Misha. Lathan knew that Beck was still raw with the pain of losing his wife. He knew that Beck had not forgotten that she had been eaten alive by those things and that she was gone now. Only Lathan didn't know just how deeply the grief had carved into Beck's soul.
“All this time I thought I had to be strong for you," Lathan went on. "I thought I had to be the one who took care of the dirty work because I was used to that kind of thing. Because you expected it of me. I played that role so long it was hard for me to think any other way. But I don’t want to do that anymore. Because it’s all bull about me thinking I can't be or do anything different. It’s bull about me thinking I deserved all the shit work.”
Lathan slid down beside the porch post until he was sitting on the wooden steps. His head was bent forward and his hands were hanging between his knees. “I’m through being that person.”
“You can do all the soul searching you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s- lost, Lathan,” Beck said, a change coming over his face now as he gazed at the man before him with barely-disguised hostility. “Same as- all the other ones.”
“No,” Lathan breathed. “I don’t have to believe that just because it’s convenient for you. I can’t follow you blindly anymore, because here’s what I see. It’s all about you, Beck. And what you want. You’ve lost your humanity somewhere along the way. Killing people that need killing, well, that’s one thing. I can accept that in this world. But I’ve seen the blood lust in your eyes too many times. You can’t stop yourself once you get started. You lost it for a while after Misha died. Maybe that’s when it all started. I don’t know. But if you keep going the way you’re going, you'll be just another version of the worst kind of people who are out there. Human life won’t mean a damned thing to you.
“I want to think I’m better than that, Beck. There’s always been a reason not to do the right thing. Even before all this started. And sometimes doing what’s right isn’t the easiest choice to make. But I want to think I’m something more than just a mindless walking corpse who goes around tearing other people apart because they don’t have the brains, or the soul, to do anything different. If we don't hold onto part of who we used to be, or who we wanted to be- ” He pounded his closed fist once against his chest. “Then what are we, Beck?”
Beck didn’t answer him. Lathan knew from past experience that Beck wouldn’t budge from the opinion he had already formed. He wouldn’t listen to anyone else’s viewpoint. He wouldn’t allow any other member of the group to have a say if it differed from his own. Forget compromises. He would stubbornly stick to his own conclusions, right or wrong, no matter what the consequences. And those, Lathan knew, were dangerous traits for a leader to have.
Lathan closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, I’m going to believe she’s still alive because I can believe it. I’ve changed. She’s changed me.”
“So you’ll do what? Spend the next few months, the next year looking for her? Or the next two years?“
“If that’s what it takes,” Lathan replied quietly.
“Well, I think that’s the wrong decision.”
“You would know, Beck, about wrong decisions. You’ve made enough of them.”
Chapter 2
The mist had thickened. It drifted eerily in the moonlight like a living entity. Drums beat a pulsating rhythm that matched his heart beats. It made the things in the pit even more restless because they knew what was coming. The writhing sea of the undead almost howled with anticipation. They tilted their heads far back, like the blind peering upward through a veil of darkness.
And Meng, the leader of all this, was waiting, too. The man sat on a rock, unmoving, like one on a throne. Shirtless, hooded, he was a sinister figure who was looking forward to the moment when he would unleash his depravity on his hapless victims.
It was hard for Gage to think that civilization had fallen so far in such a short period of time, but it should have come as no surprise to him that people would follow a corrupt leader into a cult worship of the undead. Death was everywhere, a constant reminder of man’s fragile mortality. It had to be dealt with in some way.
He had tried to save the young girl. He had failed. Whatever drugs they had given her were wearing off. She was white-faced and terrified in the moonlight, standing like a scantily-robed ghost beside the sacrificial altar.
“I want his coat,” he heard one of the guards mutter beside him.
“You can have it,” the other man said. “I want them leather boots. Almost as much as I want to use my knife on him. But not nearly as much as I want- ” The man’s words trailed off significantly as he looked over his shoulder at the girl.
Gage knew they were looking forward to their turn with the girl even more than they were looking forward to slitting his throat. Sex was part of the ritual. Meng knew he had to offer something in exchange for mindless obedience. Black-robed figures ringed the clearing and were watching in eager anticipation like spectators in a bloody arena of death and perversion. All of them were more than willing to see their own fear reflected in someone else’s eyes. Their savagery, Gage had already seen, knew no bounds. They were about as human as the things down below in the pit.
Addy was shivering, not only from the cold but from fear. The wind blew harder here in this high place, cutting right through the thin robe they had forced her to put on. Her hair was unbound and the wind blew several strands across her trembling lips.
The people around her had let themselves be blinded. She knew that. They didn’t care about mercy or decency. No amount of pleading or begging would change things, because they didn’t care about the truth anymore. They were more than willing to follow a leader who would use them to satisfy his own twisted desires, who would lead them into an even darker place.
The drums suddenly stopped and her breath lodged in her throat.
