“Wow.”
“Yeah. So we took him to a town, one that had put up fences and locked out the zombies. They let us in but they almost killed him because he’d been bitten. A nurse helped me save him, but a doctor tried to kill him.”
“Westbrook?”
Ali nods, flexing her jaw once quickly as though relieving tension. “Westbrook. Jordan survived but that guy wouldn’t let it go. When I got pregnant he couldn’t take it anymore. He called my baby a half-demon. Then he started sending people in to kill anyone who didn’t agree with him, so we ran. That was the last we heard from him and his Colonies for years, but the threat was always there. We always wondered if he’d run out of room and come after us again. And what do you know? He did.”
“I’m sorry,” I say grudgingly, unable to look at her. “We screwed up. Because of us they think you were making a deal with Marlow to come at them. We didn’t know.”
She surprises me when she smiles at me faintly. She shocks me when she reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear in a gesture so motherly it makes me cringe. “You gave us a reason to finish this, once and for all. To put an end to the wondering and worrying of when he’ll come after us again. It’s a relief,” she laughs. “Thank you for that.”
I look away, pulling my hair out of her reach. “I don’t think anyone should be thanking me for anything.”
“Too late.”
I open my mouth to reply, but I never get the chance. The sun is fading, evening is coming, and suddenly in the peaceful green glen where Crenshaw has made his home, a cry rings out.
“Incoming!”
I look around anxiously, trying to find the source of the shout.
“What’s happening?”
Ali’s face is tight, her hands clamping down on the rolled gauze in her hand so hard it dissolves into a mad mess of lazy loops through her fingers.
“Zombies,” she tells me tensely, her eyes on the makeshift road. Men and women are running down it. They’re heading for the entrance to the park. “Probably people too. They made the same announcement when Trent and the herd showed up.”
Something in me aches. It clenches hard and holds that way. It hurts and I hate it, but it’s good. I know what it is.
It’s hope.
I move to fall in line with the people running down the road. Ali grabs my arm hard.
“No. We don’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Medics and explosives experts—we’re too valuable to risk losing. It’s why we’re hidden away in the middle of the woods.”
“Not me.” I pull my arm away, shaking my head. “I’m a fighter. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”
I run for the road. If Ali calls after me, I don’t hear it. All I hear is the pound of feet on packed dirt. It’s a steady rhythm that loosens the tightness in my chest. It’s a song I know in my veins. One beating in my blood louder and louder with every step. I’m running toward something I don’t understand, but still it’s familiar. Still I know it.
When we reach the clearing barricaded by fire still pouring black smoke into the air, I don’t slow. The rest do, but I don’t. I run. I run toward the fire and the haze. I run into the darkness blotting out the sun. To the rancid air stinging in my lungs, the smoke burning my eyes. I can barely breathe, I can barely see, and all I can hear is the persistent pounding that’s beating against my body, begging to come in.
I search the ugly gray world until I find it. Silhouettes of black against the darkness. There are so many of them. So many that I don’t know.
And there’s one I’d know anywhere.
When I see him, it’s in me: the beat of his heart – the one I’d follow to the ends of the earth – it’s in my blood. It’s not calling me, it’s pushing me. It’s willing me to him until I leap into his open arms and feel his warmth, his strength.
His relentless life.
Chapter Seventeen
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper against his skin, my mouth pressed to his. “I thought I lost you.”
He doesn’t answer me. He holds onto me, his mouth over mine and his hands in my hair. I don’t need words from him. I don’t even know what ones I’m saying to him, they simply spill out in an avalanche of everything I avoid and bury too deep to find. I don’t need to know where he was or what happened. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I lost him, just like I always knew I would, but by some strange, insane, otherworldly twist of fate and luck, I have him back.
All around us the pyres still burn as more bodies are thrown on them. I hear people shouting, fighting, struggling. We should help them. We should stand and fight against the onslaught of zombies that will never end. But if they’ll always be there, then they can wait. We can take one moment in this stupid, thieving world and make it ours. Just his and mine, alone in the crowd and the chaos.
“Ryan!”
With Trent.
I groan, letting my head drop back until I’m staring up at the distorted sky.
“Hey, man,” Ryan chuckles. He squeezes me to him tightly one last time before letting me go.
I’ve never been so annoyed with him. Or Trent. Or the world.
“Good to see you’re still alive.”
I nearly die when Trent hugs him. Trent, my Robo-Boy, my unfeeling machine of a strange, bizarro man, hugs another human being. And he does it like he means it.
“I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Andy,” Ryan admits when Trent lets him go.
“Did you come out through the tunnels?”
“No, we didn’t have time. We had to light a short fuse and if we’d gone into the tunnels, they’d have collapsed on us before we got far enough away. We snuck out of the showers just after we lit it and headed for the back. When the explosion happened it shook everyone up. The lights went out, the walls started crumbling. No one knew where it was coming from or if the building was going down. It was nuts. Andy hid us in a dark corner until the coast was clear, then we ran out the back toward the water.”
“But you can’t swim,” I protest.
Ryan blushes, embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. Andy was mad. He had to swim us both out. I laid there like a log and let him float me away.” He chuckles nervously. “I was panicking the whole time.”
He’s trying to play it off like it’s nothing, but I can tell from his body language that it was hard for him. Maybe even a little horrifying. But he hates that weakness and I get that so I let it go unnoticed.
“Once we were out, we headed for The Hive,” he continues. “Andy knew it’d be nearly deserted with most of Marlow’s men still up at the Colony. He said we had some recruiting to do.”
“People were willing to defect?” Trent asks.
“Oh yeah. Andy wasn’t kidding when he said there were some angry people over there. Seventeen people left with us.”
“Can they fight?”
“A good portion, yeah.” Ryan searches the people around us. The crowd is thinning as the fight dies down. Not nearly as many zombies followed Ryan and the others here as followed Trent. I know part of that is the fires; they don’t like the scent of their own. “Where’s Vin?” Ryan asks suddenly.
I blink, surprised he cares. “He’s here somewhere. Probably with his flock.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Because we have a few to add to that flock.”
Ryan gathers together the newly arrived Hive members. Including Andy, looking cleaner than the last time I saw him, he’s right—there are seventeen. A lot of them are women and I realize when I see Freedom and a put-out-looking Elise, the girl who tried to mount Ryan the last time I saw her, that these women are from the stables. It makes me nervous whether they’ll really be happy to see Vin or not. If they’re angry enough at The Hive to run away given the chance, then I think they’re probably angry at Vin too.
“Vin!” Freedom shouts happily when she sees him.
Then again, what the hell do I know?
“You crazy bitch, who let you out?” Vin shouts back, opening up his arms.
Freedom runs into them, followed by Elise and four other women. They take him to the ground, all of them giggling and laughing, Vin being the loudest.