Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Ihit the trash bags on my front, spared any broken bones. They cushioned my fall but burst open, releasing a waft of acrid stink, brown juices splattering my face.
“Orion!” the troll cried from above.
I heard hissing and the crunching of bones.
How had neither of us spotted a horizontal zombie on the tracks?
The commotion stirred more zombies in the alley, slowies crawling out from under the bodies, others in Old Kent Road ambling over to the gate.
And the speedies noticed, too, roused out of their stupor, launching themselves through the debris toward the alley.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
I got to my feet, my boots crushing something squelchy, looking for a quick way out.
“Trev?” I called.
He slumped over the edge of the viaduct, reaching for me. Blood dripped off his fingertips.
“Take my hand.”
The troll did not look good, let alone fit enough to pull me up. Not that I could reach him anyway.
“I can’t,” I said, drawing my axe, gagging from the stink all over my face.
“Fucking zombies.”
“Is it dead?” I looked left to right, the industrial area my only escape route.
“Yeah. Just the one. I’m sorry.” He moaned. “Fucking, fuck, fuck.”
A speedie crashed into the gate, splitting the skin on its fingers as it gained purchase on the mesh hissing wildly, its scalp missing, shaking the metal so hard it clanged. Sturdy enough to hold?
Four more speedies rushed the gate.
Time to go.
“I’ll come get you!” I called to Trev.
“Worry about you!”
I ran, stumbling over bodies and trash, taking off the heads of slowies with my axe, no time to properly finish them off. Blood and juices splattered me after each swing, panic rattling my heart, my lungs about to explode.
Hands grabbed my left leg. I brought my right boot down on the terribly decayed zombie’s head, popping the weak bone like a grape.
I gagged and ran onward—no amount of training to be kick-ass stopped things from being gross. The carpet of trash bags ended, but six zombies lumbered between me and a wall at the end of the alley.
Easy to deal with.
After taking down the first two, a series of hisses stopped me in my tracks. They came from above.
Glancing up, my stomach roiled painfully. “Oh, crap.”
Three speedies launched themselves from the windows of the unfinished apartment building, landing with a sickening thwack in my path, one of them crushing a slowie.
Bones broke, blood sprayed, but two of them got up, charging at me on broken legs. I took off their heads, dodging a slowie who’d got too close.
Two more fell from the sky, then another five from the lower floors, landing better, bursting into a collective charge.
Barreling through the remaining slowies, I ran for the wall, time seeming to slow down, the wall not getting any closer.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. More speedies fell, the hissing behind me was so loud, the running footsteps a nightmare.
“We can do this, Wendy!” I roared, tearing up the final feet to the wall, launching myself through the air.
I grabbed the brick.
It gave way under my hands, crumbling like honeycomb.
A speedie slammed into me, grasping at my head. I screamed, dropping my axe, swinging a desperate punch, kicking out. Both moves were more like a fish flailing on dry land, expending the last of its energy trying to stay alive.
Grim.
I spotted movement above—a body leaning over the wall.
A man.
I screamed again, believing him to be a zombie.
“Get off me!”
I couldn’t believe I failed at the last hurdle, finally becoming food for these creeps in the smelliest place in the city.
What a place to die.
But the man grabbed the zombie by the head with two hands, twisting it off like a bottle cap.
I froze, blinking at the turn in the tide, the other zombies almost upon me.
“What—”
The man grabbed me by my coat, dragging me up and over the wall. I yelped, brick collapsing as my legs scraped the top of the wall, kicking out against pawing hands inches away from my boots.
“Easy!” the man barked.
But panic was my master, a flurry of fear taking over my limbs. I lashed out and screamed, brain still not convinced my savior was a hero, but a speedie with the capacity to trick me into thinking I wasn’t about to be brunch.
The man lost his footing, tumbling backward. I twisted in the fall, landing on top of him, my nose bumping his.
“Oh,” I rasped, the panic crashing.
His face was a blur so close up, but I knew he wasn’t an uber speedie.
A spark of static electricity crackled between our noses, making me jump.
The man growled, moving with scary speed and strength, getting me and himself to our feet. He grunted something inaudible.
“You’re not a zombie,” I said, finally taking him in.
“I’m not,” he responded gruffly.
Wow. He was a hunk of man with tawny-beige skin, short black hair, eyes alluringly dark, a dusting of stubble on a square jawline. He wore black cargo pants and a stab-vest, big arms wrapped in a black material clingy enough to show off the definition of his muscles.
Handsome yet mean-looking, a real package of male deliciousness. And he’d saved my life.
I told him that.
He grunted. “Let’s move.”
