Strange Trouble

by Laken Cane

  She shook her head. “I don't know.”

  “Whatever else happens, you have to feed, and I need your bite.”

  Gurgle, gurgle. She clutched her stomach.

  Yes, she had to feed.

  She knew what happened when she starved her monster.

  He hesitated at the door. “We’ll be okay, Rune.”

  “Yeah.”

  But really, she wasn’t sure they would be.

  She wasn’t sure at all.

  Was it some kind of demented love she and the berserker felt for each other? Not the same love she had for her crew, but love love. How the fuck would she know? How would anyone know?

  He closed the door behind him, leaving her to her thoughts. But she didn't want to think. Not about the berserker and not about what fucking him might mean. Or change.

  She needed to work. She grabbed her phone and a long, silver shiv, and headed to the bathroom.

  Halfway through her shower, which consisted mainly of her leaning her forehead against the tile and letting the water beat at her back, her phone rang.

  She got out of the stall and grabbed her cell, ignoring the water pooling at her feet. It was a number she didn’t recognize.

  “Hello.”

  “Rune Alexander?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Roger Wilson.” His voice was full of gravel, old, and somehow weak. “People call me Mac.”

  She frowned, not remembering the name. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Amy’s dad,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I’m Amy’s daddy.”

  Fuck me. She leaned against the sink, her breath suddenly gone. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of one thing to say.

  “I saw you,” he went on, when she remained quiet. “I saw you at the cemetery.”

  “I wanted to speak with you,” she whispered, finally. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t bring her back.”

  Sorry never did. “Can I do anything for you?”

  Again, he cleared his throat. “I have a little box for you. Amy told me if something happened to her, I should get this box to you. She made me swear to keep it from the vampires, and I did that. I did that.” He was silent for a second. “She meant it for you so you should have it.”

  Rune nodded, though he couldn’t see her, and held a hand to her stomach. “Do you want me to pick it up?”

  “No, no,” he said, so hastily she was taken aback. “I don’t want to see you. I might…”

  Might hit me? Might shoot me? Might prove you can still throw a knife? I’d deserve that and more. “Sir?”

  “Besides. I haven’t been staying home. I’ll mail it to your work. I have the address.”

  “Are you in trouble? If I can help you—”

  He gave a short laugh. “Help me. Yeah. You, Alexander, have helped enough.”

  And before she could say another word, he hung up.

  Her hand trembled as she ran it through her wet hair. She turned on the cold water tap and leaned over to drink, hoping to cool the fire in her stomach. God, Amy.

  She decided right then she would read Amy’s emails as soon as she had the box. She’d get a bottle of wine—maybe a bottle of gut-rotting whiskey—and would look in the box and read the emails.

  She wasn’t going to let herself hide from the pain. She owed it to the little bite junkie.

  Part of her hoped he’d forget to send the package and she’d be off the hook.

  Yeah, she was that afraid.

  It wouldn’t take a whole hell of a lot more to send her spiraling back down into the bad place.

  Even full of the berserker’s blood, she could fall.

  Because the relief that came after, that was…

  Heaven.

  And sometimes she just needed to take a break. To restart.

  Jeremy.

  For a brief second a spark of desolation at his death lit up her insides.

  Who was going to make her feel better? Who the fuck was going to make her feel better?

  She pushed her fist against her lips and stared into the mirror at her pale, stark face. Her eyes were full of terror and weakness, and that brought her back from the edge.

  She was better than that. She was stronger than that.

  Fuck you.

  And who that was directed at, she couldn’t have said.

  But then Elizabeth had called. “I don't know what's going on out there, but it's bad. Some trouble with the Others. I couldn’t get anything else from anyone. It’s not just Darius Elliot asking for help now. Call me with reports as soon as you can, and we'll take it from there.”

  And so the crew was off to Rock County.

  To the zombies.

  Chapter Three

  She wished, for a brief second, that she held her silver shivs. She’d trained with blades long before she was even aware she possessed claws, and holding a blade in each hand balanced her.

  But her claws were extensions of her body and she wielded them with a natural ease that even the deadly silver blades couldn’t match.

  She shoved the claws of her left hand into a zombie’s chest while she used her right claws to slice through his neck. She was splattered with blood. Blood that was thick and viscous and fucking…

  No, Rune.

  Fucking delicious.

  Human blood.

  These zombies had been busy eating some of the townspeople.

  A zombie fell but latched himself onto her leg as he went down. Because she caught a glimpse of Levi, seemingly unaware a monster was about to take a bite out of him, she was slow to react.

  The zombie chewed on her calf and she screamed with horror as she bent over to rid him of his head—and just barely turned in time to destroy another as he bit the air not a half inch from her face.

  She was going to be a zombie’s dinner if she didn’t concentrate.

  Looking for and worrying about the crew was only going to get them killed. She had to shut them out.

  She had to become the monster.

  She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding him back. Old habits died hard.

  Not him. Me.

  I am my monster and my monster is me.

  She smiled, acknowledging the not quite empty look in a zombie’s eyes as he tried to bite her, and then she freed her monster.

