Chapter 5 #2
“Is there anyone left to help us?” he continues.
“Does anyone need our help? Today, I can say that I have the answer to at least one of those questions. Early this morning, a stranger from outside of the Grave made it through our eastern borders—settle down, everyone,” Jack says gently yet firmly because nearly the entire auditorium has burst into conversation at the news.
“He checks out. He’s a survivor, just like us, only he came with a proposition and, well, I think I’ll let him tell you all about it. ”
Jack starts clapping and, because he is, we all join in. It’s half-hearted and off-beat because most of the survivors are more concerned with turning to their neighbor and discussing in feverish whispers what Jack has just told us.
Not me. I’m still staring at the stage, waiting for my first glimpse of this stranger.
As soon as we realized what parts of Madison had been taken over as lurker nests, creating our borders and enforcing them with fire, we basically closed the Grave off from everyone.
Since then, we’ve had one—one—survivor manage to make it through the nests and reach our borders.
He was a nineteen-year-old boy that Jack was ready to welcome into our community…
until he noticed the blood seeping through his hoodie and realized the boy had been bitten.
It takes twenty-four hours for a lurker to Turn. If he’d made it to the Grave an hour earlier, we could’ve saved him. Hell, if he’d admitted his injury instead of hiding it, he still might’ve had a chance.
But he didn’t. And when his eyes bled to black before anyone could help him, Eddie put him down behind the church, burning his remains. Like all lurkers, he went up in smoke instantly, and there hasn’t been another stranger in the Grave since.
Until now.
At Jack’s signal, a strikingly handsome man in his mid to late-thirties strides out onto the stage. His dark hair is dusted with grey, his features rugged and weathered. He has a pair of shrewd brown eyes and a thin-lipped smile.
The stranger is wearing all black, though the fabric has faded from its time in the sun.
He’s got on a pair of black hiking boots like the ones I remember Rory wearing, right down to the flecks of mud covering the toes and the frayed laces; the worn soles thunder against the dull wood of the stage, each step a slap until he takes his place in front of the podium.
A five o’clock shadow covers his sharp jaw as he casts a stare over his assembled audience.
As Jack takes a seat in one of the chairs onstage, the stranger clears his throat.
He seems at ease up on the stage there, and I suddenly wonder how many other times he’s faced a crowd of survivors like this.
“Thank you, Jack. And thank you for giving me this chance to speak. Hello. Let me tell you about myself. My name is Maverick Brooks, and I’m just like you.
I’m a survivor. We’ve all done what we had to do to make it to this point.
That makes us the lucky ones. You see, I come from a small town in Connecticut that doesn’t exist anymore. They didn’t survive.”
The auditorium is so silent, you could hear a pin drop. No one is talking. Captivated by his rough voice, the way he demands your attention… we’re all listening to this stranger.
To Maverick.
“I’ve been out there,” he says, and then he drops the bomb: “You’re not alone.
I can promise you that.” He gestures wildly with his right hand.
“There are dozens of settlements just like this one where”—he starts ticking them off on his fingers—“neighbors, friends, families… they’ve all banded together to make it on their own.
Separate factions trying to live their lives…
but it’s a new life now.” He slams his hand against the edge of the podium, gripping it tightly.
“The lurkers are taking—no. They’ve already taken over.
But it’s up to us to take back our world.
It’s time to stop hiding. It’s time to—”
Someone near the front of the auditorium raises their hand. Maverick blinks, surprised, but whether that’s because he’s being interrupted or because someone raised their hand to do so, I can’t tell. He turns behind him and murmurs something to Jack. Jack nods.
Maverick points toward the front row. A young woman in her mid-twenties stands up. She tucks one stray curl behind her ear, then waves at everyone sitting in the audience.
Audrey Monroe. Our nurse.
The moment she starts to speak, I feel like I’m back in triage again. There’s something about her, how soothing her voice is, how earnest she sounds when she’s trying to get her point across, that throws me back in time to those terrible weeks I spent at St. Matthew’s after the accident.
The emotions return, crashing into me like a wave at high tide. The grief, the worry, the absolute devastation that came with learning that my twin was gone… my head is spinning and I have to remind myself where I am. What I’m doing here.
All at once I’m going under.
It’s tough, but in the end I manage to pull myself together. I tread the water, pushing the feelings down in order to keep myself afloat as Audrey addresses the stranger.
“Hello,” she begins, a little nervous giggle in her voice. “We met earlier.”
Maverick nods. “At the church, yes. You helped me with my scrape. Thank you.”
Audrey brushes off his thanks. Not surprising.
If Jack sent the stranger to St. Matthew’s, he wanted to have him there in case it was a repeat of that nineteen-year-old kid.
Of course he’d ask the nurse to check out any injuries in case they were lurker-induced, and if he’s here, he must’ve passed the test.
She nods, her expression a mix between her usual warmth and a hint of wariness.
“I just wanted to let you know that I agree. And, yes, I get what you’re saying.
