Chapter 1 #3
When I looked up at Hayes again, he was stumbling around, clutching his neck as blood spurted from it.
He staggered to the left, then coughed, blood spraying from his mouth.
He collapsed to the ground a moment later, making wet gurgling and choking sounds.
He twitched a few times, then lay still, eyes open and staring into nothing.
He was dead.
Hayes was dead.
A laugh bubbled in my chest, then got caught in my throat when a shout from the left rang out.
I staggered to my feet, my hand slipping in the blood of one of the bodies beneath me.
I pushed the barrel of the gun into the ground and used it to help me stand.
I breathed hard and stared out into the darkness.
I had a clear shot to the fence now.
I was about to drop the gun and run when the door burst open—and Hunter limped out.
He headed my way, his face contorting into an ugly sneer. He glanced at all the bodies around me, but when his eyes fell on his brother, he froze.
“Hayes?” His voice broke as he limped toward his brother’s body.
Frantic shouting erupted from somewhere nearby, and then Four flew around the side of the building.
He was running toward the fence at a dead sprint while a group of men in black chased after him. They shouted for him to stop, and one shot at him.
“Alive! We need them alive, you fucking moron! Doc is gonna have your ass if you fuck this up again.”
“We don’t need all of them alive,” another one said.
Hunter pointed his gun in Four’s direction and pulled the trigger. Four fell limp to the ground, and the intruders seemed to finally notice us.
But Hunter didn’t give a shit about them. Those cold, dead eyes were fixed solely on me.
“Did you do this? Did you kill him? You killed him. You killed him, didn’t you, you worthless little fuck, you killed him!”
He raised his gun, and I ran.
My vision faded around the edges as I shot toward the fence, pumping my arms and running as fast as I could.
I knew if I didn’t make it to that fence, I wouldn’t be leaving this place. Dead or alive, I’d be here for eternity.
Pop pop pop pop pop pop
I leaped onto the fence, pulling myself up the chainlink.
Pop!
Something slammed into my right shoulder, and I almost fell off the fence.
“Get back here, Three!”
I swung over the top and my blood-soaked fingers slipped on the metal. I dropped off the other side and landed hard enough to get the wind knocked out of me.
Another explosion thundered from beyond the fence. The world lit up in a blaze of orange and red, the colors vivid against the night sky. I stared up at it, and—for the briefest moment—wished those colors would consume me.
When I lifted my head, I didn’t see Hunter.
And no one saw me.
I got to my feet and ran.
I followed the sun for three days. Drank from shallow streams. Ate berries and mushrooms I knew were safe. Slept in cold, quiet pockets of the forest.
My chest burned right below my shoulder, a steady, pulsing pain that grew with every step. When I peeled my shirt away to look at the spot, it was red and crusty, and I wondered if a bullet had gone through me. Or maybe it was still lodged inside me, slowly killing me.
I didn’t care anymore. I was free.
It didn’t seem like it would last very long, though. The pain in my shoulder was only getting worse, so I tried holding my arm against my side to keep it still. It went numb at some point.
For the first time in my life, I wished for red rain. For the strength it would give me, for how it would dull the pain of my shoulder and help me move faster and farther.
For once, I wanted the virus to take hold of me. And if I corrupted…
Well. At least I’d do it out here instead of in a cage.
Halfway through the third day, one of the Corrupted found me. It began following me, but I just kept walking, hoping it would lose interest or die along the way.
It looked like it had been a child once. It was smaller than I was, and its clothes hung off its rotting frame in tatters. How old was it? How long had it been wandering, roaming the earth just looking for something to eat as it wasted away?
What a miserable existence.
The flesh on its face had been ripped off. Or bitten off. Its nose was gone, and the only skin remaining was a small flap dangling from its jaw. It fluttered when the wind blew.
I named it Thirty, because that was the most bloodhounds Hunter and Hayes had ever had in the prison at one time.
They were probably all dead now.
When the sun was high in the sky, I found myself at the bottom of some kind of ravine. The rocky, vine-covered hill in front of me was higher than anything I’d ever seen before, and when I looked left and right, there was no end to it.
That was where the sun was going. I needed to get up there, and I was pretty sure that thing wouldn’t be able to follow me if I climbed up there.
As the Corrupted ambled closer, I studied the steep rocky hill in front of me. It was on a slant, so I could climb it.
I was about to start when that familiar scrape in my head came, the pull in my bones that told me the Corrupted were near.
More than just Thirty.
Shit.
A few burst through the foliage a ways behind me, snarling and growling and heading my way a whole lot faster than Thirty.
“Bye, Thirty.” My voice was a raspy scratch as I waved at the dead thing that had been my companion for half a day.
I turned and started to scramble up the ravine.
I was weaker than I’d anticipated, but used the vines crawling through the steep dirt to help pull myself up. A few times, my arms shook so badly that I almost lost my grip.
When I reached the top of the ravine, a burst of renewed energy flared through me and I pulled myself up and over, ignoring the ache in my muscles, ignoring the gnawing hunger in my belly.
I dragged myself a few feet, then lay there panting with my face in the dirt. Something crawled along my arm, but I didn’t move. I was used to bugs and things crawling on me in that tiny cell.
I wasn’t in that cell anymore. I’d never be in there again.
I laughed and rolled onto my back, staring through the gaps in the leaves at the sky.
My vision blurred, and a tear spilled down the side of my face. I wiped it away, then took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
Something rustled, but I didn’t feel like moving.
