False Idols (After The Apocalypse Book 3)

by Gen Griffin

  I did my best to keep a blank look in my eyes as she took in the zombified wound on my cheek. If I couldn't pass for a zombie then I was dead. I let my mouth hang open. A drop of saliva oozed from my lips. I made no effort to stop it.

  “You stupid?”

  I shook my head no. “I don't...I, uh... I can't...”

  The female zombie let my hair go. “I swear, everyone is getting dumber by the day.” She put her hands on her hips and glared down at me. “Go find the people. Bring them back.” She gave the orders in the tone you would use on a disobedient small child.

  I stumbled to my feet. I didn't have to pretend to be uncoordinated. My legs had fallen asleep while I'd been kneeling. My feet were numb and tingling with horrible pins and needles as I staggered to the left, pretending to head off in search of the missing prisoners.

  In reality, I circled back around the back of the cages and hid in the shadows. I closed my eyes and prayed to every god and deity I could think of that none of the zombies would realize Seth was hidden under the blankets.

  Thirty minutes or so later, the zombies had more or less cleared the area and I was able to go back to Seth's side. I picked him up in my arms, amazed by how light he was now that I had the strength of ten humans. Unsure of what else I could do, I carried Seth into the nearest tent.

  Two zombies looked up at me in surprise. They had been sitting on one of a pair of cots that had been drug into the room and positioned on either side of a small fire that had been contained in a pot. It was a fairly nice setup for zombies. One of them hissed at me.

  “Get out,” I snapped. “This is my tent now.”

  “Go to hell,” the zombie said to me.

  I bent down and gently laid Seth down on the cot that the zombies weren't sitting on. His body fell lifelessly into the fabric. I had to look twice before I saw him take a single, rasping breath. He was fading fast. I didn't have time to play with the zombies.

  I grabbed one of the knives that Gauge had given me and I threw it straight into the eye of the nearest zombie. The knife flew cleanly through the air and embedded itself in the zombie's slanted green eye. I took two steps and closed the distance between myself and the stunned monster. Gauge had ripped a zombie's head off of it's neck. If he could do it, so could I. I grabbed the zombie by his ears and twisted as hard as I could. The head ripped off the neck with a disturbing tearing sound.

  The second zombie was staring at me with wide eyes as I tossed the first zombie's head back out the cloth doorway of the tent. “Sorry about your friend,” I lied.

  “You'll pay for that!” The zombie lunged at me but I was ready for her. I stepped forward and used her own momentum against her. I crushed her rib cage by shoving my palms flat against her chest. She stumbled backwards and then fell to the ground. I pinned her down with my bare foot against her throat and stepped down as hard as I could. The zombie gurgled as the air left her lungs. She couldn't breathe but that didn't mean she was dead. I pulled a knife from the waistband of my jeans and cut her head off. Decapitating zombies was getting easier with practice. It was good knowledge to have.

  Zombies disposed of and hidden away as safely as possible, I was finally able to turn my full attention to Seth.

  “I'm really sorry about this,” I whispered as I began prying the bandages away from the angry, sucking wound in the center of his chest. The edges of the wound were red and raw. Blood began trickling out just as soon as I pulled the cloth away from the hole the sword had made. “I can't let you die on me. The prophecies haven't been fulfilled yet and, truth be told, I don't think I can function without you. I...well... you're important to me. You can't die. I need you.”

  He never moved. Never even twitched. Other than the occasional rattling breath, he gave no signs of being alive or able to hear me. I needed to infect him with the modified zombie virus. Gauge and I had both had all our wounds healed after we'd been bitten by super zombies. Something about mixing the old virus with the new one had given us extraordinary strength and good health. Seth was on the brink of death, but maybe the new virus could still save him.

  I held my forearm over the injury and pulled out the last of the knives that Gauge had given me. I'd have rather transmitted the virus via a bite, but the last thing Seth needed was another wound to heal.

