"It doesn't look like much of a horde," she ventures.
"These are the usual stragglers," I tell her. "Zombies are more active at night, and they tend to wander and cluster in areas where they can smell people nearby. The more of them gather in one spot, the more worked up they get. And eventually, if you get enough groups and clusters joined together, they start running, just running, looking for food. That's a horde."
"Aren't you the little zombie expert?" Jess leans on the wall, flicking bits of chipped stone off it. "How many times have you been out here?"
"A lot."
"Because Atlan doesn't know how to quit before he turns all shaky and weak."
I'm not sure I like her tone. "He likes to push himself."
She smiles. "Viana always quits in plenty of time to get home for a drink. We have a schedule."
"Of course you do." I suck in my cheeks to hide a smile.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just that you both seem like the schedule type." I gaze down at Viana, whose red hair glints coppery in the stray beams of sunlight slipping between the gray clouds overhead. She's precise in her kills, methodical—working to clear one section of the field before striding to another. She kills every zombie the same way—a stab through the heart, a sweep to the neck. Even her stoic gait is different from Atlan's dance of death. Her power has structure; it's not art, it's business. As I watch her, I have to admire the way she conserves her strength. She's clearly spending as little of her energy as possible, saving it for the coming horde.
Khalil stands by the gate, checking the edges of his axes. Near him, Charon is showing off, spinning his spear and scimitar in crazy loops and catching them again.
"You should tell Atlan to slow down." Jess smirks, pointing.
Following her finger, I see Atlan leaping and twirling around, mowing down the slowly shambling zombies much faster than he needs to. Sure, it's a good idea to clear out the ones who are already near the wall before the horde arrives, but does he have to make such a show out of it? He's going to wear himself out before we even catch sight of them.
But I'll never admit that to Jess. "Atlan says my blood gives him extra energy. He's just taking the edge off."
"So I've heard." Harry passes behind me, clapping me on the shoulder. "He was bragging about you to Charon the other day."
My face heats. "Was he?"
"Yeah. Something about your sweet smell, how your blood is the best he's ever had. Makes him stronger and faster, blah, blah, blah." He takes up a spot on the other side of Sarah, winking at me with a broad, sparkling smile. "It's enough to make a fellow blood-bag a little jealous. Definitely made Charon upset, too."
I bend my head a little, letting my hair fall on either side of my face to hide my burning cheeks. "What's the deal between Atlan and Charon, anyway?"
"They hate each other," says Jess. "Atlan's jealous that Charon has such a lively sex drive. And Charon despises Atlan for refusing to use a blood-slave, and for being—how does he put it—'such a towering crapheap of virtuous moral asshattery.' Charon calls Atlan 'his Holiness' sometimes, and damn does Atlan hate that." Her sharp smile tells me she has witnessed these interchanges before, and enjoyed them. It's another reminder that even though I'm sinking roots into Deathcastle, I'm still the newcomer. I'm not privy to all the conversations that go on among the others, and I haven't been invited to any group hangouts yet, though I know they've occurred. I'm an outsider, not part of the original crew—not yet.
A shout rises from Ben's lookout spot, a little way down the wall from where we're standing. He's holding his big military binoculars up to his eyes and pointing across the fields.
Atlan stops his dancing, and Viana dispatches one last zombie before standing stiff, facing the horizon. Khalil and Charon grip their weapons and step forward.
At first, I can't see any sign of the horde. And then a thick black line that I thought was a distant row of trees grow broader, darker—a black shadow creeping across the world. Another few minutes, and I can tell that it's a crowd of people running, running, insane and incessant, across the landscape. Not just a crowd—a flood.
A horde.
The vampires spread out. Viana heads to the left, so far down the field I can barely see her, and Khalil does the same on the right. Charon and Atlan take up positions in front of our section of the wall, but far apart.
"They look so small down there," I murmur. "Just the four of them."
"There are other vampires at outposts a few blocks to the south and north," Harry reassures me. "The Slaygate gang, and the Kestrels from Bastion. We're not alone—they're just too far away for us to see them."
"What about the soldiers?" I scan the humans lining the top of the wall. "Will none of them go out to fight?"
