"Don't leave me!" The reedy voice came from the ground, behind Eli.
He froze. A gnawing pain bored into his gut.
"Come back," said the voice again, hoarse and wracked with fear.
Slowly, fearfully, Eli craned his neck behind him. He found skeletal legs sprawled across the path, the feet coated in black dirt. The man wore frayed shorts, a yellow bowling shirt with the name "Stan" written on it. The name tag was drenched in blood. With one hand, he clutched the knife sticking out of his chest and with the other, reached out to his fleeing partner.
"Don't leave me." Blood bubbled from his mouth and splattered across his cheeks.
"I won't," Eli croaked. He squatted beside the man, stared into the yellowed, bloodshot eyes as they dimmed. When it was over, Eli brought a clenched fist to his forehead and held his breath against a sob until his lungs ached.
Behind him, Eli's other victim lay in a crumpled heap at the base of a tree, blood smeared across his neck. Up the path, the other one lay on his face, an arrow jutting from his head.
Three more lives.
Eli breathed quick and shallow as Jane and Frank's footsteps crunched toward him. He didn't look up.
"You saved our lives." Jane chuckled, but the sound quickly faded. "What?"
"They weren't infected," Eli said.
"Pretenders, then?" Frank stared at the corpse. "What the hell?"
Eli peeled the dead man's fingers from his knife and gently tugged it out. He stared at the bloodied blade, clutched the hilt until his fingers hurt, and sheathed it.
"Why would anyone want to be like them?" Jane said.
Eli rose to his feet, walked over to the man he'd stabbed in the neck. He was young, in his early thirties like Eli, had blond hair and a scraggly beard. He wondered what the man had been before the Fall.
"They gave up," Eli said.
"Then they didn't deserve to live." Jane peeked at the blood spattered across Eli's clothes, chest to thighs, and put a hand on his shoulder. "You did good."
He backed away from her touch. "No, I didn't. Let's keep moving."
Eli found the footprints. He stared at them, their shape and route northwest rooting him in the present, keeping him sane. He clenched his fist, forcing the anxious nerves and the fading pulse of that deadly rush from his fingers. Grief, sickening and dark, took its place.
Three more lives. Even if he'd done good, as Jane said, this was where it started — with the first kills. The ones you tell yourself are unavoidable and necessary. That was the path to losing yourself.
Eli listened to Frank and Jane's footsteps following close behind and felt their eyes on his back. Every now and then he turned around and found them, huddled together, whispering.
At a safe distance, separate from him.
Chapter 9
Eli lay on the floor of a derelict ranch house. Above him, strips of light and shadow played across a water-stained ceiling as dawn crept through the slats of a barred window.
Instead of sleeping, Eli counted the days and recited his routine. He figured it was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays, he chopped and delivered wood to his neighbors. But there would be no more routines, no more normal days, not like before.
This Tuesday, he was going to find Lily. After he brought her home, he'd leave for his farmhouse and everyone he loved would be safe. A new routine, a new normalcy would start.
The gray light outside sharpened. Eli raised himself up to his elbows and listened for signs of Frank and Jane stirring in their beds down the hall. The house was silent. He rose from the floor, put on his coat and pack, grabbed his crossbow, placed the note on a pillow, and stepped lightly to the door. He eased it open and swept outside, clicking the door shut behind him.
Clouds hung low in the sky and rain scented the air. Eli's skin shriveled in the cold as he raised his mouth guard and trudged to the street through grass wet with dew. The pavement was cracked, the rusted cars still parked in their driveways. Doors gaped open; windows were shattered or boarded. A moist, chill wind whistled through the empty streets.
The town was called Wicke. The last time Eli was here survivors still huddled inside, refusing to let him in even though he begged, bleeding. Now he was on the other side, staring at their wall laying on the street in shambles a hundred feet away. What was left of it had vanished into a thicket of saplings, milkweed, and vines. A wooden platform peeked out from the foliage. Eli remembered that day, three years ago, like it was yesterday.
Ghostly figures stood sentry on the wall there, pointing their guns at him.
"On your way," a someone had called.
