by Laken Cane
The doors were hidden behind a copse of trees and camouflaged to match the greens and browns of the surroundings.
“I felt the heat,” Lex said. “There is someone standing close to those doors. Smoking. He’s human.”
The zombies picked up speed and lurched toward them. More zombies climbed the bank and suddenly, in the semi-dark, it looked as though the hill were undulating, spitting zombies from its bowels.
“Rune,” Jack said. “You might want to get us inside.”
She didn’t ask them if they were ready—they were always ready. She ran at the door and slammed her body against it like a truck hitting a fence.
The door flew inward with a scream of metal twisting and tearing, and the crew streamed inside.
The zombies were at their heels.
The inside of the bunker was surprisingly well-lit and, with its clean lines and lack of clutter, had a clinical feel to it.
The guard who’d been standing near the door lay lifeless on the floor, his arms flung over his head.
The long entryway opened into a short, sterile hallway, then into a large living area furnished with a couch and a few small chairs. A flat screen television hung silently on the wall.
“Split up,” she said. “Find the girl.”
Zombies became stuck in the entrance hall, then some of them finally managed to find their way through the doorway into the rest of the area.
Their moans became livelier, more vicious. Hungry.
And then, gunfire sounded from outside as new arrivals came to take out the zombies infiltrating the bunker. Probably an alarm had triggered when Rune smashed in the door.
She ground her teeth as she ran, shoving doors open, her heart pounding painfully against her stake scars.
In seconds she entered a huge, circular room with small doors spaced evenly around the walls.
The room was cavernous and cold with its white brick walls and stone floors. A drain had been set in the middle of the floor, its edges tinted with the stains of old blood.
She wanted to find Fie—that was all. Find the girl and get out before the enemy realized more than zombies had discovered their secrets.
Rescuing Fie was the only thing that mattered.
Until she shoved open one of the doors and found a room full of restrained pregnant girls. A dozen of them, all lying in cots with their wrists cuffed to metal rails.
Others.
Their faces were slack with disinterest, their eyes open but bleary and dull. The room had been laced with silver. Though she was immune, Rune could feel that silver trying to suck the life out of her.
The room stank of feces and vomit, and the once white sheets covering the girls were yellow from urine stains.
And the girls. The girls.
Rune shot out her claws and slashed the air, unable to suppress a scream of horrified rage.
“Rune,” Strad called from the doorway.
She spun around. “Berserker. These girls.” She couldn’t say anything else. There were no words.
They raced to the beds, Strad taking one row and Rune taking the other. She ripped cuffs from the bed, freeing skinny, bruised wrists.
“This one’s alive,” Strad called.
She straightened, her heart full of horror. “Aren’t they all?”
“No, sweetheart,” he said.
She’d known all along that some of those stares were empty. She hadn’t been able to admit it to herself. Not then.
“What about the babies?” she asked, as though he would know. As though maybe he would somehow make it right.
He shook his head. “The one I found alive just died.”
So she hardened her heart against the horror she was facing and got back to work. It was all she could do.
The girls wore white plastic bracelets on which was written a single number.
“Shit, Strad,” she cried. “This one’s having her baby.”
He strode to her, and they watched as the quiet mother delivered her baby. She needed no help. The child poured out in a gush of blood, a tiny Other with a limbless body, a too-small head, and a mouth it couldn’t close because it was full of half-formed fangs.
It jerked once, then went still.
As did its mother.
Rune shuddered. “Check the other ones,” she whispered.
“Found another one alive,” she said, ten seconds later, her voice calm. Her lips were numb and tingly, the way they’d gotten when she grabbed the electrified fence at the Camp.
The girl’s bracelet told Rune her number was thirteen.
“This is what happened to the girl the Annex found,” Strad said, leaning over another still form.
Rune nodded. Thirteen’s breathing was shallow, and as Rune watched, she opened her eyes. Rune saw the fear bloom like blood on a tissue.
“I’m going to get you out of here, baby.”
The girl didn’t appear to comprehend Rune’s words.
Just as Nine had, the pregnant Other began screaming.
And then, Rune saw the mound beneath the sheet begin to move, to ripple as though a snake had awakened and was now slithering off the huge belly.
But it wasn’t a snake.
The girl’s baby was coming.
And so were the zombies.
Fie had lost her control.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Rune found a whole other gear—there were too many things to think about, to fight, to do. So she shoved everything out but the immediate emergency, and that was delivering Thirteen’s baby.
That child wasn’t going to slide out with no trouble. It needed help.
Strad was at the door, cutting down zombies who wanted to get into the room. Who wanted to eat.
She had a second to silently plead, don’t get bitten, Berserker, and then her thoughts were all for the tormented Other on the cot.
Even when she heard the sound of gunfire drawing closer as the enemy began to break through the barricade of zombies, she ignored it.
A baby was coming, and she was about to help it into the world.
“Owen,” she heard Strad yell. “Behind you.”
Owen? Owen was in the hospital in River County.
