At last the motorcycle's engine gutters, the gauge indicating empty. I pull to a stop and lean over the handlebars. After riding for so long, I can still feel the vibration from the bike's engine—can almost hear the distant roar of the tornado, even though the storm is miles behind us now, probably dissipating. Maybe I'm in some kind of delayed shock, and my messed-up brain keeps sending echoes of the rumbling twister through my body.
Closing my eyes, I massage my forehead with my fingers. I should be better at this. Hell, I'm a damn vampire warrior of the apocalypse, or so I told myself. Maybe living behind walls and killing zombies without much personal risk has given me an inflated view of who I am, what I am. This whole situation is a big check to my pride.
Finley rubs my back. "What now, Vampire Lord?"
I groan. "We walk."
"Shit."
"Yeah, pretty much."
She sighs. "Bonus—I don't see any zombies."
Lifting my head from the handlebars, I scan our surroundings. Flat fields, some thick with tall grass—and further on, a great sprawl of bare earth, stretching on as far as I can see. The ground is stippled and dented and scraped, as if marked by the passage of many, many trampling feet, some in shoes, some bare, some dragging along.
Squinting at the trampled area, I swing off the bike. "Hang on a second."
I've seen this before, in a briefing. Captain Markham showed us the movements of the hordes—what the military has been able to chart of their movements, anyway, from the limited surveillance we have available. Some of the hordes drive in a straight line, north to south, east to west, or vice versa—until they hit mountains, or sea, or territory so cold their legs freeze up and break off.
Other hordes, like the one that hit the Blue City wall recently, seem to have a sense of human presence. They can tell where we're congregated, and they focus on breaking into those areas.
There's a third kind of horde—the kind that's stuck in a pattern, usually an oval or a circle. This type of horde covers a huge swath of the same ground every couple of weeks, or months, depending on the breadth of their circle.
"See this beaten earth here—it's been flattened by more than one passing," I tell Finley. "The entire area is almost indented—it's been worn down slightly below ground level. I think we're looking at a hordepath."
The way her eyes widen, I can tell she's heard the word somewhere before.
"Check out those little sprigs of grass coming up." She points. "It's been a few days since they came through here. They could be coming back around anytime."
"It cuts right across our path to the bunker. We should cross it now, before nightfall."
"Okay."
We start walking, across the hordepath. It must be at least a mile wide. The sun breaks between the clouds, heating the air, and little trickles of sweat wander down my back. I don't sweat as much as I used to before I changed—something about my new circulatory system and its effect on body temperature. Finley's definitely starting to sweat, though—moisture glimmers on her forehead. Should I offer to carry her pack? It would be the gentlemanly thing to do, but would she take offense, and snap at me, and insist she can carry it herself? I never know anymore. But hell—if she refuses and gets mad at me, I can take the verbal. I'd rather do the considerate thing and offer to help.
"I could carry your pack if you want."
Her eyes flash up to mine. "Think I can't handle it?"
"Not at all. I just have extra strength on my side."
"Because you're a man?"
"Because I'm a vampire." I grin at her, letting my fangs show.
"Okay, sure, fine." She unslings the pack and hands it over. "Thanks. It was getting pretty heavy, and my legs are being—weird. It's like they're—buzzing, or something."
I frown. "Mine are too. Almost like I'm still feeling the vibration from the building when the tornado hit, or from the bike—"
She's shaking her head, her face draining of color. "But that's not it. Because the vibration is getting stronger, Atlan. The ground—it's trembling."
We freeze, and we listen.
The earth is rumbling, and the very air seems to vacillate, not with the heat, but with the faint groaning of ten thousand mouths, and the tremors of twice as many feet.
The horde is coming.
26
Finley
The sheer quantity of zombies in this world still surprises me. Before the infection, people were always on the move, always zooming here and there to work and school and activities, their constant motion hiding their numbers. I could walk through a neighborhood in the early afternoon and not see a single soul.
