Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (11 page)

A fee Marlow doesn’t know anything about.

It’s dangerous. If he found out that I was earning that money on the side it wouldn’t matter who I am or how closely I work with him. I’d be as dead as the smugglers he’s trying to ferret out. I can’t do it forever and eventually if things get too big I’ll have to start handing the profits over, but not yet. Not until I’m done stockpiling. What I’m saving up for I don’t know, but money is still power and there’s never been anything in this world I’ve wanted more than that.

“How are you gonna rig the fight this time?” an angry voice asks from behind me. “Put a laxative in his water?”

I turn with a smile. “Nah. Sleeping pill.”

Nate shakes his head in disgust and looks away. It’s tough to see him where he’s hiding in the shadowy corner of the room, but it’s not so tough that I can’t see the slings.

“How are the arms?” I ask him.

“Fuck you.”

I chuckle, sticking out my hand for him to shake. “Come on, man. No hard feelings.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“I think it depends on which side of the street you’re standing on. From here it’s hilarious.”

“I almost died that night thanks to you. No other Pikes were here. I had to make it home alone with two broken arms.”

I cross my own arms over my chest and shrug. “If we’re being real, I’m surprised you came out today.”

“My boys brought me,” he admits in a hushed mumble. “They had to guard me the whole damn way. I couldn’t fight. All I could do was run.”

“Good to see the injury hasn’t changed you.”

“Fuck you,” he growls angrily.

I slap him on the shoulder, making him wince. “You said that already. You have a good night, alright? I’ll see you around.”

I leave him there in the dark corner by himself to sulk in his sling. Dude had it coming. I have no regrets about busting him up the way I did, him or any other Pike. They’re loud-mouth, angry assholes and while most guys would be worried about having the whole crew feeling ugly toward them, I couldn’t care less. They’re welcome to come at me and see where it gets them, and when Nate heals up I’ll be waiting for him.

“Vin!” Asher calls, waving me over. “We got a problem.”

I saunter slowly to where he’s towering over some pasty white kid with his six feet four inches of ebony skin, gleaming bald head, and heavy intimidation. “With what?”

“The guy you’re supposed to fight,” his voice rumbles, “he didn’t show.”

“So what? It’s early.”

“It’s not that early. I told him the rules when he signed up. You get here early or you don’t fight.”

I shrug, unconcerned. It’s not the first time a fighter has gotten cold feet and bailed or just straight up disappeared. Hell, one time a guy died in front of me on the guard two days before I was supposed to fight him. The world is ugly. People die every day.

“Alright, so get me an alternate. Where’s Bennett?”

“He refuses to go in the ring with you anymore.”

“Sore loser.” I smile to myself, pointing over my shoulder. “Get Nate in the ring. I’ll just bitch him slap him for twelve rounds.”

Asher isn’t laughing. He looks heavily at the kid next to him. “Tell him.”

“The guy you’re looking for,” the kid says anxiously, “he’s not a Westie.”

My smile immediately fades. “What do you mean he’s not a Westie? He quit? He was kicked out?”

“No, I mean I’ve never heard of him. There’s no Greg in our gang and the way he described him,” he points to Asher, “I’ve never seen him either. He’s not one of us.”

I look to Asher who’s already watching me, then glance back at the kid. “Get lost, alright?”

“Yeah,” he mutters, already hurrying away.

I step up close to Asher, lowering my voice. “If he wasn’t a Westie, then who was he?”

“Not a clue. You want me to ask around? See if anyone else knows him?”

“No, not yet.

“How many times was he on the Guard?”

“Just once.”

“And he was good?”

“Good enough that I let him sign up for the Underground after one day on the job.”

I watch the crowd milling around us. It’s full of familiar faces. People who greet me by name and wish me good luck. People I can identify. That I’ve grown to know over the last three years because even though it’s a big world out there, for the most part we’re pretty closed off here in Seattle. You see the same people over and over again, and even though you might not know them all by name, you learn to recognize them. So much so that new faces start to seem weird.

