Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
DAKOTA
He doesn’t wait for me to stand. Just scoops me up like I weigh nothing, one arm beneath my knees, the other around my back. The towel barely clings to my body as we’re moving from the heat of the moment to—what? Sleep? Something more?
“I can walk.” But I loop my arms around his neck anyway.
“I know.” He carries me toward the bedroom, kicking the door open with his foot. “Faster this way.”
“Because…”
“Because I want you in bed.”
Heat floods my cheeks. I’m still boneless from what he just did to me, every nerve ending still singing. “That’s—You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not?” He lowers me onto the mattress, following me down. “It’s true.”
He’s looming over me, and I tug the towel higher, which is kind of useless after he’s already seen everything.
“You’re tense again.” His fingers trace my shoulder, following the ridge of my collarbone. “After I just got you relaxed.”
“I’m not—” I stare at the ceiling, easier than meeting those dark eyes. “This is just… You’re staring.”
“How do you know that? When you’re not looking at my face?”
I force myself to meet his eyes. “You’re staring.”
“Hard not to.” He traces the edge of my towel. “You look... wrecked.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“It is.”
Another howl cuts through the night, closer this time. Julien’s head snaps toward the window, muscles tensing.
“Should we be worried?” I ask.
“No.” His focus returns to me, but something’s changed. The heat in his eyes has cooled. “But we should keep quiet.”
My hands fidget with the edge of the towel. “So... sleep?”
He laughs, a soft rumble in his chest. “You sound disappointed.”
“I’m not.”
“Sure.” His thumb traces my lower lip.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You didn’t.” My face burns. “I mean, I—”
“You should get some rest.” He settles onto his back, drawing me with him. “Try to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
I prop myself up on my elbow. “We take shifts.”
“Stubborn.”
“You need sleep, too.”
“Fine.” He sighs, tucking my head into the crook of his neck. “I’ll wake you.”
“You won’t.”
“You know me too well.”
I huff, tracing idle patterns on his chest, following the ridges of muscle and scattered scars. “Can I ask you something?”
His hand strokes my hair lazily. “Mm.”
“Have you…” I’m quiet for a moment, gathering courage. “Ever done this before? With other women. I mean… obviously, you have. That was stupid. But—”
“I have.”
“A lot?”
“Some.” He tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Does it matter?”
“No. Maybe.” I press my face back against his shoulder. “I just—You clearly knew what you were doing.”
And they probably didn’t leave you hanging, not like me. He probably had amazing sex with them while he doesn’t even want me to. How can I keep up with that?
“There’ve been others,” he says. “Yeah. Some serious, most not. What about you?”
My throat constricts. “I—My parents kept me on a short leash. The only guys I met were ones they approved of.”
“Like Cameron.”
“Like Cameron.” I laugh, but it comes out hollow.
“And now?”
“Zombies kind of put dating on the back burner. Don’t you think?”
“Makes sense.” He continues stroking my hair, the rhythm steady and soothing.
“Relationships wouldn’t work, right?”
His hand stills for a fraction of a second before resuming. “Right.”
Right. It was just a distraction from the apocalypse. We keep each other warm in a world where we can’t leave the fire or lights on. Practical.
His hand catches mine, stilling it against his skin. “You should sleep.”
I nod, swallowing hard. “Good night.”
Despite my racing thoughts and determination to stay alert, the warmth of his body and the exhaustion of the day pull me under.
A scratching wakes me first. Not the soothing one of Julien’s hands. A faint scraping sound, like nails on wood.
I blink into darkness, momentarily disoriented. Julien’s gone.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
I tense, fully awake now. “Julien?”
A shadow moves, and suddenly, he is by my side, hand covering my mouth. He nods toward the window.
The scratching comes again, more insistent this time, followed by a low whine that raises the hair on my arms. Not human. Definitely not human.
“Get dressed.” His lips brush my ear. “Quietly.”
I slip from the bed, the floor cold beneath my bare feet. My clothes are still damp, hanging by the dead fireplace. Luckily, my underwear is almost dry, and I have shoes. The scratching sound comes again, this time at the door.
Fuck.
I grab Julien’s shirt next. It falls to mid-thigh, better than nothing. Crouching, I move back to Julien’s side and grab my knife from the nightstand.
“What is that?” My voice barely rises above a whisper.
He shakes his head, keeping his body to the side of the frame, carefully pulling back the edge of the curtain to peer outside.
