• • •
It was three hours before I was able to make my way back home—one hour of dragging dead rotters to the fire pit, an hour ensuring the gates were standing tall and fully functioning again, and yet another hour spent cleaning off the mess Adam had made in my truck.
Tired, hungry, and more than pissed off, one by one I freed the padlocks from my front door, hanging them off my belt before going inside. The moment I stepped foot into the dark space, the smell that greeted me nearly sent me staggering backward. I clenched my teeth and stalked inside, hard pressed to see much of anything in the dark. Fumbling for the wall, I found the switch and with one flick, the low-hanging work lamps affixed to the ceiling beams crackled and sparked to life.
My gaze landed first on the puddle of vomit that hadn’t been cleaned up before coming to rest on the girl. Directly across from me, she was crouched between my couch and a tall dresser, wide eyed and snarling at me, and smeared in her own shit.
The voice in my head started to laugh.
Chapter Twelve
Autumn
“What the fuck!”
Eagle stood in the doorway with the sunlight as his backdrop, highlighting the blood splattered across his clothing, thick black blood that I knew to be the blood of biters. He glared at me, his angry black eyes burning holes straight through me even from across the room.
I shivered uncontrollably, afraid not only of him but of the biters that would be coming. I knew they would come, that these people could only hide behind their gates for so long. Now they were here, and they would get me and they would eat me, and I would be dead, dead, dead! Terrified, I clasped my hands over my ears and fought for control of my emotions.
My father’s voice had rung out in my head after Eagle had left, leaving me feeling dizzy and sick to my stomach. His final words had been a stern blend of a lifetime of fatherly advice and a survival manual.
He had protected me after my mother had died. He had defended me at every turn, never allowing me to fight off the biters myself, and always insisting that he would be there to do it for me. Yet in his final moments of clarity he had apologized, begging for forgiveness for never teaching me how defend myself and survive on my own.
And so he had given me different advice, a different gift. Instead of telling me to fight, he had told me to hide. Above all else; hide. Hide in plain sight if I had to, but hide I must. Because for me, that was the only way I would survive.
And so I had done exactly that. I had hidden away from the world. I had smeared myself in anything that would disguise my scent to the biters, and I had locked myself away in a cave. And when Eagle left me here in this awful place, locked inside this building with the blare of sirens in the distance and the biters coming for us, I had chosen to hide again.
Then, I’d thought about taking my own life, about ending it all. I’d even taken one of his knives and held the tip of it against my heart, piercing my own flesh. But when the first vivid drop of blood appeared on my clothes, I knew I couldn’t do it. Instead I’d decided to disguise myself in the only way I knew how, the one way that had kept me alive all this time, in hopes that they wouldn’t smell me and would leave me be.
“Fucking fuck!” he yelled again, then slammed the metal door shut behind him and beat his fist repeatedly against it.
“Fucking ... mother ... fuck.”
He turned and glowered at me, his nostrils flaring in anger, his nose wrinkled in disgust at the sight and the smell of me.
I knew how bad I smelled; I had gagged and vomited while covering myself. Only a few days in this place and I’d forgotten how bad the smell actually was until I was smearing it all over my clothing, and up my arms and down my legs. But that realization had only spurred me on. Knowing I was already forgetting how to survive in this world on my own, that I had almost become comfortable with being clean and being cared for. Which led me to the most dangerous realization of all.
I was beginning to trust him.
Or at least I had been. But as he stormed across the room toward me, fury raging behind those black eyes of his, the meager trust he’d earned went flying out the window and now only fear and wariness remained.
Would he kill me? Hand me over to the people in charge? Throw me to the biters? I shook and trembled, my filthy hands clinging to the dresser next to me, my nails digging into the wood. Yet he didn’t come toward me, but instead stormed past while continuing to curse loudly and disappeared out of sight.
“The ... the biters,” I mumbled, trying to explain, my teeth now chattering so violently I could barely get the words out.
Minutes crept by as I waited for his return. Urine trickled down my thighs as I waited for him to reappear, for a gun to discharge, for my brains to splatter across the floor, for him to put an end to my suffering. But nothing came. What was he doing in there? How angry was he?
My thoughts continued to buzz, nagging incessantly at me as his ranting from the other room continued. He would be even angrier once he saw I’d peed again, and God only knew what he would do.
No, God didn’t know. There was no God. Just like there was no salvation.
As I scanned the room wildly, my panicked gaze landed on the door, and I realized at that very moment he hadn’t put the locks back in place.
Excitement tinged with panic fought against my desire to run. The biters were here; he’d said as much. Should I remind him to lock the door, to secure us from them, or should I make a run for it? But if I ran ... how many biters were out there? And worse, how many people? At least here I knew my enemy—a lone man with a penchant for cursing who for some unknown reason had saved my life. But out there, I didn’t know if I could make it to the gates, let alone get past them.
An angry sob bubbled up in my dry throat. I hated this place, hated it fiercely and was desperate for my freedom.
The sound of something being dragged across the concrete floor screeched through the air, accompanied by more of his angry cursing, and followed soon by the unmistakable sound of water being poured. My eyes widened, my heartbeat spiked, and I found myself jumping up and taking off across the room with only one thing on my mind.
