Chapter 26
Stella
It was dark when Alphie had finally calmed down enough to talk about what exactly expiation meant for the Revvers.
She still sat in the corner, with Edie beside her and a blanket around her shoulders.
I sat between Boden and Leandro on the closest cot while Fergus paced the room and chewed on his thumbnail.
“The Loved Ones require nourishment, as all living things do,” Alphie explained. “They prefer living food with humans being their only true craving. So, to appease and venerate the Loved Ones, they must be fed on a regular basis.
“Sentries are always patrolling the territory looking for outsiders,” she went on, speaking as if telling a charming bedtime story to us instead of explaining the cannibalistic rituals.
“But even Nell can’t control how many people will cross our paths.
That means that the Loved Ones are fed much more intermittently than is ideal. ”
“How frequent are regular feedings if Nell had her wish?” Boden asked.
“Once every single day,” Alphie said. “The humans must be healthy, and never more than two at a time because the Loved Ones will leave too much meat on the bone. If a body isn’t entirely devoured, sometimes it rises again as a Revenant, and there is only room in the courtyard for Loved Ones.”
“Wait.” Fergus stopped and looked down at her. “What’s the tipping point, so to speak? Or how little flesh is needed for the virus to get it moving again?”
“A brain at least,” Alphie said. “But I don’t truly know. I hated to watch the expiation ceremony.”
“Yeah, so did we,” Leandro muttered.
“The Loved Ones haven’t been fed since we arrived,” Boden realized. “If Nell prefers to feed them daily, why weren’t they fed for three days?”
“Like I said, even the Allmother can’t control the supply. There was no healthy offering available,” Alphie said. “Nell would never give them anything diseased or unworthy. That’s why expiation isn’t the automatic punishment for everyone the Sentry finds. Not all outsiders are suitable.”
“What about us?” I asked. “Would we be deemed worthy and healthy enough to be an offering?”
Alphie thought for a moment, blinking as she stared straight ahead. “Yes.”
“Trust Dougal to be the one getting sick, not me,” Fergus muttered to himself.
“Do they take volunteers?” I asked.
Alphie looked at me in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“When they come to collect two of us for the expiation, do they allow us to volunteer?” I clarified.
“What are you at, asking that?” Fergus asked. “You’ve got Fae to think of, not this.”
“I am thinking about Fae,” I said emphatically. “But there’s something you don’t know about me.”
“Stella,” Boden whispered, trying to admonish me.
“They’re going to find out anyway,” I reasoned. “And it’ll be easier if everyone knows what’s going on.”
Fergus’s eyes shot up. “You’ve kept a secret, yeah? Well, that’s altogether grand.”
“It felt like it was more of a need-to-know basis kind of thing,” I explained awkwardly. “When I was pregnant with my daughter, shortly before I gave birth to her, I was bitten by a zombie. I was infected, and I nearly turned, but Fae’s immune system helped me resist it.”
I carefully left out the fact that that had happened because Fae herself had an immunity to the virus. Remy had always insisted that the fewer people who knew about Fae’s condition the safer it was for her and the rest of us.
“It’s called microchimerism,” Edie elaborated.
She had been one of my midwives while I was sick and when I gave birth, and she had known about my condition because she was treating it as it happened.
“It’s when a fetus’s immune system helps bolster the mothers to fight off infections, even viruses and diseases. ”
“You’re saying that you were infected, but you’re not anymore?” Leandro asked, his brow crinkled in confusion. “Like you’re immune to zombies?”
“Yes,” I admitted and took a deep breath. “I can also communicate with them, but only in the most rudimentary way using pheromones. I honestly don’t have much of a grasp on how it works exactly, but the zombies won’t hurt me.”
“What?” Fergus asked.
“That’s why we haven’t seen many of the Revenant on our way here,” Alphie realized. “Usually there’s so many more out in the summer. And when they attacked the cabin and got Oakley and Juniper, you weren’t around. Have you kept them away?”
I swallowed back guilt and gave a quick nod. “I’ve been doing my best to repel them.”
“You can control two hearts,” Alphie murmured, looking at me with wide eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell us that?” Leandro asked.
“Because I warned her not to,” Boden answered for me. “People can react in strange ways when they find out about something like this. I didn’t want her to be a target for the Revvers or anyone else.”
“If Nell discovered what you could do, she’d keep you on a golden chain so you could never get away,” Alphie said, sounding both awed and menacing. “She’s been searching for someone like you for so long, and she would do anything to possess you.”
“Well, that is never going to fucking happen,” Boden said.
“So you’re heading into the courtyard to take charge of the zombies, yeah?” Fergus said, surmising the initial part of my plan. “And then what? How’re we meant to get Dougal and Fae out past those bloody thick walls?”
