Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (14 page)

Blueeyes
remained there for days, torn to shreds, bitten in too many places to count, staring at the ceiling and listening to the moans. He couldn’t move. His arms were gone, legs useless. There was nothing left, nothing worthwhile. He was unable to do anything other than bleed.

Andrew
was confused. “When did you die?”

“I didn’t die.”

Andrew
was more confused. “What do you mean you didn’t die?”

“I didn’t die, didn’t stop breathing…no matter how much I wanted to.”  

Andrew
turned away and headed for the other side of the room, bony fingers scratching scalp. “You should have died. Even if you didn’t…
the infection alone
… Why didn’t you die?” He was talking to himself, words meshing together and transforming into
biter-speak.
It was clear he didn’t know what to make of
Blueeyes’
story. Neither of us did. 

When he stopped whispering, he returned to
Blueeyes’
side and gently placed his palm against my friend’s chest. He felt something he never expected. “You have a heartbeat. You shouldn’t have a heartbeat.” His eyes narrowed. “How do you have a heartbeat?”

The whispers outside the room were getting louder. The
biters
were worked up, annoyed with our presence, frustrated with our scent. I had no idea what they were saying, but that didn’t matter. It sounded bad.  

Andrew
pointed to
Blueeyes’
neck. “You said they bit your neck, tore it away?”

“It healed.”

“How? That’s not…”

“It just healed. Everything heals.” 

Andrew’s fingers came together in a fist, twiddling anxiously below his chin. “Pain, do you feel it?”

“I feel everything…all the time.”

There was a high-pitched scream, a wail. Something pounded against the door, nails dragging along steel. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. We’d overstayed our welcome. 

Blueeyes
heard it as well, looked at me, and nodded. He was done talking and he grabbed my arm. “We’re leaving.”

Andrew
didn’t seem to care. He was whispering to himself again, shaking his head, bony fingers rubbing temples. A sound I’d never heard before emerged from his mouth, half a hiss and half a yell. One of his fists slammed against the table in the center of the room. Suddenly, his breaths were labored. His head jerked upward, sniffing the air. Whatever amount of control he’d maintained was slipping away.

For a moment his biter-speak transformed into something recognizable, angry and low. He hit the desk again. “You have to go.”

Blueeyes
dragged me to the exit on the opposite end of the room. When the door wouldn’t open, he kicked it. The room on the other side was small, less than ten feet across, a circular tunnel of stone leading nowhere but up. It looked old, patches of green moss growing from cracks, strange stains a hundred years old. I craned my neck back. Straight up there was light, far away, faint beams through grated steel.

Blueeyes
pointed to a ladder on the wall across from us. “There.” It looked older than the walls, rusted and bent, barely holding to stone. “Go. Climb. I’m right behind you.”

The whispers had morphed into something new, something animalistic, more substantial. Another
biter
wailed. Two more joined in, a chorus of awful. I immediately forgot about
Andrew,
about the ancient ladder and the very real possibility of falling to my death. I just climbed. I climbed and didn’t stop climbing. I’d barely moved ten feet when the ancient thing began to creak. Something bent. Something cracked. Bits of stone crumbled from above, bounced off my back. I froze. All I could hear were wails, pounding and the cracking. There was a crash. The
biters
had broken through.

Blueeyes
wedged his shoulder into my backside and shoved. “Move!”

Within seconds the wailing was upon us, below us and in the same room, echoing against the walls of the tiny chamber.

“Damn it, Megan! Move!” 

I held my breath. I climbed quicker than I’d ever climbed in my life. My hands were soaked with sweat, every grab a slip, every slip a last second recovery. The ladder shook and wobbled, steel and stone stretched to the limit as the
biters
grabbed hold. I ignored it, ignored them, and kept climbing. I couldn’t look down; I knew what I’d see if I did. The
biters
were getting closer. I could feel them below us, hear their fingers scraping stone. They were climbing the walls. They wanted us so badly they were climbing the walls. 

