Love Starts With Z (7 page)

“Okay, that’s my rule then. If she’s going to tag along, the muzzle stays on.”

“Come on, Colten—”

“No, Kaegan. If she stays, we’re going to be safe about it.” His voice hissed to a whisper. “That entire colony was scared of her. They treated her like they did for reasons we know nothing about. If the mask keeps us even a little safer from your colossally bad decision, she’s wearing it. And if I agree to this, she’s on serious probation. First colony we come to, I get a say in whether she continues to travel with us or not.”

Kaegan bit back his frustration. He’d never seen Colten wary like this, and maybe his friend was right to be careful. “Deal.”

Colten slid his knife against the pelt of the marten. “If we survive a day, it’ll be a miracle.”

Funny, that’s what he’d thought when he’d dragged Colten’s unconscious body to Dead Run River.

S
OREN
H
AD
H
EARD
all of Colten’s concerns, late into the night in fact. His imagination was quiet creative on ways she’d find to kill them. Some made her queasy, some inflamed her insecurities, and some just made her giggle with their absurdity. She was fairly sure she wasn’t going to drape their intestines around her neck like a feather boa and dance through the woods singing about her cunning anytime soon.

Kaegan’s eyes drifted in her direction often, but she tried to stay out of range. The moon was only half full and bathed everything in deep blue, so it wasn’t too hard to avoid him. The risk of his smoldering gaze on her felt dangerous and left chill bumps on her forearms.

“I’ll spell you when you get tired,” he called to Colten, before lying under a blue tarp draped over a line of rope and held down with stones. Minutes ticked by, then the steady rhythm of his breathing indicated he had no trouble sleeping in the woods.

The tree branches would be much safer for him. She didn’t give a guano about Colten, but Kaegan would be well served by having a tree harness.

The smaller man sat ramrod straight against the base of the tree Kaegan slept near like he was prepared to defend his friend’s sleeping body from her uncontrolled appetite. What they didn’t know about her could fill an ocean. Turning from his death glare, she pushed away from the coarse trunk she’d leaned against and started another perimeter search.

Leaves and dry branches whispered beneath her careful step, and as the wind shifted, she froze. They were coming. A sensitivity to the smell of Deads was something she’d inherited from her mom. The difference was Mom had known what it was like to have a sniffer just like everyone else before she’d been bitten the first time. The smell of rot was something Soren had learned to deal with from a young age. It didn’t even bother her now. She used to gag and lose her appetite when she was a little girl, but the smell had become a part of her life that she’d accepted. It was that or live in misery. Deads were everywhere. The world stank of them.

The odor of decay became stronger the closer the Deads came. The scent was laced with woodsy smells of vegetation, soil, and animals. And underneath it all was exactly what was bringing them in like sharks to chum.

Colten was bleeding again.

Pulling a roll of gauze from her pack, she approached him like she would a rabid badger. When she stood ten feet away, she tossed him the bandages. “You’re bringing the Deads to us.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t hear anything. Stop being paranoid and go back over there somewhere.”

His knife shone in the moonlight. She hadn’t a clue when he’d pulled it, but perhaps he’d never sheathed it in the first place.

They’d definitely started on the wrong foot, what with the stabbing and all. “I’m Soren.”

“I don’t care.”

She bit her lip against the curse that rattled in her chest and shifted her weight. How was she supposed to talk to someone who’d damned her with their judgment before they even knew her? “You’re bleeding, and it’ll bring in more Deads than we can handle alone. Please.”

“You can smell blood?” His lip curled up in apparent disgust.

“And Deads. Trust me when I say they’re coming. Hand me the bloody gauze, and I’ll try to lead them in another direction.”

“Screw you. I’m not giving you my used bandages so you can go suck on them in some dark corner of the woods. Don’t involve me in your weird plans.”

The rough tent flapped lazily in the breeze. Kaegan would be more receptive to what they had to do, but he’d only had a few hours of sleep, and she needed him rested if they were going to make it to the next colony. “Okay,” she said then turned.

