Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1)

by Ward, Tracey

  And that makes Marlow blind with rage.

  “Watch them,” he tells John quietly. “Keep an eye on the building in the north. I want to know when they start bringing people in.”

  “Do you want to try to take it?” John asks him.

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “I want you to watch it,” he reminds him impatiently. “I want you to wait, and when the time is right we’ll make our move.”

  He turns his back on all of us without further explanation.

  I want to play it cool and let him walk out like it doesn’t matter, but it does. If he plans to take the building, it’s the baseball stadium all over again. It’s my chance and I can’t handle it.

  “What’s our move?” I call after him.

  He heads for the door. Andy opens it for him and stands there like an obedient statue as Marlow passes through. His words are cast over his shoulder, faintly falling in the room and nearly impossible to pick up.

  “We’ll destroy it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Trent - Twenty One Years Old

  CLEAN BEDS! HOT SHOWERS!

  XBOX!

  Your salvation is here.

  “I can do without a real bed,” Kevin muses, looking up at the Colonists’ words spray painted over an old billboard. “I’ve even learned to like cold baths in the Sound, but they almost have me running for their doors with the Xbox thing.”

  “I’ve never played one before,” I comment.

  “You’re better off. You don’t know what you’re missing. Xbox is like sex – I barely remember what it was like but I sure as hell miss it.”

  Ryan laughs at him. “You’ve never had sex.”

  “Bethany Brookstone,” he counters longingly. He kicks at a piece of brick in the cracked, grassy street. “Summer I turned fourteen. She was fifteen. We were drunk on tequila she stole from her dad and it was the best night of my life, even after she threw up on me.”

  “Gross.”

  “Worth it.”

  “Shhh,” I shush them, my eyes sharply scanning the road to our right.

  “What’s up?” Ryan whispers, his hand already reaching for the pipe hanging from his belt. “Risen?”

  “No,” I mutter. A shadow moves slowly along the side of the building. Its eyes are glowing even in the dark, watching us. Stalking us.

  “Is that a dog?” Kevin asks hopefully.

  “It’s a wolf.”

  “Shit.”

  “Walk slowly to the left,” I tell him calmly. My eyes stay with the wolf, tracking him as he tracks us. “Go for the building with the fire escape.”

  “We can take it. It’s only one,” Ryan argues fervently.

  “They travel in packs. There’s more than one.”

  “Where?”

  We hear a growl at our backs. Low and ominous, vibrating deep in the barreled chest of a hungry animal. It’s a threat more dangerous than the dead because even if we did outnumber them – which I’m beginning to believe we do not – they’re fast. They don’t chase you clumsily the way an infected does. They hunt you with skill and a natural instinct older than the city they’re slowly invading. Their bite may not carry the Fever, but it threatens other infections that could prove just as fatal.

  “Okay, so it’s only two,” Ryan amends. “We can still—“

  “Four,” I correct him.

  “I don’t see them.”

  “We can’t see half of what Trent can see,” Kevin says, his words clipped and quick. “It doesn’t mean it’s not there. Come on, Ry. We’re going left. We’re leaving.”

  “Left isn’t an option any more,” I warn him. “On my count we run toward the one in the shadows.”

  “We’re running toward the wolves now?”

  “Three.”

  “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”

  “Two.”

  “Son of a bitch, Trent, what’s the plan?!”

  “Run!”

  We break into a sprint. We’re headed straight for the narrow side street with the wolf waiting in the dark, but once he sees us start to move he stops waiting. He launches forward in a dead run with his teeth bared and his eyes flashing like fire in the sunlight.

  I take the lead, putting myself closest to the oncoming animal. The skitter-scratch sound of claws on asphalt behind us grows into a monster of its own making, the sound closing in on Ryan and Kevin and stirring a fear in my gut that I have to force myself to ignore.

  One thing at a time, I remind myself.

  It’s going to be close. I’m running fast, the wolf is running faster, and I have to narrow the margin between us even quicker if I want to make this work. Just ten feet from his teeth and I push harder, sprint faster, and jump with all the strength I have in my body. My long legs launch me up and over him. He leaps with me, turning in the air and nipping at my feet. He gets a taste of my pant leg but my hands connect with the old steel bar at the bottom of a fire escape ladder before he can sink his teeth in. I’m able to yank my body up higher than my jump could have taken me, pulling me out of his reach. For a second. The ladder immediately starts to come down as it’s designed to do. It’s dipping me back into the fray.

  I swing out hard, clearing the wolf under me and launching myself farther down the road. The clang of the ladder continues behind me and I can only hope Ryan and Kevin get the hint to climb it because I don’t have time to explain it to them. I land a little off, collapsing on my right knee with a sharp ache, but I’m quick to recover. Getting my feet under me, I take up my sprint again. I run for the end of the road, the sound of the ladder jostling under the weight of a climber and the snarl of a jilted wolf close on my heels. From the sound of it only two wolves are following me. The others have stayed to try to convince Ryan and Kevin to come down to breakfast.

  I can’t outrun them. I’m fast but they’re undeniably faster, so when I make it to the end of the block and they haven’t taken me down yet I’m pretty pleased with myself. I also know I’m living on borrowed time.

