Rowan was in no position to make demands. He had no family. He was alone. There was no one on the council to protect him, no one to stand in his defense but himself.
“What have you to say?” Chief Orin was the oldest member of the tribe. “You may speak in your defense,” he said and the entire council fell silent. Chief Orin stood up from his seat directly across from the accused. His rail thin body was covered in a heavy fur, which he held at his neck. “Tell us what you saw.”
“The infected are gathering,” Rowan said, looking over the crowd as every pair of eyes locked on to his. “It was an army, like the stories of the old world.”
“You know nothing of the old world,” Arkin interrupted.
“Silence,” Chief Orin said in a tone that matched the aggravation on his face. “Let him speak.”
Rowan took a deep breath and slowly let it out. The entire council focused squarely on him. He had to choose his terms carefully. If the infected were truly gathering, then the fate of the entire tribe would depend on his every word.
3
Rowan wasn’t sure if he’d convinced the entire council, but he’d done enough to persuade Chief Orin to send out a hunting party. Rowan was hopeful they’d see sufficient proof and stop his inevitable banishment. More important, he hoped they’d see enough to convince them to do something that might save them all.
An early morning light crept between the buildings as Rowan reached the street. He hadn’t been able to sleep, stuck in his makeshift prison, waiting for his chance to prove his innocence. No one in the hunting party spoke, starting forward by the silent command of hand signals. They reached the far side of the road before a series of calls rang out from the rear of the group, bringing the hunting party to a stop.
Long shadows covered the streets, leaving Rowan unable to identify the caller. He was shocked to see Arkin step out into the light. Arkin rested a hand on the hilt of the katana sword sheathed at his waist. Rowan had always been mesmerized by the sight of the weapon, his imagination running wild with what Arkin was capable of doing with the blade. The elder council member eyed Rowan coldly and then motioned for the group to move ahead. They started off again before Rowan had time to consider why Arkin had joined them.
The party split twice before they reached the coliseum, the great crumbling structure once used by the old world for games of strength and skill. Rowan was left with two others in his party, moving through the shadows of the tallest buildings of the city. There was a great distance to cross before reaching the far edge of Cheyenne. There was a good chance they would see mid-day before they returned home.
The group stopped for a moment of rest and water. Rowan stood near a line of automobiles, most of which were covered by the overgrown grass and weeds reaching up from the cracks in the road. He was focused on the next street over. He’d seen movement along the adjacent sidewalk and the quickness told him that it wasn’t one of the dead. Only the infected could move with such speed.
The rest of the party headed north, but Rowan held still. He stayed focused on the parallel road. A single figure stepped out from behind the corner of a building for a brief moment and then pulled back. Rowan raised his bow and notched an arrow. He thought to call out an alarm to warn the others, but he wanted to be sure.
Several long strides brought him across the street. He slid along the front wall of the building toward the main entrance, the tip of his arrow holding steady on the other end of the structure. He pulled the bowstring until it was perfectly tight. A slight movement revealed a face beyond the shadows and only a last second recognition kept him from releasing the projectile.
“Mia?” He called out the name, unable to believe his eyes. “Is that you?” he whispered.
There was a long silence before a slender frame pulled away from the building. Mia looked up at Rowan like a scared child. He scanned the road behind him to make sure no one else could see them. A second figure had joined Mia by the time he looked back.
“Sorry” was all she could muster in her defense. “He wouldn’t let me leave without him.”
Rowan came to a panic-stricken stop. He glared at the wide and fearful eyes of Mia’s younger brother, Jonah.
“You can’t be serious,” Rowan said. “Like I’m not in enough trouble.” Mia didn’t appear to have an acceptable justification. “You have to get out of here.”
“You’re not my husband yet,” Mia said.
Rowan rolled his eyes. “And chances are that I never will be.” His comment hit her harder than he intended. She growled at him in defiance. “Your father’s going to kill you.” He shook his head. “Right after he kills me.”
Jonah rushed toward him, and Rowan was forced to slide his bow over his shoulder. He knelt down and the boy wrapped his arms around him. Jonah was only ten years old, but he was as solid as an oak tree. Mia was more like the boy’s mother than his sister.
“She said you were going away.”
Rowan looked up at Mia and held on to a fake smile. “Looks like my banishment is becoming an accepted fact.” He didn’t wait for a response, focusing on Jonah. “I’m not going anywhere.” He wasn’t sure he believed that. “Take your sister’s hand.”
Rowan’s nervous hesitation showed in a constant need to look over his shoulder. He didn’t want the hunting party to see his newfound followers, but he had to let them know he was on the move.
“You’re going to follow that road,” he said to Mia and motioned at the street adjacent to the building, “while I follow the rest of my hunting party. I’ll wait for you at every crossing, and then we’ll move forward together.” He looked at the top of the building across the street. The structures at the edge of the city were shorter, most of them three stories or less. “They’ll want to go up for a look to see beyond the boundary.” He tapped his hand nervously on the end of his bow. “I don’t want to leave you down here by yourself.”
