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I ma
de it to a pair of crooked slash pines and was up into the branches before you could say kiss my hairy white butt. I crouched among the bristles, dislodging and annoying a squirrel who fled to a higher branch and threw pieces of pine cone at me. Little asshole.
The wall was ten feet away and there were metal struts standing upright every six yards to anchor the razor wire. I was just starting to wind up to throw the grappling hook when I saw movement down on the ground, forty yards from me. There was a small side gate in the wall and a group of people stepped out into the morning sunlight. Six of them. Five men, one woman. Each pair of them was carrying a third person, so there were nine in all. The three being carried—well, dragged, really—looked to be either dead or unconscious. A tall guy, a waifish girl, and a very solid-looking woman.
I used my binoculars but could only see the strong-looking woman from my angle. She wore dark wash jeans, a faded grey T-shirt with batgirl logo in yellow, dirty knee-high black combat boots, leather bracers on her forearms and an old-fashioned pauldron on one shoulder. The armor pieces were probably looted from a museum or handmade by someone who spent a lot of time in Renaissance fairs before the dead rose.
Two men carried her along so that the toes of her boots dragged through the grass. I couldn’t see her face very well because her forehead and cheeks were covered in blood, and more of it matted thickly in her long dark hair.
They lugged her across the apron of open ground and vanished into the woods. The other pairs likewise hauled their burdens, moving quickly and cursing frequently. From the direction they took I had a good guess where they were going.
The clearing.
“Son of a bitch,” I said under my breath.
Three minutes later I was back in the ditch, worming my way back to the woods. Baskerville either saw me or smelled me, because he was waiting inside the forest shadows, looking like he wanted very much to bite something.
“Let’s go hunting,” I said.
— 32 —
DAHLIA AND THE PACK
“He could have turned me in,” said Dahlia.
Church said nothing.
“He didn’t have to lie for me.”
Nothing.
“That says a lot, doesn’t it?” she asked. “It means that he’s not really with them. That he’s not as bad as them.”
Church kept walking and said nothing at all.
Finally Dahlia couldn’t bear it and she ran around and stood in his way, forcing him to stop. The rest of the Pack stopped, too. All of them looking nervously at the two of them. Church took a breath and let it out slowly.
“What would you like me to say, Dahlia? Trash saved your life. Yes, that’s good. Yes, it shows that he has some redeeming quality. But he also betrayed the entire Pack and told them where our camp was. If you hadn’t seen him do that then we might have been raided and slaughtered. We don’t know how many of them there are. You got lucky today. That’s the bottom line.”
“He saved me,” she insisted.
“Which is why I didn’t kill him,” Church said coldly. “That’s his reward. Trust does not come with it.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Understand this, Dahlia, if it comes down to Trash’s life and a single member of our family, then I will end him.”
“I won’t let you.”
His eyes were like flecks of black ice behind his tinted lenses. “What is more important to you? Saving Trash or saving the entire Pack?”
“Both,” she said immediately.
“And if both is not an option?”
Before she could answer he walked around her and continued leading the Pack through the woods toward Happy Valley.
Dahlia stood where she was, fists balled, heart beating in all the wrong ways in her chest. Hating Church. Hating herself and everyone. Wanting them all to die. Wanting herself to die. Being a damn zombie would be so much easier than this.
As the Pack moved past her she gave them brutal death stares, daring anyone to show pity or say a fucking word. No one did. Not even Neeko, who lingered for a moment, looking hurt and confused.
When they were all gone, Dahlia stood alone in the slanting sunlight. She almost wished there was a zombie or four to fight. Or some random thug who just tried to give her shit. Someone she could happily stomp to death.
