Love Starts With Z

by Tera Shanley

  Glaring at Mark, with his face still caked in blood, something loosened deep within her. She’d been sorry for so long, but what for? She was a monster, trying to be human, and damn it, she’d succeeded for the most part. She was a killer, the daughter of the infamous Laney Landry and Derek Mitchell. She’d been trained to fight by Finn and learned survival from Aaron Guist himself. Vanessa had gifted her speed with a blade, and she’d been raised as a daughter of the heart by the greatest leader in the known world, Sean Daniels. She was warrior, friend, ally, and enemy. She was Dead and human, and no matter which side she chose, she was traitor. Tired of apologizing for being different, this was where the winds of change turned into a fucking tsunami. She was a weapon, and they didn’t even know it.

  She.

  Was.

  Soren.

  Chapter Fifteen

  CASTLE ROCK—A Nice Place to Live, a sign on the visitor’s center read. They’d ghosted the tree line as long as they could, and now all that lay before them was city. Dead city.

  Gutters sagged from paint-stripped buildings, lush overgrowth had taken over the once manicured lawns, and leaning street lights dotted crumbling sidewalks. Power lines that had once carried the convenience of electricity snaked the street under their felled poles. Cracks that spider-webbed the pavement told of the earth’s unrest in the wake of the apocalypse. Debris littered everything. Piles of dirt and leaves higher than a man’s shoulders shadowed corners of most of the buildings, and climbing ivy crept over houses, threatening to consume them completely. A mangy looking dog stood in the middle of the street with a snarl on his lips and a cocked head, like he was deciding if they’d make an easy meal or not.

  Maybe at one time it had been a nice place to live. Now, it was ashes of the city it had once been.

  Soren skirted a huge chunk of rebar-laden cement that must have been washed out by a flood. Colten climbed to the top of the rubble and scanned the area, assault rifle in hand. He didn’t have his finger on the trigger, but instead it brushed just above it, not ready, but close enough.

  “Anything?” Kaegan asked. He hadn’t said a word to her in the hours they’d been walking, and the absence of his attention left a lonely, gaping hole in her.

  “Nah. Nothing moving that I can see. They must be gathered farther inside of Denver. That or the bulk of the Deads here have already migrated south.”

  “Let’s keep moving then,” Kaegan said. “It’ll be dark soon and we need to keep an eye out for shelter. A house or building that looks secure.”

  The dog vanished behind what looked like a crumbled grocery store. The animal was a good sign. They didn’t tend to stay where Deads were dense unless they wanted to get eaten. The world didn’t house many weak animals anymore. Everything alive was still breathing because it had fought to survive.

  “There,” she said, pointing to what looked like a thick grouping of trees. The branches of the crepe myrtles were heavy with flowers and sagged just enough to show the stonework of a building behind it. The roof seemed to be mostly intact from where she stood, and the one window she saw had been boarded with thick plywood in recent years. Someone had stayed there. With a little luck, they were long gone and not pointing the barrel of an old Winchester rifle at them right now.

  “Good,” Kaegan said, approaching the building with long, confident strides. With the barrel of his shotgun, he moved branches of some sort of giant shrub aside.

  Castle Rock Museum, the hand painted cream and black colored sign read.

  “Let’s go see if anyone is home,” Adrianna said, stepping around the corner of the building.

  So overgrown was the side yard, Kaegan had to hack it with his machete to blaze a trail, and the door stood crooked in the grips of a giant vine that was wrapped around it.

  “Well,” he muttered, prying it open for Colten to enter, “I don’t think anyone has been here for a while.”

  Colten banged on the wall and waited quietly as Soren squeezed through the opening. A shuffling sounded from a back room somewhere, and she clicked her flashlight on. The ground was covered in a thick layer of dust, but a wide, bloody trail led to a hallway at the back of the main room.

  Colten looked at her with somber eyes. “Oh, the owner is home. He’s just not human anymore.”

  The others filed in as they followed the trail, careful to search every room on the way, until finally they came to a closed door. A soft scratching sounded from the other side near the bottom.

