Thicker than Blood (11 page)

Letting my eyelids drop, I swallowed
another threatening sob, not quite able to believe that it had come
to this. That after everything I’d lived through, this was how I
was going to die—at the hands of a bunch of whack jobs in serious
need of therapy.

Really, God? Really?

We continued for what seemed like an
eternity, until one of the men holding me up began to grunt with
the effort it took him to keep me from falling.

I lifted my head, just enough to catch a
glimpse of him in the dim light. He was younger than me, yet he had
an aura of darkness surrounding him that aged him beyond his years.
There was a familiar look in his empty eyes, one I’d seen a hundred
times before. It wasn’t sadness or anger, but the look of someone
who’d seen too much, done too much, someone who knew they were
going to burn
in hell
for it all when push came to shove.

“You’re going to burn,” I whispered hoarsely,
wanting to remind him of what he already knew, and his eyes flitted
to mine, staring blankly down at me. Disgusted, I turned away from
him. There wasn’t hope for someone like him, lost to their
madness.

We finally came to a stop just outside a
large wood-slatted door. One of the men holding me unexpectedly
released me, shoving me entirely into the arms of the other. He was
older, and surprisingly heavyset considering we were in the midst
of a damn apocalypse. I was reminded of Mason then, his greed when
it came to everything, but most of all when it came to me. I hoped
that having lost me, he was drowning in self-pity.

Casting a quick glance over my head, the man
pulled a set of keys from his pocket and thumbed through them.
After several tense moments as I waited for the horrors behind the
door to be revealed, he unlocked it.

The door creaked open ominously, revealing
a dark room, and the smell of decay wafted from within, even more
potent than before. It wasn’t just the smell of decay, but the
smell of death itself that hung in the air, and my stomach lurched
at the thought of what new horror I’d just stumbled into. Squinting
my eyes, I could make out what looked to be a concrete stand in the
center of the room, a velvet blanket thrown over the top of it.
There were no windows, and no doors aside from the entrance.
Of course there
weren’t.

The man still holding me pushed me forward,
shoving me into the foul-smelling darkness. At first, I tried to
resist but it was futile, and I was shoved hard onto the cold
concrete floor. Quickly, I scanned the room, but saw nothing but
the concrete stand and velvet blanket. But as my eyes began to
adjust to the darkness, I found that it wasn’t a blanket at all. It
was blood, thick and red, covering the stand.

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered,
turning back to the men, my eyes wide with horror as my brain
struggled to process what was happening.

“It’s not our choice,” the heavyset man
replied. “It’s the Lord’s.” And then he gazed up to the ceiling,
making the sign of the cross in front of him.

“You’re telling me that the Lord asked you to
kidnap three people off the street and kill them? The Lord wants
you to murder three innocent people who have done nothing to
you?”

“You’re not going to die,” the younger man
said.

“I’m not?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“No, silly, you’re going home.” He smiled
then, though it wasn’t a friendly smile, leading me to think he
didn’t quite believe what he was saying.

“You’re speaking in riddles!” I yelled,
fixing them both with as menacing a glare as I could muster, but it
was wasted on them as they were both now smiling.

“Where are my friends?” I asked, feeling the
slightest bit hopeful, though my voice had cracked on the last
syllable. “Have you killed them? Please, just tell me.”

“We’re sending them home too,” the older man
replied, his voice distant, his gaze suddenly far away. “They shall
protect our flock from the wolves.”

Tears began to build behind my eyes. These
people were insane; they were completely fucking nuts. I had no
idea what they had done to Leisel and Alex, no idea what they were
going to do to me. My heart began to beat so incredibly fast that
it felt as if my chest might explode from all the pressure. But I’d
held it together for this long, managing to keep everything always
bottled up and buried deep down inside me, that I refused to
release it here, especially in front of these lunatics.

And then, just when I’d thought all was
lost, a scream, piercing in its intensity and utterly familiar, cut
sharply through the otherwise silent hall.

Leisel!

