by Laken Cane
“I’m here.” Her voice was weak, but they heard her. She was as surprised as the crew that she could talk.
“Rune?” Lex asked.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Lex cried. She wrapped her fingers around Rune’s wrist. “I can read you now. I can read you. You’re back.”
“She’s not dead?” Jack’s voice was full of disbelief. “She’s not gone?”
“She was,” Lex said. “She was dead.”
“No,” Strad answered, his blue eyes stark and blazing in his haggard face. “She’s not gone.”
“I’m fucking immortal,” Rune whispered. “You can’t get rid of me.”
Raze, his eyes red and swollen, peered at her for a brief second. Then he turned and roared, shaking his fist at the sky.
Levi and Denim, their faces identical except for the twisting scar that marred Denim’s perfect features, stood side by side and smiled. Levi leaned on Denim as his own bite weakened him.
“You’re both so fucking beautiful,” she told them. “Levi. Hang on until I get better, baby. Don’t…don’t you die on me.”
Then she remembered Z. “Oh God, where’s Z? Get Z.”
The twins looked at each other, their eyes widening.
“I’ll go after him,” Owen said.
“Bring him back,” Rune begged. “He can’t die alone.” He can’t die.
“Oh, have no doubt.” Owen’s voice was grim. “I will bring him back.”
Rune snuggled against the berserker’s huge chest, warm in his arms. “I feel better.” She did feel better but was still too sick and weak to move a lot, or to hope for much. Something had happened. Something bad.
She hadn’t died.
But she had a sinking feeling that when she found out what had changed inside her, she might wish, once again, that she had.
Chapter Five
“Tell me what happened.” She heard one of the trucks start up as Owen took it to search for Z. She gave Strad a quick smile. “I can stand.”
He let her down, gently. “I could hold you all day.”
She avoided the eyes of her crew, afraid they’d see something soft in her own gaze.
“More zombies appeared,” Denim said. “We had to take care of them. Also the zombie heads on the ground reanimated. Beheading them, burning them…if there is an intact brain left inside the skull, the zombies reanimate. We had to destroy the brains.”
Rune shuddered. “Where is Rock County law enforcement? Where are all the people? Are we too late?”
They began walking back to their vehicles, stepping carefully over destroyed, rotting bodies.
“I saw a few zombies in police uniforms,” Jack replied.
She glanced at him, trying to keep her balance. She felt stronger by the moment, but her body was still having trouble. “The new zombies?”
He nodded, adjusting his eye patch. “I noticed. They were different. Not the usual dry, slow zombies.”
“What the hell is going on here?” She frowned, not arguing when Strad grasped her arm to help her walk. She’d be independent later. Right then she could use the hand. “If any infected townspeople escaped, they’re out there spreading the virus as we speak.”
“Something is fucked up,” Levi said, a little breathless. “It’s not just the zombies.”
“Or,” Lex said, stopping suddenly, “it is.” She pointed to their right, and automatically, they turned to look.
“Oh shit,” Rune said, spotting the crowd of zombies heading their way. “Jack, where’s the flamethrower?”
“Out of fuel,” he said. “Owen and Z are gone, you and Levi are sick. That leaves five of us to fight.”
Rune put a hand to her stomach, trying to breathe. “Too risky.”
“What do you want us do?” Strad asked, bloody spear in hand.
Rune stared in the direction of the road, the long, white road growing dim in the red evening sun. Zombies crowded it. And not just a few leftover zombies.
Dozens and dozens of them.
“We run,” she said. “Regroup. Think. Raze, carry Levi. Strad—”
The berserker thrust his spear back into its sheath and lifted her into his arms, and Shiv Crew did the only thing they could do if they wanted to live.
They ran.
“Z and Owen,” Levi said, once Raze had put him into the backseat of Rune’s SUV. “We have to find them.”
“We’ll find them,” Rune replied.
Strad ran around to the driver’s side and climbed under the wheel. He was almost too big to fit.
Lex and Denim got into the back with Levi.
“Raze,” the berserker said, “you and Jack take my truck. Owen took yours.” He tossed Raze his keys.
“Rock County officials knew the town was overrun with the monsters,” Denim said. “What the fuck were they thinking?”
Rune sighed. “They were afraid.”
“Darius Elliot,” Strad said.
“He’s an asshole,” Rune replied. The wolf alpha had been the first one to contact them and ask for the crew’s help. He hadn’t mentioned any zombies.
“We know why they’d hesitate to report it,” Denim said. “Remember the little town in Arizona that got infested?”
Rune nodded. “They bombed the town with the humans and Others trapped inside, right along with the zombies.”
“And the ones who got out before the military was called in,” Lex said. “Hunted them down, tested them, then punished them for running.”
“That was a long time ago,” Levi said.
Rune glanced back in time to see Lex wrap her arms around him and lay her head on his chest.
Maybe Rune could save him, but she didn’t really believe it.
Spiritgrove COS leader Tim Emerson had forced her to feed him, yet his brain tumor hadn’t gone away.
How could she rid Levi of a lethal zombie infection?
