by Lori Devoti
The wolf and the man both snarled.
She was a zombie. The gas, whatever it was, had turned her into a zombie.
Which meant… Caleb’s gaze darted around the space.
There were more groans and more hands clawing at the air.
Every human in the place had been turned into a zombie, and Caleb was trapped inside the locked building with them.
His wolf snapped at the leash Caleb had managed to keep slipped around him. And with a scream that came out a roar, Caleb let it go.
As the door continued to creak open, Samantha couldn’t move. Her palm, which clutched the knife, was sweaty. Her heart was beating loud and fast.
She dropped her hand to her side, hiding the blade, then positioned herself so she would see whoever entered the cabin before he, she…or it…saw her first.
“Samantha? Are. You. Here?” The words were stilted, but the accent was pure Tennessee. Samantha dropped the knife and jumped toward her friend. The heavy scent of some musky perfume caused her to hesitate, but only for a second. Allison had never worn perfumes before, but then she’d never been held captive by a zombie-making doctor before, either. Samantha had smelled the rot of zombies firsthand. She could understand why her friend might need some weapon to keep the stench of the doctor’s patients at bay.
She pushed her way through the cloud of cologne and pulled her friend into a hug.
For minutes she couldn’t move, not even to wipe at the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes. She squeezed Allison again.
She couldn’t believe it had been this simple. Couldn’t believe the doctor had kept his word. She stroked her friend’s hair. It clung to her fingers as if filled with static. Samantha laughed, thinking how she would take Allison to the salon, spend crazy money on getting her hair conditioned, her body massaged and her mind purged of whatever hell she had endured.
As she stood next to her friend all her worries evaporated. She knew everything would be okay now; it would all work out, somehow. Caleb would forgive her for lying to him; Samantha could even forgive him for locking her in the motel with the guard dog.
There was no problem too big for them to work out.
Once he met Allison, he’d see that, too; understand why Samantha had had to work for the doctor.
Samantha straightened her elbows and held her friend at arm’s length to look at her. She still couldn’t believe the doctor had kept his part of the bargain, couldn’t believe it had all been this simple.
But it had. She was holding the proof in her hands.
“You look…” Tired, drained, out of sorts. All of those were true, but not what you said to someone who needed your support. “Great.” That was true, too. There was no way Allison couldn’t look great to Samantha. She was alive; that was all Samantha had prayed for.
Allison turned her head side to side, obviously search ing the room for something. “Are you alone?” she asked.
Surprised her friend didn’t fall back into her arms and start babbling about everything she had been through, Samantha dropped her hands. “You mean Caleb?”
Allison returned her gaze to Samantha. Her normally sparkling eyes were flat; her voice was, too. “Yes, Caleb Locke, the hunter. Dr. Allen wants to meet him.”
“But Dr. Allen isn’t here, is he?” Samantha’s gaze darted behind her friend to the still partially open door as she whispered the question.
Allison didn’t reply.
Samantha slipped her fingers into her friend’s hand. Allison’s skin was cold and her fingers seemed reluctant to bend. Ignoring both, Samantha made their secret sign in her palm, then stared into Allison’s eyes.
But instead of returning the sign, Allison just tilted her head and said, “The doctor wants Caleb Locke. You can take me to him.” Then her fingers tightened around Samantha’s.
A cry of pain rushed to Samantha’s lips. She bit it back and tried to jerk her fingers free, but Allison’s grip was unyielding.
“You can take me to him,” she repeated.
The biting pain in Samantha’s fingers increased until she couldn’t feel them at all. She quit jerking, quit moving. She stared at her friend. “Allison, when did you start wearing perfume?”
“Take me to him.”
Her record was broken, stuck on the one line.
Samantha closed her eyes. New tears burned at the backs of her eyes, but these weren’t the product of joy. They were propelled by a much darker emotion. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to face the truth. “I don’t like it, Allison. I don’t like it at all,” she murmured. “When we get home, back to Tennessee, you’ll give it up, won’t you? Go back to unscented soap and oatmeal facials? I’ll take you to a spa, make sure everything is one-hundred-percent natural. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
And Allison would have. She would have squawked about the money, but she would have loved being pampered. Allison was all natural, but she was also all girl.
Samantha opened her eyes and stared at the dead, flat eyes that watched her.
But this person…this body…an animated corpse really…wasn’t Allison.
She wasn’t at all.
The truth shot through Samantha like a spear, burned as it sank in, hurt more the longer she held on to it, accepted it.
She wanted to double over and retch on the floor, but her dead friend, the zombie, still held her fingers, still gripped them tight enough Samantha wondered if she had already broken them.
Samantha was that numb, body and soul. She wouldn’t have felt it if the body that had been Allison’s had picked up a spear and jammed it into her heart.
“The doctor…” The recording started again.
Samantha couldn’t listen to it again. “Yes, of course. I can take you to him. I want to take you to him. It’s what I planned all along.”
Allison’s lips closed over the rest of her words. She smiled, not the crooked, quirky smile Samantha remembered, but a perfectly orchestrated half-moon of her lips.
It made what Samantha had to do easier.
