“Mom?” she whispered, the shock freezing her to core. It had to be, right? She’d just seen the Alpha’s last human memories. Iris had been there. Her father had been too—Sanna could still see the man’s smooth, chiseled face and brilliant blue eyes.
Kai pulled Sanna behind him, snatching a discarded sword from the ground and swung. “Stay away!”
The Alpha averted. He tried again and she leapt onto the overturn trailer, her head cocking to one side.
Kai fell to his knees, the sword clanging to the ground beside him. The familiar tang of his blood snapped Sanna back to the present. She sank beside him, studying the wound. The puncture was short and deep, and filled her with a sense of icy dread.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Kai said.
“No,” Sanna lied. There was a lot of blood. Too much. She yanked a scarf off of a nearby corpse and pressed it to his side. Kai gritted his teeth. “Here,” she took his hand and replaced her own. “Hold this as tight as you can.”
Kai did as she asked, grimacing. “You should leave me. If you follow the creek—”
“I won’t.” She studied the campground. The Infected had returned, creeping along the edge of the camp like giant rats. A few brave ones pounced on the half-eaten kills and resumed their greedy feasting.
It was only a matter of time before they smelled Kai’s fresh blood, and the Alpha was rousted from her eerie stupor. A body in gray fatigues writhed, the virus taking over. An overturned sled was nearby, along with a heap of firewood.
Sanna rushed to the sled, careful not make a sound. It was long enough to carry Kai. If she tied him too it, they might get out of here fast enough to live. She grabbed the sled’s lead and hurried to Kai.
She froze.
The Infected were staring right at her. Every last one of them. Blood stained their gaunt faces and their bellies were distended from recent gorging. Twig was in the center of camp, his tattered skin hanging from his jawbone like old rags. He shuffled closer; his limp was more pronounced than before. His eyes were white marbles stuffed into grisly sockets. “Kill her. Bring me the human. Now.”
The Infected surged forward while more poured out of the forest. Sanna took up the sword and as a stage two took a running leap, its scabby arms outstretched. She swung and missed. This was it. She’d failed—
The Alpha grabbed the stage two in midair, slamming it to the ground.
“Impossible!” Twig gasped, blood oozing from the musculature of his face.
The stage two rose onto all fours and reared his head, shooting venom. The Alpha ducked, but a few drops sizzled on her ashen cheek, burrowing deep. She howled, stomping on the stage two’s neck, then threw the stage one into the crowd knocking over several others. More pounced in unison, but the Alpha held her own, snapping and snarling as she flung them off with ease.
She’s defending me, like the Infected from the basement. But why? She hadn’t defeated in a fight for dominance.
A stage one leapt over the others, its claws reaching for the Alpha’s neck. Sanna lurched into action, cutting it down with a single blow to the head. It sagged to the ground, lifeless.
Infected poured out the forest, joining the onslaught while the corpses scattered throughout the campground twitched to life. Sanna and the Alpha were locked in separate battles, fighting the endless stream of Infected with brutal efficiency.
“Kill them!” Twig fell to his knees. “Kill them both!”
I have to get to Twig. It’s the only way to stop this. Sanna cut her way through the horde, dodging the bites and venom. The rest of the Infected receded, leaving Sanna and Twig in the center. Or rather, what was left of him. His right arm now hung by a grisly thread and the rest of him was a mass of seething tissue
“What are you doing?” He roared to the retreating horde. “Get back here! I order you.”
His arm sloughed off.
“You’re not an Omega,” Sanna stalked closer. “That’s why you’re falling apart, isn’t it? You weren’t made to control them.”
“I can do whatever I want!” Twig turned to the Infected, his lone hand squeezing into a fist. Sanna sensed he was calling to them, ordering to attack. He coughed, spitting teeth.
“If you keep this up, I won’t even have to kill you.”