Except when the low groan of one of the Corrupted drifted from over the cliff’s edge, I shot up in an instant.
How the hell was it climbing up?
I crept toward the edge and peered over, my heart stopping when I saw not one, but dozens of them crawling up the side of the gorge.
Most of them were using the vines, and satisfaction curled through me when some of those vines snapped and they fell to the ground below with disturbing thuds.
A lot of those vines were holding, though, so I grabbed the ones nearest me and yanked, trying to pull them from the trees they were wound around, to break them apart.
But they were too thick and I was too weak right now.
All I could do was keep running and hope most of them fell off before they got to the top. I could try kicking them off, but one of them might grab my legs and yank me over. Better to just run.
I turned and left them behind, just as the decaying hand of the first one reached over the edge.
The forest was thicker and quieter up here. Some birds chattered in the trees. Sunlight sprinkled through leaves that were starting to change their colors, swaying lazily in a gentle breeze.
I wandered for a while, going deeper and deeper and hoping that these woods went on forever. That I never came upon anyone or anything ever again. Maybe I should build a shelter? But I didn’t know how. What if I could find a cave?
Never in my life had I had so many options available to me, and I didn’t know what to do. What to choose.
I kept walking, looking for something I could eat, when a wave of irritation rippled through me.
There were Corrupted behind me. Following me.
More than one had made it up that ravine, and they were heading this way.
“Damn it,” I cursed, walking faster.
The trees and shrubs started getting denser the farther I went, and I had to constantly push branches out of the way.
I stopped short when I came upon a tree that had a…a face carved into the bark. Someone had been here before. I lifted my hand and trailed a finger over the curve of its mouth, wondering who’d done this and why. Was it some kind of warning? If it was, I had no clue what it meant.
I left the face behind and kept moving, soon forgetting it until there was another tree with another face. This was one was different. More detailed. It had eyes with long lashes, a nose, long hair.
Was this another warning? Or did someone live around here?
I swept my gaze in a wide arc, but saw nothing except green and brown and orange.
If someone lived here, I hoped they weren’t anything like Hunter and Hayes.
I stepped through a thick line of bushes when a sharp pain twinged in my right foot. I lifted it and looked at the bottom to see what had hurt me.
A huge thorn was embedded in my heel. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger, slowly pulling it out and flinging it away.
My feet were so dirty and bloody; I wanted to find some water to soak them in.
Hopefully soon.
I lifted my head and froze.
There was a man.
A giant, naked man standing under a stream of water that was flowing down from above him into a small river that snaked through the trees.
His back was to me, and he hadn’t heard me crashing through the brush.
I trailed my eyes down the hard contours of his body, watching muscles in his back and butt shift as he moved. His arms were thick with muscle that bulged as he rubbed his hands over his chest. What was he doing? Why was he touching himself like that?
His massive thighs flexed as he turned around, and my gaze was immediately drawn to the enormous cock hanging between his legs. There was a thatch of dark hair at the base of it that trailed up his stomach to his chest, where it spread over his pecs.
He grabbed his cock and lifted it out of the way to rub his other hand on his balls. A white substance with bubbles soon covered his groin, and he washed it away with the water.
My fingers twitched, and a strange sensation was building in the pit of my stomach.
I raised my gaze to his face, which he’d tipped back as the water splashed through his dark hair. He lifted his arms and brushed his hair back with both hands, his eyes cracking open.
I’d never seen anyone so…so pretty. A shaft of sunlight illuminated half his face, making his left eye glint, the water on his skin sparkling in the light.
He didn’t look real. Maybe he wasn’t.
His face turned fully in my direction, dark eyes sweeping across the forest.
He stilled when he saw me.
And then I heard the nasty snarls and disgusting, guttural noises of the Corrupted, and I whipped around. Fuck. I’d completely forgotten about them.
I needed to get out of here.
The bushes behind me rustled violently, and I heard a low groaning hiss before a rotting arm pushed through the foliage.
It made a snarling, snapping sound as it struggled in the bush, and another one behind it shoved it down into the branches and climbed over it, its black, beady eyes trained on me.
Old blood as brown as mud was smeared over the half of its face that was still somewhat intact; the other half was just filthy bone.
I took a step back and the ground dropped out from beneath me.
I fell with the debris and instinctively reached my hands out for something to grab onto, but there was nothing.
Light became dark in an instant, and an intense primal terror wrapped around my being. The cry that tore from my lungs broke when I hit the ground.
At first I didn’t feel anything, but the shock faded quickly and the pain spread like fire, an all-consuming agony that I’d never felt before, hadn’t known I was capable of feeling.
I gasped in a breath and blinked, trying to clear my fuzzy vision.
It was so dark and cold down here.
Wooden stakes rose from the ground all around me.
I was going to die in this pit, in the dark.
I’d been so close. So, so close.
“No,” I cried, choking on a sob.
One of the Corrupted landed next to me, and then another, and another. Some hit the spikes with wet crunches, still writhing despite being impaled.
My strength slipped away as the pain in my shoulder crawled down my arm, and someone’s blood was spreading beneath me.
I smeared my fingers through the wetness and held my hand above my face. I stared dazedly at it, mesmerized by the color. That was a lot of blood. My blood?
No.
My vision went fuzzy, and I thought I heard a voice.
Maybe all the bad blood would drain away, and I could be normal again.
A Corrupted to my left growled, and I turned my fading sight to the familiar corpse.
“Thirty,” I whispered. “We almost made it.”
At least I wouldn’t die alone.