Love Starts With Z (18 page)

The rhythmic
snick, snick
of the handheld shovel sounded behind them as the boys dug a grave for Ben.

Adrianna stood by the creek, watching the water flow by. It was her way. She wasn’t good at farewells.

Silently, Kaegan and Colten lifted Ben’s body and set him in his final resting place. Adrianna found a large river rock and placed it as a marker at the head of the grave and one by one, they touched it and trailed back toward camp.

As they passed Mark, Kaegan followed through on his promise, pulling his machete and cutting into his forearm until it ran red.

For the first time in her life, the smell of fresh blood wasn’t enticing. Now it turned her stomach. Tonight never should’ve happened.

Colten dropped back, waited for her to catch up, and slipped an arm around her shoulders. Leaning his temple against hers in a move that shocked her to her bones, he whispered, “I saw what you did back at camp. You went after the gun pointed at me instead of the one that would’ve saved you, and that says something about the type of person you are. I’m sorry I stabbed you when I first met you, and even if we die out here, I’m glad I got the chance to know you.” He reached back and unclipped the muzzle. “Don’t wear this anymore. It upsets Kaegan, and he’s struggling enough with all of this. Hell, I can’t stand to see it on you anymore either. You aren’t a monster, Soren. People like Mark are the ones who deserve to be muzzled.”

Perhaps her emotions had been amplified with the loss of Ben, but the streaming tears down her cheeks were all Colten’s doing.

He brushed a knuckle across her damp lashes, his smile white in the moonlight. “I’m still calling you Z, though.”

She laughed thickly and nodded. “I don’t think I hate it so much anymore.”

K
AEGAN
W
ATCHED
H
ER
and Colten with an unfathomable expression, and Soren slipped her hand into his when they caught up.

Colten stoked the fire when they arrived back at camp, and the glow lit the woods, flickering off tree trunks and brush. The first aid kit was in Adrianna’s satchel, and she handed it to Soren without her asking. Kaegan’s face was a gory mess, and they didn’t need the smell attracting things that went bump in the night.

“Come on, sit down,” she said, gesturing to the dark side of a large evergreen.

Grunting, he slid down against it and sighed heavily. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she straddled him and cupped his cheeks. “Mark’s death isn’t one that you should carry. He killed Ben. He would’ve killed all of us.”

He blinked slowly, drawing his dawn gray eyes to hers. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

“You did. You took the firing pin from his favorite weapon. Kaegan, you saved us.”

“No, I should’ve seen the ambush by the creek. Ben had gone quiet, but I just thought he shoved off for a piss. He was dying instead.” He hissed as she dabbed the gash on his head with a cloth she’d doused with canteen water. “He hit me with a branch. Looked like he used the same one on Ben. I think I only blacked out for a minute, and when I woke up, I tried to revive Ben, but his face—”

“I know. I saw it.” She wished she hadn’t, wished there was a way to erase the memory from her mind, but it was there, bright and unavoidable. Maybe it was a good thing she didn’t dream.

Brushing his finger down her jaw, he whispered, “You did good. I saw you fight Mark.”

“He still bested me.”

“Only because you were focused on protecting the others. You were beautiful. Lethal. But when Mark pulled the trigger against your head, it did something awful to me.” His voice trembled. “I wanted to rip his head from his body with my bare hands for trying to hurt you.”

The firelight on the other side of the tree cast quivering shadows across the woods as the others prepared for sleep. One half of Kaegan’s face was illuminated in the soft glow, enough for her to see the hunger that churned in his eyes as he dropped his gaze to her lips.

“I want to kiss you so bad, sometimes I can’t think of anything else,” Kaegan said, focusing on her parted lips.

It was hard to breathe, hard to think when he looked at her like that. As if he were hurting and the only thing that could relieve the pain was the taste of her. She lifted a curved, threaded needle to his wound, but he grabbed her hand and shook his head.

He gripped her waist so tight, his fingers dug into her flesh as he pulled her forward until she was crushed to his hips. Even through the thick canvass of her pants, she could feel his rising excitement against her.

“I’ve worried half my life that I’d never find someone to match me,” he rasped. “I was scared I’d walk the earth alone and never really be affected by anyone, and then I saw you, and now I don’t even feel like the same man anymore. You’re different, deeper. And the more I’m around you, the more I want to be different too. My life is yours, Soren. My body, it’s yours. I trust you with all of it.”

She kissed his neck lightly and whispered against it, “My body is yours too, Kaegan, just not my lips. I’ll get the muzzle.”

“Don’t,” he said through gritted teeth. The tree was wide, and the team had settled near the fire. The murmur of their conversation had died until it felt like they were alone with the wind.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“Tonight, I don’t want anything from you.” Slowly, he untied the leather string of her pants, loosened them until they lay open.