“This isn’t go—“ I begin.

My words are cut in two by the blare of a siren that screams through the room. We all stare at each other in amazement, stunned into silence. Most people don’t know what it means. It’s never gone off before and it’s none of their business, but that might be about to change because that siren is a last resort. It’s a distress call.

It means the stadium is in trouble.

Chapter Twelve

Trent

I don’t sleep for a week after the incident on the ship. My arm aches from where the bullet grazed me and it’s a constant reminder of how completely wrong that afternoon went. I go in and out, my body shutting down to survive, but nightmares wake me up every time. My schedule is thrown off and I’m up at all hours, even in the dark when I shouldn’t be on the ground.

I’ve learned from the animals, just like Dad told me to. They can tell when one of the zombies is coming. Rabbits go in their holes, deer run for the thick of the trees, and entire flocks of birds will take to the skies. That’s when I know I need to move. It doesn’t matter where my camp is at that moment, I run with the animals. I head in the same direction the birds fly and I don’t stop until I’m exhausted.

They still find me sometimes. There are times when I’ll be going about my day either fishing or hunting or just taking a walk to clear my head or stretch my legs, when suddenly one will come out of nowhere. Even out here on the coast in the woods with no big cities around, a stray infected will find its way to me.

I kill them when it happens. I don’t think about it and I don’t debate it. I just do it. Then I burn the bodies.

I have to relocate afterwards. The scent scares the animals away meaning it scares my dinner, and I go where the food goes. In the beginning I buried them, but I started having dreams about them rising from the earth and climbing into my tree to find me, their rotted faces covered in dirt and their mouths open and groaning. I jerked awake so hard one night that I fell out of my tree. I tweaked my knee and couldn’t run for almost a month. I was pretty sure I was going to die. That’s when I started the fires.

“Go to the woods. Stay clear of people. Hide with the animals.” I chant under my breath. “Go to the woods. Stay clear of people. Hide with the animals.”

I push through the low brush quickly and quietly. It’s half a mile from my camp to the road and I repeat the words to myself the entire way.

“Go to the woods. Stay clear of people. Hide with the animals.”

It’s ironic that talking to myself is how I stay sane, but I have to do it. I have to use my voice and hear it in my ears. I’m worried if I never speak that I’ll forget how, so every day for at least half an hour I talk to myself, just to prove that I can. Sometimes I sing songs that I remember. I memorize and recite poems from a book I found in an abandoned beach house a year ago. I don’t like them, they’re abstract and stupid, but the words are weird and they keep me thinking. I like to think it all keeps me human.

I find my favorite tree along the road and easily climb halfway up it. I have a spear stashed up here, one that I built just for this purpose – hunting small game. Lately, though, with the nightmares and my lack of sleep, the tree serves a second purpose. Napping.

It only takes an hour or so of sitting up here with my back against the bark and the spear laid lazily across my lap for my head to start to droop. I shake myself a couple of times to stay awake, I even try reciting poetry and my mantra to keep me busy, but even though I can run from death, I can’t escape sleep.

“Go to the woods,” I mumble, my eyes falling shut. “Stay clear of people. Hide with the animals. Go to the woods. Stay clear of people. Hide with the animals… Go to the woods… stay clear of people.”

“Just a little farther, dude! Come on! Please!”

My eyes snap open, my body going rigid. I passed out. I fell asleep and now that my eyes are open I don’t know if I’m awake or dreaming.

Two people are coming toward me. They pitch and weave as they walk. Both look like men, though one is pretty young. I can’t see his face but his height would say eleven or twelve. Maybe younger. He’s stumbling, the guy next to him dragging him more than anything. Both have the same golden brown hair, the same dirty, tattered clothes, but the one who is shouting looks like he’s my age. He’s a few inches shorter but a couple inches broader. Every ounce of strength he has appears to be dedicated to pulling the younger kid along.

