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In the darkness, I could hardly even see her face, but I knew she was smiling when she said, “We won’t die tonight, but I’m glad I got to know you, too.”
The ragged breath of a zombie grew louder, and I could hear the footsteps crunching in the leaves. Kimber and I held our breath, waiting in total silence, and in the dim moonlight, I could see the zombie’s heavy lumbering steps passing in front of us.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hardly hear anything else, and I stared straight ahead, willing the zombie to move on.
Suddenly, someone grabbed me by my ankles, and all at once, I was sliding backwards through the dirt as I was yanked out of the log. I screamed, and the last thing I remembered before everything went black was Kimber’s hand, clinging tightly onto mine until something ripped us horribly apart.
24
Harlow
It was the pained sound of a man crying out that pulled me from the darkness, and as I slowly awoke, I realized dismally that it was Kerrigan.
The floor beneath me was cold concrete, covered in a thin layer of dirty sawdust, and the ceiling above me was open wood rafters and cobwebs stretched between.
Kerrigan was slumped against the back wall, trying to remove the broken arrow that was jutting from his shoulder. One of his ankles was horribly mangled and bloodied, with his foot twisted the wrong way, and he had a makeshift tourniquet tied around his ankle.
Beside me, Kimber lay unconscious on the floor, breathing normally. A dark bruise was blossoming on the sharp line of her jaw, but she otherwise didn’t appear to be too roughed up.
On first glance, I surmised we were in some kind of barn. The exterior wall went from floor to ceiling, and the three interior ones, while too short to reach the ceiling, still extended to at least ten feet tall. The bottom halves were made of wood, and the top were iron bars with barbed wire weaved through.
A few cracks in the walls let in some light, but there were no windows, no other way to discern where we might be.
Besides Kerrigan’s groans, a cacophony of sounds filled the space. A strange ambient rumble, similar to being in the forest, except this wasn’t peaceful birds and wind in the trees. This was crying, screaming, zombies, and distant mooing.
But the first thing I had really noticed was the unrelenting stench. Since the zombie apocalypse, I had grown accustomed to the strong scent of death and decay, but this was something beyond that. Putrid and acrid and intense.
“Ugh.” I groaned involuntarily and put my hand to my nose.
“Good. You are alive,” Kerrigan said with a cynical smirk.
“Where are we?” I asked. “What’s going on? Where is everybody else?”
His dark hair was only slightly longer than a buzzcut, and he ran his hand through it before looking over at me. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
I thought for a minute before answering, “Zombies were chasing us, so Kimber and I ran into the woods to get away.”
“So you only remember the zombies then?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t zombies that shot the arrow into my shoulder, and it wasn’t zombies that set that bear trap that ruined my ankle.” He glared down at the gory mess where his foot was barely even attached anymore. “And it wasn’t zombies that dragged us back here and locked us up in an old horse stable.”
“Who took us? And why?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Kerrigan admitted bitterly. “Humans were barking orders at the zombies when they loaded us up onto the back of a truck, and when I tried to escape, they held me down and knocked me out with ether or something. Then I came to in this stall, not much sooner before you did.”
“But we are still alive, right?” Kimber asked, startling me. She was sitting up and rubbing her chin as she squinted up at our new residence. “This isn’t like hell or purgatory or something?”
“I don’t think so. Are you okay?” I asked.
“My head hurts, but I’ll survive.” She gave me a weak smile. “You? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied, because my body ached all over. I turned back to Kerrigan and asked again, “Where are the others? Lazlo? Chloe and Alex? Bâo? Riva?”
Kerrigan held up a hand to silence me. “Stop listing names. My answer’s all the same, anyway. I have no fucking clue where anybody is except for the two of you that I can see right here.”
“Maybe they got away,” I said quietly, more to myself than anyone else.