Moron. Less-than-useless, boneheaded dimwit. Was his pride so big that he couldn’t believe she wasn’t trying to lure them to their death? Now she was going to have to do something that turned her stomach. She thought of Kaegan, breathing softly against his arm in the tent and suddenly she was scared of the depths she’d go to keep him safe. He’d been kind when he had no reason to be. Offered her escape at great risk to himself. She may not deserve to exist, but he did. Good people still lived, and she’d make her life mean something by keeping his intact.

The wind caressed the trees as she strained her eyes in the dark. Closing them, she drew air into her lungs and sought a direction. She spun slowly until the smell became stronger from the west, and quietly, she drew a dagger from its sheath on her thigh.

The first Dead was three hundred yards from camp, zeroed in and headed straight for the resting men behind her. Spinning the hilt in her hand, she ran, chest heaving as she jammed the blade into his face, then moved to the next. The grouping wasn’t tight and she had trouble tracking each down in the dark. At least with all the racket the moaning Deads were making around her, none would likely go after the men at camp. There was enough disturbance right here to hold their attention. This close to the stench, it was hard to tell where it came from. The air was saturated with death. One by one, they came, and she lost count after twelve. She shook and gritted her teeth against the unsavory job. Lucky number thirteen overwhelmed her. She missed with her dagger, miscalculating how tall he was in the dark, and his hand clamped on her upper arm in a painful grip. She tried to pull away, but he pushed her backward and snapped his yellow teeth at her face. Grunting, she scanned the woods for an escape. The commotion drew the other Deads to them, and four gruesome faces appeared out of the shadows. Hands stretched, bones gnarled into claws, they came for her.

Panic flared in her chest. She’d been stupid going out alone. Her skills were rusty after being long stifled by safety. Dead Run River hadn’t protected her at all. It had made her weak. Blinking, she tried desperately to remember all Finn, Guist, her parents, Vanessa, and Sean had taught her.

The Dead’s grip was unbreakable as she stretched away from him, but she ducked and barreled into his stomach, overextending her arm. He bent at the waist, and his gnashing teeth came for her back. His groaning breath came so close, it lifted the hair on her neck, and she stifled the scream that clawed its way up the back of her throat. Kicking his legs from beneath him, she pulled her battle sword as she landed on him. It wasn’t graceful, but the blade made a long arc before his head was severed. Her right arm wasn’t working anymore, and her left wasn’t dominant, but out of options, she lurched upward, shoving the blade as she rose. A sick noise sounded as she made contact with a Dead woman with scraggly hair and blood on her mouth like she’d just eaten. Kicking her stomach, she tried to dislodge the sword from it, but with only one arm, she failed.

Next weapon
, Finn’s voice whispered on the wind.

Pulling a curved blade from a loop at her back, she hacked the next two and fell to her knees with the effort. Surrounded by bodies, she swallowed a gag that surged through her. Nothing stirred but the dry pine needles in the path of a stiff breeze.

Her time at Dead Run River had turned her soft, and that had to change if she was going to be of any use to anyone.

The crackle of leaves underfoot gave her a sense of relief. Kaegan had come to check on her, or maybe Colten. Any living face was better than what she’d just seen and done. The smile fell from her lips as she realized there was a lot of movement in the woods. Too much for just two men.

A tiny hole in the tarp made the perfect path for a single sunray to bean Kaegan in the sleeping eyeball. Like a fungus escaping light, he flinched backward and directly into a bigger pool of dawn’s proof.

Dawn.

He shot up and shoved the blue tarp flap out of the way. The stones that had pinned the edges flew this way and that, and he looked wildly around for Colten.

His friend snored soundly against the tree to his left. What the hell? Maybe Soren really didn’t get how this team thing worked. Searching the immediate area turned up no sign of the woman. It wasn’t okay to refuse to wake them, then fall asleep somewhere. He kicked Colten’s boot and searched the canopy. Where was she?

Colten groaned and stretched his stiff neck. Served him right for sleeping upright against a tree.

“Have you seen Soren?”

Colten shot him an irritable look and rubbed his nape. “You mean the Dead who’s traveling with us against both of our better judgment? Not since the middle of the night. I drifted off. Obviously.”

Piss mood grump was always Colten’s favorite persona in the mornings.