  Luckily my salvation lies in the form of a taco.

  The Colonists have a small fleet of working trucks, but a couple of gangs have guys who have managed to keep one or two cars working as well. All of them use the streets of Seattle as their personal junk yard. Busted up cars and trucks can be found all over the city with their windows smashed out, seats removed, tires taken, engines ravaged by gearheads looking for parts.

  When I round the corner at the end of the block I find one these gut jobs; a tall, rusted food truck with a massive plastic taco attached to the top.

  I leap up onto the slanted hood, my feet slipping under me and almost sending me down onto the asphalt into the hungry jaws behind me. I’m able to grab hold of the windshield wipers and get my footing before they give way and snap off in my hands. From there I run up the windshield and onto the roof just as the wolves slam into the side of the truck angrily. They try to claw their way up onto the hood or defy gravity and climb the side, but it’s not happening. I’m safe. I’m stuck, but I’m safe.

  “You alright?!” Kevin calls.

  I look to find him and Ryan standing four stories up on the roof of the building next to me.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Literally or figuratively?” Ryan asks.

  I smile at him. “Both.”

  “Good.”

  “You got a plan?” Kevin inquires.

  “Don’t I always?”

  “You wanna share it with us?”

  “I’m going to try the fajitas.” I sink down to a sitting position on the roof, resting my back against the taco. “Maybe an enchilada.”

  “Get me a burrito. Extra guac.”

  “You got it.”

  It takes three hours and a Molotov cocktail to get me off the top of that truck. Kevin and Ryan fight for over five minutes of that time about who gets to throw it. Eventually Ryan wins out. He tosses it at the base of the truck and as the
flames scattered so do the wolves. It gives me the opening I need to jump off on the opposite side of the truck and run for the other side of town to the house. To the Hyperion.

  When we got to Seattle we were quick to discover both the Colonies and the gangs. We were lucky to cross paths with a couple guys from the Hydes first. They’re a small gang in the east with only seven members but they’re good guys and they were quick to explain the system to us.

  “The Colonies are religious psychos,” Wyatt, one of the Hydes, explained. “The stadiums are pimp if you believe what they say, but they’re creepy. I’ve heard they’re super old school inside. Women cooking and making babies, guys working the fields, and everyone getting together twice a day to sing and chant prayers. You can hear it sometimes if you get close enough but no one does.”

  “I’ve heard no one has ever left the Colonies,” his buddy added eagerly as though they were tandem telling ghost stories at night.

  Ryan frowned. “Maybe because it’s so nice inside.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I think it’s because you’re not allowed to leave.”

  Next they gave us the rundown on the other gangs, and we were quick to eliminate the Hive from our list of prospective homes. While the girls and the fighting ring peaked Kevin’s attention, the mention of the Honey shut it down. He looked at me meaningfully when Wyatt mentioned it and I nodded in agreement – we weren’t bringing Ryan around that.

  The Pikes are an aggressive group with bad blood between them and the Hive – a fight we wanted nothing to do with. The Westies are alright but they’re rumored to be wild and their house sits far to the west on the water. Their closest neighbors are the Hive and the Pikes, putting them in the middle of a war zone. The Elevens are young, their oldest member barely Ryan’s age, and Kevin and I didn’t want to take orders from a toddler. There’s an unnamed group of people living in a park on the other side of the Colonies. Not exactly a gang, the community is full of families. They farm and live quietly, steering clear of everyone else and keeping to themselves. No religious affiliation, no initiations. Just life. It sounded perfect at first. It was everything we were looking for. Right up until we heard about the raids.

  Turns out the Hive has a vendetta against them. At least once a month the Hornets go in and steal from them. They execute members, destroy crops, and generally terrorize the people there. And no one knows why.

  We were leaning toward joining the Hydes until Wyatt let it slip that they were in trouble with the Hive as well. Their gang had accrued gambling debts in the Arena, a cycle that sounded pretty common for them. That turned us off of them immediately because even though we hadn’t met him yet, Marlow didn’t sound like a man you wanted to be on the wrong side of. Turns out we were right.

  We said goodbye and good luck to Wyatt and the other Hyde, and we went our own way. We lived in an abandoned building for about a month, hunting in the parks where the deer wandered in and gathering rain in buckets on the roof. I sat up there for hours with my binoculars and watched how the world worked. There are others out there who don’t align themselves with gangs but they struggle going it alone. I saw two die during that month on the roof. One overtaken by zombies. The other in a fight with a Pike up in the north.

  That’s when I discovered the Hyperions.

  The body of the slain man lay in the street for more than a day with no animals or zombies discovering it. Eventually it was found by two men I hadn’t seen before – one about thirty years old and the other probably twenty. Almost the same age as Kevin and I. They talked over it for a couple of minutes, then each took up an arm, and they pulled the body to a nearby park. Once he was on the grass, they gathered branches and leaves and buried the stranger. He wasn’t under the dirt, meaning an animal or the dead could easily sniff him out, but he was covered. He was shown a final moment of kindness in an intolerably cruel world by people who had probably never known him.

  I watched them walk home, told Kevin what I’d seen, and two weeks later we were all Hyperions.

