Alive (The Crave) (13 page)

Chapter Fourteen

“You got your things?”

Eve didn’t bother looking over her shoulder at Gage, who she knew was emerging from the house. She didn’t answer him either. He knew she had everything. There was never a moment that she wasn’t ready or prepared.

Instead, she kept her eyes trained on the scenery in front of her. The land was beautiful with the rising sun. Trees surrounded the large tank in the front and the driveway. Earlier she had made her way to the backside of the wrap-around porch. There was no floral barrier between the house and hundreds of open acres behind the house. The sprawling land was the color of wheat that seemed to glow like pure gold in the growing sunlight.

The beauty of the vast plantation home and all of its land wasn’t lost on Eve. The sadness that tugged at her gut wouldn’t leave her. She’d wanted to come to the home all of her life. To revel in its beauty and be a part of the history of the only town she’d ever lived in. She was overwhelmed by the fact that she’d just spent the night there and was watching the sunrise from the old porch. And now she would be leaving. A part of her knew instinctively that she would never come back.

She ended up sitting on the front porch with her back against the white wood near the door, disliking the overwhelming emotions that the golden field at the back of the house triggered. She’d instead, focused on a jenk approaching the porch. It looked to be a man, though she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. It could have been a flat chested woman with a shaggy haircut.

Eve had been watching the jenk for a good twenty minutes, though she’d been outside for more than thirty waiting for Gage. Shockingly enough she had been spared a lecture on running for her life and leaving his ass behind when she’d informed him she was going outside. He’d only nodded his head, though she couldn’t read his expression in the little to no light inside the house.

She was tempted to leave.
So tempted.
But she didn’t. She had promised him and it irked her that she even cared about that. Promises didn’t mean anything in the before and they sure as hell didn’t mean anything now, but a part of her wanted to show him that she wasn’t like him—a person who just disregarded their promises.

“Just gonna let that thing come up on the porch and have you for breakfast?” The jenk had reached the stairs. Eve watched with amusement as it stumbled. Its gray, bare feet shuffling and smacking against the wood. It never took its eyes off of Eve. The cloudy, bottomless pits didn’t care that it had probably just broken all of its toes. Sometimes she envied their ability to feel no pain.

She stood when Gage nocked an arrow next to her.

“No.” She put her hand on his arm, his flesh warm beneath her fingertips.

“What?” She didn’t miss the annoyance in his tone.

“Move out of the way.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.” She gave him a little shove that didn’t budge his thick masculine form in the slightest. He stepped away on his own accord and lowered his bow.

“Seriously?”

She ignored him and stood her ground, watching the jenk who had finally made it up the steps. Upon closer inspection, Eve could tell he was definitely a man, even his dry, gray skin couldn’t cover up the light-colored growth of hair on his face. As far as Eve knew, the jenks’ hair didn’t continue to grow after their death, so this one died needing a shave.

She back-pedaled a few steps when he got close.

“What the fuck, Eve?” She heard Gage nock another arrow. The jenk turned his head at the sound of Gage’s complaint and changed its course, moving toward him instead.

“Hey, mister mister, come on now. You don’t want him for your breakfast. Assholes don’t taste that good. I promise. I know you want some of this.” She let her voice take on a higher note as if she was talking to a baby or a dog. She shook her arm in front of her face to lure him away from Gage.

It worked. He turned back in her direction and reached forward trying to grab her. She dodged out of the way and opened one of the two front doors and backed through it with the jenk following her in. She let the door slam behind them. She danced out of his reach and ran for the door again. Once outside, she slammed it closed with a thunk that seemed to rattle the whole house.

“What was that for?” The irritation in Gage’s voice was palpable.

“I locked him inside.”

“Okay, why?”

“I figured he would keep future looters from
stealing
your precious inheritance.”

Gage stared at Eve as she marched off the porch.
Is she serious?
He didn’t ask the question out loud because he knew she was. Anger coursed through him again, for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last forty-eight hours.

“So, that’s it, huh?” He followed her. “You’re just going to storm off and act like you’re some sort of saint? That I’m the one who is at fault?”