Wasn’t He?
Focus, Rune.
The Other’s screams faded to a pitiful, whimpering moan. She tried to find the source of her pain with discolored, searching fingers, but her hand kept falling to the bed. The silvered room had drained her. Or maybe it was the baby who took all her strength.
Rune didn’t make a sound. She pushed the girl’s soiled hospital gown out of the way and waited. Watched, and waited.
“Rune,” Strad roared.
“Not yet, Berserker,” she whispered.
And then, black, curly hair showed as the baby began to force its way free.
Thirteen shrieked, a scream of pure agony that went on forever, and finally, the child was out.
And Thirteen stopped screaming. For good.
Rune lifted the baby from the mess of blood and fluids soaking the mattress. A girl. A tiny girl with thick black hair, wrinkled, red skin, and the smallest fingers Rune had ever seen.
“Well shit,” Rune murmured. “Look at that. A baby.”
“Rune,” Strad yelled again.
She didn’t want to leave the infant alone, but she wrapped it in the sheet and placed it carefully on the bed between its dead mother’s legs, umbilical cord still attached. “I’ll be back, kid.”
She streaked through the doorway, slamming it behind her before shooting out her claws. The zombies seemed to think Fie was in the room. They piled on top of each other trying to get past Strad, who had pushed them back into the circle room.
A pale but grimly determined Owen hacked his way through them from the back of the room, but Rune saw no signs of Jack, Raze, or Lex.
At the sound of gunfire, she realized the other three crew members were keeping the enemy shooters occupied and out of the compound.
But it wouldn’t be long before
her crew was overpowered by the number of Shop backup that was surely on the way. She had to find Fie, and get her and the baby out.
Owen worked his way toward her. “Find Fie,” he shouted. “We’ll take care of the zombies.”
She found Strad with her searching, desperate gaze. He stood head and shoulders above the slow zombies, his spear flashing as he used it to take out the monsters. Both ends boasted long, sharp silver, and the zombies fell as those blades spilt brains from broken skulls and separated heads from rotting bodies held upright by magic.
Fie’s magic.
She ran, slamming open doors and peering into closets. “Fie,” she shouted. “Where are you?”
Where the hell was she?
She was nowhere.
Finally, Rune ran back to Strad and Owen and grabbed a lurching male zombie on the fringe of the crowded room.
He careened off the hallway wall and fell, then began to drag himself up with torturous slowness.
There was a chance the zombie would lead her right to Fie.
“Come on, you bastard,” she muttered. “Get the fuck up.”
But after he finally found his feet, he lunged forward, trying to either get some dinner or go back the way he’d come.
“Fuck,” she screamed, and took off his head. One less monster to worry about.
“Rune,” Strad roared, and she ran with everything she had back to where she’d left him and Owen.
Jack, Lex, and Raze had arrived, but not to help with the zombies. The Shop shooters had forced them to retreat. There was no door to shut—Rune had destroyed it.
“We’re trapped,” Owen yelled.
Enemy shooters entered the room, blasting anything and everything they could see. Zombies fell beneath the thick spray of bullets.
The crew, using zombies for cover, began to back into the hallway.
“Keep searching,” Rune told them. “She’s here somewhere. She has to be.”
“What about you?” Jack asked.
She nodded toward the moaning mass of undead and the men who were now streaming into the room, guns aloft.
“I’m going to take out the Shop ops. Find her.” She met Strad’s hard stare. “Find her.”
He didn’t want to go—didn’t want to leave her there with a room full of toothy monsters and dozens of bloodthirsty humans.
But he did.
He knew he could trust her. She wasn’t going to die on him.
She threw herself into the crowd.
The Shop’s men were more concerned, at that moment, with the zombies than with her. That would soon change.
A zombie fell into her as a bullet nearly took off his head. The next bullet found her, ripping through the soft flesh of her shoulder where it sat for a long, painful moment before her body expelled it.
She didn’t even pause. There was no time.
And at the back of her mind was the image of Thirteen’s black-haired baby lying on the filthy cot, waiting.
Waiting for her.
She fought like the mutant monster she was as desperation lent her a little something extra. She sliced into zombie bodies, so fast a human would have had trouble tracking her deadly claws.
She cut a path through the zombies, and blood was flung into the air in strings and splatters as she began annihilating the men.
Her monster shrieked with happiness as she was bathed in the blood of the enemy. And finally, lost in the battle and the blood, she forgot everything but killing.
And when the hurt, flinching pain in her mind and heart was gone and there was only the fight, only the blood, only the violence, it was good.
So fucking good.
That was where she found the silence, and she dove right the fuck in. Wallowed in it, drank it down, and laughed with the ecstasy of it.
If Lex hadn’t appeared at her side, mimicking her movements, killing as she killed, she could have lost herself in that darkness forever.
And it was with a tiny bit of regret that she refused her monster the chance to take completely over.
Someday.
But with Lex’s appearance came responsibility, and she and her monster were once again on even terms.