Or Z.
She wanted to cry. Wanted to scream and throw a tantrum and shout curses at the sky. Losing any member of Shiv Crew would destroy her.
“Something is going on,” Lex said.
“What do you see, baby?”
“I’m not sure. But…Strad, careful!”
The berserker had driven in the opposite direction of town—away from the zombies in the road—but at Lex’s warning he stopped the SUV.
“What’s up there?” he asked, and they all stared through the window at the road ahead of them.
It disappeared around a sharp turn, and Rune watched with dread and something close to fascination, knowing, just knowing, what waited around the bend. “Zombies.”
“Lots of zombies,” Lex agreed.
“We are so unprepared.” Rune looked at Levi. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged and threw her a smile, reminding her of her Z. “Not sure.”
Shit. That meant he was doing awful.
She needed to feed, and Strad would be willing. But did she want to chance infecting him?
Maybe she’d already passed the infection out of her system.
Maybe she hadn’t.
A clump of black hair fell into her lap, and she brushed it into the floor. She couldn’t see all the damage, but she could feel it. It was bad.
She had to feed.
Strad pointed his chin at the road ahead. “Look.”
Zombies were spilling around the curve. The shuffling ones fell beneath the rush of the stronger zombies and lay like rotting slugs.
Her cell rang. Some of the crew had developed a habit of leaving their phones inside the vehicles before they went into battle. She’d put hers in the glove box when they’d first met up with the zombies. That seemed like a million years ago.
Strad maneuvered the SUV around and headed back in the opposite direction, followed closely by Raze and Jack.
“Ellie,” Rune said, after she saw his name on the display. “God, baby, I miss you.”
“What’s wrong? Are you all okay?” He sounded anxious, even more
so than usual.
“We ran into some strange trouble,” she told him.
“What the hell happened, Rune? I’m not getting an answer when I call Rock County. Where’s Levi?”
She hesitated. “Ellie…”
“Oh no. He’s hurt. He’s hurt, isn’t he?”
“Call him. He’s here in the car with me.”
He hung up before she finished talking.
“I didn’t want you to tell him,” Levi said.
“He should know.” She punched in Raze’s number.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Do you have any grenades with you?”
“I brought one.” Raze almost always carried one for emergencies.
She’d been counting on it. “We’ll have to blast the fucks out of our way.” She turned to Strad. “Let Raze by. He’s going to throw a grenade.”
“You got it.”
After the thick knot of zombies had thinned out, they’d drive through them into town and get things figured out.
“You don’t want to blast the zombies blocking the road out of here?”
She glanced back at Levi. Denim was now holding the phone to his twin’s ear. “No,” she said. “There isn’t time. And we can’t leave Z and Owen.”
He pulled to the side of the road to let Raze pass them. As they sat there, he reached over and put a big hand on her leg. “Doing okay?”
Her leg jerked beneath the weight of his heavy, hot hand.
“Let me in, Rune.”
“Rune?”
“Yeah,” she said, and squeezed his hand gently before moving it off her leg. “I’m okay.”
He frowned but said nothing. He was somehow calmer. But at the same time, he seemed to radiate more rage than ever.
Did he want her, or did he want her bite? Both, she’d decided. He wanted both. Talk about fucking complicated.
There was no time to think about her relationship with the berserker. She couldn’t afford to be distracted.
But images pelted her mind—images so vivid and intense she could have closed her eyes and been back in that room, that bed.
She shook them off.
Not right now.
She had to help her crew stay alive. All of them.
Somehow.
They watched Raze drive on up the road, toward the zombies.
“Not too close, Raze,” she murmured.
But he kept going. He’d have to get decently close in order to toss the grenade into the middle of the monsters and clear out as many as possible.
Finally, he stopped, left the truck running, and climbed up onto the hood. The zombies seemed to hesitate, and then with a frightening speed, some of them ran toward Raze.
“Fuck,” Rune muttered, digging her nails into her thighs.
Jack had gotten out of the truck as well, and stood with his guns aimed at the zombies’ heads.
He began picking them off one by one, stopping the monsters from getting too close. But there were too many of them.
Rune jumped out of the car, pulling her own guns.
Strad was standing beside her before she even realized he’d left the SUV. But when she started to walk forward, toward Raze’s truck, he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said. “After Raze throws the grenade he’ll have seconds to back the truck out of there.”
It was true, but hard to stand and watch from a distance. She should have been up there with them.
Fearing that Raze was going to let the zombies get too close to him, she held her breath until finally, he threw the grenade.
A couple of zombies reached him but he dispatched them in seconds and he and Jack jumped back into the truck.
Rune and Strad ran to the SUV and climbed inside, and Strad made a tight turn, rammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and got them the hell out of there.
Raze was right behind them.
The explosion sounded after what seemed like five minutes but had actually been a few seconds. “I hope a lot of the fucking monsters are missing their heads right about now,” Rune muttered. “Get us to town, Strad.”
Raze and Strad slammed on their brakes, turned the vehicles around, and headed back toward the blast.