  “He’s probably starving and so weak he’s on the ground,” she breathed, and Colten nodded.

  One, he mouthed.

  “Two,” she said, gripping the hilt of her knife.

  Three.

  Shoving the door open, she ran the light over the room.

  Four pairs of white, searching eyes fell on them and the instantaneous noise of the groans became deafening.

  Colten cursed and pulled a display table over in front of them. It slowed the monsters down, but something latched onto Soren’s ankle as he lunged at the first Dead. Cold claws scrabbled at her leg, but she couldn’t drop the light, or Colten would be fighting blind.

  “Kaegan!” she yelped, falling backward and kicking her leg to dislodge the scrabbling claws. The tiny flashlight clattered to the floor behind her and flickered out.

  The door flew open the rest of the way and slammed against the wall, and a new, brighter light arced over the room. As Kaegan’s large frame hurtled over her to join the fight, she stabbed at the Dead, still shrouded in darkness. How terrifying that she couldn’t see him! Horror seized her throat as the hands reached higher. He was coming for her, and at any moment her leg would be close enough to his mouth that she would feel his gnashing teeth.

  In one last effort, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine where his head would be. Thrusting down with her blade, the clammy hands stilled, and she stifled the scream of relief that filled her lungs.

  Strong hands pulled her backward against a wall. “Are you okay?” Kaegan asked, eyes wide.

  “Yeah,” she said, breath heaving from the rush of panic.

  Under the beam of his flashlight, her attacker lay facing them with empty eyes that seemed glued to her leg, as if even in death he hungered to hurt one last thing. He wasn’t long decayed, a year maybe, unlike the others in the room. Also unlike the others, he was missing the bottom half of his body. Bile stung her throat, and she looked away.

  “Soren,” Kaegan whispered. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do that to him. It was them.” She pointed to the pile of bodies Colten was standing over.

  “No, not him. Your leg.”

  Confused, she followed the flashlight beam. Blood gushed from a gash in her pant leg, and she held up the knife she still clutched in her hand. Oh, she’d brained the Dead all right. She’d also done a bang-up job of stabbing herself in the process.

  “Gads,” she whispered.

  Kaegan scooped her up on one swift motion and barreled out the door. Damn, he was strong. Her weight didn’t even seem to bother him in the least. Neck craned, he searched for something. Just as she was about to ask, Adrianna said, “This way. There’s light coming from upstairs.”

  Scaling the stairs behind Adrianna, a single bead of perspiration streamed down Kaegan’s clenched jaw.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked.

  Adrianna turned the mattress of a small bed over, dislodging a dust cloud into the air, and he set her down on top of it.

  Pungent with the smell of mothballs, the mattress sunk in under her weight, springs creaking with the motion.

  “We’ll talk about this when you’re not bleeding, yeah?”

  His clipped tone made it hard to ask. Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t see his anger, she asked, “So that’s a yes?”

  “For crissakes, no! No, I don’t hate you. I don’t know what that says about me, and frankly I’m tired of thinking about it. I can’t hate you, Soren. It’s…” His chest heaved as he searched her eyes with an
intensity to rival the sun. “I can’t…” He sighed explosively and dropped his head. “Shit.”

  Adrianna was working furiously to get the bleeding stopped on her leg. “Think he loves you, Soren.”

  Kaegan flicked two fingers at Adrianna and nodded. “That.”

  “Just say it, you giant moron,” Adrianna advised. “You’re screwing this all up.”

  Soren went completely still. It couldn’t be. After what Mark said, it couldn’t be possible that he felt anything toward her but disgust and distrust. Right? But no, the silver in Kaegan’s eyes filled with emotion—rage, worry, and something else that brought flutters to her stomach and made her heart feel like it was too big for her chest.

  Dust motes swirled around him in the rays of sunlight that filtered through the dirty window as he searched her eyes. “I haven’t ever said that to anyone.”

  “You don’t have to say it to me,” she said, giving him an out.

  “I love you, Soren,” Adrianna said in a deep voice.

  “Stop,” Kaegan drawled.

  “Stopping,” Adrianna said, zipping her lips, then ripping into a baggie of bandages.

