by Tera Shanley
“You aren’t a baby killer,” he said, a statement not a question. “I saw your face when you saw what they’d done to the meat. You were horrified by it. You aren’t a baby killer,” he repeated.
“No, not a baby killer. Just a killer.”
His elbows slid to his knees, and he clasped his hands together until his knuckles were white. “Will you hurt me?”
She shook her head, afraid of the tremble in her voice if she spoke.
“I’m about to get kicked out of the colony. Colten is packing our things right now.”
Heart sinking, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. He’d go and never think about her again, while she’d always wonder if he would’ve been half the friend she thought he could be.
“You don’t want me to go?” he asked, searching her face.
Her answer was muffled by the contraption on her face. “No.”
“Then come with me.” Staring at him, sure she’d misheard, he plowed forward. “Colten and I were on our way out of here anyway, headed to Mexico. The Deads are migrating there, gathering at the coast, and there is going to be a battle if they stay like that for long. Colonies are shipping entire stashes of ammunition and weapons to annihilate as much of the Dead population as possible.”
“How do you know they’ll still be there?”
“I don’t, but I want to help if there’s a need. This could turn the tide either way. It feels…big.” His eyes lifted to hers. “You feel big, Soren. Important. Your destiny isn’t here where you’re caged. You’re different for a reason, and it’s not to take shit from some asshole humans who take pleasure in putting you down because they’re losing a war they don’t understand. The world is bigger than this place.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand then. You want the cure to cure yourself, right? It’s the easiest thing to see in the world, but maybe you don’t need to be cured, Soren. Did you ever think about that? Maybe you’re better than all of us, a superior species, and curing yourself would only be a step back. It would make you just like every other Tom, Dick, and Harry out here.”
Her parents had said variations of the same thing, but it had never really touched her. She wanted companionship though, and no one wanted to spend time with a Dead. Her kind had killed their families, loved ones, and friends. No one would ever get over that until she looked differently, ate differently, acted differently. So Kaegan picked up on her need to find a way out. So what? He still knew next to nothing about her.
“My place is here. I’m sorry to see you go, but Dead Run River is my home. Good luck with your crusade.”
A fearsome expression came over his face and he didn’t move for a long time. Pointing to the weapons that decorated her wall, he said, “Do you practice still?”
“No need to here.”
“You’ll wither if you stay. If you’re a killer like you say, make it count for something. This colony has been trying to manufacture a cure since day one of the outbreak twenty-four years ago, and they still don’t have it. Who knows if they ever will? It could be too big for us, like AIDS or cancer. You’re fighting the wrong battle, Soren. You could be part of what saves us all.”
Her heart was ripping in two. Deny it all she wanted, but everything he said made her burn for a cause that required action. But if she left, she’d never be human. Not entirely. She’d always be Other. Swallowing the sob that threatened to escape, she looked away. “Please leave.”
The floorboards creaked as he stood and strode across her home. Only when he’d descended down the ladder and disappeared into the woods did she allow herself the tears that had been so heavy lately.
What he said was true. She’d atrophy until she was nothing. A fat, tamed bear who lived for food and a comfortable place to lay, begging for compliments from handlers who couldn’t ever really love her.
Life had been so simple before Kaegan came along. She lived day to day, kept her head down, but then he showed up, challenged her to take more pride in herself at the risk of losing her home. Damn him. She shrieked and threw the chair, still warm from his body, onto the ground below. It shattered into a million splinters, just like she had.
“Soren?” Seamus asked from the first rung of the ladder. “Are you okay?”
Hastily, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m fine.”
“I just passed Kaegan. What did he want?”
“For me to go away with him to fight some imaginary war against the Deads.”
He wore a frown as he hopped onto the entryway of her house. “In Mexico?”
“Yeah, did he try to convince you to go join his cause too?”
“No. A messenger was in Mel’s office when I went to talk to her. It was all he talked about.” He looked slowly from the ground to her face and breathed, “Maybe you should go.”
“Ha ha, Seamus. Very funny.” She plopped onto her mattress and stared at the swaying branches above.
“What is keeping you here? The cure? It’s a pipe dream with Doc fading.”
“I can’t leave you, Seamus. You’re my only friend.”
“That’s not true.” His voice was careful, calculating. “I can’t go with you. Battling Deads was never my thing. But you and Adrianna?” He sat cross legged on her floor and peered at the longest of her battle knives. “It’s in your blood.”
“Be serious. I’m not going to just leave with a total stranger. And both of them have gimp legs. They shouldn’t even be out there in the condition they’re in. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Not if you were there. You have hidden yourself from everyone here, but you can’t hide what you really are from me. I’ve known you all my life, remember? Pretend all you want that you are harmless to the people here and the Deads out there,” he said, pointing beyond the gates. “I know the truth. Don’t make a decision based on me, Sor. I’ve had to watch you suffer here, and it rips my guts out. You are the daughter of Laney Landry and Derek Mitchell, and you’re wearing a fucking muzzle. Who says in here is any better than what you’ll face out there?”
“Please stop,” she pleaded. She couldn’t take it. The decision was too big. Go fight alongside a man she barely knew, or stay here for a chance at normalcy. Couldn’t they see the choice was clear?