“You can make it, Ry,” he grunts roughly. “We’re almost there.”

I don’t know where ‘there’ is to them, but they are most definitely not almost to it. Not unless they’re looking for death. The closer they get the better I can see how bad off they are. Pale. Staggering. Slow. One zombie is all it would take to kill them, and it might not even take that. The cold of the coming night will be enough to end the little one.

“Stop.”

I’m as surprised to hear my voice as they are. All of us pause, the bigger guy scanning the tree line frantically. He’s looking too low.

“We—we aren’t armed,” he stutters.

His voice is rough and quiet. He’s probably dehydrated.

“It’s not smart to travel unarmed,” I admonish him.

“We didn’t really get a chance to plan ahead.”

His eyes continue to scan the brush underneath me. Now that they’ve stopped moving the kid has slouched against him completely. His chin is against his chest. It rises and falls with labored breath.

“Where are you coming from?” I ask.

“Oregon. Woodburn.”

“You’re from the quarantine zone.”

“Yeah. You?”

“Nowhere.”

“You’re from nowhere?” he asks, sounding confused. His eyes are all over the place. He’s probably disoriented.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” he answers weakly. “Somewhere safe.”

“There is nowhere safe.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.” The guy shifts the weight of his friend, hoisting him higher only to have him slouch even closer to the ground. “It’s been fun talking to you,” he groans, “but we need to keep moving. My brother needs water.”

I note his chapped lips. The heavy rise and fall of his breath, obviously from exertion, but there’s no sweat on his face and arms. His body is dried out. Used up.

“You won’t make it to water,” I promise him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You wanna point me in the direction of it anyway? Give us a shot?”

“You have no shot. You’ll both collapse before you make it.”

“Cool,” he replies dryly. “Thank you for that, but unless you’re going to kill us if we keep moving, we’re outta here.”

“Wait,” I say as I carefully stow my spear.

“I don’t have time to wait, man,” he snaps impatiently. “He needs water.”

I drop down from the tree, landing smoothly on the rough ground. The guy lurches back in surprise. He nearly stumbles and I wish I would have thought to warn him. I didn’t mean to scare him. I step slowly from the thick cover of bushes at my feet and come to stand in front of him on the road, my hands plainly visible and still.

“I have water,” I tell him.

He blinks rapidly, his eyes darting to the brush behind me.

“I’m alone,” I assure him calmly.

He nods, the movement jerky. “Yeah, so are we. You really have water?”

“Yes. I’ll share it with you.”

“What’s the catch?”

“I don’t have a catch.”

“There’s always a catch. No one gives anything away for free. What do you want for the water?”

“To see you survive.”

“No,” he argues. “Bullshit. What do you want in return?”

I cross my arms over my chest and think about his question.

He sways on his feet as he waits for my answer.

“I’m going to help you today,” I finally tell him, “and someday you can help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“I don’t know. We’re not there yet.”

His body slouches under the heavy weight of his brother. I take a step closer to him, feeling his eyes on me as I move.

“Can I help you with him?” I ask, gesturing to the kid.

The guy nods warily.

I step in close to the kid and gently push my arm under his until his armpit is resting on my elbow. He’s too short for me to drape his arm around my neck so I take as much of his weight on my forearm as I can. The other guy follows my lead and we carefully walk forward into the bushes. It’s not easy walking all three of us through the thick underbrush and eventually I get tired of trying and wordlessly hoist the kid up onto my back, slinging him over my shoulders like a deer I’m bringing home for dinner. His brother is too tired to protest and he falls in step behind me as I lead them deep into the woods.

I can feel the boy’s heartbeat on my back. It’s fast. His breathing too. He’s in bad shape.

When we reach the clearing where I’ve been camping, I slowly lower the kid down onto my sleeping bag. His brother drops to the ground, sitting next him.

