Page 20 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
I nod to Rae, and she directs Otto and Autumn to begin organising their things. There’s still some debris here, though Callum seems to have taken it upon himself to start cleaning up, too. It’s easier for us to lay out our sleeping bags now, as well as to check we didn’t lose anything in all the excitement last night.
“I need to see where the zombies went,” I say, and Nia sighs.
“Isaac,” she says, “you seem like you really want to help. But things aren’t like you’re used to here. Our zombies are…” She searches for words and comes up empty.
“Different,” Mason says. “Like the rest of us.”
Emma startles, and Nia turns on him with a glare. Mason’s smile is beatific in response.
“You don’t need to worry about them,” Nia bites out. “Relax. I’m sure you don’t get much of that in the Citadel?”
She’s not wrong, but she doesn’t know what it will mean to fail a job, either. Not like we’d get away with it if we lied; the Citadel would find out as soon as they sent survivors to repopulate. A headache brews behind my eyes, and I remember I haven’t slept, that maybe this jittery energy I feel around Mason is just down to exhaustion and the aftermath of fear.
“I just—”
“You could always come with me.”
I snap my head around to stare at Mason. His smile never falters. Nia sputters, clearly against the idea.
“It’d be good to have a helping hand,” he says. “Since I’m the oneinvestigating.”
“Emma or Callum oranyone elsecould—”
“I want him to help me,” Mason says, and I swallow. “I want Isaac to help me.”
My breath catches at the way he says my name. Like it’s sacred, I think, then shake the silly thought away.
This is what I want, isn’t it? I want to talk to Mason, to see what he’s truly hiding, and it’s not ideal to go off alone with him, but it might be the only chance I get.
“Mason, I need to talk to you,” Nia says. She doesn’t touch him, but I can see she wants to grab his arm and drag him away.
Mason smiles at me. “Sort your things. I’ll come get you when I’m ready to go.”
He appears to have every intention of taking me with him. Why? Does he want to kill me? I don’t see why he would.
I’m not that easy to kill.
I join Rae and the others and lay out my sleeping bag next to Otto’s. He has to be as tired as I am because he’s watching the conversation between Nia and Mason play out with half-lidded eyes.
“Good idea or bad idea?” he says through a yawn.
“Fucking terrible one,” Rae mutters. She shoots Autumn a glare as though warning her to behave better.
I bristle. “We need answers, don’t we? We can’t return to the Citadel with nothing to show for it.”
Even Autumn doesn’t question that. There’s no lying when we return. Survival depends on our ability to clear a place and then others’ ability to reclaim it. If we leave even one zombie there, it risks an entire community.
It’s why we’re punished for failure. It’s why we’re rewarded for success.
“Don’t turn your back on him,” Rae mutters as I smooth out my sleeping bag, sorely fighting the urge to simply lie down and take a nap.
A shadow falls over me and Dane’s voice is quietly controlled when he asks, “Don’t turn your back on who?”
I freeze for a second, then push to my feet, whirling around to face him. “Mason.” I could lie, but what would be the point? He’ll see me leave and be pissed off about it anyway.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t think that’s a good idea,” Dane says. Blake is already grabbing both their sleeping bags and setting them up in the space Rae left for them. “Shouldn’t matter, though. I imagine we won’t see much of him.”
“I’m going with him to find out about these zombies.”
