Page 78 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
Would the others have killed him? I don’t think so. Their panic seems genuine—Callum looks as though he might burst into tears, and Emma looks vaguely lost, even though we’re all in the same room.
“I need to go and look,” I say, and Rae shakes her head, fingers digging into my shoulders.
“It’s not safe,” she replies. “You heard them before. They might take you.”
“It’s not just us they’re after.” Not anymore. Mason’s not a hunter, and he’s been living in this town his entire life. Why would anyone go after him now?
“Don’t be fucking stupid, Isaac,” Blake hisses in my ear. “He doesn’t care about you. For all we know, he took them and he’s stayed behind to kill them.”
I jerk away. No. I don’t think that’s true, either.
Nia’s orders have turned into faint arguments that grow in volume the longer they go on. Blake drifts that way when he realises the group is more concerned about Mason than Dane.
“I have to look,” I say. I can’t explain it to Rae. I can’t explain it tomyself. This feels like my fault, somehow. Mason wouldn’t have cared enough to stay out there and look for the others if not for me.
Rae shakes her head. “I mean it, Isaac. You can’t.”
She’s distracted too when someone mentions Autumn, and when I realise no attention is on me, I slip out of the room.
I walk hurriedly to the stairs and shove the door at the top of them open as quietly as I can. When I close it again behind me, the church is silent in a way it hasn’t been since I arrived. There’s always been someone else in here with me.
Moonlight spills through the stained glass window. I stare at it for a moment, tracing the outline of that strange figure again before I turn on my heel and walk out of the church.
Do I dare to leave the graveyard? Like the church, the town is dark and silent beyond. Whoever or whatever took Mason and everyone else must be out there.
I adjust my grip on my bat and walk through the gate.
Still nothing. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I make my way down into the town, moonlight lighting each step. The gun is heavy in my pocket. I’m still not certain why I took it. It should only have one bullet—if it does contain one at all.
I haven’t brought my pack, have nothing but my bat and the gun and my torch, I realise, but I don’t pull it out. I don’t truly believe I have any element of surprise on my side, and yet I don’t want to risk it.
It takes me a while to reach the spot where Autumn disappeared. The others have been through here, of course, and I don’t really know what I’m looking for.
I justcan’tstay up there. It’s bad enough that Autumn and Dane are gone, but Mason… This feels like it’s my fault. Like I failed. I should never have let him push me away today. I should have kicked up a fuss until he let me stay; I could have kept an eye on him then.
A strange, shuffling sound reaches me. I raise my bat and take a few steps further down the street. No one should be out here. The others are all back at the church and, far as I can tell, no one has followed me down.
The sound becomes louder as I reach a house at the end of the street. There’s a strip of sparse grass next to it, a spindly tree and a knocked-over bin, and next to that—
The zombie groans, long and low, but makes no move to get at me. It’s pressed up against the house wall, legs moving like it wants to keep walking but the house is in the way. Its eyes roll in its skull, fixing blindly on me for a second. Withered lips reveal broken teeth, and I stare and stare because I’ve been this close to zombies before, but never one that wasn’t trying to bite me at the same time.
I take a step closer, and the groan turns into a growl. It knows I’m here, then, even if it isn’t out to get me. The question is, what is it doing?
Skirting carefully around the zombie, I reach the front door of the house. Now I do take my torch from my pocket—where there’s one zombie, there’ll well be more—and I kick open the half-rotted door and make my way into the building.
It’s cold in here. Damp. I find nothing on the ground floor aside from abandoned furniture and even less when I head upstairs. I pause in one of the bedrooms, looking out up and down the street. The zombie is still making faint noises next to the house.
Where is it trying to go? I move to a different room, trying to get a view of what might be in a straight line from where it’s walking.
The old school is that way. The park. Beyond that, the woods.
Maybe that’s where the zombie wants to go. Mason said that was where they all stayed, that they couldn’t get in whatever boundary they’d all set up. I sigh and lean against the wall for a moment. He was wrong about that, seems like. Why else would a zombie be here?
I make my way carefully back downstairs and flick off my torch, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness before I step back outside. As I pull the door shut behind me, I freeze.
Something is different.
Something—