Jess throws me a reproachful look. "It's too dangerous. They would get bitten and turn within seconds. They'll shoot from up here, where it's safe."
"What if they hit the vampires?"
"The vampires have zones that they'll stick to," Harry says. "And the soldiers are well-trained not to shoot too near them. Besides, the vampires are wearing body armor."
"But not helmets," Sarah says. She's chewing her lower lip, and her pale face is even whiter than usual. "I don't want Khalil to get shot in the head."
"Don't worry, sweetie. Your blood daddy will be fine." Jess pulls out a cigarette, but a burly soldier near her snatches it away and throws it over the wall. "No sparks, no fire," he snarls. "Are you insane?"
"Maybe." She smiles at him.
He stares at her for a second before turning his attention back to the fields.
Jess catches me watching the interaction. "What?" She shrugs. "Charon doesn't own me."
"Yeah, but we're not supposed to make—connections—with soldiers," I say. "Robbins told me that was one of the rules."
Jess laughs, loud and brittle. "Tell that to sweet little Sarah! See the guy in the lookout booth, Ben?"
"Yeah." I glance at Ben, looking just as surfer-boy as always, with those tanned arms and that bleach-blond hair. And then I look at Sarah, who is beet-red, her eyes downcast. "Wait—you and Ben?"
"Sshh," warns Harry in a dramatic whisper. "It's Deathcastle's least best-kept secret."
"It's like living in a freaking soap opera," I mutter—but before I can say or think anything else, a series of explosions bursts across the faraway fields, sending up spurts of zombie body parts.
"First trap line!" crows Harry, shielding his eyes with a brown hand. "Next, the trenches. See how they're just pouring into the pits? It barely phases them—as soon as the trench gets full of bodies, the others just run over top of their mates."
He's right. The front rows of the horde, the ones not splintered by the concussive blasts, are tripping and falling and being borne down and rushing on ahead atop each other, all surging onward toward Blue City and its wall. The bombs and pits barely made a dent in their numbers.
Another series of explosions follows, and the snipers begin picking off zombies as the fanged tide roars toward us. The horde's front line reaches a long tangle of barbed wire stretched across the field, and a bunch of them get stuck in it—but the rest simply keep going until there's a ramp of bodies they can climb up and over.
Charon and Atlan step forward, raising their weapons.
My gaze locks on Atlan, standing tall in his gleaming black coat, his swords a graceful sweeping extension of his arms. So many zombies are roaring and ravaging and racing toward him—so many I want to scream. I press my hand over my mouth and remind myself that he's not their prey, he's not. They don't want him. They want human flesh. But what if they bear him down and crush him, despite his vampire strength? What if—
He glances back at the wall. At me.
I want to scream to him, to tell him—what do I want to tell him? Be careful—don't die—I care about you—
He turns back around just as the gibbering tide of limbs and fangs hits him like a freight train.
&nb
sp; I whimper into my palm and clutch Sarah's arm as she squeezes mine. We grip each other in a frenzy of fear for them—our vampires, our masters—no, not our masters.
Our friends.
The horde pours around the vampires, surging up against the wall. Their reek rises into my nostrils and they claw and clamber, scrabbling at the concrete and stone. The wall is ten feet thick, but I can still feel the rumble, the tremor of their force against it, rippling through its structure and into my bones.
The soldiers on either side of us open fire, mowing down the zombies who have made it past the traps and the vampires. The other blood-bags and I jam in the earplugs we were given, but it only deadens the gunfire—it doesn't block out the sound completely. The rattle of the machine guns reverberates through my body until I think I might shake apart.
I want to get off this wall. Why am I even up here? I could be waiting on the ground, in safety, but I followed Jess and Harry up here because I didn't want to look weak, and I expect Sarah followed my example for the same reason. And now that I'm up here, I can't leave. I can't move. I'm frozen in the center of the battle, clinging to Sarah—although at this point I'm basically holding her up. Her eyes are pinched shut and she's trembling all over.