  It was as though another being, one which shared her body, rose up and took over. Her monster wanted only blood.

  Her claws lengthened even farther. Her fangs cut her lip and she eagerly lapped up the blood, and then she lost herself in the zombie battle.

  There was nothing else.

  She was invincible then, faster than ever, stronger, meaner, hungrier. She blew through the monsters like an unstoppable tornado.

  Blood flew at her from those enemy bodies and she took it eagerly. She opened her mouth for it and drank it down.

  It made her infinitely better.

  Infinitely more…monstrous.

  She tasted something different in the zombie blood—not all the zombies, but the different zombies. The new zombies.

  They tasted of a strange, powerful magic.

  When Jack arrived with his flamethrower, she was disappointed. She wasn’t ready to give the bastards to the fire. But unless she wanted to burn, she had to get out of the way.

  The crew retreated, zigzagging past zombie bodies, trampling those that lay still upon the ground, and only when they stood in the clear did Jack let loose his fire.

  And the zombies screamed.

  Agonized and aware, they screamed, and she felt each one like a knife in her brain. Bathed in fire, they tried to run, tried to escape the second death, but the fiery tongues lashed them, cooked their naked bodies, destroyed them.

  They screamed.

  Rune put her fists to her ears, feeling their terror and their torment, and screamed with them.

  These were not normal zombies.

  Or maybe she was not a normal monster.

  The berserker snatch
ed her off the ground and wrapped her in his arms.

  “Listen to my voice, Rune,” he murmured. “Hush now…”

  “Make them stop, Strad,” she begged. “Oh God, make them stop!”

  She couldn’t have said what she wanted stopped. The screams? The fire? The pain? She did not know.

  Then suddenly she did.

  She’d filled herself with strange zombie blood. She’d been bitten by the fucks.

  She was connected now. Connected to the zombies.

  Connected, even more than she’d been before, to the dead.

  Part of her needed to protect them. To protect the fucking zombies.

  She wanted to bury her face in the berserker’s warm neck and wait for the waves of misery to recede.

  But she was Shiv Crew captain and she would not hide and she would not break.

  “Put me down, Strad.”

  The crew sent tense looks her way, and Lex put her palm against Rune’s back. She might read Rune through the touch, but Rune didn’t care. The touch comforted her as much as it comforted the little blind Other.

  “Are you okay?” Strad asked, his expression worried, his eyes solemn.

  “I am.” I am always okay. I am never okay.

  When her feet touched the ground she turned and with silent determination, watched the field of destruction with her crew.

  It seemed to her the fiery purge happened in slow motion. Maybe just to torment her. The zombies burned and fell, some of them trying to rise and some of them succeeding.

  “We have to go around,” Raze said, his voice grim. “A few are escaping.”

  “You go,” Strad answered. “I’ll stay here with Rune.”

  She stiffened and once more shot out her claws. “No,” she said. “You will not.”

  She led them around the burning zombies to the edge of the clearing, beyond which the surviving monsters were crawling and clawing their way to freedom.

  Bastards.

  She did not hesitate to slaughter the remaining zombies, though her heart was bleeding with almost paralyzing empathy. She would kill them, and she would protect the living.

  It was her job and she was not going to fail in it just because she’d been bitten and her emotions were confused.

  Her mind hadn’t lost its logic simply because her heart was unsure.

  Let me in, Rune.

  At last it was over. The crew stood silently in the bloody, burning field. They huddled in a tight knot of weariness, taking a moment to catalog injuries.

  Z gave a sudden grunt of pain, then half-smiled as Lex grabbed his wrist.

  “What’s wrong?” Rune asked.

  Lex reached up and hooked a hand around Z’s neck. She pulled him toward her so she could kiss his cheek. “You’re my favorite.”

  Rune grinned as Z winked at her over Lex’s head.

  “Am I your favorite too, Rune?” he asked. He smiled, but his eyes were completely serious.

  Owen watched her with an unreadable expression. “I don’t think Rune does favorites,” he said.

  “You don’t really know me, baby.”

  He inclined his head. “Not yet.”

  Strad said nothing but she could feel the tension radiating from him.

  Her entire body hurt from the bites she’d sustained, but she could handle the pain. What scared her was becoming one of those rotting, brainless undead whose only desire was to eat.

  Raze helped Jack out of the flamethrower and Rune eyed her crew, almost afraid to ask the question she had to ask. “Everyone okay? I was the only one bitten?”

  It didn’t seem possible.

  It wasn’t.

  “No,” Lex answered.

  Z’s eyes were full of something close to shame. “I was bitten, sweet thing.”

  Levi gave a sharp nod and stepped forward. “I was bitten as well.”

  Lex fell to the ground, sobbing, her hair hanging in her face, hiding her unseeing, crazy eyes. “Levi,” she cried. “Levi.” Maybe because Z had stood so close to her, she’d known he was bitten. But Levi…she hadn’t known.

  The crew remained silent, helpless, letting Lex’s heartbreaking sobs speak for all of them.

  Finally Rune opened her arms and both men walked into her embrace.