“Wake him up if you can,” I tell him as I fill my tin cup a quarter of the way with fresh water from my jug.

“Ryan,” the guy says, gently shaking the kid. “Wake up. We have water.”

Ryan mumbles and his eyes flutter but he’s clearly not going to be coherent any time soon. I hand his brother the cup and take Ryan by his shoulders, pulling him into a sitting position and propping him against a tree. Taking the cup back from his brother, I pull on Ryan’s jaw to open his mouth and tip his head back only slightly. I want him to swallow this naturally, not drown him in his sleep in it.

I pour a small trickle of water on Ryan’s tongue and watch as it runs back to his throat. He swallows reflexively.

“Good,” I mumble encouragingly. I add more water to his tongue and he swallows again.

“Is he drinking it?” the guy asks anxiously.

“Yes. He’s swallowing it. It’s slow feeding it to him, but we don’t want to give him too much anyway. He could vomit it back up if he gets overfull.” I glance at the guy to find him sitting with his face in his hands. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Me or him?” he asks, his voice muffled by his hands.

“Both of you.”

“Him, two days ago. Me, more like three. I think. I don’t know.” He sits up and shakes his head, dropping his hands. “I’ve lost track of the days.”

“I have deer jerky. Nuts. Some mushrooms. Hopefully we can get him awake enough to eat soon.”

I finish feeding Ryan the water and slowly ease him back down onto my bag. I refill the cup, this time halfway full, and hand it to the guy. He immediately drinks it down as I pull a jar of Vaseline out of my pack. I put a small daub on my finger and trace it over Ryan’s cracked and bleeding lips, then I offer it to his brother who does the same for himself.

“Thank you,” he says as he hands it back to me. “For everything. I’m getting kind of worried you’re a mirage and I’m going to wake up and find out I just drank my own urine.”

I smile. “I’m hoping that doesn’t happen.”

“Me too. It’d really suck to drink piss.”

“Not as much as ceasing to exist.”

He snorts a laugh that turns into a dry cough. “Yeah. I guess not. What’s your name?”

“Trent. What’s yours?”

“Kevin.” He gestures to the boy sleeping soundly on my bag. “That’s my brother. Ryan.”

“I got that.”

“From what?”

“When you said it.”

Kevin frowns. “When did I say it?”

“When we gave him water.”

“Wow. I don’t remember any of that. Did he drink it?”

“Yes. I’ll give him a little more in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Okay.” He nods his head, his eyes scanning the small campsite. “Okay.”

I open my Tupperware container of nuts I’ve collected and hand him a fistful of them. “Here. Eat these, have another cup of water, and go to sleep.”

His eyes widen with fear. “I can’t sleep. I have to watch out for Ryan. I have to keep watch.”

“I’ll keep watch while you sleep.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

I sit down slowly across from him. His eyes are sharper than they were on the road. He’s having a moment of clarity, no matter how short-lived it may be. “What exactly have I done to make you think you can’t?”

“It’s hard to trust people. Everyone wants something from you.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“How long have you been alone?” he asks, hesitantly taking the handful of nuts from me.

“Since the quarantine fell.”

He gapes at me. “That was… years. Over two years ago.”

“Three.”

“You’ve been alone for three years?”

“Yes.”

“Your family? They died?”

“It was just my dad and I, and yes. I killed him.”

He stares at me blankly, my blatant confession rolling around in his brain and looking for a place to land but there’s no ground to take it. It’s not a thing that sits well anywhere with anyone. Least of all me.

“I killed mine too,” he whispers almost inaudibly. “They turned and they tried to eat Ryan. So I killed them.”

“How long ago?”

“Almost four years. Did your dad… did he turn?”

“I watched it happen.”

He shakes his head faintly. “I didn’t see it. One minute they were my parents and the next they were trying to kill us. I kind of wonder if it would have been easier to see the change. To say goodbye.”