Strange Trouble (6 page)

Anxiety filled him. It oozed from him, that anxiety, like
noxious, bubbling water from a toxic spring.

Lex slid up beside him and grabbed his hand.

He glanced down at her. “What’s wrong, honey? Was I hit on
the head? I can’t remember anything. We were fighting the zombies and
I
…” He trailed off, then his eyes widened. “I was bitten.”

“Yes,” Rune said.

“What happened to your hair?”

“I was bitten as well. Yours…”

He slapped a hand to his head, suddenly realizing. “I was
bitten. I was infected. You fed me?”

“Yes.”

“You healed me from a zombie infection.”

“I…”

Raze stepped up beside them, Levi’s cell in hand. “Ellis is
having trouble.”

Levi shook his head once, hard, as if trying to shake
something loose that didn’t belong there. “Ellis?” He listened, staring at Rune
as though she was his lifeline and he would die if he stopped looking at her.

She turned away, unable to bear the weight of his stare.

What was he? What had she made him?
A…living
zombie?
That wasn’t even possible.
Was
it?

When he figured it out, he was not going to forgive her.

She
was not going to forgive her.

“I…I don’t know,” he was saying to Ellis. “I feel fucked up.
I don’t know anything.” He paused. “Yes. I’m alive.”

Rune shut her eyes and clenched her fists so hard she broke
the skin. Raze was suddenly beside her.

He pulled her to his chest. “Don’t.”

She
laughed,
a harsh barking sound
that held absolutely no amusement. “Oh Raze. What the fuck have I done?”

He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “He’s alive. You
saved him, is what the fuck you’ve done.” He shook her again. “Now snap out of
it. We have
work
to do and this shit will sort itself
out.”

“How
can
it?” she asked.

“It has no choice, does it?”

“I guess it doesn’t.”

“I feel like I need to sleep,” Levi interrupted. “I feel
like…”

“You’re confused,” Lex said, her vibrations strong. “You’re
walking through a fog and it has grabby hands.”

Rune nodded. “Go lie down, Levi. Sleep. I’ll wake you in a
bit and you’ll feel better.”

He didn’t say a word—simply turned and walked away. They
watched him in silence as he lay down on the couch and immediately went to
sleep.

And she knew that when he woke up, he’d feel better.

Lex was staring in Rune’s direction, her dancing eyes dark.
“You…” she said.
Nothing more.
Just
“You…”

“Yeah,” Rune said. She started to bite her fingernail,
realized what she was doing, and stopped.
Me.
And my
monster.

“What…” Lex held out her hand.

Raze took it.

Lex shuddered,
then
tried again.
“What
is
he?”

Rune shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

“But what do you think?” Raze asked.

She pressed her lips together. “I think he’s something I’ve
never seen before.”

“You command him,” Lex said. “You’ve made him your…slave.”
She curled her lip and put her free hand to her chest. Despite her disgust and
anger, her face was stark and full of desperation.

“Would you rather he’d died?” Rune closed her eyes in a slow
blink, wishing she could retract the words. “I’m sorry, baby.” She gestured
helplessly at the peacefully sleeping Levi. “I’m sorry.”

“Do
not
tell Denim,” Lex said. “And try to refrain
from ordering Levi directly. Maybe it will wear off. Maybe he won’t notice.”

“He’s alive,” Raze told the angry
Other
,
his voice soft.

“Maybe,” was all Lex would say.

“I’m better,” Rune said. She had to get out of the stifling
room. “But I may need to feed again to help Z. Lex, guard Levi. Raze and I will
go help the crew.”

“Rune—”

Rune cut her off. “I’ll bring Denim back. I’ll bring them
all back. And everything will be okay.”

“Do you have your cell?” Lex asked.
“Just
in case?”

Rune hesitated, understanding suddenly that Lex was afraid.
She glanced up at Raze. “Raze…”

“I’ll stay with her,” he said. “Be careful.”

