Page 94 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
“We didn’t kill all of them, Isaac,” Nia says gently. “Some of them did work out why they were here.”
Heat crawls up my face. I didn’t. Not until Dane fucking spelt it out for me.
“If we want to stay here, we can?” Rae asks.
“For as long as you’d like. We’d be glad to have you.”
Rae turns to me. “What do you think?”
No point asking to excuse ourselves. And I don’t fancy my chances with another group of survivors right now. Still, better to hedge our bets. “There’s nowhere else I can go yet,” I say, waving a hand at myself. “We have time?”
“That’s the one thing we have in abundance, I suppose,” Nia replies. “You know he wants to talk to you.”
I certainly don’t. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs by now, I think. I can’t promise anything when it comes to him, Isaac. The only way to be sure you’re away from him will be to leave.”
No. I don’t think even that will work. I don’t think I want it to.
“I’ll go talk to him. What did you do with—” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. Will the others simply become part of the horde?
“We’ll lay them to rest,” Nia says. “For good. For now, they’re laid out and warded. When we put them in the ground, they will stay there.”
“Can you promise that?” Rae asks. I remember the strange, jerking movements of Autumn’s body. I haven’t seen a zombie that fresh since the outbreak, and to have those dead eyes that stillsee… I shiver.
“Yes,” Nia says. Her sleeves are rolled up and when she reaches up to push a few strands of hair from her face, I see a blue mark on the inside of her forearm. “Beyond a doubt.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for now. I get to my feet with another faint groan, and Rae looks up at me, concerned.
“Do you want help?”
“No, I’ll be fine. Get some rest.”
She nods. I don’t know if she’ll do that, and we both know it’ll be a while before I check back in with her.
I see no one again as I wander the tunnels, then walk back up into the church. By the time I’m up there, I feel almost like I might pass out from the pain. Sweat beads on my brow. But that desire, before, to find Mason—it’s now aneed.
He’s standing by the grave when I walk out into weak sunlight. The first one. The one where he tried to raise someone who was clearly the most important person in the world to him.
He stands there, head bowed, but I don’t for a second believe that he doesn’t know I’m there. Still, he makes no movement until I’m standing directly next to him, short of breath.
“Who was originally in here?” I ask.
Mason raises his head. He blinks like he’s not at all expecting the sunlight. “My mother.”
“What happened?”
“She just… she died. She was sick all my life. When I was fourteen, it finally took her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“But it still hurts.”
He looks at me and nods. “It does.”
“What happened after that?”
