Page 2 of Whispers of the Dead

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting. Emily doesn’t have the luxury of waiting. Besides, she already did the same thing for me, and I won’t let her down now. I’ll be careful. I always am.”

Max snorts from his post near the fence. “Careful doesn’t mean shit when dregs are out there. You know they’ve been getting closer. It’s only a matter of time before we’ve got another battle on our hands, and I don’t intend to dance on burning rooftops again. This place has grown on me. I quite like it here.”

I do know. We all do.

The rotters are bad enough, but the dregs are worse. They’re humans who’d thrown away their humanity along with the rest of the world. They not only kill; they destroy, taking whatever they want and leaving nothing but devastation behind.

“Well, I can handle myself.” I avoid his gaze and look toward the new metal gate instead. “I’ll take the south route, which is quieter and less likely to be picked clean. With any luck, I’ll be back by sunset.”

When I turn back to look at my friends, Griffin levels me with a hard stare. “Take someone with you.”

“I’ll be fine?—”

“I don’t give a shit what you think. You know the rule. Nobody leaves here alone. At least not until we can guarantee the dreg situation is moving farther away.”

Emily reaches out and touches my arm, her amber eyes full of worry. “Be careful, Zoey. You know I’d go with you if I could.”

Griffin growls—I never knew men could growl until meeting these three—and kneels down to uncross his arms and wraps them around her so she’s tucked in against his side. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Emily rolls her eyes, but she smiles softly. “I love that you worry about me, but don’t get yourself sick, too. And Don’t get yourself killed, Zoey, or you’ll have to deal with Max.”

Griffin responds by resting his lips against her temple, and her eyes flutter shut. Taking it as my cue, I shake my head with a forced smile. “I promise, Em. You’ve got enough to worry about without adding me to the list. I’ll be back before you know it. Maybe I’ll even take out some dregs while I’m out,” I joke. Then I hurry away and leave them to it.

Once I finally get away andsneak out without having to drag someone else along with me, especially since there isn’t anyone else available, I slip through the forest as silent as I can with my knife clutched in one hand and my nearly empty pack slung over my shoulders. I only have enough food for two days, water for three days, and two vials of my insulin. That should tide me over in case something goes wrong, and I don’t make it back today like promised.

The south route is quieter, like I’d said. The trees whisper above me, their bare branches clawing at the gray sky like skeletal fingers. Every crack of a twig and rustle of leaves sends my pulse racing, but I keep moving.

Over the last few months we’ve been at the new colony, I’ve been scavenging less and less with others. Emily tried to talk to me about it, until Max threw her over his shoulder and ran from the room, so I never got the chance to tell her how utterly out of place I feel. Everyone else has found a place for themselves in this new colony, but I’ve been feeling more lost than ever before, and I can’t figure out why.

No, I know why. The only person I had left who was as close to family as I’ll ever have, has found her own family. While I’m still included in that, it’s still not the same. It’s not that I’m jealous, because I am happy for her, and she deserves the world. Though, it would be nice if I could find something similar, too. Someone willing to set the world on fire to keep me warm. Although, maybe there’s something wrong with me that will prevent that from ever happening.

The ruins of an old pharmacy come into view, and I realize I’ve traveled farther than I have on any previous supply run. That, or I made a wrong turn somewhere. Either way, I have some hope.

The place looks ransacked. The shattered front windows diminish my hope and the shelves along the inside walls are overturned, spilling empty pill bottles across the dusty tilefloor. Still, I open every drawer and check behind every counter.

Empty.

Empty.

A half-bottle of something with a label too faded to read. I toss it into my pack.

Empty.

My growing frustration reaches a peak, and I kick over a metal rack. It clatters to the floor, but I ignore the racket it creates.

I refuse to let myself go back empty-handed. Emily has no idea how much I’ve been spending all these days searching outside those walls. She refused to give up when she was searching for my insulin, and now I refuse to give up on her.

So, I push aside my frustration and move deeper into the building. Broken glass littering the floor crunches beneath my boots, and I sidestep empty pill bottles scattered everywhere. Then my breath catches when I spot a dust shelf higher up, and the white lid to a bottle that’s out of reach. I climb the shelves to reach it, but it’s the rattling of pills inside that raises my hopes, and I pull it down. There, still printed clearly on the label, are the antibiotics I’ve been looking for.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper-yell that ends in a squeal. A laugh of disbelief bubbles up in my throat. This makes everything worth it. The cold, the fear, the endless miles. Emily will have what she needs, and for once, something is going right.

Then a shadow shifts in the corner of my vision.

I freeze. My fingers tighten around the bottle, and I turn toward the doorway. The light from the broken windows pool across the cracked tile floor where a man stands blocking my exit.

His clothes are dirty and mismatched. A patchwork ofscavenged gear and a crooked smile highlights the glint in his eye that screams dreg. The knife in his hand catches the light, and his lips curl into a grin that makes my stomach twist.

“Well, well, well,” he says, his voice low and mocking. “Look what we’ve got here. A little mouse, all alone.”

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