  His eyes stayed on Adrianna’s work for a long time before he turned to her. Instead of saying anything, he took her hand and placed it on his chest. His heartbeat was strong, steady. “It’s yours.”

  And somehow that small gesture meant more than any three words ever could.

  She parted her lips to confess just how much he affected her, but Adrianna said, “Kaegan, I need you to hold her together while I stitch or we’ll never get this stopped. You nicked yourself good, girl. And where in the fig is Mark? That little douche. He’s the one with the medical experience.”

  “I don’t want him touching her. You’re doing fine,” Kaegan murmured, pressing her opened skin together.

  Soren watched in wonder. It looked like it should really hurt. Times like these made her thankful she was a freak. She didn’t feel anything from the long, open gash, not even a dull ache.

  For someone who swore up and down she didn’t know much about medical stuff, Adrianna sure did stitch her up swiftly enough. The stitches didn’t even look that crooked. She frowned thoughtfully at Adrianna, whose dark hair hid her face as she wrapped gauze around the clean wound. Her friend had changed since she’d left. Grown stronger, more secure with herself. Pride swelled in her chest as she smiled down at the feather laden braid that twined down her tresses. It looked like her own, but dark, where her pigment was light. It still struck her sometimes how alike and dissimilar they were all at once.

  “All right, Sor,” Adrianna said, patting her good leg. “If your super special zombie healing abilities are going to work on this, you need to eat, which means…” She pointed to Kaegan and waited.

  “I need to hunt.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Colten,” he called.

  Steps sounded off the stairs, and Colten popped his head around the corner. “What?”

  “You want to go hunting with me?”

  “For what?” Colten asked.

  “For Soren.”

  Colten looked at her with a confused knot in his brow. “I already stabbed her once.”

  “Not hunting Soren, you idiot,” Kaegan growled. “She needs to eat.”

  “Fine. Do you like dog?” Colten asked, eyebrows almost to his hairline like he was asking how her day went.

  “She’s not eating dog meat,” Adrianna said with a shake of her head. She was grinning, but Colten couldn’t see it from his place on the stairs.

  “We’ll hit up the tree line again and see if we can get lucky,” Kaegan assured her, squeezing her hand.

  Worried, she said, “If you’re going that far, take Ben with you too. Just in case. And don’t let Colten spit on my food.”

  “I heard that,” Colten called from below as Kaegan chuckled warmly.

  Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. “We’ll be back soon.”

  “Kaegan,” she said as he left.

  He turned and jerked his chin in question.

  Her heart hammered away, rivaling its speed during the fight below, but this fear was different. “About what you said earlier.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Me too.”

  A slow smile spread across his sensual lips, and he winked. “I know.” Turning, he left without a backward glance.

  She sat with her mouth hanging open, then clacked it closed. That cheeky man.

  Adrianna’s gaze followed him out with a toothy grin. “I like him.”

  “Of course you do. You like Colten too,” she accused.

  “Don’t. Don’t play matchmaker with me, Soren Mitchell. I would chew that boy up and spit him out and ruin him along the way. He’s too good to get mixed up with me.”

  “You think Colten is good?”

  “I do,” she said softly. “And someday, you will too.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and left.

  Huh. Soren lay back, sinking into the old mattress. The ceiling was cracked, resembling a map of rivers and highways as the damage stretched from wall to wall. She supposed if it was a choice between Mark and Colten, she’d pick the latter. His insults were losing their sting lately, though why that was, she hadn’t any idea.

  Testing her injured leg, she stood and scanned the small, dusty room. The previous tenant, likely the one who had been clawing at her leg a half an hour before, had kept a tidy home. Why anyone would live on the fringe of a colony alone was beyond her. Survival rates were grim if you didn’t have the safety of numbers, and looking around the room, it seemed like such a lonely existence. A bedside table housed an old paperback book, the cover so layered with dust, it was unreadable. The single window was adorned with a thick panel of fabric, and she pushed it aside to see the street below. In the waning light, the dog stared up at her with a tilt to his head. The shepherd looking mutt had one ear that flopped, making him cute if one could ignore the snarl on his lips. Maybe the owner hadn’t been so alone after all. If it was indeed his dog, what kind of loyalty did a creature have to possess to stay around for months after his master died?