And that was good, because as she killed and maimed and became coated in blood, she saw something her monster might have ignored.
Sheriff Erin Wallace was sliding along the wall, her eyes wide with terror but also a resolute determination. She held two guns and shot at anything that came near her, but that wasn’t what made Rune shudder with fear.
Wallace made it to the door of the room holding the dead girls—and Thirteen’s baby—and with a single, quick look over her shoulder she ran into the room and slammed the door shut behind her.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rune growled and flung a zombie into a group of shooters, her mind still on the baby as she charged the Shop’s humans.
She twirled and kicked and used her claws like the lethal blades they were, desperation making her even faster than usual.
But the Shop ops kept coming. She’d put down six of them, and eight more would appear.
And Wallace was in there with the baby.
She heard Lex scream once, “Too fast, Rune, stop…” but she couldn’t stop. Lex needed to get the hell out of her head, because she couldn’t fucking stop.
Lex screamed again, her voice somehow wrong, and upset, and horrible, but Rune had gone somewhere deep inside herself and if she didn’t fight like a mad woman, like a monster, that baby was dead.
It couldn’t die. She couldn’t let it.
Then she heard a flutter of wings, and a scorching wind caressed her sweaty cheek, burning hot and hard before sliding away with a whisper of heat.
She had called Lex’s demon.
There was no time to think about how pissed Lex would be. No time to feel guilty that she’d ripped Lex’s demon free much as Lorraine had forced out Cree’s bird.
No time to care that it was true.
Lex was hers to hold.
Really, hadn’t she known it all along?
The Shop ops could stand against Rune, but she was only one woman against a Shop army. Now, there was Rune, and there was the demon.
And no fucking one was standing against that.
Lex drifted toward the ceiling, and for one second, when Rune glanced up at her, she found the demon’s hate-filled stare burning into her.
The demon’s stare.
It dawned on her that the demon could see—maybe not the same way sighted people could see, but something was different in those eyes.
Then Lex sent a stream of fire at the Shop op humans.
When they saw their mates burning so hot they fell to the floor as black ash, the humans ran.
Too late, but they ran.
Lex began to systematically destroy every living and dead person in the room, and Rune left her to it. She had a baby to save.
And a sheriff to kill.
She raced to the door, flung it open, and plunged into the room. “Wallace,” she screamed.
But the sheriff was not in the room.
Rune ran to Thirteen, unable to take a breath. The baby was gone.
“Fuck,” she screamed, and shook with a fury and terror she couldn’t contain.
Erin Wallace had the newborn.
A little innocent Other, in the wicked hands of the Shop.
Wallace had somehow sneaked out of the room while Rune was occupied fighting, though she’d been sure she’d glanced toward the door every few seconds.
“Rune,” Owen said, running into the room. “You’re okay?”
“God,” she said, her heart still beating hard and fast. “I lost the baby, Owen. I lost the fucking baby.”
He walked to stand in front of her, his eyes narrow. “Baby?”
“One of the girls went into labor. She had a baby. I put it on the bed and went to fight, and the fucking sheriff stole the kid.” She retracted her claws and put her fingers to her temples. Unable to resist, no matter how
stupid it was, she fell to her knees and peered under the cots.
“The kid was alive?” Owen asked. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped, climbing to her feet. “We have to find her. I don’t know what these people are doing with babies, but I’m not about to let them have mine.”
“Yours,” he said. “Yours.”
She closed her eyes. “Fuck you. I delivered it. We have to find the sheriff.”
“The baby,” he asked. “Was it a monster?”
“It seemed to be a normal Other newborn. Whatever that is.”
It dawned on her that there were no sounds coming from the other room, and when she went to the doorway and looked out, she saw no sign of Lex. The room was a mess of charred zombies and piles of ash and stank of burnt meat and hair.
“It’s not your baby, Rune. You—”
“Shut the fuck up, Owen.” Furious, she strode toward him. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
He held up his hands. “You can’t take on another burden, that’s all.”
Before he could say something that made her lose control and punch him, she turned and left the room.
The sheriff was either still in the building or she’d escaped through some other exit. No way had she gone out the same way she’d come in.
When she was halfway across the circle room, stomping over piles of crispy zombies and lost silver weapons, she remembered she needed to ask Owen if they’d found any sign of Fie.
Perhaps that was where Strad, Jack, and Raze were—carrying their necromancer to safety. And where the hell was Lex?
As she was walking back to the room, Owen stuck his head out the doorway.
“I found a passage, Rune. Hurry.” Then he was gone.
She ran to the room, then stood still, confused. The room was empty.
Owen wasn’t there.
She put a hand to her stomach. “Owen?”
But then she saw how he’d exited the room—the same way Erin Wallace had left the room with the baby.
The door was indistinguishable from the wall when shut, but Owen had left it ajar. How did he find that fucking door?
Urgency held her heart in a cruel fist, and she felt as though there was no one else left in the world but her, the dead girls, and the piles of burnt bodies in the next room.