We all lost someone we care about during the Turning…
My mom ate my father right in front of me,” she says candidly, and no one blinks because that’s not even the worst of the horrors that came out of that dark day, “and I’d leave the church and make a pile of lurker ashes of my own if they’d let me, but that’s just it.
The Grave can protect itself. We’ve never had a lurker make it past our patrols since before summer.
We probably have one of the best hunters to exist—”
I slink low in my seat again. She has to be talking about me. Sure, I haven’t been out on a hunt for too long now, but before that night when the street lamp went out, I had more verified lurker flamings than anyone in the Grave—
Leaning over, Audrey grabs her seatmate by the upper arm. She tugs, pulling him up, urging him to get to his feet.
Chase sheepishly stands up, holding his hand high as the audience applauds again.
I blink. Oh. Right.
Not me.
As the survivors rightfully cheer on one of their own, Maverick narrows his shrewd gaze on Chase, watching him with interest. He jerks his chin in his direction.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Chase, sir. Chase Knight.”
Chase isn’t wrong. There’s something about Maverick’s bearing that just screams ‘sir’.
“How many lurkers have you killed, Chase?”
His brow furrows. “I can’t say. I mean, I don’t count. I just do what I have to to keep us all safe.”
To my surprise, Audrey squeezes his arm, beaming up at him. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just being modest. We’ve got a chalkboard set up over at the church, keeping track of all his kills since July. It’s already up to thirty-eight.”
Chase starts shaking his head as soon as she says July. The significance of that month isn’t lost on me. Thirty-eight kills since Hallie’s death. Seems like Chase got to take out his grief on the lurkers like I wanted to do.
Another round of applause breaks out among the crowd. I can’t help but join in. There are one or two cheers.
With the arm that Audrey isn’t still hanging onto, Chase raises his hand again, gesturing for us all to quiet down. “I don’t do it by myself,” he argues.
“See?” Audrey says. “Told you. So modest.”
It’s a quick kiss, and it’s on the cheek, but I watch as the pretty nurse rises up on her tiptoes and kisses my sister’s fiancé in front of the whole Grave like Tony did to me.
Chase flushes under all of the attention.
He doesn’t move away from Audrey or shake her off of his arm; instead, his eyes shoot over the crowd, and I know with absolute certainty that he’s looking for me again, wanting to see my reaction.
I pause mid-clap, dropping my hands to my lap.
Fuck.
Chase and the nurse? When did that happen?
Maverick braces his hands on the podium like Jack did before, leaning in so that his lips are just about kissing the microphone.
He clears his throat, drawing everyone’s eyes back to him.
Chase’s head snaps forward again and he sits down, followed by Audrey.
The applause dies down to a gentle roar, then nothing as we all listen attentively to what the stranger has to say next.
“I commend you, Chase. And I didn’t mean to insult your people by assuming you weren’t capable of fighting back.
Just the opposite, actually. I was telling Jack when I first sat down with him this morning after my…
welcome… that I thought I might’ve finally found a group of survivors that still had their backbones.
And then I thought, maybe I’ve finally found the right people to help me at last. So you guys like to kill lurkers…
how would you like to kill so many lurkers that his thirty-eight seems like nothing at all? ”
He pauses there for effect. Another round of whispers erupts through the crowd. The stranger knows exactly what to say—and how to say it—to get a crowd of suspicious survivors to at least hear him out.
He continues.
“Listen. There’s a nest. In my travels, I’ve heard too many people talk of it, whisper of it, speak of it with fear.
But I’m not afraid. There’s a nest, the biggest nest of lurkers on the entire East Coast, and it’s not too far from here.
It’s the reason why we’re plagued by so many lurkers to this day, why no matter how many we kill, they keep on coming.
This nest breeds lurkers and provides for them, and it needs to be stopped.
“I will destroy it. Whether I have to do it alone or not, I aim to set the biggest bonfire you’ve ever seen to this wretched nest, and I’ll be damned sure I take out as many lurkers as I can along the way.
“So who will come with me?” he asks softly, the microphone amplifying his voice so that we all hear him anyway. As he goes on, his voice rises, “Will any one of you dare go beyond your borders? Will you kill the lurkers with me, watch them burn? Who will go?”
No one is saying a damn thing. Once again, it’s dead quiet in the auditorium.
I know the people in the Grave. When we were still Madison, we stayed to ourselves.
Living our own lives, ignoring our neighbors as we focused on ourselves.
Now that we’re a settlement, a community that relies on each and every one of us for survival, we haven’t changed all that much.
We’ve learned that we can only continue to exist if we look out for each other and take care of each other. No one else.
The Grave is all we have. Jack might have wondered what’s happening beyond our borders, but do we really care? After the Turning, no one cared about us.
They’re going to say no. The silence is deafening.
There are those who might think Maverick has the right idea, and others who, I’m sure, can’t wait to see the backside of this insane stranger with his insane ideas—traveling to a lurker nest, risking your safety in a bonafide suicide mission—as he gets booted out of the Grave.
But no one is going to go.
And that’s when I stand up.
“Me,” I say, my voice echoing around the room. “I’ll go with you.”