Not far from her, Gage hung suspended by his hands in a silence so portentous that the whole world seemed to be waiting. The first man was grinning at him with evil anticipation. Gage looked the second man in the eye unflinchingly, saw the change in the man’s face, saw him hang his head. He was surprised to see that there was, perhaps, a hint of shame in the man’s eyes. He hadn't expected that.
But it wasn’t going to change things. There was only brutality in the face of the other man because he saw something in the condemned man that was lacking in himself and he hated him for it. He hated the unshakable calm of the man even though he was a prisoner. He wanted to see him afraid. He wanted to see him grovel and beg for his life, because deep down he, himself, was a coward.
The man leaned forward and said close to Gage’s face, “Take a good look at what’s waiting for you.” He gave a high-pitched, almost maniacal laugh, enjoying himself immensely.
They lowered him over the edge of the precipice to a narrow rock ledge. The noose tightened till he had to fight for air. The rocks were uneven and loose so that he had to struggle to keep his footing. With his hands tied together over his head, he was even more helpless.
Forgot about the boots, he thought to himself. And the coat.
The snarling and the growls and the wheezing groans far below him grew louder.
Meng stood. He spread pale, flabby arms wide. “Lord of the undead, accept this as our sacrifice. Look favorably down upon us as we spill the blood of the living onto the dead, joining the two.”
Gage had his escape planned out. It was a desperate one, but it was the only one that had any chance of working.
Take them by surprise, he told himself again as he swung his hands free from the tree branch with a mighty effort and scrambled back up the side of the cliff. His boot immediately caught the first man in the chest and the man flew back several feet. His boot lashed out again with lightning speed and connected with the other man’s jaw. The man went down and stayed down.
The first man quickly recovered and came at him with an enraged howl. Gage spun around and drove his heel in where it did the most damage. The man
doubled over in agony, staggered a few steps in blind pain and lost his balance. With arms flailing, he fell over the edge, screaming all the way down.
The huge knife in Meng’s hand glinted in the moonlight as he, too, rushed forward. The blade sliced through the air with a whooshing sound, but Gage easily evaded the attack. Meng was no fighter. Like all tyrants, he let others do his fighting for him.
Gage delivered a solid punch to Meng’s face. It was a terrific blow that was accompanied by the sound of bone and flesh connecting. Again he struck Meng. And once again. He was sure he broke his nose the last time.
Gage had not forgotten about the other people. They would swarm up here from the lower levels like ants from a disturbed nest.
As a low rumble of thunder rolled ominously across the darkness, he grabbed the girl’s arm and steered her upward through the brush. “Come on. We gotta move.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice.
Beck had not found her yet. Their creed had always been that they never left anyone behind. But things had changed. She had been left behind. She had desperately wanted to believe that someone was searching for her. She had clung to that hope for a long time. But now that hope was gone.
Macayla shook her head resolutely. She was going to have to help herself and not wait for someone else to rescue her. What good was waiting for help going to do? How could anyone find her even if they were looking? No one knew where she was. No one knew what direction she had taken.
It wasn’t like this was first time she had been on her own, she reminded herself. She knew what it was like to be utterly alone while facing the dangers of a zombie apocalypse. Still, for a few unguarded moments, her loneliness in the aftermath of Beck’s decision to split up and the realization that he had deliberately abandoned her came back to haunt her. Once it had been her greatest fear, that of being completely alone in the world. To feel just like a wolf must feel when it is kicked out of a pack and left to the mercy of a very harsh, very unsparing world.
She looked up as a low rumble of thunder rolled across the gathering darkness. The sound was very faint and very far away, but there was nothing else left in the world to make a sound like that. Not that she knew of. There were no planes. No traffic. No trains.
She already knew, from the way that the spiders were spinning their webs that a storm was coming. She knew it in the very feel of the atmosphere. For now, at least, she was safe from any bad weather. She would not be out in the open as she had been on many occasions. She would shelter here in this abandoned house. And when she was able to do so, she would continue her desperate search for something she had only been on the verge of finding. Her goal was a fantasy, perhaps, though it was a simple one. It was an endless quest, a holy pilgrimage to find safety and the right to exist.
She looked down at the man lying on the bed.
He was a risk. She knew that. And she might have eliminated that risk a few months ago by turning her back on him. But she had changed, emerged from that dark cocoon she had been trapped in like a half-formed butterfly. She had gone through some profound metamorphosis, one that she did not completely understand herself.
For a long time she had existed like one of the undead herself. She had given up a good portion of herself to grief and to fear. She had lost so much just trying to survive, both physically and emotionally, that she had denied much of what made her human. But somehow she had found her way back, and she wasn’t willing to give herself up, for anyone or anything, again. And sometimes that meant taking risks. Part of her healing had come with the realization that she could make choices. That she was not a helpless bystander in life. That she was, in truth, multi-dimensional and not just the person everyone had always expected her to be.