  I raised the knife and then plunged it deep into my forearm. I cut a straight line down the center of my arm and then, on impulse, I cut a second line perpendicular to the first one. The two lines formed a cross. The same cross that I had watched Gauge carve into his own arm less than two weeks ago. The same cross that was scarred into Seth's arm.

  Blood poured down my skin and I let it flow. I was careful to hold it above the wound so that the bright red drops would fall into the open injury. I watched my blood mix with Seth's. I waited for his raspy breathing to start to ease and for his skin to stop looking quite so ruined and bloody. The healing should begin anytime now I thought as I crawled onto the cot beside him and pulled his head into my lap.

  I held him close and I told him how sorry I was for blaming him for my mother's death. I poured my soul out to him, not knowing whether or not he could even hear me. I apologized for nearly drowning us both in the river outside Mylon and then running away. I apologized for not trusting him in Ra Shet. I was just getting around to telling him how bad I felt about falling into Jeb's trap inside the Cube when Seth took two sudden, horribly forced breaths and then died in my arms.

  Chapter 22

  I don't remember screaming, but I know I must have because Bud's zombie guards found me. They pried me away from Seth's still, lifeless body.

  I kicked and I fought and I clawed at the zombies when they drug me out of the tent and began carrying me across the camp. I couldn't breathe. The entire world ached. The night seemed to stretch on forever. Hot tears were pouring down my cheeks as I cursed God, the stars and Bud Moon. My heart had broken. It had shattered into a million pieces.

  It didn't matter whether the city defended itself or if the king fell to Bud Moon and his zombies. The worst had already come and gone. Seth was dead and I was left alone to be the High Priestess of his ridiculous fraudulent church and its false idols.

  Eventually we arrived at a massive white silk tent in the very center of the camp. Bright lights shone brilliantly from somewhere inside its depths. The zombies carrying me threw me down. I collapsed into a thick white fur carpet that was far too luxurious for the rest of our surroundings. The blood from the cut on my arm shone brilliantly against the fur.

  “Well, well well. What do we have here?” A pair of shiny leather boots appeared in front of my face. “You're supposed to be dead.”

  Bud Moon knelt down in front of me. A cruel smirk slashed across his thin lips as he reached for my hair. I smacked his hand away. “Don't touch me.”

  He kicked me as hard as he could in the ribs. Pain blossomed through my chest and took my breath away. The pain should have been agonizing but I was past feeling it. It wasn't that it didn't hurt. It was just that I didn't care.

  I sat up on the plush carpeting. “Is that the worst you can do?”

  Bud hit me in the face with one meaty fist. I laughed. He punched me a second time and then a third. I laughed again. He hit me so hard that he knocked one of my teeth loose. I spat it at him.

  He narrowed his pretty blue eyes at me. “I'm going to take great pleasure in killing you, little girl.”

  “Do your worst,” I taunted him. “I don't care.”

  Those words had been a mistake. Bud grabbed me up by my hair and drug me across the room. He threw me down onto a surprisingly luxurious four-post bed. I absently found myself wondering how he'd gotten such a massive piece of furniture into his otherwise primitive camp. I supposed it was too hard for Bud to break his habit of always having the nicest things.

  “Leave us alone,” he snapped at his zombies. They hesitated for only the slightest moment before ambling back out of the room.

  “Zombies are so fucking dis
gusting,” Bud muttered as they went. “And the smell. How can anyone stand the smell?”

  “If you don't like zombies then why did you turn everyone who lived in the Cube into one?” I asked.

  Bud sneered at me and let out a disgusted snort. “I've been plotting to take over the city for years but I didn't want to make my move until I was sure that we would be 100 percent successful.” He rubbed his hands together and licked his lips. “When I realized that Seth was immune to zombies, I knew that I could use that immunity to my own advantage if I could figure out how to achieve it.”

  “Your zombie serum.”

  “My zombie serum.” Bud ran his fingers through his balding blonde hair. He looked so much like Jeb that it was hard to look at him without remembering how it had felt to end his brother's life. I absently found myself wondering if Bud knew that his little brother was dead.