Glancing around, she said, “We can’t do this here.”

Pulling her close until her chest brushed his, he slid his hand down the front of her, cupping her, silencing her denial as the warmth of his hand met the wet heat he’d created with the intensity of his admissions. Her body hummed as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She could never be close enough to him, and as he slid a long finger inside of her, she gripped his shirt and stifled a groan of ecstasy. Rocking against his touch, she set the pace, slow and languid at first, but faster as tension filled her. He nibbled on her neck, sucked and kissed in turn, and as climax built, he pulled her tighter and tighter against him until there was no ending to her and no beginning to him. His arms flexed and shook, his breath trembled against her neck, and she bit her lip against the scream building in her throat. She shattered, and the only thing holding her together was Kaegan’s embrace.

“Kaegan, Kaegan, Kaegan,” she breathed as she buried her face in his shoulder.

A deep chuckle filled the quiet night and he eased her back. “Don’t hide it from me, love. I want to see the face you make when I touch you.”

She tried to steady her breathing, but anything more than simply existing seemed impossible. The smile dipped from his face as he studied her, and by the time he slid out of her, she was no better than mud in his hands.

God bless that man, he tightened and tied her trousers when her fingers didn’t seem to want to work and then pulled her beside him into the shelter of his arm. Cocking his head, he said, “I like the way you say my name.”

She smiled into the darkness, heat flooding her until it reached the tips of her ears as the shudder of aftershocks pulsed against where he’d caressed her.

“I was afraid…” he started. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to feel anything inside of you either. Since you don’t feel pain, I didn’t know what pleasure would be like for you.”

Pursing her lips against a smile of pure satisfaction that threatened to take over her entire face, she snuggled against his ribs. “Pleasure won’t be a problem for us.”

His lips were warm as they pressed against her hair. “Good.”

Kaegan lay below Soren at the base of the tree, on a worn blanket with his go-bag propped under his neck like a pillow. He was on his side, with his arms crossed in front of him as if he were cold, but when she searched for gooseflesh on his skin, she could find none.

Maybe she should put her blanket over him. She was lookout tonight, so she wouldn’t need it. No, she was just obsessing. He was fine, and if she covered him up, he’d only wake. Even in his sleep he looked exhausted, or haunted, or maybe a disturbing combination of the two. She could tell being with her had only been a temporary escape, and that his thoughts had drawn inward, to Ben, when he sat beside the campfire to eat the leftover dinner that had been warming there. His silence was deafening as she’d searched for something to say to take the burn of Ben’s loss from their shoulders.

No, she wouldn’t risk waking him. He needed the rest as much as the others did.

Dragging her gaze away from his sleeping form to the moonlit forest, she leaned back against the trunk of the tree she’d scaled for a better vantage point. Frogs croaked, but it was an unusual sound. Sometimes it was akin to screaming, and at first it had rattled her. And why wouldn’t it after the long night the team had? But time healed all, and in this case, settled all, and she had grown used to the screaming frogs as the hours dragged on.

In a few hours’ time, it would be dawn, and they could break camp and escape the haunted woods where they’d lost a chunk of their team to betrayal. The urge to hurry from this place was so thick it was almost tangible.

Movement caught her eye, and she squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness below.

Another blurred movement, but this time, she caught a flash of brown fur. The dog was back.

They’d discussed a name for him. Lauren had written
Maynard
on her board, and when Soren had agreed it was the perfect name for him, Colten started calling him Nards for short, so they re-cast their votes. Instead, his name was now Max.

She climbed down the tree and dug a piece of dried venison from Adrianna’s satchel. Slowly, she approached with her offering, but Max didn’t seem interested in food at the moment. He slunk back and forth, tail tucked.

Soren frowned and cocked her head. Maybe he was agitated by the Deads Mark had likely attracted near the creek. “They’re far enough away they won’t pay attention to us tonight, Max,” she said soothingly.

A high pitched whine wrenched from his throat as he looked behind him and jumped at some disturbance beyond her senses. A twig snapped and Max bolted.

Drawing her battle sword, she listened for a groan, a shuffle, anything that would point her in the right direction. She didn’t smell Deads, and she should at this short a distance. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed, but still nothing.

As quietly as she could, she crept through the woods in the direction of that small ruckus. It was probably an animal. A rabbit or deer. Even a boar, perhaps.

The camp was far enough away she could barely make out the fire. It was nothing. She scanned the woods, but everything was still and quiet except for the screaming frogs.

“Geez, Mitchell,” she muttered. “Get ahold of yourself.”

As she turned, she ran into a solid wall of muscle. A man with a tattoo across the side of his face gave her a cold smile, and then threw a black bag over her face before she could scream. She fought like a wild, injured animal, but as soon as she thought she’d made ground, the crack of her skull sounded like gunfire in her ear.

