Page 58 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
“Callum,” Mason says. His voice is a thunderclap.
“I didn’t see him,” Callum replies. “They’re right. He was here.”
Fuck. Fuck! I spin around, then race back down the hill. He didn’t go up. The others would have seen him.
Rae calls after me, and I shine my torch down one dark alley, then another. No sign of him.
How can he be gone? I come to a stop in the centre of town again, breathing hard. The air is getting heavy, wind picking up. I can already smell rain.
“Where do you want to look?” Mason asks.
I startle. I don’t know when he managed to sneak up on me. It’s dark now, and there might be zombies out here and Otto—
“We’ll keep looking, if he’s important to you.”
“The others?”
“Callum’s taking them back to the church. It’s safer.”
“We should—”
Mason steps in close. “Isaac. Where do you think he might have gone?”
Chapter Seventeen
Wedon’tfindOtto.I give in some time in the early hours of the morning, when we’ve already walked around the entire town once. Mason is a stalwart and looks just as confused as I feel.
I think confusion is what has him sticking with me. I’m not sure he cares about Otto at all, but that’s fine. If it means he’ll keep me company and help me search, then I’m not going to argue.
“We’ll search again when it’s light,” I say eventually. All the adrenaline has seeped out of me, leaving me drained. Where can hebe? Why would he leave at all?
It can’t have been a zombie. They don’t move that quickly or that quietly.
But with Dane gone, too…
Mason steers me inside the church, where the others are waiting. One look at them tells me they’ve had no more rest than I have. Rae is sitting on a pew when we walk inside, but she leaps to her feet at the sight of me.
“You didn’t—”
“We’ll carry on in the morning,” Mason says. Sal’s sitting on the pew, not Callum, and his spine straightens when Mason looks at him. “Take them out at first light. We’ll join you as soon as we can.”
“Got it.”
No one argues—not even me—when Mason snatches up my pack and pushes me over towards the door. Blake glares, but there’s no real heat in it. Is he wondering what I am?
If someone or something is picking us off, if Dane and Otto didn’t wander off on their own, then who’s next?
That thought aside, I hold it together until Mason closes the door to his room. I sit heavily on the bed and drop my head into my hands. Mason puts my pack down and then sits beside me.
“We’ll find him.”
“Alive?”
He rubs my shoulder. I don’t like the non-answer. I don’t likeanyof this. We never should have come here, but if we hadn’t come here, then I wouldn’t have met Mason, and none of that matters because if we’re being set up or something strange is going on, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.
“You need to rest,” Mason murmurs. He kisses my temple, then slides to the floor in a mirror of the position I took lastnight. I squeeze my eyes shut when he drags off one boot, then the other. I’m filthy and tired, and I just want—
“How can they both be gone?” I whisper. “I just don’t—Zombies don’t take someone like that. Theycan’t.”
