Chapter 2
Stella
The months on the boat made the soft ground feel unusually steady under my boots.
Boden watched me with an amused smirk as I took my first steps down the well-worn trail from where the shuttle boats went ashore.
He was half-a-meter in front of me, his backpack slung over his shoulders, and his machete sheathed on his hip.
The sun had already warmed the day enough that he’d rolled up the sleeves on his flannel shirt.
“It might take you a minute to get yer land legs back,” he said with an exaggerated pirate drawl. “Maybe you ought to get off the river more often.”
“My sea legs suit me fine, since I don’t really want to accompany you on any hunts,” I reasoned.
That was one of Boden’s main roles in Barbarabelle’s society. He hunted animals for food, he made repairs around the boat, and he would go on land to dispatch the zombies if they got too close to our livestock or the gardens.
The virus that caused the zombie infection gave them hydrophobia, so they rarely came close to the river in any situation. Not that zombies had been too much of a problem for me since I gave birth to Fae.
“Besides, with all the walking we have to do, I’ll get over it fast,” I assured him.
Boden smiled at me over his shoulder as we walked. “If you say so, Hopalong Cassidy.”
“Hopalong Cassidy? Who is that?” I asked.
He paused, thinking for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know actually. It was something that my dad used to say when I was a kid after I broke my leg. I think it might’ve been an old cowboy with a limp or something.”
By the time we stopped for lunch, I felt completely back to normal, albeit tired and hungry. While I kept very active on the boat with all the chores and raising a toddler, I wasn’t used to hiking so many kilometers on overgrown, broken asphalt. And I was always hungry.
“We can campout whenever you want,” Boden said in the late afternoon, when my pace had started to slow.
I brushed him off with, “I wanted to wait until dark.”
“That’s not for another four hours. And we have another long day of walking tomorrow,” he said as if I didn’t know that already.
“Yeah, my feet might hurt, but I’ve still got plenty of energy to keep me going for the day,” I insisted.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him studying me, as if he didn’t quite believe me. “That’s fair, but I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard in the early days and ending up with an injury or exhaustion.”
“I will be careful,” I promised him. “But for now, let’s keep to the plan we made. Campout from dusk until dawn, and walk as much as we can the rest of the time.”
He waited a beat before reluctantly acquiescing with a heavy sigh. “Okay.”
So, for the first few days, we walked on, from just after first light until twilight, minus breaks scattered throughout.
I didn’t complain about the ache in my shoulders from my pack or the throbbing of my feet.
The sun was hot overhead, and my cheeks were sunburnt.
When it started dipping toward the horizon, with the tall pine trees casting long shadows over us, there was some relief in the heat, and that was nice.
“Okay, now we really ought to start looking for someplace to sleep,” Boden said one night as dusk rapidly approached, and I was about to agree with him when I saw the sign at the side of the road.
It was splattered in the brick red color of either rust or blood, or most likely a little of both. But the words were still legible underneath: Tarik Copper Mine: A Weiland-Uylee Corp with the word Next Exit written underneath.
“Let’s wait until the mine,” I suggested. “There are plenty of buildings there to shelter in.”
“You really want to go to the mine again?” Boden asked, likely remembering what we’d found the last time we had been there two years ago.
I nodded fervently. “Yeah. There’s something I need to check out.”
It didn’t take long for us to reach the entrance, which was a dilapidated gravel driveway between chain link fences, but the sky had dimmed to dark orange. Beyond that were rows of buildings and abandoned machinery, almost entirely consumed by vegetation and rust.
The first time I had been here, I had been heavily pregnant, and Remy and Boden had discovered the open pit mines were filled to the brim with zombies.
The second time I had been here, I had been two months post-partum, and I had been leading hundreds and hundreds of zombies back into the open pit mines.
A mad woman bent on revenge called Mercy Loth had set the zombies free, unleashing them on the town of Emberwood. Remy had killed her, but Mercy had also left behind her unusual son, born out of a union with a zombie. His name was Chosen, and he could think and reason.
But there was no place in the world for a zombie-human offspring, and so I had trapped him with the other zombies in the open pit mine. I had hoped he could find happiness and peace with them, but I wasn’t sure if I even believed that was possible for anyone, let alone such an unusual hybrid.
“It doesn’t sound the same,” Boden commented as we walked down the long driveway toward the mine. “All the zombies together in the pit, they made this awful humming noise that made the ground vibrate. But this time I can’t hear them at all.”