  “It doesn't work.”

  “Oh, it works.” Bud clucked his tongue at me. “It just doesn't work very well. My intention was to create zombies who didn't look like zombies.” He reached out and poked the newly scarred section of my cheek. “I succeeded in creating zombies. They're just not very attractive zombies and that is a personal problem for me. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking at oozing wounds in the mirror.”

  “Don't worry, I plan on killing you before that happens,” I told him.

  He looked down at me and laughed. I looked in his eyes and knew that he didn't see me as anything more than a weak, helpless sixteen year old girl. He was almost amused by my threats. His smile said that he didn't think I had the ability to follow through.

  Being underestimated really pissed me off.

  “If you want to know why I decided to move on the Cube now, the truth of the matter is that my fellow Powers That Be are the ones who forced my hand. Ronald Malls ordered the zombie virus injected into everyone in the Cube, not me.”

  “Really?” I was surprised and didn't care if it showed.

  Bud nodded. “It was my fault. I'd been fudging the success of my test results when I gave them to Ronald. Ronald had no idea that everyone injected would turn into a monster within days. Evidently we didn't use one of the more successful batches.”

  “I'd noticed that they seemed to be rotting pretty quickly.”

  “Most of them are,” Bud confirmed. “And since the Cube has now lost it's population of uncontaminated meat and our zombies are rotting almost too quickly to be useful, I found myself fresh out of leverage. We either had to make our move on the city now or admit failure and suffer the consequences.”

  “Which is why you made your move against all better logic.” The shock of Seth's death had begun to wear off slightly. I looked around the opulently furnished tent, taking in its fancy embroidered couches and heavy wooden furniture. Bud definitely liked his creature comforts.

  He strolled back and forth across the patch of carpet in front of me. His hands were on his hips as he talked. “I admit, storming the city with several thousand rotting zombies may not be the soundest plan. On the bright side, I won't have to share my victory with them for long. My zombie serum has proven 100 percent fatal to everyone who has been exposed to it.”

  “You're going to use the zombies to take over the city and then you're going to sit back and watch them die.”

  “Convenient, isn't it?” Bud smiled. “It's a mess that does me the favor of cleaning itself up at the end of the day.”

  “You're a sick bastard,” I said as I continued to scan the room. I needed a weapon. There had to be something I could use among all this luxury. “You deserve to die.”

  “I deserve to die?” Bud mocked me. “Did I hurt your feelings or are you still mad about Seth? They told me that they found you clinging to his body and crying.”

  “Not because of what you've done to me. Not even for killing Seth, because Seth has always been the master of his own fate. He knew the risks he was taking when he decided to go against you.” I glared at Bud and spoke the words straight from my heart. “You deserve to die because you betrayed the people who had followed you blindly. You led the people who trusted you to their deaths and you're proud of yourself for doing it.

  Bud's smile didn't even falter. “I'm starting to see what Seth saw in you. You both have the same tiresome morals and desire to play the bloody hero.”

  “You have no idea how much like Seth I am.” I grabbed hold of one of the bedposts and snapped it off of the bed. I'd intended to bludgeon him with it, but the wood splintered into a vicious spike at the bottom. I threw myself at Bud and jammed the splintered end of the bedpost into the soft little bit of flesh at the base of his throat.

  Bud's eyes widened as I pushed the sharp wood into his flesh until a thin trickle of blood appeared. “You're never going to rule the city,” I told him.

  “You're not brave enough to kill me.” Bud was smiling despite the blood running down his neck and down into the silk collar of his bright blue shirt.

  I stabbed the splintered bed post straight through his neck. Bud let out a small gurgling scream and fell to his knees, clawing at his throat. I pulled the wooden spike back out of his neck and stabbed it back down into him. This time I hit his chest.

  Bud's eyes bulged out of his head as I impaled him. Blood was running out of his mouth, this throat and his eyes. I punched Bud as hard as I could with my bare fists. I pounded my hands against his chest until I felt his ribs cave and his lungs burst. I beat him into a pulp as the last of the light faded from his eyes and the pupils turned gray.

