Page 79 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
The zombie lurches out of the darkness with a rattling groan. I yelp, dodging to one side, and it crashes into the door, falling through it. Fuck. Whatever it was after, I’ve sufficiently distracted it, and I glance up and down the street for any others before I ready myself to end things.
The zombie struggles back to its feet. Its arm is half hanging off, useless by its side, and it drags its legs towards me. I clenchmy teeth, trying to ignore the terrible moans escaping its throat. It swipes its still-working arm at me, and I dart out of the way.
One swift hit brings the zombie to its knees; two take out its skull. I grimace at the blood and brain spattered over my boots, then give it one more hit for good measure.
Why is there a zombie here?Howis there one here? I glance in the direction of the church. Did one of them let it in?
Most importantly, are there more of them out there?
I leave the zombie behind, heading in the direction that it clearly wanted to go for want of anything better to do. There are no others—not as far as I can tell—but I still start every time the wind whistles down narrow streets, on edge in a way I’ve never been.
I turn up nothing, of course. I break into the school, for a moment certain that I feel eyes on me, but all of the rooms are empty and don’t look like they’ve been disturbed beyond the things Mason and I moved the other day.
Where could he be? I pause in one of the classrooms and stare out the window, across the field that backs onto the school. The woods look ominous beyond, trees swaying in the wind. If he’s out there, I’ll never find him. Pain fills my chest, pushing into my throat. It makes no sense to feel so much for him after such a short time, but I think part of me believed him. He’d never let anything happen to me. He’d keep me here, so long as I wanted it.
And now he’s gone. They’re all gone. Me and Rae and Blake will have to go back to the Citadel and tell them—if we’re allowed to get on that train at all. If Nia doesn’t do to us the same thing as whatever happened to those other teams.
The sky begins to lighten, and I drag myself wearily back up to the church. Rae and Callum are waiting by the doorway, and Rae lets out a cry when she sees me—a mixture of anger and relief.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
I shake my head. I can’t answer that. I don’tknowthe answer. Callum takes me in with a sweeping glance, eyes lingering on my boots and the end of my bat.
“What did you find?” he asks.
“Zombie,” I mutter. “Just the one.”
“Where?”
“Next to… a house.” I describe it to him, and he doesn’t look as though he disbelieves me. Doesn’t matter, I guess. What’s left of it is still down there. Callum scurries off and I wander into the church and drop onto one of the pews.
“Did you find anything else?” Rae asks, taking a seat next to me.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I don’t know where they could be.”
“We talked a while after you left,” Rae says. “They think they’ve all been taken out into the woods.”
“Are they going to go and look?”
“Talked about that, too. We tried to convince them, but—”
I shake my head. “What did they say was out there?”
“Zombies.”
“Did Blake tell you what we found?”
She presses her lips together and nods. “For a minute, I thought they’d killed you. Realised they were all still down there with us.”
“Do you think they’re going to let us leave?”
Rae lets out a long breath. “Fuck. I don’t know.”
Blake comes thundering up the stairs and stalks down the aisle. He doesn’t look at either of us as he passes, and I sigh, tipping my head back on the pew. I’m exhausted. Too exhausted to worry abouteverything—I still desperately want to find Mason, so I can’t concern myself with whether or not we’ll get back to the Citadel.
The life I have there feels so distant now. Bleak and cold and quiet in comparison to everything here, and perhaps it’s foolishto think it, but if Mason were before me now and asked me to stay, I know I’d say yes.
I sit up and rub at my stinging eyes.