A dull ache spread from her temple to behind her eye, and her legs seized and refused to work.

This was it. This was the part where she died.

A
DRIANNA’S
C
URSING
W
OKE
K
AEGAN
U
P
from a deep sleep. Dawn had broken the horizon, and the sun now hung heavy in the eastern sky. He would’ve been more concerned with the late hour if it wasn’t for Mark-the-Dead, standing at the edge of a branch Adrianna was pushing on.

“Hurry up, Colten,” she groused.

Colten rubbed his eyes sleepily, yawned, and pulled his machete. One languid thrust and Mark fell to his knees, limp but propped on the branch. The ropes still hung from his wrists, and Colten lifted one up to examine it. “Son of a bitch, someone cut these.”

Kaegan looked around, the feeling of unease pushing him to action. “Soren?”

The morning light sifted through the trees, leaving the ground speckled around him. Leaves lazily rustled in the wind and branches swayed. Nothing more.

Adrianna dropped the branch and yelled, “Soren! Where are you?”

“Why would Soren cut Mark free?” Colten asked, still staring at the sliced rope.

“She didn’t,” he said bolting for the woods. “Someone else did, and I bet this has something to do with that kid we saw in the woods yesterday.”

Turning around and around, he searched the woods. Damn it! Where was she? No way in hell would she let Mark slip past her when she was on watch. Dread slammed into him like a glacier, and his chest constricted until it was hard to breathe. She was gone. Every instinct in his body screamed it was so, but still, he searched the woods.

A flash of brown ran between two trees, and he pulled his gun and aimed.

“Don’t,” Colten warned. “It’s just Max. Don’t waste your ammo on him.”

Kaegan lowered his weapon as the mutt slunk from the tree he’d hid behind and sniffed at something on the ground. He looked up and then sniffed again, repeating the gesture until Kaegan surged forward. The dog had found something.

Skidding to a stop, he brushed leaves away from a single curved blade in the dirt, the smaller of the pair Soren carried on her back. The ground was torn up, like she’d fought, and branches had been snapped where something big had been dragged away.

“Pack camp fast,” Kaegan breathed. “They could have hours on us.”

He stared in horror at the fallen blade as Colten sprinted for camp. He didn’t matter without her. Nothing did. She was everything good, and now she was in danger. He wouldn’t, couldn’t believe her already dead. His heart would’ve felt it if she didn’t exist anymore.

“Hold on, Soren. We’re coming for you,” he breathed.

“Check its back. Does it have wings?” a man asked from somewhere far off.

Opening her eyes made her want to retch, so she pulled her knees up to her chest and tried to stay asleep instead.

Rough hands pulled at her shirt, and she gasped. A shrill and constant noise rang against her eardrum, irritating and grating. A breeze caressed the bare skin of her back, and a calloused hand rubbed down the length of it. Not Kaegan’s hand.

Squinting against blinding sunlight, her cheek brushed against splintered wood as she tried to turn her head. Light streamed in through a crude, glassless window, and large, untied boots echoed across the floorboards in front of her face. She tried to rub her temple, but her hands seemed to be tied behind her back.

“Where am I?” she asked softly, so as not to add to the shrill alarm rattling her brain.

The man with the tattooed face leaned down in front of her and smiled, exposing two missing teeth in front. “Well, darlin’, you’re in hell. That’s where you are. Don’t worry yourself none though. You won’t be here for long.”

Thank goodness for small blessings. If she had to exist in the cloud of that man’s fetid breath much longer, she’d lose her sense of smell.

“’Cause we’re going to kill you,” he clarified.

Oh.

“Can you tell whomever is rubbing my back to lay off?” she asked sweetly. “I’m not a fucking kitten.”

“What are you?” the man behind her asked.

Soren gritted her teeth. If they wanted answers, she wasn’t giving them lying down and vulnerable to their groping.

Tattoo Face yanked her into a sitting position and dragged her backward until she leaned against a wall. “If you’re smart, you’ll answer Bossman. Or,” he said, pulling a knife from his belt, “I can start cutting off fingers until you talk.”

She wouldn’t exactly feel that, nor was it likely to entice her to talk, but he didn’t have to know that.

Bossman wore hunting garb, and his camouflaged boots squeaked as he knelt. Intense, dark eyes studied her like she was a lab rat.

“I’m a hybrid. My parents are human, but I have second generation immunity.”

“Do you have any superpowers?” a blond haired boy of sixteen or so asked from behind Bossman.

“Would you consider sarcasm a superpower?”

“No,” he answered seriously.

“Then no.” So it was a lie, but they didn’t need to know any of her cards.

“She’s lying,” Tattoo Face snarled. “She’s had fight training. Nearly gutted me when I took her.”