His sharp intake of breath doesn’t reassure me.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
He grabs my wrist, tugging me next to him. “Look. Careful.”
I edge toward the narrow gap in the curtains.
What I see stops my breath.
Moonlight illuminates the clearing outside our cabin, casting everything in silvery blue.
Five, no—six figures move across the open space.
Zombies, but unlike any I’ve seen before.
They move on all fours, backs hunched unnaturally, heads low to the ground.
Their movements are wrong. Jerky yet coordinated, almost animal-like.
One lifts its head, and I see its face. It has human features stretched and distorted, mouth hanging open to reveal blackened teeth.
“What the fuck,” I whisper. “Are those—”
“I don’t know.”
One of them approaches our porch, sniffing along the base of the cabin. Its spine juts sharply through torn clothing, legs bent at uncomfortable angles as if broken and reset wrong.
“It’s like they’re hunting,” Julien murmurs.
The realization chills my blood. Regular zombies shamble mindlessly, following sound or movement, but these—they’re tracking something. Us?
A movement across the clearing catches my eye. In the window of the opposite cabin, the one we checked earlier with the sleeping bags, a face appears. A man, maybe mid-thirties, dark hair and beard. He raises his hand, making a sharp cutting motion across his throat, then points down.
“He’s telling us to stay put, get low.” Julien yanks me away from the window.
“He wasn’t here earlier.”
“Must have arrived after us.” Julien guides me toward the center of the room, away from all windows. “He might know more about these things.”
A heavy thud against our porch makes us both freeze. Something scrapes across the wooden boards, followed by sniffing sounds beneath the door. My grip tightens on the knife, knuckles whitening. I force myself to breathe quietly through my nose, counting each inhale.
One. Two. Three.
“Could be the fish they’re smelling,” Julien says.
“Or us.”
He positions himself between me and the door, machete raised. We wait, muscles coiled tight as springs. Its shadow is visible beneath the door crack as it sniffs along the threshold.
A high-pitched scream shatters the silence. One that sounds like a… child.
My stomach drops to my feet.
Howls sound from the clearing, answered by several more. The shadow beneath our door disappears, bolting toward the source of the scream.
“There are kids here?” I rush back to the window.
The pack of wolf zombies converges on another smaller cabin down the hill on the other side. Wood groans as they throw themselves against it, claws raking down the logs. Another scream joins the first, a woman’s this time, and my heart races.
“We have to help them.” I move toward the door.
Julien catches my arm. “Those things will tear us apart before we get halfway.”
I stare at him. They look like wolves. They definitely howl like ones. They move in a pack. “What are wolves afraid of?”
“What?”
“Regular wolves. What scares them?”
His eyes narrow, understanding dawning. “You want to—”
“Fire.” I turn toward the fireplace, where embers still glow orange in the darkness. “Torches. Anything big enough to keep them at bay.”
I cross to the hearth and grab one of the longer firewood logs, partially burned at one end.
Julien moves to the kitchenette, rummaging through drawers. “Cooking oil or alcohol should work. Stay here.” He disappears while I check the window again.
The man from the other cabin has emerged, a hunting rifle clutched in his hands. He moves cautiously along the tree line, trying to circle toward the cabin under attack, not yet attracting the wolf zombies’ attention.
“Hurry,” I call softly. “That guy’s trying to help them.”
Julien returns with another towel and a plastic bottle. “Rubbing alcohol.”
“Perfect.” I help him wrap it tightly around the end of the log.
His hands work quickly. “You realize we’re betting our lives on the hope that these things behave like actual wolves.” He pours the alcohol over the wrapped fabric.
“Got a better idea?”
His mouth twitches. “No.”
I glance out the window again. The man with the rifle has moved closer to the besieged cabin, but one of the zombies has noticed him, head lifting to track his movement.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” I say. “We need to go now.”
Julien finishes the torch, handing it to me along with my knife. “Here.”
“What about you?”
He points to his machete. “I’ll manage.”
We move toward the door, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Three steps in, Julien pivots.
I barely have time to register the movement before his hand is in my hair, tilting my head back, and his mouth crashes against mine.
The kiss is hard and fast, almost bruising in its intensity.
A claiming.
A promise.
And over way too soon.
“Stay close to me,” he whispers against my lips, voice rough.
My heart thunders in my chest. “Always.”
