by Laken Cane
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 snatched 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 turned 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 wa
s 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.
“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?”