Jumping to my feet, I lunged through the
doorway, blindly reaching for either man standing there. Punching,
kicking, clawing, biting, I attacked them with everything I had
left, drawing my strength from the sound of Leisel’s fear.

Leisel

I couldn’t stop screaming. The smell was foul, vile,
enough to make my eyes water and my stomach heave. Only I didn’t
have time to lose my stomach contents. Not locked in this tiny
room, lit by a lone candle on the floor, chained to a stone altar,
my only companion a hungry infected.

I’d never been this close to an infected
before, only Thomas and Shawn when they’d been newly turned. Shawn
had quickly ended Thomas’s life, and when Shawn had awoken as an
infected, it had been Evelyn who’d taken his.

Although I’d seen other infected through
the years, it had always been from afar. Even our encounters most
recently, I hadn’t been up close and personal with them, not like
Evelyn or Alex had. I’d always been shielded by something, by
someone.

Not anymore.

My head was still pounding from the blow I’d
suffered, and the shackles around my wrists were cutting into my
skin, chafing and tearing it. But I continued pulling on them, my
adrenaline overshadowing my pain as I ran in circles around this
bloodied stone altar. I had only myself to protect me now. No one
was coming to save me, and there was no time to break down, to
freak out and give up. Not unless I wanted a very painful and awful
death.

The infected was desperate to take a chunk
out of me. It shambled mindlessly after me, its arms outstretched,
its maw strained wide open, exposing rotten, jagged teeth. Even
worse, this was not a newly turned. From what I could tell in the
flickering shadows, this looked to be a first- or second-wave
infected. What had once been skin, smooth and plump and flush with
life, was now sunken and shriveled by age and decay, giving the
thing an overall brown and leathery appearance. It was utterly
hairless, its cloudy eyes were sunken in, and what little muscle
mass remained wasn’t enough to shield the infected’s bones from
protruding from its skin. Since it was utterly devoid of any body
hair, I couldn’t even begin to determine what sex it was.

First-wave infected were rarely seen
anymore, most of them having been killed or no longer able to get
around as easily as in the early days after years of decomposition
had taken its toll on their bodies.

However, this particular one had been well
cared for. No exposure to the elements to quicken the decaying
process, no human attacks had left it missing limbs or with gaping
bullet holes. Sure, it smelled something awful, like meat that had
been left in a freezer long after the electricity had gone out, but
at the same time it had been routinely cleaned, clothed…and
fed.

This infected, as hard to believe as this was
for my fear-addled brain, had been loved. Was loved. And I’d been
so lovingly given to it for dinner. But I wasn’t going to be an
easy meal. Whereas fear might have paralyzed me in the past, in
this tiny room it had become my motivation.

With the stone altar the only thing keeping
the creature from easily getting to me, I ran left, then right,
then left again, or sometimes in a complete circle, as it slowly
but surely continued to come at me. It was a tireless creature,
uncaring about the energy it expended, whereas I was the opposite.
I was cold, exhausted, my body not yet recovered from Lawrence’s
final beating. I didn’t have Alex’s physical strength or Evelyn’s
seemingly tireless stamina, and although I wasn’t out of shape, I
certainly wasn’t in the best condition. Eventually I would tire or
make a mistake, and then become fodder for the dead.

Then the worst thing possible happened—I
slipped. I didn’t know how or why it happened, not that it mattered
once I was flat on my backside, my arms hanging above my head, my
wrists still chained to the altar. As the garbled groans grew
closer, I grabbed hold of my chains, kicking at the floor,
attempting to pull myself back up to my feet, but I wasn’t fast
enough. The infected reached me, and with its bony arms
outstretched, descended on me.

I knew I was screaming, I could feel the
vibration in my lungs and in my throat, yet I couldn’t hear a
thing. My heart was pounding, my cold, sweaty hands sliding down
the chain as I continued to try to pull myself upright, my fingers
slipping with every attempt. Instinctively, I swung my right leg up
and forward, hitting the infected square in its open mouth and
sending it staggering backward. It hit the wall, the force of which
pushed it forward, giving me only a split second to pull myself
up.