I took a deep breath and explained my plan, the one that I had come up with Boden while Alphie had still been sobbing and hyperventilating.
Edie and Leandro were initially dismayed and opposed, while Fergus got on board almost immediately. He and I had an understanding because he would do anything to save his brother the same way I would do anything to save my daughter.
Alphie, interestingly, only had one question. “Are you planning to hurt the Loved Ones?”
“I am not,” I said truthfully. “But I can’t predict how the Revvers themselves will act when the Loved Ones are unleashed.”
“So who’s the second then?” Fergus asked when the other details had been sorted out. “They usually offer up two, yeah?”
“I am,” Boden said without waiting for anyone else to answer.
I frowned at him. “We talked about this. I would rather you stay back in case something happens to me, so someone is here for Fae.”
“Edie’s here, and I know Fergus and Leandro wouldn’t leave Fae behind, either,” Boden said.
“The only way I’m going out those bloody walls is if both Dougal and Fae are with me,” Fergus immediately promised me.
“Fae can’t lose you, too, Boden,” I insisted.
He held my gaze when he said definitively, “You were the one that told me where I go, you go. I’m with you on this all the way, and we’re both getting Fae out of here. That’s the only way this works anyway.”
And that’s how it was decided. With great resolve and many reservations, the six of us made our plan in the dark of the barracks with zombies dancing in the moonlight outside the barred windows.
In the morning, a garden shower dampened the courtyard, washing the remaining blood off the bones of yesterday’s offering.
But by afternoon, the clouds had parted enough that a salmon-orange sunlight could get through.
The courtyard was left in the shadows for most of the day, but the sky above painted a disparate picture from the Loved Ones shambling below.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” Alphie asked me as dusk slowly approached, though I didn’t know who the she was she was referring to.
Alphie had been standing at the window, staring outside for most of the day.
It didn’t seem particularly strange to me, because it was what I had been doing, too.
Boden and Leandro were trying to rest while they had a chance, and Fergus continued his pacing.
Edie sat on her cot, running through various scenarios in her head, and occasionally stretching or doing light exercise.
“Who is beautiful?” I asked.
“Her.” Alphie smiled and pointed to a female zombie a meter or two away from us.
The zombie was facing us, but by the vacancy of her eyes, it didn’t seem like she was really looking at anything.
Half of her face and scalp had rotted, but her remaining hair was wrapped with golden ribbons.
A flowy, tattered orange tunic was draped over her, but all that poked out at the bottom were literal bones for legs.
Her feet, oddly enough, still had skin, but they’d swollen into putrid bags of flesh.
“In the orange?” I asked, confused. “You think she’s beautiful?”
“She was always so beautiful,” Alphie said wistfully. “She’s my mother, Josette.”
For a moment, I tried to see the traces of humanity clinging to the ruined forms in the courtyard. But the sound of bells tolling shattered the illusion. Some of the zombies growled in anticipation, with a few already turning their attention to the north gate.
Through the thick glass, I could smell the hunger coming off the Loved Ones.
A heavy, cloying sweetness tangled with rot and copper.
It seeped through the barriers, mingling with the damp cobblestones and morning rain.
Somehow faint but potent enough that I could still taste it in the back of my throat.
The moment the bells stopped, the door to the barracks opened. Benedict and another guard burst into the room, while another two waited in the hall.
All of them were dressed in the unusual armor I had only glimpsed before.
A metal carapace covered in foot-long dull spikes – likely to repel the Loved Ones without harming them – atop coveralls made from a thick moose hide.
On their heads were football helmets with a mesh screen across the entire face.
The helmets were painted in a kaleidoscope of colors, while the rest of their armor was much more utilitarian and drab.
In addition to their usual rifles hung over their shoulders, each of the men had a spear with a jagged blade at the end.
“Nell has made her decision,” Benedict announced. With his good eye, he surveyed the six of us. “Your punishment is to be expiation, and you will atone without mercy. Two of you will be chosen for tonight’s offering.”
Boden stepped forward. “What if we volunteer?”
“Some have in the past, but it doesn’t change the fate of anyone else,” Benedict said. “Nell’s decisions are never undone.”
Boden nodded his head in understanding. “I know. I just want to get this over with.”
“Fine,” Benedict said. “Any others?”
I raised a hand. “I volunteer.”
Momentary surprised flashed in Benedict’s solitary eye, then he reached forward and grabbed me by the arm. “Let’s begin then.”
“Hey, easy!” Boden protested, and another guard grabbed him by both his arms.
“I told you that volunteering won’t change your fate,” Benedict reminded him as they roughly dragged us away.