“Everyone alive has had fight training,” she said blandly. “I wouldn’t consider something so common a superpower. And I’m pretty sure anyone would try to gut someone who was attempting to kidnap them.”

“Shut your smart mouth.”

“Why do you wear feathers in your hair?” the boy asked.

“Michael,” Bossman warned.

“Can I open my smart mouth to answer?” she asked Tattoo Face.

He only scowled so she said, “Because I like the way they look.”

Good lord, her head ached something fierce. And if she could feel it, she probably looked like she’d been trampled by a horse.

“Where were you and your team headed?” Bossman asked.

“Mexico. We heard the weather is lovely this time of year.”

Bossman spat on the floorboards and narrowed his eyes. “You’re joining the war, ain’t you? Hippy dippy idiots think you’re going to change the world by offing a few walkers. Well I’ve got news for you. There are way too many of them and too few meat bags. You’ll only feed the horde and keep them alive longer.”

She shrugged. “Noted. Can I go now?”

His dark eyebrows shot up as he laughed. “Go? Dead, you ain’t goin’ nowhere. ’Cept maybe the bottom of a shallow grave. Old Troy here would’ve shot you down in the woods, but I was curious about what one of our boys told me yesterday. Said some team of fighters had a pet Dead with them, and that the Dead was giving the humans orders. Imagine my surprise when I heard this. I mean, humans bowing down to Deads.” He grinned at Tattoo Face Troy. “Now ain’t that the damndest thing? But rules is rules, and we have a strict no Dead left behind policy. Why did you think Castle Rock was so empty of zombies?” He thumped himself on the chest and beamed. “That’s our territory, just like the woods you was campin’ in was ours too.”

“It didn’t have a sign.”

“Oh, it did, you just missed them. We had graffiti painted across the whole dadgummed city. Coffee?”

He stood and sauntered over to a French press, poured dark, pungent liquid into a dirty looking tin cup and offered it.

Why did she get the feeling that telling him she only ate raw meat would shave minutes off her already short lifespan? “I can’t hold the cup. My hands are tied.”

“Duh,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. She got the feeling he was much more intelligent than he was putting on, and it made him seem more dangerous somehow. “Here, let me.” He leaned forward until the cup was within an inch of her lips. His hand was so close, if she could only bite him. He didn’t smell vaccinated. Just a nip from her would be enough to turn him in minutes, but the man kept his hand just far enough away to make her hesitate, as if he expected it. His eyes swam with triumph as she sipped the scorching liquid that tasted like burned bark and dirt. Hell, maybe it was. Gulping it down and praying it would stay put until he wasn’t looking, she gave him a stiff smile and said, “Thank you.”

His eyes were hard and humorless as he said, “My pleasure. We’ll be executing you at dusk. My boys have been working so hard and deserve a break, so I think we’ll make a little party out of it, what do you think, Troy?”

“I think they’d love that, sir.”

“Good. Let’s get our creative minds into the think tank and come up with some fun ways for her to die, shall we? Meanwhile, you sit tight and let us know if there is anything we can get you.” He stood and strode to the door. “You’re our guest, after all.”

Troy followed and the door slammed, taking the wind right out of the room. She bit back a curse as the coffee she’d ingested made its way back up, coloring the floor beside her.

“I don’t like that stuff none either,” Michael admitted from his seat on a crude wooden bed across the room. “You want some water instead?”

“Please, can you untie me so I can hold the glass myself?”

“Mmm, I don’t think my uncle would be too happy with me if I did that. I’ll just have to feed it to you like he did. If you got away, he’d kill me and spit on my carcass.”

“But he’s your uncle. Why would he do that?”

“He’s got a colony to run, and he didn’t get to where he is by letting people cross him.”

“Please,” she pleaded. “I have a family. A man is waiting for me back where I come from. Please, just let me go.” The boy seemed soft, and this was the only chance she’d get to bargain for her life, so there it was. Everything was laid out for him. All he had to do was cut her loose, and she could do the rest. Yes, she’d happily take out the entire colony if it meant she could see the people she loved again, but Michael likely wouldn’t want to hear that.

“You’re a tricky one,” he said with a grin. “But Deads don’t love people. You might think you do, but it’s not the same feeling as humans have about other humans.”

“I am human!”

“Then why do you look like a Dead?” He walked crisply over to a canteen and poured water into a cup, then allowed her a drink. “You ain’t a human any more than I’m a Dead. Best you accept that, or your fate tonight is going to be mighty confusing for you.”

The boy hummed to himself as he put away the cup, and she searched the tiny room for anything she could use as a weapon.

Dusk. She had until dusk to find a blade. All she needed was one blade, and she could wreak havoc on this colony. If she was going to die tonight, she didn’t want to do it tied like an animal in some sick death game one of Bossman’s psychopaths had concocted.

She wanted to go down fighting.