She stopped at the door, unsettled, and put her cell on
vibrate before stuffing it back into her pocket. “I will. Try to call the crew.
If you get any of them, text me their locations.”
She
had no idea if they’d collected their phones or not. She could only hope they
had.

She pulled the door open the slightest bit and peered
through.

She saw no movement, no zombies,
no
people. It was just dead quiet and eerie as fuck. The sky was overcast but the
sun peeked through some clouds, lighting the area in a colorful, strange way.

From the moment they’d entered Rock County, nothing had been
right. She had a feeling things were going to get worse.

She jogged down the street, alert for any movement or sound.
The weird light combined with the dead quiet to make Rock County seem like a
different planet.

She didn’t like it.

And now she was out alone with a town full of zombies. Well,
not really alone. She had her monster.

Up ahead she spotted three zombies. Chunks of their
deformed, rotting bodies broke off and splattered the pavement as they shuffled
toward her.

She dropped her fangs and sent her lethal claws out. Where
the
fuck were
the rest of the bastards?

Probably battling her crew.

She ran toward the zombies. She dropped the first one quickly,
but zombies had no fear. As she was killing the first one, the other two came
right on, craving her living flesh.

She didn’t have to work hard to destroy them. She’d fed Levi
and was still strong enough to kill without breaking a sweat.

She was growing in strength. Soon, she might have no real
weaknesses.

Not if she fed—and the days of denying her monster were
over.

Zombie body parts littered the street around her almost
before she realized she had nothing left to kill.

Night would come soon. She wondered if the vampires would
come with it. They could help the crew, if she could convince them to do so.

If any humans remained in Rock County they were hiding. Most
of them appeared to have become zombies—strange, somehow altered zombies.

But where were the
Others
? Where
were the wolves and shifters?

At that exact second, she spotted a wolf crossing the street
a half a block away.

The wolf was bony. His swaying head hung low between sharp
shoulder blades. As she watched, he listed to the side and fell over.

His paws scrabbled against the pavement. Finally, he climbed
with torturous slowness back to his feet and continued on his way with drunken,
weaving steps.

She jogged toward him. That he was injured was obvious, but
she needed some answers. If she could get him to shift and talk to her…

She was about fifteen feet from him when the wolf heard her,
stopped his rambling walk, and turned around.

It was then she realized what had happened to the
Others
.

They’d been infected. The wolf looking at her now was not
just a wolf, he was a zombie wolf.

“No fucking way.” Weres couldn’t be made into zombies. They
couldn’t.

Yet there he was.

And if the new zombie humans were faster and stronger, what
would a zombie wolf be like?

Slow at first, until they got their first sniff or taste of
human flesh? Or blood?

He growled,
then
opened his
misshapen mouth to show broken, sharp teeth. His eyes were black, pure black,
except for a sudden bright spark of joy.

And like the starving, desperate zombie he was, the wolf went
for her.

He was no match for Rune, despite his hunger and lack of
fear. She moved to the side as he leaped at her, and drove her heavy, razor
claws into his skull.

As he lay on the ground, she pulled one of her longer shivs
and took his head. Just in case.

If she’d been less alert, the next wolf would probably have
torn her head off, but she was Shiv Crew.

Shiv Crew barely relaxed when
off
duty. No one was
going to sneak up on them. She whirled around and drove a claw through his eye
and into his brain with almost perfect precision.

She knelt to clean the blade and her claws on the downed
wolf’s fur.
Zombie fucking wolves.
Unbelievable.

When she saw movement from the corner of her eye she shot to
her feet, a gun in one hand and a silver blade as long as her forearm in the
other.

She’d dropped her fangs, as well. It was good to cover all
bases.

Another wolf crept down the street toward her, but that
wasn’t what caused her to back up a step. “Oh, shit.”

Behind the creeping wolf were what appeared to be at least
fifty
Others
.
Other zombies.
New
zombies.

