely clear and we’ve done an okay job so far. But there’s a nagging kernel of hope that I’ve buried in my chest. Every time we encounter another human the same thought runs through my mind: Wyatt. Will he really
just let me go? Can he leave whatever we have together unfinished? I know it’s crazy. Suicidal. He doesn’t even know our destination. But I also know if anyone can find us, it’s him. It just depends on if he wants to.
“Did you get a visual?” I ask Walker.
She looks at me in a way that tells me she knows what I want her to say. There’s pity and annoyance in her eyes. I know the look because she’s been giving it to me since we started working together again. She grits her teeth. “No. But there are at least four of them.”
“What’s the plan? Out the back?”
“Yes, I think so. Those two,” she jerks her thumb at the guys up front, “will go out that door. We’ll run, or at least fight, our way to the Jeep. It doesn’t have much gas left in it but there’s enough to get away from here.”
Jane watches us while she laces her boots. She never has an opinion on these matters. She just wants to be somewhere safe, out of the fray. So far we’ve managed it—but we won’t be able to forever.
“Where’s your weapon?” I ask Jane. Walker took away her gun after a particularly careless situation in Tennessee that nearly robbed Jackson of a thumb. Now she’s allowed to carry a tire iron. She holds it up with both hands.
“Keep it visible. Even if you can’t—or won’t—use it, at least make them think you will.”
“Maybe we should just hide out in here for a while,” she suggests.
“Nope,” Walker says, heading toward the non-working exit sign in the back. I push Jane to follow her. Walker unlatches the back door and eases into the sunlight. It wasn’t warm inside but the wind slaps my face. There’s no one in the back alley. We break for the lot where we left the truck.
To my surprise I spot the flash of Green’s red hair at the front of the truck. They beat us back so maybe Walker was wrong and there wasn’t anyone out front, or if there was, they moved on. Walker skids on the gravel-strewn pavement in a hard stop and looks around. She holds her hand for us to stay still. “Where did they go?” she whispers.
“Who?”
“The men out front.” Her eyes are wild—paranoid--and I think she’s lost her mind.