I managed to regain my footing, but the
chains had become twisted and tightened when I’d fallen, and now
running in circles around the altar was no longer an option.

The infected came at me again, steady and
sure, and again I swung out with my leg, this time catching it in
the knee. With an audible crack, the limb bent and the infected
stumbled. But still, it kept coming, entirely unbothered.

Frantic, I tried to untangle the chains,
screaming as I yanked and pulled, uncaring that I was openly
bleeding, uncaring that I was now probably missing most of the skin
on my wrists. I hadn’t lived this long—surviving the loss, the
pain, and the brutality of this new world—only to end up locked in
a room, chained to an altar like a sacrificial lamb, and given to
an infected as a gift.

I took too long trying to untangle myself,
not giving myself enough time or space to get another good kick in,
before the infected came barreling back toward me. I screamed as it
reached for me, thrusting out my elbow into its chest, but without
enough strength. The shove didn’t do much, only alerted the
infected to the ready meal I’d just shoved into its face. As its
rotten teeth clamped down on my arm, I screamed again, this time
with tears in my eyes.

“No!” I cried out, struggling harder.
“No!”

My jacket ripped beneath the onslaught of
teeth, and I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing my shirt and skin would
be next. I was too tangled now, no room for any evasive maneuvers.
The sickly sweet smell of rot and decay was all around me, the
breathless monster on top of me, clutching at me with frozen hands.
It was over. This would be my bitter, ugly end.

At the first scrape of teeth against my
skin, my heart skipped a beat. A visceral reaction burst forth and
I swung my arm upward, and even with as little room as I had, my
elbow dislodged from its mouth, finding purchase against its jaw.
The force of the blow wasn’t enough to send it backward, nor
distract it, but it gave me enough room to back away just enough to
lift my leg and send my foot straight into the same knee I’d
already broken.

This time its fragile bones shattered and the
infected fell to the floor, its head slamming against the concrete.
I didn’t waste another second. I lifted my foot and sent it down
and onto the creature’s face. With the force of my stomp and the
amount of decay the infected had already endured, my foot sank
easily through its skin, its face giving way beneath my weight.
Skin split and bones cracked beneath my shoe, but I pressed on,
grinding my heel, screaming and crying until I both felt and heard
a resounding pop. Like a broken water balloon, the head of the
infected deflated, sludge pouring from it.

The infected was now still, unmoving, and
what was left of its face entirely engulfed my tennis shoe. Still
screaming, I began kicking, attempting but unable to dislodge it.
With my refusal to touch the thing, I eventually had little choice
but to sink to the ground beside it. Not that it mattered much. The
infection would soon take root inside me and the fever would spread
quickly, giving me a day, maybe two before I succumbed and then
awoke as one of them.

As my bottom hit the cold concrete floor,
the rest of my fleeting energy leaving me entirely, my screams
turned to whimpers, my cries to a quiet choking that resulted in
bile erupting from my throat and down my chin. I sat there,
coughing through my emotion, fear snaking through my body so wildly
that I could hardly think straight, and then my bladder unwittingly
released, warm and wet, coating my jeans.

And that was how Alex found me. Covered in my
own vomit, in a pool of my own urine, with my foot still lodged in
the skull of an infected.

So consumed with my own circumstances, I
hadn’t even heard the door open, didn’t see Alex until he was
standing in front of me. I stared up, feeling momentary disbelief
until I noticed the arm in his hand. Connected to the arm was the
entire body of a man I didn’t recognize. A man who, considering he
had what looked like a human bone jutting from his eye socket, was
obviously dead.

Alex took one look at me, at my expression,
then dropped the body and rushed to my side. Belatedly, I noticed
the large key ring in his hand, courtesy of the dead man, I
supposed.

“Ev-Ev-Evelyn,” I managed to sputter out
between sobs.