  “I think he's dead, Pi.”

  I turned to see Seth standing next to the doorway of the tent with someone else's blood dripping from both his hands. His skin was too pale and he still had the dark circles under his eyes, but the gaping hole in his chest had been reduced to nothing more than another old, scarred wound. His ruined white eye was still just as awful as it always had been, but the pale blue of his good eye had turned as red as the blood that flowed in my veins.

  “Seth!” Bud was instantly forgotten as I bolted to Seth, running as fast as my feet would carry me. I hit him squarely in the chest, throwing my arms around his neck. He stumbled backwards and only managed to avoid falling by catching himself on the corner of a heavy wooden desk.

  He wrapped his arms snugly around my waist. “Damn Pi, keep acting like this and I might actually start to think you like me.”

  I was tempted to slap him. “You're not funny. You're so not funny.” I buried my face in his shoulder and hugged him as tightly as I could.

  “Did I miss something?” Seth gently stroked one hand through my hair. “You seem unusually happy to see me, especially considering that I showed up too late to the party to save you from Bud. Not that my tardiness matters. Clearly Princess Pilar is more than capable of saving herself.”

  “You died,” I said flatly.

  I felt Seth stiffen in my arms. “What?”

  “You died,” I repeated.

  “Died...how?” Seth sounded uncertain now.

  “You got stabbed all the way through with a sword and then tortured to death,” I explained. “You don't remember any of it? How did you even find me?”

  “I woke up in a tent. I followed the screaming to you.” Seth cradled me in his arms.

  “I wasn't screaming.”

  “Bud was.”

  “Was he?” I didn't remember Bud screaming, but I'd kind of gone into a hazy place inside my own head when I'd been killing him.

  Seth ran his finger down the new scar on my cheek and then smiled. “You know, some memories of the last few days coming back to me now. I vaguely remember the sword. Ronald Malls did that, didn't he?”

  “That's what my Dad said.”

  “Your Dad.” Seth's eyes brightened slightly. “I'd almost forgotten about George. That motherfucker is crazier than I am. You failed to mention that about him when you were describing him to me. George Augustus is an insanely tough old bastard.”

  I had to laugh. “He's my
Dad.”

  Seth considered that for a minute and then nodded. “I suppose that does account for some of your less ladylike quirks.”

  “My less ladylike quirks?” I pouted at him. I was so ridiculously glad he was live that I was willing to tolerate any insults he wanted to throw at me.

  “Did you or did you not just beat Bud Moon to death with your bare fists.” He took one of my hands into his and held up my knuckles for inspection. They were scraped, bleeding and swollen.

  “I impaled him on a bedpost first,” I said.

  “Oh. Well. That makes it so much more polite.” Seth shot me his familiar wicked grin. I'd never been so glad to see it. “A bedpost. That's not how I would have done it.”

  “How would you have done it?”

  “With style.”

  “What kind of style?” I asked.

  “The kind that makes me a legend and Bud Moon nothing more than a cheap and distant memory.” Seth didn't wait for me to respond or agree before he switched topics back to his own death. “Are you sure I actually died?”

  “You stopped breathing and you didn't have a pulse,” I said.

  “If that's true, why aren't I a raving lunatic zombie right now?”

  “I infected you with Bud's modified zombie virus,” I explained as I held up my cut arm for him. He ran his thumb across the cross I'd carved into my own skin and then looked down at my face. His eyes flickered across the zombified wounds on my shoulder and cheek before traveling up to my yellow eyes.

  “Interesting.” He pursed his lips as he stroked one finger down the wound on my cheek. “The old virus and the new one have somehow combined.”

  “Best Gauge and I can figure. We both gotten bitten inside the Cube and woke up a few days later with different colored eyes.”

  “Did my eyes change colors?” Seth asked.

  “Your dead eye is still white,” I said.

  “My good one?”

  “Your good eye has turned red.”

  “Red?” Seth considered that for a minute. “You mean like blood?”