She could choose to watch over him. Even though he was near death. Even though she knew that she might end up having to make some even harder decisions after all was said and done. Being completely alone did have its compensations after all, she reminded herself with a faintly ironic smile. There was no one around to condemn her choices or to criticize her for foolish decisions.
When she had first found him, he had dropped literally at her feet. It had been hard to tell then if he was even alive, or if he was one of the undead. After cleaning the blood off his face, she had been shocked at the damage. She wondered who could have beaten him so badly. No flesh hunter had been responsible.
Macayla frowned as she continued to watch him. The cuts and bruises that were swollen so badly yesterday looked a little better today. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It told her that he was mending and not getting worse. She had taken the precaution of tying him to the bed. She didn’t know how many times she had sat watching him, not sure that he hadn’t already died and turned. He looked that bad. But he continued to hold onto some tiny flicker of life. He was even beginning to improve.
He muttered something under his breath and strained against the ropes. Even in his fevered delirium, he didn’t like being tied down. He fought it. With a fury, at times, that alarmed her.
He didn’t even know she was there. What, she wondered, would he say to her when and if he did wake up? And then after that what would happen? Trusting someone was always a risk in this world.
Look how Beck, whom she had allowed herself to trust, had abandoned her. She had not forgotten that when she had called his attention to the voices that she had heard calling out, he had turned on her with such venom that it had taken her aback.
"We're not going back," he had said to her as he got belligerently in her face. "I don't want to be responsible for all those people anymore. How many times do I have to risk my life for them?"
In spite of that, she had tried reasoning with him. "But that's not who we are. We never leave anyone behind. Lathan would- ”
“I don’t give a damn what Lathan would do,” Beck had snarled, cutting her off. "Don't you get it? There may not be any we left if we go back there."
He had started for the woods again, but when he realized she wasn’t following him, he'd stopped. With his back still towards her, he'd said, "I checked behind that fence myself. There was nobody there."
At that point, Beck had fully revealed himself to her. She’d had only one thing to say to him. "That's a lie, Beck."
He had turned back to her with such a look of fury that she knew in an instant that she had gone too far in calling him out like that. For a long time she didn't want to think that Beck had purposely deceived her and cut her off from the group, but now she believed that’s just what he had done. By now she had figured out that it was no accident that they had gotten separated in the dark. He had arranged it all so that his lie would disappear with her.
The truth was that Beck wasn’t who he used to be. But none of them were.
When she realized Beck wasn’t going to go back, she had wrestled with the thought of going back by herself. But by then it was too late. The group had scattered, without even a remote chance of making any kind of a stand, let alone freeing the prisoners. Not only that, but the undead, a swarm of hungry flesh hunters had been drawn to the noise.
She had grieved these past two weeks over the ones who had been left behind, over the ones who could have been saved. She had experienced not only regret and remorse, but guilt as well. Searing guilt. They had been like family to her.
She had carried anger in her heart for a while, but she only pitied Beck now. She understood the demons that tormented him. She had walked through a dark place herself. The difference was that she had faced her demons and she had overcome them. She also understood that lies were a heavy burden to carry. The truth always came out eventually. You couldn’t hide from it forever. Even in this world.
Macayla straightened and kneaded the small of her back with both hands. Last night had been a long one and she probably had another long night ahead of her. In the last of daylight, she turned and caught a glimpse of herself in the oval mirror hanging in the hallway. She studied herself objectively for a few moments. There
was one good thing about a zombie apocalypse. There was no need to even think about dieting anymore. Not when starvation was always staring them in the face.
Her. It was always staring her in the face. There was no them anymore.
She looked down as the man suddenly called out. She knew he had no control over what he was doing or saying. But he needed to be quiet. He could draw attention from any flesh hunters when he was like this.
So she sat down beside him and calmed him with what was at hand. Her own voice. As she held a cool rag to his forehead, she spoke soothingly to him and continued on with the same story she had begun telling him yesterday. That of her old life. At least the better memories. .
Another rumble of thunder rolled across the sky, like some kind of dramatic accompaniment to her words. Lightning flashed outside the window, briefly lighting up the dim room. She needed to put containers out to catch some of the rain. She was running low on drinking water and she didn’t have the luxury of slacking off. Not if she wanted to survive.
“Why are you here alone?” she asked the unconscious man as she rinsed the cloth in cool water again and pressed it gently to his battered face. “And who did this to you?”
Perhaps the answers to her questions were not yet revealed, but she had come to believe that all things had a purpose. She was supposed to be here. Even now, there were things worth living for. Keeping a half-dead man alive, she had discovered, was one of them.
His authority had suffered a serious blow, but he had no intention of going back to what he had once been. Bertram Mengle, who had been an accountant in his previous life, the life he had lived before the shit had hit the fan, had decided somewhere along the line that he was going to do the shoving and take what he wanted instead of being the one who was always being pushed around. No, the last thing he wanted was to be a victim again. He’d played that role since childhood. So if that meant he had to be ruthless, maybe even brutal, then so be it.
Deadrise (Book 4): Blood Reckoning Page 2