But after the Gorging—well, let's just say it became very obvious how severely overpopulated our world is. A couple of long neighborhood streets lined with townhouses, emptied of all their denizens, could easily become an instant crowd—almost a small horde.
There is nothing small about the horde streaming toward me and Atlan. It's easily the most terrifying thing I've ever seen—scarier than the horde I saw from the Blue City wall, because at that point I had a wall and traps and vampires and soldiers between me and the zombies. Now they're a quivering dark mass pouring across the world, getting closer with every passing second.
"What do we do?" I ask Atlan.
"Trying to run ahead of them is pointless—we'll wear down eventually and they never will. We've got to keep going, and try to cross the rest of this hordepath so we can get the hell out of their way. Come on, Trouble. We need to run."
He takes off, and I follow, thanking my lucky stars that I committed to those weeks of training. I may not be soldier-strong, but I'll last longer at a dead run than I would have a couple months ago.
Wind rushes across the bare earth, eddies of the storm that passed through. It washes over my clothes and hair and skims on, toward the distant mass of zombies.
A bare minute later, the pitch of the horde's sound changes, rising a couple notches, and the ground beneath our feet trembles with renewed intensity.
Atlan curses. "They can smell you."
"They can smell me from this far away?"
"Yeah. If we were outside their path they might not care enough to deviate for one human, but—"
"We are right in their way."
"Yeah."
Fear claws through my heart. "We're not going to make it. I mean—I'm not going to make it."
Growling in frustration, he redoubles his pace, sprinting ahead, and for a few minutes I push myself harder, but acid is burning in my thighs and calves now, and my lungs are aching with every panicked drag of breath, and there's a painful pit of horror in my stomach, ratcheting up in agony with every footfall.
Is there no end to this horrible stretch of trampled earth?
"I think I see the grass line, Finley," Atlan calls back. "Up ahead."
Up ahead? Might as well be in the next county.
I can't. I can't anymore. My legs are trembling, partly from exertion and partly from sheer terror.
He circles back to me, hovering like an anxious black hawk. "I'll carry you."
"You may be strong, but you can't carry me all that way and still outrun them. Can you—can you fight them? You protected me before, with Harry." Even as I say it, I know it's ridiculous—impossible.
"That was different, Finley," he says gently. "That was maybe fifty zombies total, and this is a horde. We're talking maybe ten thousand of them, probably more, moving all together, moving fast. I can't fight them all and protect you at the same time—if even one of them got a fang into you—aahh!" He gives a low roar of frustration.
An echoing desperation is crawling through my limbs, along my spine. "It's over then. No shelter anywhere—I'm dead. They're going to eat me, and turn me. Oh god—Atlan, you have to kill me right now. Please. Just drain me until I pass out, or something. Or cut off my head, quickly—please! I don't want to be torn apart—it's going to hurt so bad—" I can't stop chattering, can't stop clutching the sleeves of his coat—<
br />
He grips my shoulders. "Stop it, Finley. Stop. I'm not going to kill you. You're not going to die—you can't." He speaks the words savagely, recklessly. "Everyone else on the damn planet can go to hell. Not you. Not. You."
I'm paralyzed, looking into those blue-fire eyes of his, but before I can formulate a coherent answer, he grips my hand. "Come on. I might have an idea."
He pulls me along, back the way we came at an angle that brings us closer to the onrushing flood of zombies.
"Are you insane?" I pant.
"Here it is." Atlan points to a deep groove in the ground, its edges worn by zombie steps. There's a crusty, sun-baked, broken carcass of a zombie lying in there—must have fallen in and gotten crushed on one of the horde's last rounds. Why didn't I see it before? I guess I was too focused on running for my damn life.
"I saw this earlier," Atlan says, hauling the zombie body out of the crevice. The zombie's fangs click faintly at my scent, and Atlan stamps its skull with his boot until the movement stills.
"Lie down on your back in that hollow," he orders. "Arms tight to your body, legs together. Keep as still as you can."