“You’re a...a mistake. An abomination!” Twig crawled backwards. “You think I’m the only one who’s after you? The whole western horde is coming! You’ll be squashed like a bug, along with whichever Omega dared to create you.” His leg detached off and a trickle of dark blood oozed from the stump.” He snapped to the Alpha. “What are you waiting for. Kill her! KILL HER!”
“She’s not yours anymore. Haven’t you noticed? None of them are.”
Twig’s glistening jaw dropped. He stared at the infected standing around them in a silent gray ring. “H-how? You’re not an Omega—”
“But my father was. And the Alpha was my mother, before he turned her.” Sanna pressed the tip of her sword to his throat. “Thanks for reuniting us.”
“Infected don’t have human memories! You’re controlling her. Using her, just like I did.”
“Are you sure about that?” Sanna bent down, pressing her fingers to Twig’s raw temple. A series of places shuffled before her eyes, rooms of different shapes and colors. She’d be land in one place—a house, or a car—only for it to morph into another. Garbled voices filled her ears, each ending in a terrified scream. It was a disjointed chaos, a dozen different deaths playing out in her mind, overlapping each other.
“Stop it!” Twig cried.
A cold, hard table stretched beneath her. Machines crowded around her, their whirling and beeping drowning the death screams. A web of wires and tubes stemmed from her chest, which was cleaved open in a grisly cavern.
“God, were you drunk when you made this?” A strange voice said. She couldn’t see his face beyond the brilliant light that blazed over head.
“He’s an ugly bastard, but he’ll do. We need more help around here and we don’t have time to wait around for the virus to develop naturally. This one should be just strong enough to keep the humans in line but won’t cause us any trouble. Small too. Can keep him anywhere. The perfect servant.”
Silver flashed in the light. A needle hovered close to his eye.
“GET OUT!” Twig jerked away, breaking the connection.
Sanna blinked as the vision dissolved. Her sword was still pressed to his throat, but her arm trembled. “You’re not Infected. And you’re not human either. You’re something in between, like me.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Twig glared up at her, his face a seething red mask. “I might’ve been made from scraps, but I’ve accomplished more then they ever said I could. I’ve controlled an Alpha. That’ll show them I’m just as powerful—just as worthy they are!”
“Don’t you get it? The Omegas won’t care. They’ll see you falling apart and—”
Twig snapped the bone of is right arm against the frozen earth and rammed into Sanna’s chest. She gasped, tasting blood. A coolness radiated through her core.
“Some demon you are,” Twig sneered as he dragged her closer, a fish on a pike. “Pathetic.”
Sanna cried out, swinging her sword arm. Twig’s bloody skull rolled off his body and into the snow, lifeless.
“Go away,” she whispered to the surrounding infected, then collapsed to the ground. The star-washed sky spread above her. In its dark depths, she saw her mother’s face.
A woman who’d loved a monster so much she became one herself.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
After three days of rest inside one of Cerise’s trailers, Sanna’s wounds healed enough to travel, though the one on her chest remained an ugly knot of flesh.
She chose her path carefully, remembering Kai’s fevered instructions from the day before. He was strapped to the sled she pulled, unconscious, with Frankie nestled beside him. The dog had refused to move, intent on keeping his shivering master warm.
Follow t
he stream. Up the hill. Kai had murmured over and over when she’d first awoke. He was slumped against the wall, his face slicked in sweat.
She understood his words as the directions needed to finish their journey and immediately gathered whatever she could find. They set out within minutes. On that first day, the forest had been eerily empty of Infected, but by the second they’d returned with a vengeance and didn’t listen to her at all.
It seemed as if Twig’s demise had broken their chain of command and left them to roam the territory like starving dogs.
Sanna froze as yet another pair of stage twos blocked her path and another two quickly flanked her on either side. They all had the strong, wiry bodies of good hunters. She was out of weapons, having lost the last of them in a skirmish with a Plains hunchback that morning.