Seamus stood and brushed the seat of his pants to dislodge the leaves and dust. “Go live. I’m tired of watching you die here.”
Overwhelmed, she drew him into a tight embrace, squeezing him as she rested her muzzled chin on his shoulder. Hesitant hands went around her waist, and he sighed. “Send word you’re safe from time to time, will you?”
Silence stretched on forever between them before she finally whispered, “I promise.”
Chapter Six
THE SUN WAS SINKING LOWER and shadows stretched across the forest floor, like gnarled hands reaching for her. Turn back, they seemed to say. Even if Soren could, she was too far in it now. The excitement of freedom was too tempting a lure to be burdened by logic.
The cold hard fact, though, was that she’d gone half-cocked into the Dead-filled woods following two complete strangers who’d had two hours head start. They hadn’t had loose ends to tie up in Dead Run River—the benefit of being strangers. She, however, had been there two years, and even if most looked relieved at her revelation that she was leaving, she still felt the need to say good-byes to anyone who’d showed her a kindness over the duration of her stay. Z she might be, but she was a Z with manners.
It should have been a lot more difficult to track Kaegan and Colten. For a human it would’ve been a real challenge, but she’d been trailing them for hours, just far enough back they didn’t notice her. In fact, Kaegan didn’t seem to notice much of anything, to the seemingly everlasting irritation of his friend, Colten. He stared in silence, taking long strides that hitched with the limp of a twisted ankle. It was Colten who she’d tracked. He was louder than anything else in the woods with his running commentary, and his leg was s
eeping. It smelled delicious. His bandage was pungent enough that she’d followed on scent alone for a while, and she wasn’t the only one he’d attracted. A Dead shuffled beside her, badly injured and slow, but still intent on catching up to the two humans in front of her.
That idiot, Colten, was going to get them all killed.
She frowned at Kaegan’s tense back through the trees. Something about Colten’s carelessness made her angry. She didn’t want Kaegan to die. Didn’t want to see his face reanimated on a Dead. Perhaps Colten could be loud and bold because the vaccine gave him some sort of invincibility complex. He’d survived the bite on his leg after all, but Kaegan didn’t have the benefit of immunity, and that put him at higher risk.
“What do you think?” she asked the Dead to her right. “Which one would you eat first?”
He was a skinny thing, and his leg had been broken in half at some point in his jaunt around the mountains looking for human snacks. His blue tinted flesh was sunken around the curves of his bones, and shoulders and ribs showed through the tattered mechanic shirt that still clung to his withered body. Bob, the name patch on his stained pocket read. She cocked her head and tried to imagine what he looked like before most of his face had rotted off. Maybe he’d looked like a Bob once.
He was slow and little danger to the men in front of them at this distance. They’d attracted him around the same time she’d found him, and it had been three hours and counting that they hadn’t noticed they were being hunted. At this point, it was just sad.
Limping badly, the Dead stayed focused ahead, not even a groan for an answer to her question, and she shrugged. Corpses weren’t the best conversationalists.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you or is this how it’s going to be all the way to the coast?” Colten asked. “You haven’t said two words since we left. I get it. You’re the stoic type and all. That’s why we work well together. You are the big loner who gets shit handled, and I’m the social one who gets us invited into colonies. This sucks though, man.” Colten stared at him while they walked. “At the very least, you owe me an explanation on why you got us kicked out of Dead Run River over a fucking zombie.”
“Don’t say that,” Kaegan growled.
“Fine. A freaking zombie.”
Warning hummed in the tension of Kaegan’s shoulders.
“Please don’t tell me you were crushing on her, man. She’d eat you in your sleep and pick her teeth with your bone splinters. We’re better off getting out of there if that’s the case. That place was messed up, wasn’t it? Deads inside the gates. I mean, damn, how stupid could they be? She should’ve been banished or caged, or I don’t know, something.”
A numb feeling crept over Soren as she listened. This was probably what everyone said about her when she wasn’t around. She didn’t want it said to Kaegan, though. If he hadn’t already thought of all of it, Colten was just going to fill his head with reasons to hate her. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
Kaegan paused and turned slowly to Colten, saying something much too low for her to hear at this distance.
“Aw, crap,” she muttered. “Sorry, Bob. I can’t have you gnawing on my team, so this is the end of the line for you, buddy. Sorry,” she whispered as she stood in front of him and slid a battle knife through his temple. Other than the rustle of leaves, he dropped without a sound.
Staring at his crumpled body, she sighed. He’d been somebody once. The only thing Bob had done to earn an empty life was get himself bitten.
“We’ll make camp here for the night. The grove behind us will act as a natural barrier,” Kaegan said. “You want to take care of the moaner that’s been following us or you want me to?”
“I’ll do it. You go take the two coming at us from over there.” He gestured toward an embankment.
Soren tilted her ear in that direction. Huh. Sure enough, a pair of distant moans sounded over whispering leaves. So they’d known about Bob the entire time; they just didn’t feel threatened enough to pick up the pace or fight him earlier. Maybe they weren’t as incapable as she had begun to think over the past few hours.
