“Shh. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to stay here with you. We’ll face it together.” He didn’t think he could face watching him turn, but he would do it. Do it for him.
Zeke exhaled, his hot, shaking breath warming Noah’s face. “Only if you kill me at the first sign of trouble.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, will the pair of you just come down here?” shouted Frankie. She sounded a million miles away. “You need to elevate your leg, Noah.”
Zeke’s hand moved down to Noah’s thigh. “What happened to your leg?”
“Tobias shot me.”
“What?”
“He’s dead now.” Noah kissed the top of Zeke’s head. “He’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.”
“Guys?” Vitt shouted. “I agree. Come down so we can assess the situation.”
In all honesty, he would have preferred to stay up in the tree with Zeke—pretend they were in their own private oasis, a protected bubble where everything was going to be fine. But he’d already dragged Vitt and Frankie through the dark on a snowy December evening. Leaving them alone when types could arrive at any moment seemed like a pretty poor way to thank them.
Noah forced his frozen muscles into action. Despite being the injured one, he helped Zeke several times as they descended the tree. When they arrived at the bottom, Zeke shuffled off to the side, unable to meet the girls’ eyes.
“Frankie,” Vitt warned, as Frankie closed the space between herself and Zeke, who flinched away from her.
Vitt inspected Zeke’s bite from a safe distance, then paced up and down for a minute before sighing. “I don’t know what to say. As far as I know, there are no documented cases where someone with this level of contact with the pathogen has ever come through the other side unturned. But it has been hours and hours now, and he’s not showing any symptoms…”
“Could it— Could it possibly be…?” Frankie hesitated.
Noah tensed. He didn’t want to hear what she was on the verge of suggesting. His fractured soul couldn’t handle the possibility of hope.
Zeke turned away to face the dark abyss of the forest.
“Could it be what?” asked Vitt, cocking her head.
Frankie shot Noah a glance. When Noah didn’t react, she said, “You know the doctor Zeke was working for? The boss at his lab? How he was using him and another employee in some shady off-the-record shit? He was injecting them with untested drugs.”
Vitt blinked rapidly. “Wow. If that’s really the case, then—”
Zeke turned back to them, his expression guarded. “There could be dozens of other reasons I haven’t turned yet. The cold weather, somehow. Or maybe it’s just taking its sweet time. I’ve always been a late bloomer.”
Noah sidled up to him, slid his arm around Zeke’s waist despite Vitt’s death stare. “Or, maybenot.”
“Don’t,” croaked Zeke. “It’ll just make it even more painful when it happens.”
“Well, I, for one, am absolutely freezing. Why don’t we at least start walking back? Wolf could lead us back to the vans. We can lock Zeke up in the one with the cage built into the back. Sorry Zeke.” Frankie gave him a sympathetic smile. “Plus, Noah is bleeding through our make-shift bandage, which is going to attract types sooner rather than later.”
Zeke nodded. “I’ll go to the cage.”
Wolf rubbed himself against Noah. “Lead the way, boy.”
thirty-five
Zeke
Zekewasfamished.Starving.Ravenous.
As he lay on the hard metal of the cage’s floor, waiting for Noah and Frankie to come back, he ran his fingertips over the wound on his neck. The sharp sting of the type bite had reduced to a rhythmic throb. Images of the type’s fangs coming towards his face, the rancid smell of its breath assaulting his nostrils, while he desperately attempted to wriggle away, looped around his mind.
Attempting to shift his focus elsewhere, he tried to tune in to his body’s every cue. Were the tremors in his legs from the frigid cold, or the RONS virus starting to devour his nervous system? Was his headache from the stress of the day, or a sign he was running out of time? And most importantly, was his relentless hunger for food, or human flesh?
A loud growl reverberated throughout the cage as another round of hunger pangs tormented him, like live mice gnawing at his stomach lining.
