Hunter Of The Dead (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Covering a massive crowd of infected with the remains of a tent was easier said than done. Short of climbing the cliff walls and jumping straight down, it was impossible. And that was if the tent had actually been wide enough to stretch between both walls.

Eden didn’t have much time to worry about it, though. The infected increased their attack, coming at her in a single wave. She was left fighting for her life, striking and ducking away even as she tried not to give ground. The whole damn situation was impossible. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Kaede and Taro, the dissembled tent stretched tight between them. They clothes-lined any infected too tall and covered them. The fabric of the tent ran out all too soon. but it had covered at least twenty of the infected, enough to make a dent. Which left ten for Eden and Jordan to deal with. She glanced at her sister and then back at the group of uninfected children huddled together behind the spring. They could do this. They had to.

“The twins will take care of the covered ones. Let’s end this,” Eden said as she cut into an infected.

“Okay.” Jordan sounded tired, too tired, but there was nothing Eden could do. They had to fight or die. And Eden refused to end her life in a God-forsaken jungle in South America. Thanks, but no thanks.

She dodged a large zombie and lunged, taking out a small one on her backswing. Three down. Seven more to go. Even as the thought crossed her mind, Jordan eliminated one.

Taking her
bolo
in a two-handed grip, Eden beheaded another infected and shoved a second back to where Kaede was efficiently dispatching the zombies trapped beneath the tent. The other woman stabbed her
nagamaki
into its mouth, shook it off. Behind her, two infected appeared, wriggling from beneath the tent, their mouths gaping in anticipation. Kaede didn’t see them in time and one latched onto her leg, the other one coming to its feet and going for her throat, topping her to the ground.

Eden screamed as they crawled up the Kaede’s body. Her
nagamaki
, the very weapon that gave her such reach on the battlefield, now worked against her. Eden was forced back by the infected in front of her, and she lost sight of the other woman while she dealt with them. Panic and fear gave her speed. Kaede needed her. As the last zombie fell beneath her blade, she didn’t pause, sprinting across the distance to behead the two on top of Kaede.

For a full thirty seconds, Eden didn’t understand what she was seeing. The red wetness glinting dully in the moonlight, the way Kaede’s throat didn’t quite line up, the jagged bite wound where there was once unblemished skin, the dullness in the her eyes. “No.”

Then Taro was there, shoving her out of the way as he went to his knees next to his twin. He gathered her gently into his arms and rocked, oh so slowly, and then faster, pulling her body tighter against his chest. Eden covered her mouth and took a step back as Taro threw back his head and made a sound that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life while tears ran down his face.

“No,” she said again, as if denying it would make it any less real. “Not Kaede.” It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. Kaede was unkillable.

“Oh God.” Jordan skidded to a stop next to Eden. “
Oh God
.”

It was only because she was watching so closely that she saw Kaede’s fingers twitch. “Taro,” Eden whispered, her voice thick with tears. “Taro, you have to let her go.”

Jordan cursed softly and put a hand on his shoulder. He moved faster than Eden could follow, one hand whipping out and sending her sister flying. Eden looked down to where Kaede’s eyes were now open, her mouth gaping. It was only Taro’s grip on her hair that kept her from biting him as he rocked.

She dropped to her knees across from him. “Taro. Taro, look at me.” Eden reached over and cupped his face, painfully aware of the snapping infected—the infected that used to be his sister—between them. “Taro, let me do this.” She didn’t want to, desperately didn’t want to, but Eden couldn’t let him kill his own twin. “Please.”

Taro shook his head, his dark eyes wide.

“We have to do this. She wouldn’t want to be infected.” She used her free hand to pull free the knife he kept in his boot, holding his gaze all the while. “Close your eyes.”

He obeyed, still making that horrible sound. Eden moved her hand from Taro’s face to cover the one gripping the back of Kaede’s head. She sent a silent prayer for forgiveness to God, hoping He was listening, and slid the knife through her friend’s jaw and into her brain. As soon as Kaede went still, true death glazing her eyes, Eden pulled out the blade. “It’s over.”