She shifted her stance, desperate to protect Kai. Her foot nudged a rock loose beneath the snow. She grabbed it, ready to strike. The stage twos snarled.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” a woman’s husky voice filtered through the trees. “I can’t suppress their instincts.”
Iris. She sounded just like she had in Cate’s memory. Sanna spotted her picking her way through the brush, her long chestnut hair woven into simple braids. Her face hadn’t changed either, oval-shaped with a hooked nose and eyes so fiercely blue they seemed to glow in the forest’s February gloom. Sanna guessed she was probably in her thirties or forties. But, then again, Twig had looked like a child, so there was no way of knowing for sure.
The woman’s gaze zeroed in on the festering wound above Sanna’s elbow. “You’ve met your mother, I see? I’d recognize those teeth marks anywhere.”
“She, uh, tried to kill me. Multiple times, actually.”
“Humph!” Iris scoffed. “If she wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be standing here, now would you? Always difficult to control, that one, even when she was human. I knew that upstart would never manage.”
“You mean Twig?”
“Yes. Tried to do too much, that one. Like me, he was made from corspses and given life by the virus, but his ambition was tore him apart.” She shifted her focus to the charred holes in Sanna’s clothes. “So, you heal like your father, hmm? You should know, then, that there’s a limit. Severe injuries to the heart or brain will kill you. Bullets must be removed. Fire is deadly too, if enough of you is burned. No matter what, when you heal, you are at your weakest, so always find a safe place to hide. Bury yourself deep, if you must. And feed after. Always. If you don’t, the virus may take over and you won’t remember what you’ve done until its satisfied. He hated that, your father.”
“Virus?” Sanna’s stomach fell. “So...I’m unclean? Infected?”
“Infected is a human word and beneath us,” Iris snapped her fingers, and a stage one took the sled’s rope from Sanna, his bloodshot eyes glazed. “Stop using it.”
“So, what am I, then?”
“A mystery, for the most part,” Iris started back the way she came. Her Infected escorts followed while the stage one shuffled behind her, strands of drool hanging from his mouth. “No Omega has ever reproduced, let alone with a human, so I suppose you might be something entirely new. And what you do with that gift is entirely up to you.”
Frustration mounted inside Sanna. “If no one knows what I am, then why did Twig call me an abomination? Why did he try to kill me from the start?”
“He, like so many before him, sensed you were different. It’s in our nature to root out abnormalities and destroy them. Omegas have been sending crusaders here to kill you since you were born. A single cancerous cell can overtake an entire organism if left unchecked.”
“I’m like a virus...to the virus?”
“Your father said you would either kill the Omegas or perfect them.”
Iris didn’t speak again for a long while, cautioning that if she didn’t keep her concentration on the Infected, they could attack at any moment. “They’re very territorial, you see, and we are trespassing. If they are part of a horde, then you can challenge the strongest among them. When they are rogues like these, however, it becomes much more time consuming.”
Sanna nodded. She was still in no condition to fight, and the Infected watching them from all angles made her increasingly nervous. Many were outright aggressive—snarling and snapping as their downtrodden group walked by. Iris responded by keeping her pace slow and deliberate while avoiding their menacing stare.
By midafternoon they passed the waterfall Sanna recognized from her mother’s memories. They climbed a steep hill next, and Iris’s house sat on the far end of a snowy meadow. The front door swung open. A young girl stood in the doorway, her jet-black hair braided into stubby pigtails. Frankie yapped and bolted across the snow, launching himself into her waiting arms. He wiggled and laved her chin, brimming with glee.
This must be Esme. She was a small, spindly thing, with knobby knees and Kai’s dark coloring. She let Frankie go as they approached, her smile dimming. “Where is he?”
Iris glanced at the stage one pulling the sled.
Esme’s brows knitted together, her mouth forming a soft “o”. She rushed to her brother’s side. “Who’d you piss off this time, Kai?”
Kai’s eyes cracked open. “You shouldn’t talk like that, Esme.”
Esme’s lips pressed into a quivering smile.