They didn't hear him. Eli had cried out, "Please, help me!" A gunshot barked and the bullet pinged on the road at his feet. "Bloody Parasite," the voice had said. Another gunshot. Eli fled, and the echoing patter chased him down the road.
All this time later, Wicke was empty and silent. The gunshots had long faded and the only sound left was a hanging shutter, flapping in the wind against an empty house.
A frigid breeze raked Eli's face and froze the tears puddling in his eyes. They were all infected now, those people who couldn't tell the difference between monster and man. Or maybe they could; the people in Hope should've chased him away with bullets, too. Eli thought of his farmhouse and watching Hope from the tree line as he headed for the gap in the broken wall and the road beyond.
Boots smacked the pavement behind him, and a voice whispered. "Eli."
He turned to find Jane running toward him. Her eyes spit fire.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Eli kept walking and spoke over his shoulder. "Going after Lily. You two'll be safe in there. I'll bring her back or —"
"I read your fucking letter. I mean why?"
Jane grabbed his arm and spun him around. Eli stared over her shoulder at a leaning electrical pole, its wires sagging to the ground.
"One person blends in easier than three."
"And if those things come after you, you think you can fight them off alone?"
Eli shrugged. A red-tailed hawk soared above his head, screaming, then fluttered down from the ashen sky and perched on top of the pole.
If I'm alone, I don't have to.
"Look at me, Eli," Jane seethed. "Right now."
He obeyed. Her eyes blazed blue-green, the only spot of color in the drab morning.
"Frank is a mess and he needs both of us to help him."
"I am helping him."
Jane thrust a finger in his face. "He doesn't just need you to search for Lily, he needs you to listen to him, to tell him it's going to be okay."
"He has you." Frank didn't need him; Eli was a stranger now. "You'll be safe here."
Jane rolled her eyes. "No place is safe."
Eli watched the hawk launch off the light pole and whip its wings into the gray sky. "It is if I'm not around —"
"What does that mean?" Her voice drilled into his ears.
Eli studied his boots and the cracked road beneath them. It meant he was treading the same bloodied road he'd tread before. It meant he killed three men in his first day outside the walls and it would only get worse.
He rubbed his forehead and ran his fingers between his eyes, squeezing to ease the pressure gathering there. There would no escaping Jane when she was stubborn; if he kept going without her, she'd only follow.
"Be back out here in five minutes," Eli said gruffly. "We eat on the road."
Jane left and he listened to that creaking shutter and the crows cawing to each other. Ten minutes later, Jane stormed down the street toward him with Frank following behind, his head down and shoulders hunched. Jane cocked her eyebrow, demanding silently that Eli say something, but heat spread across his cheeks. He turned around and led them out of the settlement.
Eli led Frank and Jane to the spot he last spotted footprints: at the shoulder of the road that went into Wicke. These led to an avenue of trampled weeds and disturbed debris cutting through the center of the road. Eli shadowed
the trail with his friends a few feet behind, keeping northwest. After a mile, the land opened up into abandoned fields and they passed an old dairy farm with a tall statue of a Holstein standing in the front yard, its black spots blanched to gray. Then came the town sign, announcing Wicke was once home to 750 people. After that, the road cut through thick woods that smelled of rotting leaves, wandered past peeling billboards and a campground, still littered with rusted RVs.
Houses grew up from plains of swaying grass. Bird nests topped chimneys. Leaves, debris, fallen trees, and power lines covered every inch of the road and saplings burst from the cracks. The air was clear, the water sparkled; animals, buzzing insects, and birdsong filled the air.
Eli watched this dead world pass by, sad and fascinated, and searched the shoulder for signs the group had left the road. He kept ahead of Frank and Jane, but always within earshot. The rumble of their constant conversation made him uneasy, but he didn't tell them to be quiet. Frank needed to talk.
Mid-morning, the road climbed a steep hill and dove into a patch of forest. At its top, the road flattened, and to the east, the land opened up into a valley. Eli strolled to the shoulder to let Frank and Jane catch up. He instantly ducked behind a line of sumac and peered through the leaves.