“Soren?” he called.

“Shhhut up,” Colten hissed. “You’re going to bring every Dead within a mile to us. She probably went back to the colony. Camping rough doesn’t suit many women, Kaegan. You were never going to impress Dead girl with this lifestyle—hate to break it to you.”

Kaegan rested his hands on his waist and glared at the empty woods. “What was the last thing she said to you?”

“Some bullshit about how I was bleeding, and she needed all of my bandages for a midnight snack.”

His patience was about as thin as rice paper, and Colten was asking for a fat lip. “Did she give you those?” he asked, pointing to a clean roll of gauze that had been tossed haphazardly to the side.

“Maybe.”

“Let me see your leg.”

“Why?”

“Geez, you f—” Bending down, he yanked Colten’s pant leg up to his knee and shook his head at the moist, red bandages. “That’s just great. She wanted you to change your bandages for a reason. Soren!”

He took off aimlessly through the woods. What if something had happened? Or what if she had decided to go back to colony? Or what if she hadn’t, and they eventually left her hurt somewhere without knowing it? A separated team was a fighter’s worst nightmare. Trevor and Mike attested to that. They were roaming these woods now as the monsters they’d spent a lifetime killing.

Heart pounding against his chest, he ran through the trees, but nothing stirred save the morning birds singing from the branches above. Taking a left, he slowed to a jog and called her name again.

“Kaegan!” Colten called. “We can’t get split up, you dunce.”

Around a thick grove, in a small clearing, Soren panted and shoveled dirt over a wide hole like she raced time to get it filled. Kaegan skidded to a stop, relief and confusion warring within him. She used her left hand, and her right arm hung limply at her side. Perspiration poured down her face, and she blinked hard as it dripped into her eyes.

When she saw him, she struggled to her feet, chest heaving.

“What the hell is she doing?” Colten asked from beside him.

Kaegan took a slow step toward her and then another. The hole wasn’t deep, but considering the small shovel, it had taken extreme effort. Inside the damp earth, filth-covered faces of Deads stared vacantly at the sky, arms and legs tangled in their final resting place. She’d dug a mass grave. Unable to keep the shock from his expression, he dragged his gaze to hers, but she looked only at the carnage at her feet.

“What happened to them all?” he asked.

She shot Colten a fiery look he didn’t understand and swung around to him. “Me,” she answered.

He searched her face to see if she was joking, but she just stared and sucked breath like she’d never catch it again. Ticking off bodies, he tried to count heads, but couldn’t because of the layers. Two layers deep. Twenty-six at least.

“Why are you burying Deads, Z?” Colten asked. Disgust soaked every word.

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s what everyone at that colony called you. I heard them. Why?”

“Because they deserve a proper burial. I can’t do it for all of them, but I could do it for this group.”

“They aren’t people!” Colten barked. “They’ve done horrible things. They aren’t starved. The remains of living, breathing people are in their bellies, and you held a funeral for them?”

“Yes! And I’d hold a funeral for you too, Colten, if you were turned. Why? Because the shit you do when you’re a Dead isn’t on you. It’s the disease’s instinct to spread to healthy hosts that is responsible for the awful, awful things they do.”

Her arm looked painful, hanging listlessly from her torso, and Kaegan gestured to it. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. One of the Deads turned out to be a lot stronger than I expected and yanked it.”

“Colten, can you pack up camp and grab my bag?”

“Gladly,” he muttered before stomping off.

“He’s a tough sell,” Kaegan said apologetically.

“Isn’t everyone?” she asked. Her otherworldly eyes searched his, steady and curious.

He imagined that before the apocalypse, the answer had been no, but the world was different now. Harder. Drawing up beside her, he felt for a broken bone, but the shoulder was just dislocated. “I’m going to have to pop this back in.”

“Will it work again?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be real sore for a few days. Oh.” He frowned at the soft curve of her collar bone. “I mean, it would be if you felt that kind of stuff.”

Unsettling pale eyes rested on him for a moment before she nodded. The top of her shoulder was bruised like something had crushed the skin there, but she did little more than grimace as he rotated the arm into place.