Page 39 of Outbreak

I get it now—his nickname.

‘You’re my Death, Rue.’

His words from the woods come back to me. I don’t know what he meant. But I know he’ll be the death of me if I don’t get away.

CHAPTER 32

Rue

“What are you doing?” Ghost yells, his voice carrying over the window and cutting through the rain.

“I need a minute, okay?” I turn away from him. He wouldn’t be able to tell my tears from the rain, but he would know. I just need to take a breather—allow myself a second to calm my racing thoughts and pounding heart.

“We need to keep moving,” he says softly behind me, close enough that I can feel his gravity pulling me back in. “It’s not safe out here. Let’s make sure the road is clear to pass and get going.”

“Fine,” I say, wiping my face and inhaling just as much rainwater as I do oxygen as I try to take a steadying breath and turn back to him.

He grabs my hand, guiding us past the abandoned truck we almost hit. When we get around it, he turns on a flashlight he must have taken from the truck, shining it over the roadway.

“Fuck. There’s a tree down. We aren’t getting through here tonight,” he says, moving the light over the length of the massive fallen tree blocking both lanes of the road and covering the ditch.

“What do we do?”

He pulls me to him, tucking my rain-soaked hair behind my ear. “Right now, we get back in the truck. It's freezing, and you’re shaking. Then we either wait it out or find another way around.”

“I th-think we need to w-wait it out,” I say through chattering teeth, the cold seeping into my bones. He’s right. We need to get out of this rain.

“Then we wait.” He takes my hand and leads us back the way we came. Lightning flashes and thunder booms loudly, making my heart beat skyrocket. It’s raining even harder than before. I can’t tell which way we’re going. Ghost shines the light ahead, back at the truck, and I feel the blood drain from my face.

“Oh fuck—” he says, tucking me behind him and ducking down behind the bumper of the abandoned truck. There’s a horde of the dead lurking in front of his truck, blocking our way.

“There’s too many,” he says.

“It’s the lights. They must be drawing them in,” I whisper, grabbing his flashlight and turning it off. The dead walk back and forth, dragging their feet in the beam of the headlights.

He backs us up, hiding us on the other side of the truck as he stands up and tries to find us somewhere to hide. There are buildings on one side of the street, and another road intersects with this one to what appears to be the heart of the town. He brings his face to mine. “Okay. There are some buildings this way,” he points to where I was just looking. “We’ll get inside one of them and barricade the door until morning. They should move along soon enough.”

“We need weapons, Ghost. They are in the back seat. How fucking stupid was I to jump out of the truck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse without grabbing a fucking weapon?”

Ghost looks around, reaching into the back of the truck we’re hiding behind. “Look. Here. These will work for now. We’ll be fine.”

He hands me a baseball bat, and he reaches back and pulls out a crowbar.

“Go for the head. Body shots don’t work.”

The bat feels slick with rain against my palm, but it’s heavy and do-able. “Lead the way.”

“Watch our backs,”Ghost says, shimming his now blood-soaked crowbar into the padlock on the door. I grip my own bloody weapon tighter as I look out into the dark alley. We found an old warehouse, but we didn’t see the zombies until it was too late and were already out in the open. Back to back we stood, swinging the makeshift weapons until all six went down—and didn’t get back up. I didn’t know if I would be able to do this, but I didn’t really have much of a choice. It was kill or be killed—a choice I’m all too familiar with.

“I got it. Come on,” Ghost whispers from the now open doorway. It’s dark inside; no light to show us what might be hiding in the shadows.

I shove the fear down and walk past him, keeping the bat ready to swing. The door scrapes against the floor as he drags it shut, locking us in the pitch-black building. His flashlight flickers to life a moment later.

“I need to find something to block the door with. Stay right here.” He disappears into the shadows, the beam of light shining around the space and his footsteps my only way of tracking him.

A shiver slides up my spine at the chill in the air, and I hug my arms around my cold body, rubbing my arms. I’m following the light with my eyes and silently begging him to hurry up. The goosebumps skittering over my body are growing goosebumps. I don’t like this.

The light disappears, and I hear him grunt as something crashes into the floor. Growling erupts, and fear moves me forward, into the shadows to where I last saw him.

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