Page 33 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
“Perfectly well. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You—” I run my tongue over my lips and the words stick in my throat.
The next look Mason gives me is a little sharper. “Isaac,” he says, drawing out my name. “Why would I not be all right?”
“I don’t know.”
His mouth pulls like that wasn’t the right answer, and I struggle to keep up as he lengthens his strides. In the back of my mind, I’m horrified with myself. I hardly know Mason. For all I do know, he’s a threat, or at least wishes to be seen as one. And here I am, chasing him around like a lost puppy.
I know better than that. I have more pride than that.
Don’t I?
It doesn’t matter. We catch up to Dane, who’s studying the alley we gathered at the end of the night before. It’s not the same one where the zombie attacked me and Mason—that was where we began.
“Where should we search, then?” Mason asks, and for a moment, I gape at him because he genuinely sounds as though he’s letting Dane take charge.
I see the glint in his eye. Dane doesn’t. He preens, chest puffing out, and gives me a lazy grin. “Work our way back up from here,” he says. “There are nine of us. Three groups of three, and we should find something.”
Mason nods. “I will accompany you and Isaac.”
Some of the wind goes out of Dane’s sails at that. I have no doubt he was going to suggest me, him, and Blake, never mind the fact that Blake despises me on a good day.
“You…”
“Nia wants us to help you, so one of us should be in each group,” Mason says and turns to the others, who’ve now reached us as well. “Emma, Sal…”
“We’ll stick close,” Emma says. She’s standing next to Otto, who glances over at Blake. Neither of them will split Rae and Autumn. I’m sure of that.
Mason looks back at Dane, eyebrows raised. All the confidence Dane had a moment ago deflates, and he clenches his jaw. Mason has just decided what we’re all doing, and at least the three of us know it.
“Fine,” Dane says. “Let’s go.”
He stomps off and I trail behind, Mason walking closer to me this time. I watch his profile out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know what I’ve done to anger him or upset him maybe, but I don’t like it. I don’t like that he won’t tell me, but then I can’t really ask, not with Dane so close. He’ll seize on any small thing and blow it out of proportion.
It doesn’t help, either, that what Dane said earlier has wormed its way into my mind. Oh, it’s not as though he had any great insight. No. The gravesarestrange and make no sense, considering what we’ve been told.
Why would the townspeople dig them up? Destroy everything? I might not remember the first days of the outbreak all that well, but we were not worried about the long dead. I remember that. We worried about the sick, about those who died with the virus in their systems.
The ones who came back.
A virus can’t reanimate an already dead body. How would it? There’s nothing there to bring back to life. And that applies even more at the graveyard, since many of those graves were filled decades, if not centuries, ago.
“You’re thinking hard,” Mason murmurs. We move slowly down a narrow alley and step out onto another cobblestonestreet. The houses are squat and solid, looming over us and seeming to watch us with their dark, empty windows for eyes.
“Is something else going on here?” I ask, and he hums under his breath but doesn’t look at me. I know why survivors might hide. I can even understand why they’d want to stay out here instead of surrendering to the safety of the Citadel. My father regretted going there in the end. He missed our home outside its walls, even though that place was long gone.
“I don’t know what you think could be,” Mason replies.
Dane walks ahead, not listening to us, approaching a house door that’s half off its hinges. I raise my bat, all the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. The townspeople have kept their home well. Some of the windows might be boarded up, but I noticed it yesterday—things are neat and clean and well-secured.
“Neither do I,” I say, then plough ahead, voice firm, “but thereissomething going on here. Something else. I know it.”
Mason reaches for me. His hand stretches out, fingers reaching, but as they graze my sleeve, Dane lets out a startled cry. A zombie lunges from the darkness of the house and he gets his hatchet up between them, trying to push it back.
I race over, adrenaline already pumping and making my heart thump hard against my ribs. This zombie is big and still strong, hardly looking dead at all. Its stomach stretches with bloat and my mouth fills with saliva when I take in a breath, the stench making bile rise in my throat.
I raise my bat. “Down!”