He releases me, strikes a match against the doorframe, and touches it to the torch. The fabric catches instantly, flames leaping up with a whoosh that illuminates the cabin in flickering orange. Heat pulses against my face as I grip the makeshift torch tighter.
“Ready?” Julien asks.
No. Not even close. But I nod anyway.
He opens the door.
Cold night air hits me like a slap. We move onto the porch, Julien slightly ahead of me, his body tense and ready. The wolf zombies are still focused on the other cabin, claws scrabbling against the logs, throaty growls rising into the night.
“Hey!” The man with the rifle calls out, drawing their attention. “Over here!”
All six heads swivel toward him in unison.
“Run!” I shout, waving the torch as we sprint across the clearing.
The wolf zombies hesitate, caught between prey. Two break off from the pack, loping toward the man, while the others drop to all fours, heads swinging between us and the cabin they were attacking.
I reach the man just as the first zombie lunges at him. I thrust the torch forward, flames licking at the creature’s face. It recoils with a high-pitched whine, skittering backward on all fours. And its eyes—
Calculating. Clear in a way the regular dead aren’t.
The man moves to stand with his back to mine and Julien’s, forming a triangle with the torch at the center. The wolf zombies circle us, growling and snapping, but keeping their distance from the flames.
One zombie, larger than the others with half its face torn away, edges closer despite the flames. It tilts its head, like it’s… studying us?
“They’re smarter than regular zombies,” the man says, rifle trained on the nearest creature. “Don’t—”
Suddenly, it darts in, snapping its jaws before retreating.
Another one does the same on Julien’s side. He pivots, swinging the machete in a wide arc that catches the creature across its outstretched arm. Black ichor sprays from the wound, and the zombie flinches, limping back.
The larger one—the leader?—makes a series of clicking noises, head cocked at an unnatural angle. The others respond with similar clicks and growls, a macabre conversation taking place before our eyes.
“Are they communicating?” I ask.
“Looks like it,” Julien says, machete raised defensively.
The leader clicks again, more urgently this time. As one, the pack begins to back away, still facing us but creating distance. They move with eerie coordination, retreating toward the gate we entered through earlier.
“That’s new,” the man says, gun still raised.
One by one, they slip through the opening until only the leader remains. It rises to its full height, eyes fixed on us, giving us one last snarl before disappearing after its pack.
As soon as the last zombie fades into the trees, the man breaks from our circle, sprinting toward the gate. He shoves it closed, winding the chain through the metal links and securing it with the padlock. “That should hold them.”
I lower the torch, my arm starting to shake. “What were those things?”
“I call them wolves.” The man turns back to us, rifle pointed safely at the ground. “First saw them two days ago. They hunt in packs, seem smarter than the regular dead ones. Quick thinking with the fire. Saved our asses.”
“How many of you are there?” Julien asks.
“Just three. Me, my sister, and her kid.” He gestures toward the cabin that the wolves were attacking. “Ramirez. Used to be park ranger here.”
Julien nods once. “Julien. This is Dakota.”
I manage a weak smile. Wolf zombies. Evolved dead that hunt in packs. As if regular zombies weren’t bad enough.
“You two planning on staying here?” Ramirez asks.
“For now,” Julien says. “We’re waiting for the rest of our group.”
Ramirez’s eyes flick between us, assessing. “More of you coming?”
I step closer to Julien, suddenly wary of this stranger’s interest. “Yes. They should be here already, actually.”
“Haven’t seen anyone else.” Ramirez shifts his rifle to his other shoulder. “But—”
From the cabin across the clearing, a door opens. A woman peers out, a small figure clutched against her. “Is it safe?”
“For now,” Ramirez calls back. “Got some help.”
The woman steps back inside, closing the door firmly.
“Should get back to them,” Ramirez says. “Kid’s pretty shaken up. But we will talk tomorrow. Reinforce the gate. Those things—” he nods toward the forest “—they’ll be back.”
With that, he turns and jogs back toward his cabin, leaving Julien and me standing in the clearing with our torch burning lower by the minute.
Julien’s hand finds the small of my back. “Let’s get inside before anything else decides to pay us a visit.”
“I’m tired.”
“I know.” He picks me up without a word, holding me close, and I let him. “Me too.”
I can’t shake the image of those creatures communicating with each other, retreating as a unit. And somewhere out in those woods, my sister and the others might still be trying to reach us.