She dropped the knife behind her, out of sight of Taro, and let the tears come. They’d saved the remaining survivors from the infected horde, but the price was too great. This was one blow none of them would bounce back from.

Several of the children behind Eden whimpered, reminding her that their work wasn’t done yet. What the hell were they going to do with fifteen newly orphaned kids? She shook her head. It didn’t matter, none of this mattered. Eden had done enough.

What she wanted now, more than anything, was to sleep for two weeks straight and forget this assignment ever happened, forget she’d never see Kaede again. No, that wasn’t right. Before she could do anything else, she had to go back for Alejandro.
Then
she’d do her damndest to forget.

But for now, she couldn’t stand to watch Taro mourn. Eden struggled to her feet and stumbled over to where the children cowered. Shrugging out of the pack she’d somehow managed to keep through all the fighting, Eden pulled it open and started handing out protein bars. “Eat.” It took her two tries to say it correctly in Spanish.

The kids fell on them, demolishing the bars in seconds. Being in a constant state of terror did wonders for the appetite. Even though she knew better, Eden searched their young faces for Ana. The girl was probably gone, fallen under the infected attack. Hell, if the zombies could kill Kaede, what chance did a defenseless little kid have?

Except she wasn’t dead. Ana rose from where she’d crouched on the ground and flew into Eden’s arms, sobbing hysterically. Eden pulled her close, taking as much comfort as she gave.

Sometime later a shadow fell over them, making Eden look up. Jordan. “What?”

Her sister’s eyes flicked down and to the side. What the hell was wrong now? She cleared her throat. “We need to check the children.”

It must have been exhaustion that made her stupid because it took Eden’s mind a long time to process what she meant. They wanted to check the children to make sure none had been bitten.

“No.” She started to push Ana out of her lap when Jordan hit her and the whole world went dark.

****

It had to be done. Even as Eden opened her eyes and blinked into the harsh light of the sun, she
knew
that, but it didn’t make the reality any easier to bear. Not after Kaede. Not wanting to know if Ana was one of the bitten children was almost enough to make to close her eyes again. Instead, she forced them open, blinking into the dawn. She was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them.

Eden sat up, pausing as the world spun. Damn it, she was going to kill her sister. Looking around, she found the camp in shambles. It was one thing to know the whole place had been destroyed. It was completely another to see it in the unforgiving light of morning. Bodies lay strewn about and the ground was damp with blood. The flies had already moved in, creating a false haze low over the ground. And the stench was horrendous.

There were so many bodies, one in particular that she didn’t want to see. Anger swelled, threatening to drown out everything else. Eden welcomed it with open arms. She couldn’t deal with the grief threatening to swallow her whole. Someone had done this intentionally to these people, to their team, to Kaede. And, God help her, they would pay.

Eden climbed to her feet and fought not to sway. Well, they would pay when she recovered. Right now she wasn’t much good to anyone, emotionally or physically. She took a few careful steps, stopping when she caught sight of Taro kneeling near the cliff wall. As much as Eden wanted to run in the opposite direction, she couldn’t ignore him. Or the body covered with a torn sleeping bag.

“Taro.”

He didn’t look up, just pointed. Eden followed the motion and caught sight of her sister sitting just outside the open gate, staring into the jungle. She turned back to Taro, but couldn’t find any words. What could she say? She was sorry? She’d miss Kaede? She knew how horrible it was to lose a family member? As hard as it had been to lose Dad, it would be so much worse to lose Jordan. And Jordan wasn’t her twin.

There was nothing she could say to dull his pain, to make it more bearable. Eden squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll kill them all.”

Then she turned and started for the gate. Going to her sister meant crossing the minefield of corpses, but Eden refused to be deterred. Or worry that some of them might not be truly dead.

Strengthening her resolve—and breathing shallowly through her mouth—Eden started across what used to be the survivors’ camp. Every few steps she was forced to step over or skirt around a corpse, her eyes glued to it in case it moved. None of them did and she reached her sister’s side a short while later.

“Hey,” Eden said while she was still a few feet away as Jordan didn’t react well to being startled. It ran in the family.