Eve stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “I’m not a saint.”

“You sure are acting like one. You don’t even have a real reason to be pissed at me.” She started walking again when he reached her. Her steps were jerky and quick. “You know it too.”

“Are you still talking?”

“You know that you’re the one at fault, don’t you? It’s either that, or you really do think you’re a damned saint.” A feeling of satisfaction washed over him. Yelling at her, feeling angry at her, washed out all of the other emotions thrumming through his body.

Eve stopped walking and turned to him. “I’m not a fucking saint, Gage. I don’t think I am and I never will. I—Have you been crying?” The question took him back. He’d hope that it wouldn’t be noticeable. Men weren’t supposed to cry, but hell if it didn’t hurt saying goodbye to Jacksondale. It was as much a part of him as the skin on his back.

The hard glint in her blue-green eyes softened and suddenly he couldn’t help but feel like a petulant child, blaming someone else for something because he didn’t get what he wanted. And what Gage wanted was his life back—his family, Jacksondale, all of it…and Eve too. He tried hard not to, but he did. He didn’t usually dwell on the past because he knew he couldn’t change it, but seeing the place again for the first time in so long had triggered emotions he didn’t like.

He looked away from her. “Fuck.” He ran a hand over his head. “Just forget it.” He started walking and she kept pace with him, though she didn’t say anything. They walked in a pregnant silence for some time. He didn’t look at her. She’d seen his weakness and he didn’t like it. Weaknesses were dangerous.

They reached the old gravel road they’d traveled on yesterday and together they took a right. A left would have sent them back to town, going right signified that they would be taking the old Tim Pistol road that intersected with this one a few miles away. The only other way to get into Fenton aside from the interstate.

“I understand, you know,” she said after they’d been walking for a while.

“Understand what?”

“How you feel about Jacksondale. You may not think that I do, because I lived in a ‘squalid little trailer.’”

He’d forgotten that he’d said that. “Eve—”

“Let me finish.” Their shoes made crunching noises across the gravel as they walked. “That trailer was the only home I ever had. It wasn’t pretty or fabulous. It didn’t have thousands of diamonds hanging from the ceiling…but it was still my home. And I burned it to the ground with my parents inside.”

Gage jerked his head, and looked at her. He knew she’d burned it down, had told him as much, but she hadn’t shared the tidbit about her parents being inside.

“It was the only home I ever had. The only family I knew, besides my sister and I burned it all. I didn’t look back either, not once did I look back to see the flames because I knew it would break me. I hated my parents for the way they treated me, but I still loved them. It seems like love and hate are double-sided coin. You can’t have one without the other.”

How right she was about that. He felt like an asshole for what he’d said about her house, but he didn’t say he was sorry. The words were there on the tip of his tongue and that’s where they stayed. He just kept walking, staring out at the long gravel road ahead of them. There were no houses. A thick wooded area flanked the side to their left, while the land on the right was open, rolling fields. Farmland.

“You know, they thought that Jesus had come.” A bubble of laughter escaped her lips after she spoke that had Gage glancing sideways at her. “That’s why they called it the Reckoning. They said that Jesus had come to settle his accounts with the people of earth, that he was coming to take them to heaven.” She spoke like it was a joke.

“You don’t think that’s what this is?” Even though Gage had lived in the Bible Belt all his life, his family had never been a spiritual one and in all honesty, he didn’t know what he believed.

She gave him a droll stare. “God didn’t come. Jesus didn’t sit upon the throne in Jerusalem. At least, if he did, then I never heard about it. The best part about all of it, was that they blamed me for the entire six months that we were stuck in trailer after things went to crap. Said it was all my fault, that Jesus hadn’t come and taken them from the hell on earth. They even blamed Olive in the end. Their golden child.”

“They really treated her different?” He hadn’t heard her speak an ill word of her sister
ever
.

“Yes, while I was named after the original sin and she was named after the olive branch that the white dove brought to Noah. A sign of possibility, of hope, and love.”