He was right. Usually, when I was this close to the zombies, I could hear them. With their wheezing, groaning, and clumsy stumbling, they were audible to most people from a distance, but for me, it was something more than that.
In truth, it wasn’t so much hearing them as smelling them. The pheromones they left in the air were how they communicated with each other, not unlike ants or bees. None of the uninfected people around me could notice the scent, but to me, it was clear and distinct.
It hadn’t always been like that. Not until after I was pregnant with Fae and bitten by a zombie.
Max and Remy were biological siblings and both immune to the lyssavirus.
Since Max was Fae’s father, he had apparently given that same immunity to her.
Because after I was bitten by a zombie, I fell ill, but the baby’s resistance passed through me.
My midwife had explained it as something called microchimerism that can occur in pregnancy, albeit very rarely. Fetal cells cross the placenta, entering the mother’s body, and they can affect her immune system and fight infections.
I survived, and now I had a connection to the zombies that I didn’t fully understand. Parts of it were definitely positive, like my ability to command them via pheromones, but there had been strange changes to me since then.
I craved meat, especially raw or undercooked, in a way that could never be fully satiated. The hunger was with me when I awoke and invaded my dreams when I slept, like an angry little gremlin that lived in the pit of my stomach, demanding more, more, more.
Mostly, I’d learned to ignore it, because that was all I could do. I ate my fill when I had the chance, making my belly and thighs thick and soft even on our relatively rationed diet.
The zombies were a part of me now, the way I was a part of Rafaella.
As we grew closer to the open-pit mine, I could see the vast stepped crater a hundred times the size of the Barbarabelle. I inhaled deeply, and I caught a faint scent. Even faded, it was acrid and smoky, with something musky and rotten underneath.
But as soon as I breathed in, my heart began racing, and panic crackled through my brain like a lightning bolt across the sky. I stopped short, and Boden looked back at me, his eyes darkening with concern.
“What is it?” he asked, because he knew about my connection to the zombies. “What are they telling you?”
“It’s fear and pain,” I replied.
My legs wanted to run. An indescribable urge hit as soon as I’d inhaled. It was as if the sensation of pins and needles somehow had the ability to control my movement, and it took effort for me to hold myself back.
But then, I didn’t really want to anymore. The panic and urge were so much, and the pit was so close, and I had to see if it was as it had been when I left it.
I ran forward, the aches of my feet and legs suddenly forgotten, and I could hear Boden jogging after me.
Before we even reached the edge of the open pit, I could see the blackened piles of ash and bone.
The pheromones were still hazy, but there was an overpowering odor that anyone could smell.
Smoky ash, putrid sulfur, and an undeniable sweetness all mixed together in a sickening stench.
When we reached the edge, it was enough that Boden had put his arm over his nose to block it.
Last time I’d been here, all the stepped levels had been filled with zombies. They still covered every square of dirt, but instead of fleshy and animated, they were unmoving black soot and charred bones.
None made a sound, but their final thoughts lingered in the ashes that clung to their remains: Fear. Pain. Run.
I shuddered and swallowed the guilt that threatened to rise up my throat in the form of bile.
“Somebody finally took care of them all,” Boden said, sounding rather relieved.
“They didn’t all need to be taken care of,” I replied thickly.
He gave me an apologetic look, then put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re thinking about that kid again?”
I blinked and turned away. I had made my choice a long time ago when I left Chosen here and went back to my family.
I couldn’t risk my newborn daughter around a zombie hybrid, and I couldn’t abandon her for a child I didn’t know.
No one would have allowed him onto the Barbarabelle anyway.
He might have been contagious, and he could certainly summon and command zombies.
Even today, even if I’d known this is how the hybrid child’s story would end, I wouldn’t have made a different choice. I chose to protect my family first – as I always had, as I always would – and now all I could do was live with those choices.
“I bet that’s what all that smoke was about last year,” Boden commented. “Remember all those dark clouds in mid-April? It went on for a few days, and Remy was planning to investigate when it finally went out.”
“Who did it?” I asked. My back was to the pit, because I didn’t want to look anymore, and that awful prickling urge made my hands tremble.
“I don’t know. Someone with a match and a hatred of zombies,” he replied simply. Then he looked back over at me. “Come on. We need to find somewhere to camp, and I think it would be good for you to get away from this place.”
“It’s too late for us to go far.” I glanced up at the darkening sky. “Let’s just find a building.”