Blueeyes
grunted, kicking at the beasts nipping his heels, knocking them away as they lunged from surrounding stone. I heard his machete, heard it swinging and heard it connect: wet thuds, definitive endings. By the time I reached the top of the ladder I was out of breath, arms impossibly sore, legs weak. I wedged my back against the steel grating and shoved. It wouldn’t budge. I shoved again, muscles straining, neck soaked in sweat. It was no use. Frustrated, I made the mistake of looking down.  Below us was a sea of white, open mouths and grabbing hands. There were so many of them crammed into the tunnel and fighting for position. They weren’t a
horde
so much as a
swarm,
unorganized and violent, frenzied. As I stared, a hundred white eyes stared back. Fifty mouths screamed. The
biters
weren’t what I expected. They weren’t
Andrew,
or his lab, or his test tubes and papers. They were more than that.

They were worse than I could have ever imagined.

A
biter
below
Blueeyes
swung at his leg; bent nails tore fabric and nearly pulled him from the ladder. My friend’s boot connected with its head right between its eyes. It gushed blood. The creature fell twenty feet, limbs waiving, engulfed by the insanity below.
Blueeyes
was under me, moving upward, machete hacking and feet kicking. Suddenly, we were sharing the same space. When his palm slammed against the grating above us, it moved. Dust spewed from the edges, gravel and sand like smoke. 

He hit again. “Push!”

I rammed my shoulder against the steel so hard it hurt, felt the pain down my side and into my legs. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry so badly. 

“Push, Megan!”

Instead of crying I did it again.

It moved. A corner of the grating pulled away, lifted and snapped. A chunk of stone tore from the wall, clanked off the ladder and tumbled to the swarm.
Blueeyes
punched the grate so hard I heard the bones in his hand break. The next time we pushed it flew open. Daylight filled the tunnel. Instead of wailing, the swarm of
biters
screamed, covered their eyes, and dove for cover. As quickly as it advanced, the mass of snarling monsters retreated, scurrying for shadows. I snagged a handful of dirt, dug in with my fingers, and pulled myself onto land.
Blueeyes
was right behind me. When we were both out, he lifted the steel grating and dropped it back into place.

Blueeyes
sighed, shook his head, and glanced at the sky. He shook his broken hand and grimaced. In the distance there were clouds, heavy and moving fast, black bottoms flashing. “Won’t have the light much longer. Have to go.”

A part of me wondered what would happen to
Andrew.
Another part didn’t care. We didn’t stick around to find out. I was okay with that.

The rest of the day was quiet. We walked the same as we’d walked so many times before. We didn’t talk about
Andrew,
didn’t talk about anything.
Blueeyes
ignored me. I kept close and kept my mouth shut. I wanted to say something. I really did. I had questions, so many questions, nothing but questions. I wanted to know if he was telling the truth. I wanted to know if he was alive, if he was dead. I wanted to know about his family, his daughter. I wanted to know what he was. His shoulder had already stopped bleeding, the limp in his leg disappeared. There were times when my mouth opened, when something vaguely resembling a sound emerged. As a cover, I coughed. At one point I was coughing every thirty seconds.

Blueeyes
stopped, turned, and looked down at me. “Are you getting sick?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He knew. I could see it in his eyes. 

I think he knew.

When night approached, we took shelter in the lower level of an apartment complex on the outskirts of the first town we’d come across. It wasn’t much: dark and damp, tucked away. There were no whispers, not a single pair of white eyes. Outside, nothing howled. It was perfect. As I nibbled at a bit of food we’d scavenged earlier in the day, I watched my friend with different eyes than I had before. He was still
Blueeyes,
still the man who’d rescued me, introduced me to
Pointycrunch,
and taught me to shoot. He was still my friend. At least, that’s what I told myself. At the same time, he was different. I didn’t want him to be different, but he was. For better or worse. There was no denying it. 

Andrew
popped into my head. “Why did they change like that?”

“Who?”

“
Andrew
…the
biters.
”

Blueeyes
grunted the way he always grunted when he didn’t want to talk. “A monster with good intentions is still a monster.”

“Yeah, bu—”

“Can’t change what we are, Megan.”