“Get him inside,” Iris instructed. “Quickly.”
Esme tried to help Kai stand, but she was too weak. Sanna stepped in, taking Kai’s other arm, and together they helped him into Iris’s cabin. It was a small, tidy space with a wood stove in the center of one wall and two pallets on the floor. This was where my mother was when the hybrids attacked. With me.
Kai was fast asleep by the time they heaved him onto the nearest pallet. Sanna grabbed a pitcher of water from the stove and brought it over, along with what she hoped was a clean cloth.
“I’ll do it!” Esme said, snatching both from her. “You’ve done enough. How could you let this happen? I thought you were like Iris.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” A sickly-sweet smell wafted from the girl’s hair that made Sanna instantly uneasy.
“You can control the Infected, right?” Esme spoke slowly, as if Sanna were the child. She wetted the cloth and pressed it to Kai’s forehead. “So why is he so badly hurt?”
Iris brushed by Sanna before she could respond, lighting a kerosene lamp near his wounded side and adjusting it so a yellowish glow flooded the room. “All right. We begin, yes? Esme, get my basket. I’ll stitch him while you get that tea ready that I showed you.”
Esme bumped into Sanna’s shoulder as she walked past. Her scent was growing stronger, and Sanna feared it was the virus starting to take hold in her body. covered her nose and rushed out of the cramped space. She burst through the door, into the cool afternoon air, and sank down, her elbows propped on her knees.
Frankie trotted up to her, nudging her hand for pets. Sanna obliged, lost in troubling thoughts.
The door flung open and Iris emerged. Her face was still tight, like a mask, but her neat braids had frayed slightly. “There you are. I did not see you leave.”
Sanna had waited for Iris to find her, not wanting Kai or Esme to overhear their conversation. “There’s something wrong with her, isn’t there? I can smell it.”
“Your senses must be improving. That’s good. You’ll need them if you’re to build a horde of your own.”
“Is she...changing?”
Iris blinked. “In the west, the humans have two choices. Be food or become part of the horde. Only the strongest are allowed to join. It is a great honor.”
“An honor? I’m sure Esme doesn’t want to become a monster who kills the people she loves.”
Iris’s lips curled into a mocking grin. “As if humans ever needed a virus to do that.”
Sanna let that one slide. “How long does she have?”
“That is...unknowable.”
“Is there a cure? Twig used th
e promise of one to take over that camp.”
“It’s possible he knew of one. The Omegas were working on a way to inocoluate humans whenI left with your father. Starvation was a real threat when I left. Too many Infected.”
“We have to go then,” Sanna bolted up. “We have to find it and bring it back before Esme turns.”
Iris tutted. “You will be killed before you even cross the mountains. They will not care who your father is, only that you are a threat. Forget about the girl. She is unnecessary to your survival.”
“Why am I here then?” Sanna asked as Iris continued to the backyard, where two Infected waited like statues. They were stage twos, one male and one female. Sanna wondered if they were the same ones who had attacked Kai the first time he met Iris. They bent down to Iris’s level, and she pressed a tender hand to each of their cheeks.
“The humans sensed you were different, yes? They were threatened by you. Your face is changing. Your body. Soon they will attack you on sight. I will teach you how to stay hidden. How to defend yourself. You should be safe, so long as you are careful. Sometimes an explorer will arrive from the west, like this Twig. You will kill them not because you protect the humans, but because the Omegas must not know you exist.”
“And what about you?”
“I will stay with you, as your father asked.” Iris removed her hand, and the stage twos jerked as if waking from slumber, and immediately sprinted for the forest. “You will likely have a longer lifespan than a human, but a shorter one than an Omega. Once you die, I will return to your father.”
“What if I moved around a lot? Or stayed outside the village walls? I could still be around people then, couldn’t I?”
“Rumors will start. Humans will notice. You will be driven out—or worse. There is no real place for you with humans or the Omegas. You must make your own.”
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