The valley's green folds were dotted with squat earthen buildings. Figures milled between them wearing loincloths, soiled T-shirts, and feathers in their greasy hair.
Parasites.
Frank and Jane's voices floated up the hill. Breathless and rigid, Eli waited for them to reach the top; at first sight of their familiar faces, he motioned for them to be quiet and crouch. They shimmied to his side behind the sumac.
Jane gasped. "There are hundreds of them down there."
Three of the Parasites peeled away from the others and lifted their faces to the sky, apparently sniffing the air. Then one opened its black mouth wide and a yip echoed from the valley and grew to a howl. Its fellows took up the call with rhythmic shrieks and howls. The shrill chorus reminded Eli, as it so often did, of coyotes.
"Get out of here," he whispered. "I'll see if they follow."
"What?" Jane hissed.
Eli glanced at her face a moment, dappled with the arrow-shaped shadows cast by the sumac leaves.
"Go. I'll catch up."
Jane scowled but didn't argue. She took Frank's arm and they both inched back to the road and ran away at a crouch. Eli was left alone with the Parasites.
Stay calm, stay calm.
The camp was three times the size of Hope, full of wasted, leathery, filthy bodies. Shells of human beings. It was in sharp contrast to the landscape surrounding them: richly green, bursting with foliage and animals; clear water; clean air. Nature had swallowed man like he'd never existed, to be replaced by a creature less than human. Eli watched the Parasites in the valley, wandering about their huts, crouching by their fires, sharpening their spears.
Animals in men's skin.
The trio of Parasites disbanded, the scent apparently lost. Eli breathed slow and deep and then he, too, backed away from the sumac and ran down the road. He found Frank and Jane around the next bend, standing on the open porch of a convenience store whose sign had long fallen down, talking quietly. Eli beckoned them to follow but didn't stop; he felt as if he were interrupting. Their distant footsteps fell in behind him and they continued their slow pace, Eli following the trampled weeds, Frank and Jane chatting behind, an abandoned world passing beside the road.
For Eli, the journey passed by in brief flashes of asphalt and weedy ground and the tips of his boots, scenes of decay and rebirth. A deer grazing peacefully in a meadow of wildflowers. A half-collapsed barn and a silo whose roof had been blown off. An elementary school with trees climbing out of windows and wild turkeys roaming the playground. He swooped from one side of the road to the other, gaze to the ground, distantly noticing the houses disappearing, the land growing wilder, and thunder rumbling beneath darkening clouds.
Late in the afternoon, the trail vanished. Eli stopped and looked up for the first time in hours. A tight feeling clenched his chest and he couldn't breathe.
Did she really go this far? Am I on the right track?
Narrow houses lined both sides of the road. A short overpass, peppered with graffiti, loomed overhead. He trudged underneath the bridge to the other side, found the road veered sharply right, and the weeds sprouting from the road were undisturbed. Eli retraced his steps, combed the shoulders for footprints.
"What's wrong?" Jane said from somewhere behind him.
"The trail stopped," Eli said quickly.
Jane asked more questions, but Eli didn't hear. He swished through the overgrown shoulders, through goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace and tufted vetch, searching, panicked.
Then he saw it.
He dropped to his knees and squatted over a spot on the western shoulder. Prints, several of them. He traced the edges with a shaking, gloved finger and took a deep breath. The tracks dipped down into the ditch; he rose and followed, found more footprints pummeled across the ground. Spied broken twigs, flattened scrub.
Eli launched from his muscled legs and tore into the forest. Jane hissed something at his back, but Eli just motioned over his shoulder, ordering them to follow.
Cool, dappled green stretched before him, like a forested cave. He immediately found what he was looking for: bent twigs, leveled plants, and footprints. He crept forward with his gaze down, squinting at the brush until he found a pink thread draped on the twig of a maple sapling. He plucked it up as a branch snapped, somewhere distant but close enough to spook him. Eli squinted between the trees, felt eyes on him, told himself to be calm.
"Everyone be quiet." He walked forward with his crossbow ready.