Jordan glanced over her shoulder and offered a wan smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I ran more miles than I want to count, fought all night, killed my friend and then got knocked over the head.”

Jordan stared down at her hands. “I would have done it so you didn’t have to.”

Eden shrugged, not willing to talk about it. She had to be the one to do it. She owed it to Kaede. Doing this, killing infected, for as many years as they had, it should have been expected to lose teammates. And, hell, it was. But it Kaede was different. Eden had half believed the woman was invulnerable. She had no idea what she was going to do without those sarcastic comments or that feral grin.

So she didn’t think about it. Someday, probably someday soon, all the stuff Eden chose not to think about was going to come crashing down around her and send her straight to the loony bin. But not today. Today she would wrap herself in denial and hold off feeling anything. “Alejandro is still in the cabin.”

“We’ll get him once we’ve cleaned up here.” There was no warning about how he might not be alive. No one expected Kaede to die and look how that turned out. It made Eden want to fall into Jordan’s arms and cry.

“Where are we putting the survivors?”

Jordan turned back to stare into the jungle. “What’s left of them, you mean.”

It finally hit Eden, what was wrong with her sister. Jordan blamed herself for what happened with the fence. It was so obvious Eden wanted to smack herself in the forehead.
Of course
Jordan blamed herself. She could deal with this, with Jordan’s guilt, so she wouldn’t have to touch her own. “What happened?”

“Apparently there was a faction of them who still agreed with the priest. They opened the gate and tried to make it through the infected.” Jordan’s breath caught in her throat. “It’s my fault, Eden. I wasn’t convincing enough. They didn’t trust me to save them.”

Eden almost reached for her, but stopped at last second. Their family didn’t do well with comfort—giving or receiving. There was a better way to snap Jordan from her funk. “Don’t be stupid, Jordan. How the hell could you know those sheep wouldn’t take to the new shepherd?”

Jordan spun around, her eyes practically shooting sparks. It made Eden want to smile. An angry Jordan was much preferred to a depressed one. “No one deserves to be bitten and die. No one deserves to be ripped apart by the bodies of people they once knew.”

“Don’t they?” Eden crossed her arms over her chest and forced a laugh even though she felt like crying. “I think people who are willing to let those same things happen to their kids, to innocents who rely on them for safety, deserve whatever they get. If I had my way, I would have lined them up and put a bullet through the back of their heads, one at a time.”

She really wouldn’t have. And her explanation didn’t begin to cover Kaede. She might have been a psycho but, aside from Jordan, she was Eden’s closest friend. Hell, her only friend. Eden pushed the thought away. She didn’t know what she was going to do without her. But the object was to incite her sister, so Eden lied with a straight face.

Jordan swung and Eden danced out of the way. She might be willing to provoke her sister, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to take a punch “You know I’m right and you can’t stand it.” The words tasted bitter on her tongue, but Eden forced herself to keep talking. “Some people are too stupid to live, Jordan. That’s life.”

Jordan went to her knees and Eden was alarmed to see tears welling in her sister’s eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore. The survivors. The kids. Kaede. God, Eden, Kaede is dead.” Jordan buried her face in her hands. “I can’t stand wondering who’s next, who’s going to die or get bitten. It’s too much.”

It was eerily close to what Eden had been thinking earlier. She shivered. “I know.” She crossed the distance between them and sank to the ground next to Jordan. “Whatever you choose, I’m with you to the end. You know that, right?”

Jordan nodded, her eyes shining unnaturally. “I know.” She glanced back towards the camp. “We should get back and supervise.”

“Yeah, okay.” It was the last thing Eden wanted to do. She wanted to run as far and fast as she could, to put the last week behind her and never think any of this again, but her desire wasn’t realistic. This was her life and she’d be a fool to walk away now. Too many people had died because of this infection, because of whoever created it in the first place. She had to finish this, one way or another.

“What the fuck is that?”

Eden froze as Jordan leaned forward. As soon as her sister’s hand closed over her right calf, Eden went dizzy with pain. When did she get injured? She watched in horror as Jordan peeled back the armor just over the top of her boot, revealing a bloody mark. A devastatingly familiar bloody mark.