I obey, lying down in the shallow groove and squeezing my legs and arms in tight, wondering what his plan might be.
Unbuckling his weapons belt, he lays it beside me in the groove, along with my pack, and then lowers himself on top of me—his legs, hips, chest, all flush against mine. He spreads out his coat, tucking it around both our bodies wherever he can. With one hand he tilts my face aside, so my right cheek is pressed to the ground, and then he lays his cheek against mine and wraps his arm around my head.
He's covering my warm human scent with his vampire smell, concealing my living flesh with his altered flesh. Shielding my brain activity from their perception.
This can't work.
But it must, because the entire world is shuddering now, and a ferocious symphony of screams and groans and mutters and snapping fangs assault my ears.
With nearly two hundred pounds of handsome vampire on top of me, I'm having trouble breathing. Atlan shifts, and I can tell he's trying to hold himself above me just a little, to give me space to breathe.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "It's just for a few minutes."
I focus on taking in slivers of life-giving air. If I can just last until the horde passes by—
They're coming. The ground thunders with the pulse of their feet—thousands of them, surging toward us.
When the first lines of the horde arrive, several of them pause at the brink of the hollow and shuffle along it, snorting and sniffing. I can see their feet out of the corner of my eye—broken shoes, swollen and blackened toes, half-torn ankles with white bone showing through ragged tendrils of decayed flesh. Gurgles and growls issue from torn throats.
In a way, it's lucky that some of them caught a whiff of me and stopped to check it out. Otherwise, the entire horde would have poured right over Atlan's back—hundreds of bodies' worth of weight crushing us both slowly. As it is, the zombies who are investigating us form a kind of fire-break—a wall around which the rest of the horde curves and flows onward.
Maybe we'll actually get out of this.
I risk another shallow breath, but the reek of rot from the feet nearest me spirals into my nostrils and I gag sharply—audibly.
Instantly a pair of black-veined eyes and a hideous bloated face bends down to mine, sniffing, its yellow fangs champing an inch from my nose. Atlan shifts the arm wrapped around my head, spreading his hand in front of my face.
The zombie bites, latching onto the skin of Atlan's hand and pulling. There's a squelching rip, and through Atlan's splayed fingers I see the zombie experimentally chewing the bit of skin he ripped off my vampire's hand. The zombie snorts, shakes his head violently, and spits out the scrap of red goop.
I'm holding my breath, tears oozing from my eyes, fighting to stay quiet. Atlan tensed all over when he was bitten, but he didn't cry out. I know the zombie virus can't affect him—vampires have been bitten before with no effects—but it pains me that he is suffering for my sake.
As the zombie biter turns away in disgust, its fellows shamble after it. Then dozens and dozens of zombies clamber over Atlan and me, crunching our bodies together, and I pray for my ribs and sternum to hold out just a little longer. I can feel the strain in Atlan's body as he braces himself, enduring the worst of the scrabbling hands and stumbling feet. But when an especially heavy zombie bounds across Atlan's back, his chest grinds against mine and a sharp pain lances through one of my ribs. A hairline crack, if I'm lucky—but damn does it hurt and I almost cry out, mouth opening before I can stop myself—but Atlan slips a finger between my jaws and I manage to suck back the sound, biting on his finger a little so I can endure the pain spearing through my side.
Finally the last stumbling, half-decayed zombie drags itself across us and claws its way upright again, tottering off along the hordepath.
Then the horde is gone, its thunder fading across the fields.
After a few tense moments, Atlan lifts himself on both elbows and sweeps the area. "They're gone. I think it's safe to leave."
"Your hand," I whisper.
"It's nothing. I've had a lot worse. What about you? You were in pain, I could tell."
"Just my rib—a crack maybe."
"I'm so sorry." He pushes my shirt up a little, gently sweeping the area with his fingers. "How is it feeling?"
"It hurts. Too bad you can't lick the inside of me."