  Bray is there at the door when I get home from the afternoon spent with wolves. He opens it for me with a worried expression on his face. “Where have you been? It’s going to be dark soon.”

  “I was tied up. Are Kevin and Ryan back yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “They shouldn’t be far behind me. I’ll wait with you.”

  Bray nods without responding. He’s a good kid, sixteen years old with surprisingly solid nerves, but I make him uncomfortable. I make a lot of people uncomfortable. Some of it has to do with the way I talk, some of it has to do with the way I don’t talk, but the bulk of it is my eyes. According to Kevin they’re ‘kind of creepy’ in their brilliant blue hue and the intensity of the way I look at everything and everyone. It’s a fact I wasn’t ever made aware of living with my dad and the people on the Farm. He never said anything about it. Neither did Chris or Orsen. Neither did Zoe.

  “Lot of Risen out there?”

  I glance at Bray, considering his question until he frowns and looks away. “Same as always,” I finally answer.

  “Cool.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I was making conversation.”

  “And that’s what you want to converse about? The dead population?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  “You don’t find that topic interesting?”

  “No.” He shoots a fleeting glance my way. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you read, Bray?” I ask abruptly.

  “Um… yeah, a little.”

  “What do you read?”

  “Comics.”

  “What kind of comics?”

  “Batman if I can find them,” he says, his voice warming with enthusiasm.

  “Who’s your favorite villain?”

  He doesn’t hesitate. He has his answer locked and loaded. “Harley Quinn. I know she’s the villain’s girl and all that, but she’s hot and she’s crazy. I like her for some reason.”

  “You don’t have to defend your choice to me.”

  “What about you?” he asks happily. “Who’s your favorite Batman villain?”

  “I don’t read comics.”

  “Oh.” His shoulders slump slightly, his grin disappearing. “Then why were you asking me about them?”

  I smile at him sideways. “I was making conversation.”

  “You’re alive!”

  Ryan’s voice cuts through the evening and carries down the street to where Bray and I stand by the door to the Hyperion Theater.

  I turn my smile to him and wave. “Against all odds, yes, I am alive!”

  Kevin points to me accusingly. “Tell me you’ve got my burrito, brother!”

  I chuckle, showing him my empty hands. “Sorry. It wasn’t in the cards today.”

  He and Ryan jog the rest of the way to the theater. They nod to Bray in greeting, smiling happy and healthy and golden in the fading amber light of a long day. They look a lot alike – Ryan and Kevin. The same crooked smile. The same brown eyes. The same chestnut brown hair. They’re handsome and charming. Relatable.

  They’re nothing like me.

  “Hey, I got good news for you, Kevin,” Bray tells him excitedly.

  “What’s up, man?”

  “We got a message from the Hive. You won the bid to be in this week’s fight.”

  Kevin smacks my shoulder with the back of his hand. “We gotta get on the roof and train. I want to try out the new weapon.”

  Ryan grins mischievously. “You mean the Death Spike?”

  “You have to eat dinner first,” I caution.

  Kevin laughs. “Okay, Mom. I’ll eat all of my vegetables before I practice murdering Risen.”

  “And wait twenty minutes before you go swimming.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And wash behind your ears.”

  “Always.”

  “And don’t masturbate
more than once a week. You’ll go blind.”

  “Stop. It’s starting to feel too real.”

  I smile. “Pretty good imitation for a guy who never had a mom, right?”

  Kevin chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief. “Way to keep it awkward, dude.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vin

  I dream of Sin. It doesn’t happen very often but every now and then she creeps in. She’s not a zombie in my dreams. She’s not even sick. She’s just Sienna with her long dark hair and those full pink lips that tasted like berries. I don’t know what makes me think of her now but the dream I have is so vivid I wake up with a hard on for the first time in years. It would be easy to jerk it to my memory of her – her face is still fresh in my mind – but for some reason I can’t. It feels wrong and I don’t even know why.

  Instead I head into town. It’s early, the world still gray and half asleep, but it’s light enough to see and I’m careful about what roads I go down. No dead ends, no alleyways. I stay to the main roads where there’s room to move and when I find an infected, I have plenty of room to play.

  It’s a guy, I think. Hard to tell when they’re that far gone. When their face is falling off their skull and their eyes are leaking out of the sockets and down their cheeks in yellow streaks that look like snot. I don’t bother with my knife because he’s walking pudding at this point. When he gets close enough I kick him in the stomach and send him onto his back. Then I come at him with my boot. I kick his skull until it nearly snaps off at the neck and finally his body quits moving.

  It’s an exhausting way to kill. My knife would have been faster and even without it I know a lot of better ways to take down a Risen. You can’t run the Arena for as long as I have, witnessing Z fights night after night, and not pick up a few tricks. But I want the workout. I need the rush. I get cagey being cooped up in the Hive for too long and I start to worry I’m not what I used to be. Sometimes I feel impotent and castrated – locked out of the Arena, locked inside the Hive. No man wants to think he’s gotten so soft he can’t make it on the outside anymore, so I keep my knife sheathed and I silently hope for another infected to cross my path so I can stretch my legs.