Chapter 20
TWENTY
DAKOTA
Julien’s right, and I hate him for it. I hate that he sees the cracks I’ve spent years plastering over with politeness and perfect grades. But he’s also wrong.
There is a hierarchy.
There’s the people you bleed for, and the people you tolerate because they’re standing next to the people you bleed for. I’m the latter.
I shouldn’t have told him about my father. Shouldn’t have let him play doctor. Shouldn’t have slept in his arms.
A hand clamps down on my shoulder. Hard.
I spin around, adrenaline spiking into irritation. “I don’t want—”
Julien’s hand slams over my mouth, cutting off my words. His eyes aren’t soft. They’re wide, scanning the tree line, pupils blown black.
“Down.” He yanks me off the road, hauling me into the overgrown drainage ditch.
Dry weeds scour my face as he shoves me into the dirt, his body covering mine. I try to squirm as a rock digs into my hip, but he presses his weight down, trapping me effectively.
“Stay still,” he whispers into my ear.
Then I hear it.
Slap. Drag. Slap. Drag.
Then the smell hits in a wave of rotted meat that makes me gag.
I turn my head to the side, peering through the screen of dead yellow grass. Legs. Dozens of them. Dirty jeans, torn suit pants, bare skin gray with decay. They’re crossing the road twenty feet ahead of us, emerging from the woods like a slow-motion mudslide.
A horde. Maybe fifty.
Julien’s breath is hot against my neck, steady and slow, while mine comes in terrified, shallow gasps. His hand is still clamped over my mouth, fingers digging into my cheek.
We just have to wait. Let them pass.
A zombie in a gray jogging suit stops. She—it—pauses in the middle of the road, head twitching to the side like a dog catching a scent. Half her scalp is gone, hanging like a peeled orange rind.
Don’t look. Don’t look.
She turns.
Her milky-filmed eyes lock directly onto the ditch. Directly onto the patch of grass where we’re lying.
She opens her mouth, and a low, gurgling screech rips through the air.
It jerks the entire horde to attention. Dozens of heads swiveling in our direction.
“Run.” Julien is off me before I can exhale, hauling me up the muddy embankment by my backpack strap. “Through those trees.”
I grab his wrist. “We can’t outrun fifty of them.”
“Not trying to outrun them.” His eyes meet mine. “Just need to split them up.”
Jogging Suit reaches our hiding spot first. She dives, jaws snapping.
Julien doesn’t hesitate, swinging his machete in a vicious arc that separates her head from her shoulders. It rolls into the ditch, her body following suit.
“Go!” He shoves me toward the tree line. “Don’t look back!”
I sprint.
My lungs burn instantly, and my head throbs in time with my boots slamming the earth. Behind us, the slap-drag rhythm explodes into a chaotic stampede. Snarls. Breaking branches. The sound of fifty bodies crashing through the undergrowth like a tidal wave of rot.
Branches whip my face, stinging like tiny lashes. I don’t care.
“Left!” He barks, grabbing my shoulder and steering me hard away from a dense thicket of brambles.
“They’re fast!” I gasp, risking a glance over my shoulder. Bad idea. Some of them aren’t shuffling anymore. They’re surging, tripping over each other in a frenzy. “How are they so fucking fast?!”
“Save your breath.” His steps falter. “And don’t stop.”
I whirl around. “Julien!”
“Go!” He swings again, cleaving through a skull. “Run!”
The dead converge on him, hands grasping, mouths snapping.
“No. Not without you.” I fidget for my knife. “Please—”
Two of them stumble, tangling on the ground before regaining their footing, and Julien cuts down another, then pivots, sprinting toward the woods opposite from where he told me to run.
“Fucking run, Dakota!”
He’s leading them away. Using himself as bait.
That stupid, noble asshole.
Is he doing this to prove his point?
My feet move before my brain catches up. I pull the knife from my belt and dash parallel to his path.
He glances back, sees me still in view, and his face contorts with fury. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“Following you!”
“I TOLD YOU—”
“Heard you the first time.”
Half the horde follows him. The rest mill about, seeming confused by two targets. Some start shambling toward me, but they’re slow, scattered.
“Stubborn woman,” he growls as he slows his pace so I can catch up to him.
We weave through the dense pine, dodging trunks. A straggler wearing a flannel shirt and missing an arm pops out from behind an ancient oak directly in my path.