  “Where?” she whispered.

  “Back of my right arm,” Z replied.

  She closed her eyes, realizing his left arm was around her, but his right was unmoving between her and Levi.

  “My thigh,” Levi said.

  Fuck me. Fuck me.

  Raze helped Lex to her feet and she walked unsteadily to Rune and the injured men.

  “Rune,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You’ll have to feed them.”

  But Z squeezed Rune gently. “No.” He leaned forward to kiss Lex’s forehead, and then turned away.

  “Z,” Rune cried.

  He stopped walking, his back straight, determination in every line of his body. “No, Rune. I was bitten. Whatever happens…” Then he did turn toward her, quickly, and winked. “That’s just how it’s supposed to go.”

  It was his choice.

  And he was choosing to die.

  Chapter Four

  Would her blood heal them anyway?

  She had no way to know until she fed them. Z didn’t want to let her, but Levi was willing to try.

  Death and reanimation of a zombie victim usually occurred twenty minutes to three days after the bite, depending on the person.

  Symptoms could begin appearing immediately, but those first symptoms—body aches, fever—were generally mild.

  She started to call Z back, but put a hand to her stomach, frowning.

  She leaned over suddenly as her stomach cramped, and heaved up a crimson gush of blood.

  The sickness was sudden and intense and despite her previous understanding that she might have gotten infected from the bites, she was stunned.

  As were those around her.

  “Rune?” Lex asked. “What?”

  “Well fuck.” Rune straightened, wiped her mouth, then leaned over again as blood spewed from her mouth in a torrent and splashed upon the ground. The infection was making itself known in a hurry.

  And just that suddenly, she lost her thoughts.

  Misery. Pain. Confusion.

  Hello, Other.

  What? Who are you?

  I am waiting for you.

  She felt an icy terror then, and more. A dread, insidious and thick, eating at her insides. Such a cold, horrifying voice. Did she know that voice? Did she kn—

  The next time she became aware she was on her back, staring up at the sky, as something tried to claw its way from her stomach.

  Then blackness.

  She heard shouts and the metallic sound of blades, slicing, cutting. The earth vibrated beneath her as people ran, leaped, fought.

  The ground was a cold, hard bed. She smelled old blood mixing with new blood, a sharp, sour scent. She sensed the determination of spring as it tried to break through the frozen ground.

  Crushed leaves, the dried skeletons of dozens of tiny animals, birds ruffling their feathers as they watched from naked trees. A vision of Nicolas Llodra, the mad vampire master, swam into the murky waters of her mind.

  “Destroy the brains,” someone shouted. She didn’t recognize the voice. Or maybe she did. What was a voice? What was a brain?

  Suddenly she was back at the inn, letting Strad into her room.

  He came at her like a bulldozer. A tornado. A raging man filled with grief and pain and desperation.

  His voice echoed in her mind. Rune...

  But then he was Jeremy. She was restrained in her bed and Jeremy was cutting, cutting…

  She began to seize, understanding what was happening as her body convulsed. Not long ago she’d been hit with a vaccinator, an evil invention of the Church of Slayers. It was like that, only worse. Somehow, it was worse.

  The next time she swam to the surface of awareness her body was numb, and the berserker was with
her.

  God, she was sick.

  So sick.

  Kill me, Berserker. Don’t let me become a zombie.

  Kill me.

  Maybe he heard her, or maybe he saw it in her eyes. He knelt beside her and lifted her trembling, freezing body against his chest. “You’ll survive this.”

  Then Lex was there, throwing her blood-spattered body at both of them and wrapping her arms around Rune. She said nothing.

  What would they do if she died?

  Both Strad and Lex were addicted to her. They couldn’t be weaned away from the bite or the blood.

  So what would happen to them if she died?

  I can’t die. I’m immortal.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  But she could suffer a hell of a lot.

  Owen was there, then, laconic and calm, but she saw the horror in his eyes. He couldn’t hide that from her.

  She wanted to shrink back, to cover her face.

  She felt empty. Her skin seemed to rub against her clothing like husks rubbed against a dried corncob. She could not close her eyes. Dry and rubbery, they bulged from sockets too small to hold them.

  “What’s this?” Lex asked, pulling away.

  Rune couldn’t turn her head to see. She couldn’t move her eyeballs.

  “Hair,” Strad said, his voice curt, cold. “Her hair is falling out.”

  “Is she going to die?” Lex asked. “Don’t let her die.”

  Can’t you see me? I’m right here looking at you. I’m listening. Can’t you see me?

  “I’ll feed her,” Lex said. “She needs blood.”

  “No,” the berserker said. “That won’t help her now. What blood she has left is leaking out…everywhere.”

  “Still.”

  Rune heard rustling, and then Lex leaned over into her field of vision, baring her neck.

  “Lex. I said no.”

  “Move out of my way, Berserker!”

  Strad stood suddenly, and the world tilted as he shifted Rune in his arms. “You’ll become infected. Damn you, Lex.” He turned his head. “Denim. Take Lex away.”

  Abruptly, Rune came back. At last, she could blink. She could speak.