Gage successfully felt like an asshole. His family hadn’t been perfect, but he’d known, even in the before, that her family had problems that he couldn’t comprehend. Things were worse than even he thought. “That’s pretty damn unfair.”

She shrugged next to him. “It’s life. And life isn’t fair. The best part about all of it, is that she hates me.”

“Olive hates you?”

“Yep. Always has, even after the Crave set in. She hated me more with every passing day.” The last words were said so quietly that Gage barely heard them.

“But, why?”

She shrugged again, her wavy blond hair brushed against the top of her shoulder. “She believed my parents. They loved her and treated her differently. Why wouldn’t she believe them?”

“That can’t be all it is.”

Eve didn’t look at him, nor did she respond. There was more to the story, he could tell.

“Why do you even want to find her in the first place?” He nearly smacked himself for saying the words out loud.
Good job buddy. Yeah, talk her out of wanting to find her sister. Then you’ll really have no leverage to keep her with you.

“Blood is thicker than water, right Gage?” The edge in her voice was his indication that she was cutting him off, hiding behind her anger again.

She’d led such a sad life before and maybe that was why he had been drawn to her that first day of his senior year. She needed someone and part of him responded back then, wanting to be her knight in shining armor. He never would have admitted it out loud. Dudes don’t think about that kind of thing and they sure as hell didn’t share it with their friends.

A glass-shattering scream rent the air.

Gage jerked his crossbow from his back and nocked an arrow, spinning to his left. In his peripheral vision he could see that Eve had done the same with her pry bar.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, didn’t sound like a gurgh, though.”

“No shit, Gage.”

He stared at the tree line where the sound had come from, raking his gaze back in forth in an attempt to pick out any movement.

“I don’t see anything,” he said after several minutes passed. He repeatedly checked their position from all sides, revealing nothing, no gurghs following them. Just them and the landscape.

“Me either.” Eve paused the span of several heartbeats. “Let’s get out of here.” She had already started in the direction they had been heading. He fell into step beside her. He kept his head on a swivel.

“Noooo! Daddy!” The scream that shattered the air froze them both.

Eve looked at him, her eyes reflecting a thousand emotions. “Shit.” The sound of the child’s voice seemed to register to both of them in unison. “I’m going,” Eve said the words as if she expected him not to follow. He jerked his head back feeling as though she had slapped him.

“We try to save them. If it is too late, we bail. Got it?” He had snagged her arm, stopping her movement forward.

“Duh.”

And then they were running into the thicket of trees. Gage hated being in wooded areas. Every tree he saw out of the corner of his eye was a potential threat. Back when the Crave first hit and him and some others had been forced into a grove of trees, he had broken five arrows by shooting them into trees. He knew better now, but it didn’t change his twitchy trigger finger.

“Daddy!” The high-pitched shriek was close by and Gage didn’t miss the groaning sounds that accompanied the cry.
Gurghs.

It wasn’t long before they came upon the chaotic scene. Gage’s galloping steps slowed and so did Eve’s. There were gurghs everywhere, there had to be at least forty, all coming from the west and heading east straight for Eve and Gage. Though, it wasn’t just Eve and Gage they were headed toward. Not ten feet away stood a man with a little red-headed girl clinging to his leg crying. He was waving a huge sword covered with black blood, through the air. He stabbed it into the gurgh closest to him. Gage scanned the upcoming group. All seemed to be staggering at a simple pace.
No runners.

“We’ll cover you! Run!” Gage shouted as he nocked an arrow and sent it flying at the closest undead near the man and his child.

The guy didn’t spare them a glance when he grabbed the sobbing little girl and threw her over his shoulder. There was a bag lying on the ground between him and the gurghs. Gage could tell it must have contained all of their belongings, because the man tried to grab for it. His hand missed the strap as he danced backward to avoid the swipe of a gurgh.

“Run, man! I’ll get your bag!” This time the guy did look over, but only for a split second. He looked at Eve, but he didn’t take his daughter and head back in the direction that her and Gage had just come from. Instead he slashed his sword through the air again, beheading the closest undead in an attempt to grab his bag again.