I risk a glance downward, and I meet the bleary eyes of a zombie, three stories below me—no, not quite three stories, because he's standing on a stack of bodies, clawing at the concrete while the tips of his fingers are shaved away, little by little, by the frantic scraping of his hands. His milky eyes are shot through with black cracks. It's almost as if he sees me, wants to sink those long yellow fangs into me, in particular. If he got those teeth into me for even a second, they would inject virus-carrying fluid from the venom pockets buried in his gums. I would transform within minutes—sometimes it's as fast as a few seconds, depending on a person's blood composition and genetic makeup.
A sudden, panicked impulse seizes me—the desire to have a gun in my hands, to shoot, to help in the defense of Blue City. Untangling myself from Sarah, I inch along the wall, sidling behind the soldiers firing over its edge. My back is to the rope barrier; it's the only thing between me and the drop-off to the inner side of the wall.
When I reach Ben's lookout station, I touch his shoulder. He's leaning forward, sighting through a rifle scope, and he takes the shot before turning. I have to put my mouth near his ear and shout to be heard over the cacophony of gunfire and zombie screams. "Give me a gun!"
He shakes his head, but I glare at him fiercely. "Gun. Now!"
"You ever shot before?" he yells back.
"Are you kidding? It's the damn apocalypse. Yes, I know how to shoot. Plus I took a gun safety course in high school."
Shaking his head, he grabs a pistol and a box of ammo from a tiny table in the corner of the lookout station. He shoves them into my hands with a warning look. "Watch yourself. Don't shoot anywhere near the vampires."
Nodding, I scoot back to my place at the wall and switch off the gun's safety. Jess stares at me, mouth open, and Sarah inches away, toward Harry. Ignoring them, I lean over the edge and look down. That big zombie bastard with the cracked black eyes is still there, still clawing. Carefully I aim and squeeze the trigger. His head jerks back, brain matter spurting out the back, and he tumbles away. Two seconds later he's replaced by another slavering fanged creature, so I shoot that one too, and so on and so on. Strangely, when there's a gun in my hands and I'm actually doing something about the horde, my panic recedes, and my doom doesn't seem so damn inevitable.
When I run out of bullets, I watch Atlan for a while. He's still on his feet, but he's not dancing now—he's slashing and stabbing, fast and frantic, stepping up onto the bodies of the zombies he's killed to gain a little high ground over the ones rushing past him.
Finally he goes motionless, standing at the peak of a mound of bodies, his swords angled down and dripping. I grip my empty gun harder, squinting at Atlan, trying to see his expression under that sweep of black hair. Is he all right?
He lifts his arms, crossing his swords over each other.
"Respite!" shouts Ben.
"Respite!" repeats another soldier. They swing a rope ladder over the wall, just out of reach of the scrabbling zombie fingers. Atlan sheaths one of his swords, strides forward, and leaps, catching its lowest rung and climbing upward. A zombie snags his boot, not trying to bite, but blindly seeking a way up, and Atlan chops it through the neck. With a snap, his sword breaks, its severed blade spinning away into the maelstrom of half-rotted bodies.
I hurry toward him, returning the empty gun to Ben's booth on the way. Atlan smells like a thousand corpses, and his coat is drenched in gore. He inspects the broken sword, then kisses the hilt and tosses it over the wall into the horde. Catching my hand, he pulls me toward the steps and I follow him down, away from the gunfire. The soldiers are using a few grenades now, probably to make up for his absence in the fray.
When we reach the bottom of the steps, I tug out my earplugs and tuck them into my pocket. "Sorry about your sword."
"That was Megara," he tells me. "She was with me a long time."
"You name your swords?"
"Yeah." Unabashed, he shrugs off his messy coat and snatches a wet-wipe from a box on the table by the toilets.
"I never thought soldiers would have antibacterial wipes handy."
"Zombie venom is only communicated through bites, injected straight into the bloodstream," he says. "But some of the soldiers like to take extra precautions if they get zombie blood or fluids on their skin. And I like to use these for cleanup."
I feel strange around him right now, partly because he's buzzing with an odd manic energy, and partly because I'm painfully grateful for everything he is doing to defend me—us—humanity. I'm having a serious case of unbridled admiration, creeping into fangirl territory. Plus, the high of my own kills is still with me, sizzling through my veins.