“We’ll stay back,” Mia said. “We’ll wait for you to come down once we get that far and we’ll go back together.”
Rowan couldn’t get past the lunacy of her decision to follow him.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I wanted to make sure the party wasn’t going to take you out and—”
Rowan held his hands up. “All right, I get it.” He was shocked by her thought. He’d never imagined that the council might have sent him out, in part, to make sure he never made it back. “I’m going to show them that I was telling the truth.”
Mia nodded silently.
Rowan gave Jonah a playful shove and then sprinted back across the street. It took him a while to catch up with the others from his group. He had to slow down at every cross street and wait until Mia and Jonah showed themselves before he could continue. Rowan found himself right on top of the others before he realized it.
“Where have you been?”
He acknowledged Garret with a nod but nothing more. Garret was a few seasons older than him and they did not know each other well. Barrick was an older man. He’d known Rowan’s father and he’d always been kind. The trio was an odd pairing and Rowan could only guess Arkin had matched him up with Garret to keep an eye on him.
Mia’s concerns darted back and forth in his mind. He slid an eye toward Barrick while the older hunter drank from his waterskin. Could they actually do it? he asked himself. If the plan were to get rid of him, would these two be the ones to handle the task? He shook his head no to the silent question. He had to believe Chief Orin was giving him the chance to prove himself and validate what he saw.
They were off again with no words between them. Rowan kept his bow ready with an arrow notched to fly. It took him several anxious moments to find Mia at the next crossing, and his lingering drew the ire of Garret. He made it obvious that he had no interest in being on the hunt and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
The size of the buildings gave a hint at the distance the hunters had traveled. The shorter structures acted as a signal that the
vast clearing between the ruins and the forests the infected claimed as their own awaited on the other side. The sun was hidden behind a wall of thick, billowing clouds. Brief moments of light served as a reminder to Rowan of how long he’d gone without sleep. The burning in his eyes told him his senses would soon be worthless.
The history of the Cheyenne Tribe spoke of a time when the infected could not venture out into the light of day. The vile creatures had evolved over generations, toughening their skin and even learning to communicate with one another. They gathered in the early days, nearly wiping out humanity in one fell swoop. They’d become far more sophisticated than the lowly, bloodthirsty assailants they once were.
“Up.”
The one-word command caused Rowan to shake. His senses were failing as exhaustion took hold. He studied the scene ahead and understood what Garret meant to do. They were near the clearing and the true danger of their search was at hand. The buildings closest to the boundary were the most treacherous. The dead had a way of trapping careless wanderers in the darkness. Rowan’s mind was on something else. The vision of the infected mass rushing into the city prominently played over and over in his head.
Garret and Barrick disappeared through a busted doorway before he could react. His concern for the hidden, trailing party kept him from following. Mia waved at him from a block away, letting him know they were safe. Rowan caught sight of Jonah’s cautious smile before dashing in after Garret.
Light from the cloud-covered sky did little to break the darkness within the long dead building. A series of shifting steps focused his mind, and Rowan slipped his bow over his shoulder and pulled his knife free in one fluid movement. A familiar birdcall helped him locate the others, and he rushed up a flight of stairs to find them waiting on him.
“You lead,” Garret said. “I’m not going to end up like Darian, looking for you in the dark.”
The remark was particularly harsh, and Rowan had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping back. He slipped ahead of Barrick and caught Garret in the chest with his elbow as he passed him on the stairs. Rowan kept moving, not wanting to give Garret time to make a fight of it. They were running a moment later, bounding up the stairs, pausing at each landing to make sure there wasn’t anyone or anything waiting for them.
All of the doors leading into the stairway were barred from the inside. The building had no doubt been the last holding ground of some long lost group foolish enough to try to make a stand. The city was filled with the remnants of man, most of them now among the infected or the undead. There were others living in the city outside of the tribe and those drifters were oftentimes the most dangerous encounters.
The door to the roof opened with a loud screech. Rowan stepped out on to the blacktop and immediately drew his bow, holding the string back as he scanned the flat surface. Garret and Barrick moved out from behind him and the trio cleared the rooftop. Figures dotted the tops of the closest buildings all around them. Rowan found Arkin on the far side of the adjacent building, his eyes focused on the clearing. Rowan put his bow away and crept closer to the edge. He looked out beyond the remaining city block at the wide, lush lowland. He scanned the overgrown field all the way to the distant forest border. Rowan could barely breathe.
The grassland was alive in a way none of them could have imagined it. The horror of what Rowan and Darian saw was in full view. The infected had laid siege on the edge of the city, taking over the buildings as they went. A sudden gasp for air from Garret told Rowan that he was not alone in his horror.
“How could there be so many?”
Rowan didn’t have an answer to the question. He was drawn to movement along the roofs of several of the buildings ahead of them. In a sudden panic, he looked down at the streets. Dark figures rushed from one building to the next, and the vision was highlighted by a scream from somewhere in the distance behind them. Rowan’s concern turned to what only he knew.
“Mia.”