I didn’t like that answer or the questions it created. It took me a while to speak up again, and I spent the next few minutes awkwardly coughing before I worked up the nerve. “What are you?”

He didn’t like the question. “I don’t know.”

“Are you a monster?”

“I don’t know.” 

I didn’t like the answer, so I changed the subject. “What was she like?”

I think he liked that question even less. “Who?”

“Your daughter.”

Blueeyes
groaned and shook his head, eyes moving to the floor. When he finally looked up, he’d stopped breathing, blinking. For a moment he didn’t move. In that instant I felt like he was judging me, rethinking the choices he’d made, his reasons for saving me.

He looked away again. “She was the only decent thing I ever did.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Every day.”

I thought of Mother, of Father, of dimples and strong hands. “Will you tell me about her?”

Blueeyes
didn’t want to answer. He wanted me to shut up. I’m still not sure why he did. He was uncomfortable, squirming in his seat, scratching a phantom itch somewhere deep in his beard. “She was quiet…maybe a little shy. So smart, though.
God damn
was she smart. I’m still not sure where she got that from. Wasn’t from me.”

There it was again, that expression on his face. I had noticed it in the bunker with
Andrew.
For the briefest moment he wasn’t
Blueeyes.
He was someone else, somewhere else, reconnecting with ghosts. Outside, thunder cracked. The clouds began to weep. 

For some reason, I already knew the answer to my next question. I had known it in the bunker. There was a reason he’d saved me. There was a reason he’d gone through everything to keep me safe, and a reason he always would.

“What was her name?”

Blueeyes
looked right at me, into me, and through me. When he spoke, his voice was stern, every word emphasized, every pause extended. “No more, Megans.”

I was right. 

14.

Sleep came easily. I’d never slept so well. No matter what happened, I knew
Blueeyes
was there. If I was hurt, he would heal me. If I was lost, he would find me. If I was in trouble, he would rescue me. I didn’t care what he had said in the bunker, what he told
Andrew.
It didn’t matter. If he was a monster, he was my monster. 

I slept so well I didn’t dream. 

In the morning we packed our gear and took to the road. While the cloud cover remained, the rain slowed to a drizzle. I didn’t hate the rain. I hated storms, but never the rain. Everything smelled cleaner in the rain, fresher. It felt good on my face, a light tickle, a soft caress. I hoped it would never stop drizzling. 

For the most part, the day was uneventful. We walked, and we walked some more. The road was empty, quiet. When we stopped, I listened to the rain on the cement, pattering sheets of steel in a nearby garbage heap. I thought of Father and remembered the way he sometimes watched the rain, the quiet content on his face. We never talked about it. He never told me he loved it. I liked to imagine
she
did. 

It was midday when we passed the remains of a
howler
attack. There were four bodies, too mauled to identify. There might have been five. One of them was a woman, I think. There was a dress, anyway. The flower pattern reminded me of something I’d seen Mother wear. I didn’t like that. The rain had spread the blood across the street, rivers and lakes of watery crimson extending thirty feet in every direction. There was so much of it: watered down life, washing away. I I’d seen so much blood in my life, so many variations. I was becoming accustomed to it. 

“Megan, come on.”
Blueeyes
hadn’t stopped to look. He was further down the road, annoyed that I wasn’t keeping pace.

Instead of going around the blood, I walked through.

I kept my mouth shut that night. We were in
gimp
territory and had spent the latter part of the day moving from hiding place to hiding place, doing our best to remain unnoticed. Our shelter wasn’t much of a shelter at all. The house was empty and the walls upright, but the place was falling apart, warped wood and rusted nails, half a door that wouldn’t close until kicked. It was the best we could find, certainly better than black streets filled with the walking dead. The
gimps
were everywhere, always moaning, shuffling feet. They weren’t quiet, constantly knocking over and running into things.
Blueeyes
said I should
try to sleep.
I told him I’d rather stay awake. Sleeping would have been impossible, not with the sounds coming from outside. It went on all night, dusty bones grinding, rotted teeth snapping against rotted teeth. It never stopped. I was becoming accustomed to that, too. The moment the sun rose we were gone.