She took a breath and tugged lightly on her fingers. Slowly Allison’s hands opened.
Samantha straightened her fingers, then curled them closed again. They weren’t broken. They were bruised and numb, but would still do what had to be done, if Samantha could do the same.
“I need to get my purse,” she mumbled and gestured toward the kitchen where she had left the knife. She touched her friend’s elbow, pushing her slightly toward the chair she had occupied earlier. “Here. You’re tired. You’ve been through a lot. Sit and I’ll get everything together.”
With her record stopped, Allison seemed easy to lead. She sat, her feet flat on the floor, her back and legs pressed against the chair like every kindergarten teacher’s dream pupil.
Like a zombie, doing as it was told.
Feeling cold, inside and out, Samantha forced a brittle smile on her own lips and scurried into the kitchen. Confident Allison wasn’t watching her, she picked up the knife and hid it behind her arm.
The blade was cold, too, like an icicle resting against her skin. Allison was just sitting there, waiting. Samantha could sneak up behind her and pith her. She’d pithed zombies before, and death was what Allison would have wanted, would have asked Samantha to do if she still could. Her friend wouldn’t want to exist like this, wouldn’t want to become what Samantha knew she would become, perhaps already was.
The zombie she was staring at seemed calm and controlled, but for how long? How long until Allison was like the others, stumbling around alleys, attacking people, eating their brains?
Samantha clutched the knife in her suddenly sweaty palm and shivered.
All thoughts of what the creatures around had been just seconds earlier fled from Caleb’s brain. His teeth flashing, he twirled, biting and tearing as he spun.
Someone grabbed him from behind, around his hind legs, and jerked at him. He curved his body and chomped onto a hand, bit through flesh down to bone. He ripped and tor
e, sawed his jaws over the hand until there was no muscle or skin left, just bone. Then he bit through that, too.
A new sound built around him, echoed through the building. A hungry sound. Zombies smelling blood, facing their first hunger. They moved in toward him, formed a circle that grew smaller and tighter.
He continued his frenzied attack with no thought of how he would escape, if he would escape.
Escape didn’t matter. Killing the creatures did.
A man dressed in worn carpenter jeans grabbed the bloody arm of a woman who had already got in Caleb’s path. He stared at the gory stump, then jammed it into his mouth.
She screamed and smacked at him with her remaining hand. He placed a palm on her forehead and kept eating. Others followed his lead, dining on the fallen and even those who hadn’t, until the zombies formed one squirming mass…teeth latched on to anything that landed in their path.
Another hand grabbed Caleb, this one catching him by the fur ruff around his neck. As he turned, a face moved into view. The girl who had spoken to Samantha outside the gas station. Her mouth was open. It was obvious she meant to bite into Caleb’s neck.
He bit hers first, got lost in blood and moon lust. Was only aware of the smell and taste of blood, of the stickiness of his paws and the way his coat clumped together, grew heavy…
Something bit him on the tail. On autopilot now, he twirled, his teeth ready.
Linda, in her wolf form, barked at him, then grabbed him by the tail again and tugged him backward.
Linda. He knew her. Trusted her and Mike as much as he trusted any weres.
Not long ago he’d given her a job, an important job, he remembered. But he couldn’t recall what.
She jerked again. “Get out. Mike is outside. We’re going to torch the place.” A wolf himself, he understood her.
As she barked the last, a zombie lumbered toward her. It lifted its arm and smacked the female werewolf in the side of the head. Her toenails scratching, she slid across the concrete floor.
Caleb watched the wolf, his brain still processing why her appearance here was important. Samantha.
Linda was supposed to be guarding Samantha.
The gears in his brain shifted, fell into new, sane slots. His wolf took a step back and allowed the man to think.
If Linda was here, Samantha wasn’t at the motel, and she wasn’t safe.
He had to leave.
He jumped over a pile of zombies that writhed like worms on the floor, each trying to devour the others. He made it to the door before he looked back and saw Linda lying unconscious ten feet away. A zombie was bending over her.
With a growl, Caleb leaped and landed on the creature’s back. He snapped his jaws around the back of its neck. He bit and tore, harder and more violent than when he was lost in his wolf. This time he was fully aware of what he was doing and why. This time he wasn’t just killing a zombie, he was saving a friend. A friend who could tell him about his mate.
The zombie’s neck half gone, it dropped to the ground like the dead carcass it was. The other zombies, smelling the kill, mumbled noises and stumbled closer.
Caleb ignored them. They didn’t matter; not now. He sank his teeth into Linda’s neck and jerked her backward to the closed door. His backside bumped against it; he growled his frustration. He had gained control of his wolf, but with the moon still high and the bloodlust so recent, he didn’t think he could get his body to shift…not quickly enough.
He growled and slammed his hindquarters against the door again.
A hand grabbed him by the scruff and both he and Linda were jerked through the suddenly open doorway.
Caleb jumped to his feet and spun. Mike slammed the door closed behind them and thrust a metal rod through the handle.
“Get back,” he yelled as he scooped up his unconscious wife and sprinted past Caleb.
Torch the place. He remembered Linda’s words.