Slipping behind a tree, she held her breath as Colten searched for Bob. He froze, likely listening for the movement typical of Deads, but when only the quiet rustling of branches sounded, he pulled a hatchet from his back. The blade whispered against its sheath, and Colten turned with a suspicious glower. “Where are you?” he muttered.
The you he spoke of was about fifteen yards to his left, half hidden by trees and leaves, staring vacantly in his direction and definitely dead as a doornail. Colten just wasn’t looking low enough. The rough tree bark she leaned against was steady against the slight tremble that shook her limbs.
He stepped closer and Soren held her breath. Now he stood just on the other side of the large oak she hid behind.
Another step closer.
“Colten? What’s taking so long?” Kaegan called.
“Nothing. I think we lost the Dead.” He lowered his voice and muttered, “That or you bored him to death with the dullness of your silence.”
Footsteps retreated, and when they were far enough away, she dared a peek from her hiding tree. Kaegan wiped the blade of a long machete on a tuft of grass, turning it red.
“Do we have anything to eat?” Kaegan asked.
“No. You left us zero time to gather supplies before you got us in a fight with a bunch of off duty guards and got us booted, remember?”
Unable to shake the feeling their hunger was her fault somehow, she turned and searched the ground for small rocks the perfect shape for the leather strip she’d use as a sling shot.
Kaegan had been a raging idiot. Without thinking it through, he’d jumped up to defend someone who didn’t need it. Soren could’ve lobbed off that prick’s head if she wanted. She’d been defending herself for God knew how long before he stumbled into her life. If ever there was a woman who needed a man like she needed a bullet hole, Soren was that woman. He’d heard Mel loud and clear when she said Soren was a murderer, and he didn’t doubt it. She was the fiercest creature he’d ever seen. No innocent looked like that.
But when that jackhole, Andrew, taunted her in front of his friends, something inside of him had snapped. Beating his sneering face settled something scary inside of him. Watching the way people treated her around the colony made him feel nauseous. It was over now, and he wouldn’t see her again, so it didn’t do him any good to overanalyze what it was about the creature that made him want to protect her.
Still, it was impossible not to think about the tragedy of her cage. She was a tiger on a jeweled leash. Train her all they wanted, but someday the wild would reclaim her. And a piece of him wished he could be there to watch her rise to her potential—like a damned phoenix—instead of cowering behind that contraption on her face.
With a growl, he snapped the twig he’d been stripping in two and chucked it into the darkening woods. Colten was right. It was a good thing they got out of there when they did.
When he glanced in the direction the sticks had flown, there she crouched. Animal hide traveling pants clung to the tensed muscles of her legs, and an earth colored vest hugged her torso like a second skin, exposing shoulders, neck, and alluring collar bones that stood out against her pale skin. The muzzle sat stubbornly across the bottom half of her face. In her hands was the twig he’d just snapped.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
Such a personal question should’ve unsettled him. At the very least, her unexpected presence here should’ve had his heart racing. It was weird that he felt so calm. She canted her head as she waited, like his answer mattered. “You,” he breathed.
The sound of Colten’s knife sliding from its sheath was loud against the breezeless evening.
“What are you doing here, Dead?” Colten asked, taking a defensive stance beside him.
“I asked her to come.” Kaegan followed her graceful movement as she stood.
The lift to her
chin was brave, rebellious, and he followed her to stand.
“Why would you do that?” Colten asked, never taking his eyes from Soren. Venom and shock permeated his words.
The answer stayed lodged in his throat. He hadn’t the power to explain why he’d wanted her to come. Her fate was bigger than that place she was trying to call home, but was it with them? He didn’t know anything anymore. Since seeing her, learning of her existence, everything had gone upside down and stayed that way.
“No response at all? Really? She’s isn’t even human, Kaegan. Look at her!”
Soren pulled sunglasses over her eyes. “There. Better?”
Colten shook his head and stared at him like he should be as offended as he was. “No, it’s not better! Now you look like a Dead wearing sunglasses!”
If he hurt her feelings, Soren didn’t show it. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders like she’d tried, then tossed a trio of small, foxlike animals to the forest floor beside Colten’s planted boots.
“What is this?” he asked.
“They’re called American martens. Cooked, they’re edible for you. A good source of protein too.”
Kaegan picked up one of the small animals, the size of a large jackrabbit and turned the limp game in his hand. How had she known they needed food? He looked up slowly. “How long were you following us?”
“Since you picked up the Dead to your rear.”
“And what happened to the Dead? He wasn’t there when I went to find him.” Colten still held his knife, which looked like a pushpin compared to the battle sword that hung from Soren’s back. His weapon wouldn’t be their saving grace if ever Soren decided to end them.
“Bob is dead,” came the muffled reply. “Really dead.”
“Bob?”
“That’s what his name tag said.”
“Oh, that’s just fantastic. Fantastic, Kaegan. She’s naming the monsters. You invited a Dead to travel with us like we’re an actual team, and she’s a freaking sympathizer on top of it all. Not only will we have to sleep with one eye open to keep her from eating us alive, she’s going to invite all of her little undead friends to join in the buffet the second we let our guard down. This is a terrible idea.”