Chapter Six
The town of Shalegrove was eerily silent when they drove through it. There were no signs of life. The only movement came from a few scattered zombies roaming the streets.
“There are the townspeople,” Rune said. The new zombies. The lumbering zombies had been called from their graves, but the new, fast zombies were the fresh kills of old zombies and something more. They were full of the magic she’d tasted.
She let down her window and aimed her gun, picking off zombies as Strad drove slowly through the silent town. Denim took the left side, with Strad’s help.
Because they dealt with the monsters, Shiv Crew guns were loaded with silver bullets that exploded on contact, sending melting hot silver into the monsters’ systems.
The bullets might not destroy zombies, but they would slow them the fuck down. Almost before she’d finished the thought, a zombie she’d shot fell to the ground, then battled the silver to regain his feet.
She heard Jack and Raze shooting zombies from behind them. “Might as well save your ammunition, boys.”
Owen and Z...
Where are you guys?
Levi had begun throwing up before they’d entered town. He’d hung his head out the window behind Rune, and she flinched every time she heard him expelling what sounded like buckets of blood.
No one, no matter how strong, could battle the zombie infection and win.
I did.
Yes, she did. But she was…
Different.
Her symptoms were gone. She was weak and tired and her muscles ached. Maybe her mind was a little sluggish. But she’d perk up once she fed.
She’d been bitten by zombies.
Maybe she carried the antidote to the bite inside her now. In her blood.
“God,” Levi screamed, his voice startling and loud in the silence, “I can feel it. I can feel myself rotting.”
Rune pushed her knuckles against her lips, hard. They began to swell and bleed immediately.
Strad reached over and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “We’ll fix him.”
But if her blood couldn’t heal him, he was gone. And she wasn’t confident in her blood.
Z might already be dead. Her Z.
“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck no.”
A zombie ran at the car and she shot it with savage glee. She shot it again as it fell. It lay twitching but not destroyed. Another zombie wandered close to examine it.
She shot it, too.
“Should we have Elizabeth report this?” Lex asked.
“No,” Rune answered. “They know about the zombies by now. We just need to get out before they find out about us, too.”
“As soon as we find Z and Owen,” the berserker said. “We’ll have RISC contain us until we’re cleared. If we’re lucky, no one will know we were here.”
Rune wasn’t going to bet their luck was that good, but they had no choice. The way she figured it, they had a few hours before military ground troops descended upon the county.
The ones who’d abandoned Rock County would try to keep their secret—after all, their lives were in danger if they talked. But probably at least one of them was infected.
Those things happened fast.
“We have to hurry,” she said. “We have to fucking hurry.”
And in order to help her crew, she had to feed.
Not just because she wanted to try saving Levi and Z, but because…
Her hand shook when she lifted it to her head. She pulled gently at a lock of hair and it came away easily.
She’d lost her blood. She had to feed. She had to feed her monster.
Without feeding, she was just another human. A weak, starving, sick human. And without her monster, they didn’t have as good a chance of getting out of zombie hell.
Her cell rang. “Elizabeth.”
“Ellis was just updating me,” her boss said. “I’ll do what I can, Rune. Who’s hurt?”
“Z and Levi. Both were bitten.”
“How far along in the disease?”
“Levi is…he’s bad. I can’t find Z. Owen went to look for him, and now they’re both missing.”
“Owen?” Elizabeth’s voice sharpened.
“We’ll find them. This place was gone by the time we got here. Taken over. I’m sure some of the people escaped, and they’ll need to be traced before they do too much damage. But until we can get out of here…”
“You won’t have much time. Find Owen. I’ll do what I can,” Elizabeth said again, and hung up.
Owen was Elizabeth’s cousin. She was the one who’d brought him in and had given him a place in RISC.
Rune knew little about their relationship, but she knew if Owen died, Elizabeth would blame herself.
And maybe she’d blame Rune, too, but no more than Rune would. As leader of Shiv Crew, it was her responsibility to keep her people safe.
“The fucks are hanging around houses,” Denim said. “These are some freaky zombies.”
“New zombies,” Rune said. “The townspeople. Those called from the grave are slower, but there are a hell of a lot of them.”
“We have to find a place to regroup,” Lex said. “Levi needs a bed.”
Strad pulled into the yard of a small yellow house. “This one is as good as any. I’ll go in and clear it.”
But Rune was already climbing out of the car, gun in one hand, blade in the other. “You can carry Levi in,” she said, “after I’ve checked the house.”
“Rune—”
“I’ll be careful.” She waved to Raze and Jack and ran to the door. It was locked so she knocked out the window beside the door. She hated making noise and alerting any nearby zombies, but she was in a hurry.
One of the crew could board up the window once they were inside.
The house was quiet and she ran through the rooms quickly—if there were any zombies they wouldn’t have been hiding under beds or in closets, so she didn’t bother doing more than a cursory check of the rooms.
There was no basement and no second floor. The kitchen was small and clean with what were probably breakfast dishes in the dish drainer. Whoever had lived there hadn’t been killed there—he’d simply walked out the door that morning for work and had, most likely, been attacked.