  A knock sounded, light but firm, and she turned. Lauren stood with her hands clasped in front of her, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  Soren smiled encouragingly, but then remembered the girl wouldn’t be able to see it behind her muzzle.

  The girl’s mouth moved, as if she wanted to say something, but nothing came out. Her honey-blond hair was pulled back, and her soft brown eyes studied her. A smattering of dark freckles graced her cheeks. Why hadn’t she ever noticed them before? Now they seemed like the most obvious and endearing of her features.

  Lauren sat on the bed and pulled a small chalk board from her pack. The chalk made a soft screeching noise as she scribbled across the dark panel.

  Was the boy an accident?

  Soren sat on the bed and nodded. “He was unkind to me, and one day it got to be too much. It wasn’t like Mark said. I didn’t just eat him because I was hungry. He was choking me after school because he said his father would be proud of him. I thought I’d die, so I bit into him as hard as I could.”

  Erasing the board with the sleeve of her green hoodie, she wrote even faster than before.

  That’s what I thought. You don’t seem to be the type of person to kill someone lightly. I can tell these things.

  Relief swelled and stretched until she sighed. Lauren probably didn’t know it, but her belief in her was a rarity. “Are you and Mark together?”

  Sometimes, but not right now.

  She didn’t explain further, and Soren didn’t push. Instead, she asked, “What happened to your voice?”

  It’s broken. I’m not some sob story with a traumatic experience that made me clam up. I just don’t have a sound. Sometimes I scream and scream, desperate for anything to come out, but nothing ever does.

  Out of the corner of her vision, Lauren stared at her while she read the chalk board.

  As so
on as she looked up, Lauren wiped it clean and wrote:

  It doesn’t bother me except when I want someone to listen to me. I get overshadowed in groups.

  “I bet. I’ll try to listen better.”

  One nod and Lauren pointed to the floor beside the bed.

  “You want to sleep there tonight?”

  Yes, she mouthed.

  “You’re not afraid of me eating you in your sleep?”

  She snorted and shook her head.

  You won’t. I’m too gristly.

  Ha. Lauren put the chalkboard away and stood.

  “Wait. You can have the bed with Adrianna if you want it. I don’t sleep much, so the mattress would be wasted on me.”

  The ghost of a smile took her lips, and she mouthed, thank you, before she disappeared down the stairs.

  Kaegan could hear them, smell them even, but so far hadn’t caught a glimpse of the beast they hunted.

  “This is a bad idea,” Colten warned.

  “You have any other ideas on easy game that’s active this time of the evening?” Ben asked.

  “Easy? Have you ever hunted boar before? They’re mean as sin, especially if you sneak up on them.”

  “Soren needs red meat and a rabbit or two won’t do,” Kaegan whispered. “We could use the protein too. Don’t go for the big daddy. Just pick off a smaller one, and get out of the way.”

  Colten muttered, “I can’t believe we’re reduced to feeding a freaking zombie now. Some fighters we are.”

  Anger coursed his veins, red and blinding until all he could think about was wrapping his fingers around Colten’s throat. Closing his eyes, he counted to ten, and then ground out, “If you call her a zombie again, your nose will match Mark’s.”

  “Geez, man. You’re so touchy now.”

  “He’s got it bad,” Ben said.

  Bad? Nah. He’d liked girls before. It had been a few years since he’d had any kind of steady relationship with one, but bad? So he thought about her more than was maybe healthy. And he worried about her wellbeing. And when people insulted her, he wanted to kill them slowly. Okay, so maybe he did have it worse than he ever had before, but it was Soren. She was different. Not just the way she looked, which enamored him more every time he saw her, but she was kind. Not polite-kind to trick people into liking her, but she was someone who honestly cared about the feelings of others. And she did what she thought was right no matter what anyone else thought of her. She was respectable, beautiful—this gorgeous warrior who had consumed him, mind and body, without any effort at all. And when she fought? She was an artist.