Page 8 of The Dead Don't Talk
It reverberates, the wobbling sound knocking around my brain along with the pounding of my heart.
And yet, Moros doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.
“What the fuck?” I whisper frantically to the back of his head, an anxious perspiration blossoming across my skin, especially in my pits.
Oh fuck, did he bring me out here to have me killed?
“Shhh,” he snaps.
Still with that fist lifted, knuckles raised like he’s not clenching his hand correctly, he unfurls his middle digit.
What in the actual fuck?
Another arrow wings through the air, stabbing the ground at his feet, and I jump.
“What are youdoing?” I squeak out, grabbing his back, fisting his shirt in a tight grip.
“Flipping him off.” Cool. Calm. Way too fucking collected afterbeing shot at.
“What does that even mean?Who?”
He whips around so fast, I stumble sideways.
“You don’t know what this means?” The finger he waves in my face goes ignored when another arrow slices through the air, clipping his ear the process, and pinging into the trunk beside the first one.
He doesn’t even flinch.
But my heart isracing.
He just stares at me like he’s astonished.At me. And not at the fact that we’re standing on the outskirts of the forest that surrounds our community, the place only the Guard is supposed to go and anyone else can wander into, while beingshot at.
“You’re out of your mind!”
Leaving him in my trail of metaphorical dust and definitely some dirt, I dive behind the nearest tree that’s big enough to cover me and fist my rifle.
Is it raiders?
Did we venture too far off our land and onto someone else’s?
Did the fucking decomposed learn how to use a bow?
The sharp claws of fear grab hold of my throat as I chamber a round. It’s hard to breathe as I ready myself to whip around the tree in a crouch. Difficult to think as I line up the scope against a tiny flash of red paper in the distance. And I—
“Whoa, whoa there, kitten. Put away the claws.”
My finger slips from the trigger as Moros snags the barrel and yanks the firearm away from me.
“What in the fuck?!”
“You’re jumpy.”Is that a fucking smirk?“Start picking up arrows.”
“What?” I yell out so loud that it echoes, and launch upright. “We’re beingattacked.”
Moros plucks the second arrow from the tree trunk and shoves it in my chest.
No, I don’t focus on the warmth from his hand against me because I ampissed.
“Not attacked. You’d be dead,” he mutters dismissively.
