AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I lowered my voice a bit and glanced over my shoulder to be sure that the family wasn’t listening. “Waylon mentioned something about a mark. Do you know what that means?”
“No idea.” Avril shook her head and blinked back tears. “But the family only talk to me when they have to.” Her terrified scowl deepened. “I really hope I don’t have to see the King.”
That was the second time I heard someone mention “the King,” but I still hadn’t learned who it was. The patriarch Zeke, maybe? I was about to ask Avril more about it, but Tallulah uncharacteristically interjected herself into the conversation.
“I know what the mark is,” she said.
Tallulah was standing in the middle of the kitchen in a shapeless sack of a dress. The hem hung above her ankles, and she grabbed it and pulled it all the way up to her hip.
There she had the three letters LFR – Loth Family Ranch – stylized into a circle, and it was marked into her a flesh in a dark pink scar. The family had branded her, and claimed her as theirs.
31
Harlow
“What’s it like out in the barns?” I asked Kimber that night. We laid together as we always did, on a pile of fluffed hay. My head was on her shoulder, and her hand played absently with mine.
“I told you,” Kimber said, annoyed because she hated talking about what we did on the ranch. “It’s not too bad. I work with this guy, Gacy, and we get along well enough. Mostly it’s just shoveling shit and petting cows.”
“How are the Loths? Do you see them often?” I asked.
“Wyatt comes around a lot, but he doesn’t talk much. Just tells us what to do and leaves us alone for the most part,” she said. “I see Waylon and Bly doing stuff with the zombie herds, but I never get anywhere near them.”
“What are they doing with the zombies?” I wondered, not for the first time.
“Gacy says that the Loths capture any zombie that comes around and adds them into the hordes. They watch for ones that seem docile or smart or something, and they take those out to be ‘trained’ with other domestic zombies.” The way she described that last part, it didn’t sound like Kimber completely believed it.
“Waylon’s able to work with them somehow, and a domesticated zombie is a good hunter and can even be something like a guard dog,” she went on. “I’ve seen them roaming free from time to time, following Waylon as he gives them orders to go this way or that. They stumble around like regular old zombies, but they do seem to do what he says. I don’t fully understand how any of it works, though.”
“What do they use the zombies to hunt?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Food. Humans. Remember how they captured us?”
“What about the rest of the zombie horde? The ones that aren’t domesticated?” I pressed.
“I really don’t know what they do with them,” Kimber said. “Maybe they think it’s better to have the horde in a cage instead of roaming free. Bly seems to be in charge of the wilder ones, and I don’t see him that often.”
I tilted my head, so I could see her face when I asked, “But you get along with Wyatt okay? And your friend Gacy, he’s nice and everything?”
“Yeah, he is.” She craned her head to look down at me, and her eyes had gone worried. “Why are you asking all this stuff? Are they treating you badly in the house?”
“No, no, they’re fine,” I insisted quickly. “It’s fine. They like me, actually.”
“That’s good, isn’t it? They’ll be more likely to keep you safe,” she reasoned, and now she was studying my response.
“Yeah. I think it’s good,” I said, hoping it sounded convincing, and I curled up closer to her.
She ran her fingers through my hair and said, “Maybe we should try to get out of here sooner. We’ve had time to build up some strength.”
“The last of the snow from that big snowstorm just finally melted,” I reminded her. “We need to wait until it’s warmer to make a break for it. Until then, we can keep making nice with our captors.”
The next morning, Bly retrieved Kimber for her work after dawn. Elmyra usually came down to get me shortly after that, and she’d escort me up to the house so I could make breakfast. But today she was running late.
It was cold in the stable alone, without Kimber to cuddle up against for warmth, so I paced back and forth, rubbing my arms and watching the sunrise through the cracks.
Finally, the stall door slid open, and there stood Waylon, grinning down at me. “Morning, Harlow.”
“Good morning,” I said, even though it didn’t feel good anymore. “Is everything okay with Elmyra?”
