Page 64 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
“About the necromancer? Did you know?”
Emma frowns as she looks between me and Mason. “You told him?”
Mason opens his mouth, but I get there first. “Yes, he told me. You all knew? You knew everything we were talking about was a lie?”
Emma shrugs. “Yes. There’s no virus. Never was.”
“And you just—”
“You don’t know what it was like here,” she snaps, but then her eyes stray to the bag Mason is still holding and her expression falters into something more sympathetic. “And that has nothing to do with all that’s happened anyway.”
I growl and fight the urge to kick something. “It does if that’s why we were sent here in the first place.”
Mason looks at me curiously. “What do you mean?”
I shake my head. I can hear Rae’s and Autumn’s voices outside the church. Emma throws her hands into the air and stalks away.
Rae drops onto a pew when she reaches us. “Anything?”
I indicate Otto’s war hammer, and she shakes her head in disbelief. Autumn goes pale.
“That’s not all,” I murmur.
“What is it?”
“We found…”
Mason has drifted away with Emma, still with the bag, and I can’t stop looking at it, remembering what’s inside.
“Otto’s dead.”
Autumn sits heavily next to Rae, who shakes her head again. “That’s not—”
“He’sdead,” I say, tone too harsh, but I can’t help myself. I close my eyes for a second. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just—”
“His body?”
We need his ID if we’re to go back. Need to account for the dead. “I don’t know where it is.”
Autumn frowns, voice so quiet when she asks, “How do you know he’s dead?”
I glance at the bag again. I can’t fight the urge.
Rae follows my gaze and presses her lips together, eyes filling with tears. “In there?”
“Yeah.”
“Zombies didn’t do this.”
“I know.”
I sit down next to them both, resting my bat against the wood. Emma and Mason are speaking in harsh whispers over by the wall, and Callum has joined them, expression shifting to something thunderous. After a few minutes, Emma turns on her heel and goes down the stairs. Mason rolls his eyes.
I drag mine away. We’re really not equipped to deal with this, despite everything we can usually handle.
“Why were we sent here?” I ask Rae.
“To clear the town,” she says, but she sounds uncertain. After a long moment of silence, she adds, “I don’t know. I thought it was strange, too.”