I blinked again, dragging myself out of the spell of his pleasing aesthetics.
We stood between the wall and another much lower one.
A closed gate under the viaduct behind me rattled, slowies bumping into it, pawing and groaning.
Beyond the lower wall was another gate with more zombies desperate for a snack.
Too many of them.
He pointed to the steep, weed-choked embankment leading up to the railway. A woman waited up there, propping up a limping Trev.
“You’re alive!” I couldn’t help but cry.
He gave me a thumbs up.
The woman smiled.
Thank the stars he’d survived.
There was commotion against the wall that’d nearly ended my existence, hissing, pounding, bricks crumbling, hands clawing.
“Will they get over?” I said, about to pee myself.
The man, clearly a shifter of some kind with his strength and speed, ordered me onto the embankment with a snap of his fingers.
Before I could move, a speedie vaulted over the crumbling wall.
The man punched a hole through his head, throwing the corpse back over the wall.
Stunned, I stared at him, wishing I could punch like that.
“Get up there!” he boomed, the deepness of his voice terrifying.
I obeyed.
“Paige!” he called to the woman.
“Sir,” she responded, throwing something at him.
Pausing my scramble up the damp embankment, I watched him catch what looked to be a grenade. He pulled a pin, confirming my suspicions, then launched it at the bottleneck of zombies behind the wall.
I covered my ears, ready for a bang.
Only a soft pop announced the burst of fire, flames quickly engulfing the zombies. Within seconds, half the alley sizzled, the dead keeling over.
“What was that?” I asked, slipping slightly.
“Incendiary grenade,” he replied. “Having trouble?”
I slipped again. “No.”
He offered me his hand. “Take it if you can’t make it.”
Why did he have to say it with such disgust in his tone?
Making a point, I scrambled up the last part of the embankment myself, taking a deep breath once I reached the rails.
“Are you alright?” the woman asked.
She wore similar clothes to my gruff rescuer, but with a cute Snoopy badge pinned to her stab-vest. Athletically built, fair and freckled complexion, her tight blonde curls bobbed in the breeze, her eyes a pretty pale blue.
I nodded in response, my eyes on the troll. “Are you?”
Trev winked at me. “All good, Orion. All good.”
The pain in his voice said otherwise.
A rough bandage covered the bite on his arm, another halfway down his right leg. His jacket was tied around his waist.
“I managed to halt the bleeding,” the woman said, “but we really need to get him to shelter.”
My savior moved past me, checking left and right. “No more biters in sight.”
With his back to me, I got an eyeful of a substantial booty lurking within those cargo pants.
He turned to look at me, his expression pure ice.
My cheeks flushed hot.
“You okay with the troll, Paige?” he asked, eyes boring into me.
“Yes, sir.”
“You can walk?” he asked Trev.
“I can, mate.”
The troll didn’t look too sure.
“Then let’s not fuck around any longer,” he declared, taking point.
I hung back with Paige and Trev.
“As you heard, I’m Paige.” She was much more pleasant than the one up ahead.
“Orion. Nice to meet you,” I answered.
“That’s Miko.”
I noticed she spoke with an Irish accent.
“I can help with Trev’s wounds,” I said.
“Are you a medic?”
“My saliva can heal.”
Miko turned, striding toward me. “Your saliva can heal?”
I nodded, tensing up under his scrutiny. “As long as the wound isn’t fatal, yes.”
“A fae trait?”
“A me trait.”
“Then do it.”
“Right here?”
“Uh-huh. I’ll keep watch for biters.”
Moody assbug. “Okay…”
“It’ll really help for the journey back to Haven,” Paige interjected. “I can go over you properly once we’re inside. The wounds aren’t fatal. Yet.”
Thank the stars for that!
“Haven?” Trev questioned. “I like that sound of that.”
Paige smiled. “It’s a fine place to rest your head and stay away from biters.”
“Even better.”
I glanced up at Miko, his attention fixed to me. I squirmed a little.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you need anything else?”
“A minute to gather myself would be nice.” His stern question brought out the sharp rebuttal.
He looked away, eyes on the fire.
Paige lowered Trev to the ground, gently removing the cloth around his arm.
I winced at the bite wound and the dark glisten of his blood.
Messy, painful, prone to infection. Dawn passed on to humans through bites or through its morning hunt.
It might not affect the rest of us, but other infections remained a risk for many.
Trolls and shifters were not exempt. Not like me.
I had built in protections from most bacteria and viruses.
But not from death.
Churning up a good load of spit, I leaned close to the wound.
“Not how I expected my morning to go,” Trev said.