For an hour, they strolled through the woods in silence. Eli was comforted by the soft rustling of his friends' footsteps, always close behind. He kept his eye on the path made by bent twigs and trampled ground, spotted three more of Lily's threads and added them to the small, growing clump of yellow and pink he kept in his pocket. The sun slowly fell in the sky and the woods sank into shadow. Eli began to think of setting up camp for the night.
Eventually they found a stream, wide and shallow and slow-moving. Upriver, dark, sharp-edged rocks pinched the water into a small waterfall. Eli squatted at the edge and dipped his canteen in the frigid depths. Frank stooped beside him and suddenly palmed Eli's arm, and warmth spread from the spot on his forearm up to his shoulder, his chest. The warmth of the familiar, the kind, the comforting. Still, Eli panicked. Frank was too close.
"Walk with me," his friend said.
Eli nodded. They tucked away their filled canteens and found the path again. Frank limped beside him, Jane followed.
"I know what you're going through, son," Frank said.
The words tugged at the back of Eli's throat: I'm a killer, I'm a bad man. You've no clue what I did. "What am I going through?"
"Remorse. Taking lives isn't an easy thing, I know. It never should be." Frank's voice was soft in Eli's ear. "I know you're not the killing type. But sometimes we're forced to make hard choices. That was one of them. And you did what you needed to."
Eli glanced up at his friend, the scratched glasses and graying beard. The truth burned in his mouth and he thought he'd gag, or throw up, or just stop breathing.
I'm no victim. You're not safe near me.
"If you say so," Eli said to the ground.
"I do. And you must learn to live with it. Make peace with what you've done. I did. When it comes to protecting the people you love, nothing is too extreme. I did everything I could to save Becky and Andrea. I'll do the same for Lily. And I'll bear it, because it's for her." Frank squeezed his arm. "And so will you. To find her. I know you will."
Eli glanced at Frank's crestfallen face and knew he should be the one offering advice and comfort. "One act just leads to another," he said instead. "Until you've gone too far."
With that, Eli plunged ahead, deeper into the darkenin
g woods, reciting in his mind what he didn't have the courage to say aloud.
I'm a killer, Frank.
Eli walked in silence until it became too dark to see the footprints on the forest floor. A branch snapped. Eli shouldered his crossbow and scanned the woods, stepped forward with his ready arrow at the lead, but it was too dark to see very far.
Movement flitted to Eli's left. He took a step.
Something tight wrapped around his ankle and yanked.
Eli hit the ground with a hard thwack, shoulder first, his cheek thumping against cold earth, his teeth clattering. The something around his ankle yanked him upward. He grasped for the ground, but it fell away and his crossbow slipped from his hands. It fell to earth with a crunch.
"Eli!" Jane's bodiless voice called.
Eli curled up at the waist to glimpse his feet; they were bound and he hung from a thick branch. He heard footsteps and caught a flash of Frank and Jane. They stood near him with weapons raised. Eli spun and saw shadowed woods.
"What the fuck is this?" Jane spat.
"Do you see anything?" Frank asked.
"I don't think so."
His friends' legs. Trees growing into the sky. Movement flitting between the trees. A man, sprinting between tree trunks, leading with a spear. Then Jane.
"You have to get out of here," he said. "Someone's coming."
She unsheathed her knife with a "fuck that" and reached to cut the rope dangling him.
"Don't you move," said a voice, deep, firm, and harsh. "Back away."
Feet scraped across the leaves, voices murmured, three sets of feet pounded the earth. Another flash of Jane and Frank, their hands up. More sets of feet. Eli reached up toward the knife sheathed at his hip. An arrow tip poked his nose.
"Do that, and I shoot this arrow through your girlfriend's heart."
Eli dropped his arms and gradually stopped spinning; he faced four sets of boots. His heartbeat thumped in his head, the panic pressing into his skull with the blood.
"And don't you try anything either, sweetheart."
The strangers rushed to Frank and Jane. "Hand 'em over," a different voice said. Swishing and thumping and grunting followed, then hands ripped Eli's knife from his pants.
A New America Trilogy (Book 1): The Human Wilderness Page 8