His eyes snap to mine, startled, and I realize what I just said. My face flames and I hurry to correct the misunderstanding. "No, I just meant—too bad you can't lick the rib and heal it, like you heal my skin when you feed."
"I know what you meant." But he doesn't stop staring at me, and I'm suddenly conscious that from the waist down, he's still pressed against me, his hips on top of mine.
The pressure of his eyes, the beauty of his face, the size and heat of his body—it's overwhelming, and my feelings for him flood my nerves, exaggerated by the terror we just endured—what he saved me from. I curse myself for that traitorous tickle between my legs, for the heat flaring through my stomach.
But no—I refuse to feel bad about this. Hell, I just survived a zombie horde with only a cracked rib, and this stunning specimen of a man shielded me with his own body.
I reach up, stroking his cheek and the dark scruff along his crisp jawline.
"You saved my life," I whisper. And then, half-teasing— "Thank you, master."
Suddenly, unexpectedly, something else is pressed against me—something hard, thick, and unmistakable, right over my crotch.
Shock and heat rush through me, and my jaw drops. "Are you—"
He lurches off me, turning away and scooping up his weapons belt. "Shut up."
"When I said 'master,' you—"
"I said 'shut up'!"
Slowly I climb to my feet, cupping my sore rib. "Why are you embarrassed? I think this is amazing! A very, very good thing. Now we know that all it takes for you to get excited is a zombie horde, a near-death escape, and one little word—master."
He shudders. "That's not what caused it."
"Hmm. A likely story. Let's look at it scientifically—while we walk to safety, of course—come on." I tug his uninjured hand, and he yields, letting me lead him across the hordepath. "This is the first time you've been aroused since you became a vampire, right? So it's logical to assume that this particular group of factors is the recipe for getting you excited."
"This isn't the first time," he mutters.
"Wait, what?"
"Let it go, Trouble."
"No. Uh-uh. Definitely not letting it go." A sudden thought chills my heart. "Were you aroused by someone else, before me?"
He snorts. "As if. No, Finley, apparently you're the only one annoying and persistent enough to work me into this state."
I grin, stupidly satisfied at being the only one. The only damn one. "Annoying and persistent. Such sweet words!
"
"Shut up," he says again, but he's grinning now, sheepish, and my blood has risen through his veins to flush his cheeks.
I slip my fingers through his and soften my tone. "Can you tell me? When did it start happening?"
He sighs, deep and resigned. "The first time I felt something was the day after I drank from you, when we were behind Deathcastle. You wanted me, and you smelled so irresistible. But the sensation was so subtle I thought I'd imagined it. It kept happening, just a hint of something, over and over when I was around you—like the time I saw you naked in the shower with Charon, and again a few times after that. But things really changed the morning after we shared your bed."
"That's why you rushed out of the room? Because you had a boner?"
"Yeah. And then it happened again, not long after you said you loved me."
I stop walking. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I didn't know if it would last, or if it would ever happen again. And if I told you, I thought you'd assume that I wanted—that I was asking for sex. Expecting it, or demanding it as your master. But I wouldn't do that—I would never pressure you, and I don't care what Markham says—you're not my slave, so don't feel like you have to do anything you'd rather not do—"
I seize his face in my hands. "Stop. Are you insane? You know I've wanted you since the very first day."
He looks at me, pleasure suffusing his face—pleasure mixed with a hint of uncertainty, of longing. "You know it's more than just—" But he breaks off the sentence, focusing on something behind me. "Look out. Stragglers."
He sidesteps and plants himself at my back, between me and the oncoming zombies. I pivot and crane my neck to see over his shoulder—five zombies by my count, their shambling steps picking up speed as they catch a whiff of my scent.
"Give me the gun from my pack," I tell him.
"No! The noise might attract more of them."
"Then give me one of your swords."
"Why? So you can accidentally cut me up with your wild swings?"
"No, idiot. So I can defend myself. Geez, I'm not that bad at swordplay."
Enslaved To The Vampire Zombie-Hunter (Pandemic Monsters Book 1) Page 17