♦
Rowan tripped at the top of the first flight of stairs but managed to keep himself upright by grabbing the railing. Garret was yelling at him from the top of the building, but Rowan’s mind was moving too fast to piece together the warning. He got down on the ground floor in a matter of seconds with no thought for his own safety. Another scream spurred him to move faster than his mind could process what he was doing.
There was enough light to push back most of the shadows covering the street. Rowan saw movement rushing toward him from the buildings lining the edge of the city. He turned his back on them, his heart pounding in his ears. Rowan was focused on the last place he saw her.
It was the dead-speak that let him know what was chasing him. He’d been right about the infected. The tribe would have to believe him, but none of that mattered now. Mia was in trouble and that single thought kept him moving. He raced through two intersections and slowed before he reached a building on the corner. He was aware of the movement behind him, but it was the shadows ahead that grabbed his attention.
“Rowan.”
He leapt forward at the sound of Mia’s cry. She was across the street, running wildly, one hand grasping a knife dripping with blood. Two figures lay slumped over in the middle of the road with two more sprinting after her. Rowan fired twice, both arrows finding their mark. One of the infected fell back and slammed onto the weed-covered pavement. The shafts of the projectiles buried deep into the pale skin, but the man was already picking himself up off the ground.
The second figure crossed into the morning light and revealed itself as a woman. Her naked skin exuded the violet stains of her heinous acts, highlighted by the dark veins pumping the infection through her body. The woman closed in on Mia with unmatchable speed, but before Rowan could act, his damsel saved herself.
Mia spun around with considerable force, bringing her knife across her body as she did. The blade caught the infected woman near the temple, the tip popping out the other side of her head. The woman froze for a moment, before her head slid off the blade and her body collapsed onto the ground. Rowan reached the man before he could get off the ground, sliding his knife beneath the base of his skull. He reached Mia a second later. Rowan tried to throw his arms around her, but she pushed him away and then rushed back in the direction she’d come.
“I can’t find him.”
The sudden realization that Jonah was missing threw Rowan into a desperate panic. He looked back and forth along the street, unable to decide which way he should go. His eyes found a growing pack of infected racing toward them, and he knew they had to move. He reached Mia in a few long strides, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled. She started running with him, but the terror quickly consumed them.
“We have to find him,” she screamed as tears ran down her cheeks. “I can’t leave him out here alone.”
“Where was he?”
Mia tugged against his grip, but he refused to let her go.
“They rushed us from the other end of the building,” she explained. “I didn’t see them until they were right on top of us.”
Rowan eyed the far end of the street and aimed them toward it. Sunlight had worked its way over the rising structures, but it gave no hint as to the whereabouts of the lost boy. They reached the next intersection, and Rowan forced himself to stop. The echoing dead-speak grew louder by the second as the trailing group of infected appeared to double in size with every glance. A shifting movement several blocks to the north caught his eye.
“Jonah.”
Rowan started off again, this time with a target in mind. He wasn’t certain if the figure was Jonah, but he guessed that if it was one of the infected that it was chasing something or someone. The sound of a fight erupted behind them and Rowan knew the hunting party had entered the fray. He didn’t want to consider how furious Arkin was going to be when he discovered that his children were out in the streets.
The chase continued until they reached the last row of buildings. The sight of the decrepit road coming to an abrupt end was a shocki
ng reminder of how far from safety they truly were. Rowan watched his target lunge into the high grass beyond the boundary, and the yelp that followed caused him to push his legs to the brink. He came to a sliding stop where the concrete cracked, and Mia nearly bowled into him from behind.
“What are you—”
“Hush,” he said, sliding a finger to his lips. He scanned the edge of the grass before finally acknowledging her desire to press forward. “Whoever it was,” he whispered, “they’ve stopped moving.”
Every member of the tribe had a fear of the city boundary. All of their lives they’d been warned that the outlands beyond the city belonged to the infected. Rowen eyed the towering grass, the imposing stalks standing taller than him by at least a foot. He hesitated as he tried to gather his courage.
“Jonah’s in there,” Mia said. “We can’t leave him.”
Rowan swallowed hard and forced himself to take a step forward. He tightened his grip around the hilt of his knife, squeezing until his knuckles turned white. It took several steps to reach the grass. Rowan took one last look at Mia’s anxious face and then pulled the grass apart and walked into the outlands.
4
The tall grass absorbed the sounds of the dead city. The moment Rowan disappeared within the towering meadow, he felt disconnected from the world he’d known all his life. He’d never known anyone who’d ventured beyond the boundary except for the wanderers who claimed no allegiance to any of the tribes. Few of the wanderers remained and the tribes avoided most at all costs.
Every step resonated in Rowan’s mind like a stomping giant. He was holding his breath and the heat built in his chest until he was forced to let it out. Rowan didn’t know what he was looking for, nor was he certain Jonah had come this way. He held his knife out in front of his chest, ready to strike at the first sign of movement. In the end, a low, hoarse sound caused him to stop.
The Decaying World Saga Box Set [Prequel #1-#2 & Books #1-#2] Page 46