"I killed a bunch of zombies," I tell him. "Thirty, maybe?"
He glances up, crumpling the bloodstained wipe in his hands. "They let you shoot?"
"Ben gave me a gun."
Atlan shakes his head with a half-smile. "You keep surprising me, Trouble."
I sway closer to him, sliding the straps of my bra and tank top off my shoulder. He lifts his eyebrows. "I thought you didn't want me biting your neck."
"It's okay for today. It'll be faster."
He glances around, then wraps his hand around my wrist. "Come here."
We step into a shadowed space by the wall, and he pulls me toward him, with my back to his chest. His left hand splays across my lower abdomen, drawing me close, while his right one sweeps my hair off my neck. When he presses more firmly on my stomach, pushing my rear against his body, my pulse accelerates, and my skin roars with heat, tightening with lust. He inhales softly, running his velvet lips along the curve of my neck. "That's it, Trouble. Relax for me."
My eyes close as my flesh tingles in response to those words. "You're so wicked."
"Just trying to make this more pleasant for you."
I relent, relaxing against him, enjoying the moment even though there's no answering hardness from his body. His fangs slide into my neck a second later, and he's right—the pain is barely noticeable through the haze of delicious desire flooding my mind.
When he's done, he caresses the wounds with his tongue, sealing them—but he doesn't let me go. Instead, he lays his forehead against my shoulder and sighs. "I wish I could stay here."
Slowly I reach up and lay my palm against his cheek. "What happened to loving your job?"
"This is different than the usual patrols. More dangerous, and the stakes are higher."
A voice breaks into our moment. "Which is why you need to get back out there, Your Holiness."
Atlan's head lifts, his arm tightening around me.
Charon stands a few paces away, with Harry behind him. "I came in for a respite too. Might as well, while the soldiers are having a little grenade fun. And this is such a great f
eeding spot—so nice and private. I'm sure you wouldn't mind if Harry and I borrow it." He advances, reaching out to trail a finger up my neck. "Or maybe your blood-bag could spare me some of that ruby wine in her veins. I'd love to have a taste."
I knock his hand away and give him the finger. Sliding out of Atlan's arms, I stalk back into the sunlight and mount the steps, with Atlan at my heels. The noise surges around us again, preventing conversation; but as he shrugs his coat back on, he gives me a look—not a smile, but something deeper—stronger, more intimate.
Then he grabs the new sword Ben offers him and disappears over the edge of the wall.
For hours the vampires battle, spending their energy recklessly, returning occasionally for more blood or protein shakes to spur their strength.
Finally, finally, the flood of zombies subsides to a few streams, then a trickle. And then, they are gone. Well, not gone—their bodies are thickly layered across the killing fields, piled so deep in places that it will take days to dispose of them all. The soldiers are already groaning about the cleanup, about how long it will take to move the entire dead horde an acceptable distance from the city.
A crew of soldiers leave the gate, one manning a crawler dozer, the others walking alongside to inspect the carnage and help with clearing a path. The vampires stumble back to the gate, every one of them weary and wobbling. Only Atlan seems to have a hint of energy left—he keeps his head high and spins one of his swords before sheathing it. Charon shoots him a vicious glare that warps his beautiful face into something demonic. With Harry at his heels, he swings into one of the trucks, snapping at the driver, "Get me out of here so I don't have to look at the Prancing Pope anymore."
As they roar away, the last pair of soldiers re-enters the gate, following close behind the returning crawler dozer.
One of the soldiers stumbles in the gateway, his eyes blasting wide with shock.
My gaze drops to the ground, where a half-decapitated zombie has just sunk its fangs into the soldier's leg.
A scream catches in my throat.
The soldier's body shivers—twitches—jerks—and then he flails toward another soldier, sinking newly erupted fangs into the woman's arm. She shrieks, but the cry burbles and changes as her own body seizes and her gums split, her cells rearranging into massive fangs laced with viral venom. The first victim has already snagged another soldier with his jaws. The dozer driver wrestles his gun out of its holster and immediately drops it, screaming as the female zombie attacks him.
Enslaved To The Vampire Zombie-Hunter (Pandemic Monsters Book 1) Page 8