With a curse, Caleb broke into a run, too.
Behind him, the building erupted into flames.
Chapter 17
S amantha stared at her friend’s back, her fingers opening and closing around the knife’s handle. Allison’s hair covered her neck completely, covered the spot where Samantha would have to shove the blade.
Her hand trembling, she took a step forward.
She could do this. It was like shooting a rabid dog. Her father had done that once. He said it hadn’t been hard, not once he focused on the disease and not the dog.
Samantha could do it, too.
Focus on the zombie, not Allison, she told herself.
She turned the knife so the serrated edge would be down when she struck.
Thrust and twist, she told herself. Then twist again.
Three seconds and it would be over…forever.
Three feet from her friend’s turned back she stopped. Her hand was shaking so badly the knife waved back and forth in the air. She shoved her empty fist into her mouth to keep from crying out.
Her father said it hadn’t been hard.
But then her father was a liar.
She turned and padded as quickly and quietly from the cabin as she could.
Outside, she jammed a wooden lawn chair under the doorknob then stumbled down the steps into the yard.
The knife was still in her hand. She shook her arm, tried to dislodge it. Her fingers wouldn’t loosen. She knelt and slammed the blade into the frozen ground. The tip caught; she jerked it out and slammed the knife down again. The blade sank into the earth halfway now. Another jerk, another slam, and the blade broke off and flew up into the air, spun off into the darkness.
But still Samantha couldn’t stop. She lifted the handle and smashed it again and again against the hard ground until her arm ached and finally her fingers let go.
And even that didn’t help. She folded her body down until her head rested on her knees and cried.
The knob on the cabin door rattled and then something—a body—smashed against it from the inside.
Samantha sprang to her feet. Her gaze shot to the knife she had just dismantled.
Then she ran.
Fire. Yet another way to kill a zombie Caleb hadn’t considered before. Of course, in most cases it would be impractical, but for a space packed with fifty or so freshly made zombies it really was the perfect solution.
He was in his human form again. Something about the fire—maybe the light overpowering the moon—made it easy for him to shift.
Fifty yards behind him, Linda was unconscious. Caleb had tried to awaken her, but Mike had pulled him away and pointed at the collapsing building. As the roof fell so did the walls, and zombies poured out of the place like ants out of a flooded anthill.
Caleb could feel Mike’s worry. He knew the other wolf wanted to check on his mate as badly as Caleb wanted to race to find Samantha, but Mike didn’t. He stood his ground, did his part to protect a pack that had never treated him with anything but disdain.
Caleb was the zombie hunter, not Mike, and he couldn’t leave him here to fight alone. Besides, until Linda awoke, he didn’t know where Samantha was.
So, he shouldered the shotgun Mike had provided and strode toward the zombies, shoved the muzzle into one head after another, firing and repositioning as quickly as he could. A few yards away, Mike did the same. At one point, Mike’s aim was too close. Shot peppered Caleb’s bare foot and calf. He winced, but kept going.
The quicker this batch of zombies was down, the quicker he could find Samantha.
When the last one fell, he dropped the shotgun and strode back toward Linda. Mike was already there, holding her against his chest.
“She came to tell you she’d let your female go,” he said. “She wanted you to know she couldn’t keep her, not after hearing her story. But Linda wanted Samantha to be safe, too. She wanted you to give the girl a chance to face her past and her future on her own.”
“Her future?” Caleb’s brows furrowed.
Mike rubbed his cheek across the wolf
Linda’s fur and murmured against her neck. “She’s a romantic and a bit of a women’s libber.” He laughed. “She wasn’t happy when I asked her to keep your female trapped anyway. I should have known she’d let her go.”
“You’re the dominant.” There was a pack alpha, but there were dominants and submissive wolves, too. And there could only be one dominant in any relationship.
Mike cocked one brow. “When she lets me be.”
Then he turned and carried his mate toward the camp.
“She’ll be fine,” Caleb called.
Mike looked at him over his shoulder. “If I had any doubt of that, I’d kill you for getting her into this.” He stared at the charred mess of building and zombies, then stalked off.
Caleb watched them leave. They were headed back to the camp. Caleb should be headed there, too. He glanced at the black spot that had been the building, and more than that, what had been humans, too. People tricked into thinking what the doctor offered them would be better than whatever future they faced on their own.
The doctor had to be close. Those people hadn’t turned into zombies by themselves. Someone had pumped something into the building that killed and turned them in one or two easy breaths. And Caleb had been lured there, too. The doctor had planned on him dying, being torn apart by the doctor’s newly created monsters.
And the doctor would want to be nearby to witness his victory.
Caleb should go to the camp, look for the doctor and find Anita. The doctor had to be stopped, and it was past time for Anita to answer for what she was doing.
Alpha or not, she didn’t have the right to unleash zombies on humanity, and despite her arguments, she was responsible for every person taken in and every person killed.
But Caleb’s mind was on Samantha. Where she was, how she was. He couldn’t pursue the doctor or Anita, not until he knew Samantha was safe.
His wolf growled in agreement.
He stared at the smoldering remains of the building, not really seeing any of it.