She holstered the gun and the blade and shot her claws back
out, forcing them to lengthen.

The zombies caught her scent.

It was as if the smell of living flesh gave them energy and
a spark that was almost life. Their ears perked up, their faces lifted as they
sniffed the air, and then, they saw her.

It never occurred to her to run. She wasn’t going to turn
her back on a pack of zombie
Others
.

Not yet.

She’d do what she did best.

Fight.

Then they were upon her.

After that, she didn’t stop moving, not for a millisecond.
If she had, they would have torn her to pieces.

They piled on top of each other in their eagerness to reach
the scent driving them crazy, and that slowed them down.

Still, it wasn’t enough that she was a super monster.
Didn’t matter that she used her built-in shivs to slice the zombies
up.

There were simply too many of them.

Because even as she kicked and sliced and
punched, she spotted more of them coming to join the fun.

She thrust the claws of her left hand into the wide open
mouth of a particularly large St. Bernard and as the claws exited through the
back of his throat, he clamped his teeth down, trying to eat the tempting flesh
right there in his mouth.

He took off half her hand.

When she managed to pull free she was missing three fingers,
with only her first finger and thumb remaining.

She screamed, though in her shock she barely felt any pain.

Time to run.

With the haunting zombie moans and clicking teeth assaulting
her ears, she turned to run for her life.

The ground was littered with pieces of the zombies she’d
destroyed, but with a mangled hand and no one to help her, she wasn’t feeling
too confident.

The pavement was a blur beneath her feet as adrenaline and
her monster propelled her onward. But she wasn’t running at full speed—feeding
Levi had taken that from her.

She could feel them there, right at her back. One misstep
and they’d mow her down like tall grass. And no matter how immortal a girl was
,
if a zombie was eating her heart and munching on her
brain, she was just dead.

Across the street she spotted movement. A young man stood on
the edge of a porch, waving. “Here,” he yelled.

She veered off the street immediately and ran toward him.
Leaping up the steps to the porch, she streaked past him and into the house.

As soon as she was inside he slammed the door shut, bolting
it behind him. They listened quietly as zombies rammed themselves against the
house.

She stood in the middle of a nice size living room, which
contained small pieces of furniture and an enormous flat screen TV. She cradled
her injured hand to her chest, her gaze on the stranger.

He had straw colored hair and shy blue eyes. He wore a pair of
faded overalls, his feet stuck into boots almost big enough for her to sleep
in. But she was accustomed to big men.

He smiled a little vacantly and twisted his hands together.
“Hi.” The zombies continued to torpedo themselves against the exterior of the
house, but he no longer seemed to notice. “My name is Benjamin David Arco.
Everyone calls me George.”

She was unable to contain a groan when she glanced down at
the bloody stumps where her fingers had once been. Now that there was no
immediate danger, the pain roared over her. Nausea rose when she saw the tiny,
bloody bones standing sharply at attention.

The fingers would regrow, and so would the claws.

They would.

“George, I need some ice and bandages.
And
coffee, if you’ve got it.”
Coffee made everything better.

“What happened to your hand?” He walked a little closer and
peered down at her, his eyes wide.

She showed him. “There
are zombie
Others out there. I was fighting them when one—”

He wobbled back a few steps then crashed to the floor, out
cold.

She sighed.
“For fuck’s sake, dude.
It’s just a little blood and gore.” She guessed she’d have to go find her own
damn ice.

But he’d know how the whole mess had started. Once she took
care of her hand she’d get his story.

As she headed for the bathroom George moaned, then called
weakly, “Lady?”

“I’m here.” She could see a bathroom at the end of the
hallway. “Can you make some coffee?”

There was an open door on her right and as she started to
walk by, she glanced into a small bedroom.

“Fuck me,” she whispered. She pulled a shiv with her right
hand and stepped into the room.

On the bed sat a very large female zombie, holding the hand
of a very little girl.