My boots skid on pine needles.
Julien doesn’t even slow down. He shoulder-checks me out of the way, driving his boot into the thing’s chest. It flies backward, crashing into a tree with a bone-jarring crack.
“Don’t stop,” he yells, grabbing my hand again.
“I wasn’t—”
“Run!”
We burst into a small clearing. The ground slopes sharply downward ahead. Loose shale and jagged rocks.
“Careful!” He tightens his grip on my fingers.
We skid, sliding down the incline, sending a mini-avalanche of rocks clattering ahead of us. It’s loud. Too loud.
“There.” He points to a rusty chain-link fence cutting through the woods at the bottom of the slope. It’s leaning, overgrown with ivy, but it’s a barrier.
“Over it?” I pant.
“Through it if we have to.”
The horde crests the hill behind us. They don’t slide. They tumble, a mass of limbs and teeth rolling down.
“Faster,” he says.
We hit the fence. No hole. Too high.
“Climb.” He laces his fingers together, making a stirrup. “Now.”
I step into his hands, and he heaves me upward. I grab the mesh, rust biting into my palms, and scramble over the top, dropping to the other side with a heavy thud that jars my head.
Shit. I see stars burning behind my eyes and rub them, the pounding getting stronger.
Slowly, my vision clears, and I spot Julien halfway up the fence.
A hand grabs his ankle.
The flannel zombie. Its gray fingers are clamped around Julien’s boot, dragging him down. Beige teeth snap inches from his calf.
“Julien!” I scream, grabbing my knife.
He kicks out, his other boot connecting with the thing’s face. Smack. The grip loosens. Julien climbs up, vaulting over the top just as three more slam into the fence.
He lands beside me, chest heaving, sweat cutting tracks through the grime on his face.
“Move,” he wheezes, pointing deeper into the woods.
We don’t wait to see if the fence holds. My chest heaves, ribs protesting against the constraint of my own skin, as the zombies do the same, but while the rattling behind us fades, the one in my head doesn’t.
“This way.” Julien veers right, dodging a low-hanging branch.
I follow his gaze to a treehouse jammed between a triad of thick pines about twelve feet up.
“Move.” He shoves me toward the trunk where wooden slats are nailed in a crooked ladder.
I grab the first rung. Damp, slick with moss. I haul myself up, boots slipping, splinters digging through my palms. My arms scream, trembling with exhaustion, but I force myself upward. One rung. Two. Don’t look down. Don’t look back.
I scramble over the lip of the platform and roll onto it, catching my breath. Julien lands beside me a second later, silent despite his size. He kicks the trapdoor shut and slides a rusted bolt into place.
Darkness swallows us, save for thin slivers of afternoon light cutting through gaps in the plank walls.
I drag air into my lungs in ragged, burning gasps, willing my head to calm down. Julien sits with his back pressed against the wall and eyes closed. His chest rises and falls in a heavy, rhythmic cadence. Dirt streaks his jaw, and a fresh scratch bleeds on his neck.
The adrenaline crash hits hard, the high evaporating to leave behind the cold, jagged reality.
We’re trapped. And he…
He saved my life, again, threw himself into a horde to buy me seconds, but the sting of being an afterthought, a charity case he’s burdened with, just a way to prove he meant it, throbs harder than my concussion.
I wipe sweat from my forehead, smearing grit across my skin. My eyes trace the line of his jaw, the tension held there even in exhaustion.
He cracks one eye open, catching me staring. “They’re not following,” he rasps, voice wrecked.
I look away, fixating on a knot in the floorboards. “You sure?”
“Stopped at the fence.” He shifts, wincing as he stretches a leg out. “But there could be more on this side.”
“Yeah.”
He watches me. I can feel the weight of his gaze, heavy, searching for… what? I pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs to create a wall.
He clears his throat, reaches for his water bottle in his backpack, unscrews the cap, and holds it out to me.
“I have my own,” I murmur.
“Just drink.”
I hesitate, then take it. “Thanks.”
I take a sip, barely tasting the warm, metallic water, and hand it back. He takes a swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and goes back to leaning against the wall. The air is charged, static electricity waiting for a spark, but neither of us strikes the match.
We just sit in the semi-darkness, alive, safe, and worlds apart.