“Yeah, my feet might hurt, but I’ve still got plenty of energy to keep me going for the day,” I insisted.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him studying me, as if he didn’t quite believe me.“That’s fair, but I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard in the early days and ending up with an injury or exhaustion.”
“I will be careful,” I promised him.“But for now, let’s keep to the plan we made.Campout from dusk until dawn, and walk as much as we can the rest of the time.”
He waited a beat before reluctantly acquiescing with a heavy sigh.“Okay.”
So, for the first few days, we walked on, from just after first light until twilight, minus breaks scattered throughout.I didn’t complain about the ache in my shoulders from my pack or the throbbing of my feet.The sun was hot overhead, and my cheeks were sunburnt.When it started dipping toward the horizon, with the tall pine trees casting long shadows over us, there was some relief in the heat, and that was nice.
“Okay, now we really ought to start looking for someplace to sleep,” Boden said one night as dusk rapidly approached, and I was about to agree with him when I saw the sign at the side of the road.
It was splattered in the brick red color of either rust or blood, or most likely a little of both.But the words were still legible underneath:Tarik Copper Mine: A Weiland-Uylee Corpwith the wordNext Exitwritten underneath.
“Let’s wait until the mine,” I suggested.“There are plenty of buildings there to shelter in.”
“You really want to go to the mine again?”Boden asked, likely remembering what we’d found the last time we had been there two years ago.
I nodded fervently.“Yeah.There’s something I need to check out.”
It didn’t take long for us to reach the entrance, which was a dilapidated gravel driveway between chain link fences, but the sky had dimmed to dark orange.Beyond that were rows of buildings and abandoned machinery, almost entirely consumed by vegetation and rust.
The first time I had been here, I had been heavily pregnant, and Remy and Boden had discovered the open pit mines were filled to the brim with zombies.
The second time I had been here, I had been two months post-partum, and I had been leading hundreds and hundreds of zombies back into the open pit mines.
A mad woman bent on revenge called Mercy Loth had set the zombies free, unleashing them on the town of Emberwood.Remy had killed her, but Mercy had also left behind her unusual son, born out of a union with a zombie.His name was Chosen, and he could think and reason.
But there was no place in the world for a zombie-human offspring, and so I had trapped him with the other zombies in the open pit mine.I had hoped he could find happiness and peace with them, but I wasn’t sure if I even believed that was possible for anyone, let alone such an unusual hybrid.
“It doesn’t sound the same,” Boden commented as we walked down the long driveway toward the mine.“All the zombies together in the pit, they made this awful humming noise that made the ground vibrate.But this time I can’t hear them at all.”
He was right.Usually, when I was this close to the zombies, I could hear them.With their wheezing, groaning, and clumsy stumbling, they were audible to most people from a distance, but for me, it was something more than that.
In truth, it wasn’t so muchhearingthem assmellingthem.The pheromones they left in the air were how they communicated with each other, not unlike ants or bees.None of the uninfected people around me could notice the scent, but to me, it was clear and distinct.
It hadn’t always been like that.Not until after I was pregnant with Fae and bitten by a zombie.Max and Remy were biological siblings and both immune to the lyssavirus.Since Max was Fae’s father, he had apparently given that same immunity to her.Because after I was bitten by a zombie, I fell ill, but the baby’s resistance passed through me.
My midwife had explained it as something called microchimerism that can occur in pregnancy, albeit very rarely.Fetal cells cross the placenta, entering the mother’s body, and they can affect her immune system and fight infections.
I survived, and now I had a connection to the zombies that I didn’t fully understand.Parts of it were definitely positive, like my ability to command them via pheromones, but there had been strange changes to me since then.
I craved meat, especially raw or undercooked, in a way that could never be fully satiated.The hunger was with me when I awoke and invaded my dreams when I slept, like an angry little gremlin that lived in the pit of my stomach, demanding more, more,more.
Mostly, I’d learned to ignore it, because that was all I could do.I ate my fill when I had the chance, making my belly and thighs thick and soft even on our relatively rationed diet.
The zombies were a part of me now, the way I was a part of Rafaella.
As we grew closer to the open-pit mine, I could see the vast stepped crater a hundred times the size of the Barbarabelle.I inhaled deeply, and I caught a faint scent.Even faded, it was acrid and smoky, with something musky and rotten underneath.
But as soon as I breathed in, my heart began racing, and panic crackled through my brain like a lightning bolt across the sky.I stopped short, and Boden looked back at me, his eyes darkening with concern.
“What is it?”he asked, because he knew about my connection to the zombies.“What are they telling you?”
“It’s fear and pain,” I replied.
My legs wanted to run.An indescribable urge hit as soon as I’d inhaled.It was as if the sensation of pins and needles somehow had the ability to control my movement, and it took effort for me to hold myself back.
But then, I didn’t really want to anymore.The panic and urge were so much, and the pit was so close, and I had to see if it was as it had been when I left it.
