Chapter 27
Stella
The journey through the narrow corridors to the north gate was brief. The guards walked quickly and half-carried me/half-dragged me along before tossing me on the floor in a staging area.
“You okay?” Boden asked, as he fell hard on the cobblestone beside me.
“So far,” I mumbled.
As I glanced around, I realized we weren’t in a room but an arched passageway that ran through the barracks, connecting the interior Loved Ones courtyard with the community of Fort Lately.
Both ends of the passage were closed off by sturdy gates with locks and crossbars, but the cloying hunger pheromones permeated even more.
The area was dimly lit by a candle ring hanging from the ceiling.
I was studying the locks as best I could when a guard suddenly grabbed me and yanked me to my feet.
Boden protested a moment before another guard grabbed him the same way.
Benedict walked over to the wall, and that’s when I noticed the row of blades and spears hanging on it.
“What are you doing?” Boden asked, straining futilely against the guard that held his arms behind his back. “You’re going to feed us to fucking zombies. Why do you gotta torture us first?”
“Because you refuse to show reverence,” Benedict said as he chose a skinning knife with a sharp, curved blade.
When he approached me, Boden cursed at him, but I knew this was a part of the ritual we’d have to get through. There was no way around it, so I closed my eyes and I thought of Max and of Fae and the French lullaby I sang to her at night.
Benedict cut my pants first with a rough jerking motion, leaving me with jagged shorts that landed just above the knee. Then he sliced down my calf, one quick cut on each side.
“This is barbaric,” Boden growled at the guards. “You’re a disgusting disgrace to the human race.”
Benedict said nothing as he slashed the blade across the soft underside of my forearms. I opened my eyes then to see him grinning smugly down at me.
“I’m going to kill you,” Boden warned him in a low growl.
“That sounds damn near impossible, since you won’t even be alive in a few minutes,” Benedict sneered at him as he went to work, repeating the same quick cuts on Boden’s legs and arms. “Although, I’ve always thought those last few moments must feel like a lifetime.”
“I only need to live a minute longer than you,” Boden replied, and Benedict’s sneer faltered slightly.
“Let’s get this over with,” Benedict said, speaking to the other sentries. “Nell likes her punishments carried out swiftly.”
It took two guards to lift the crossbar, but the gates appeared to swing open with relative ease. Since neither Boden or I were screaming or causing a commotion, the zombies were much slower to notice and start their shamble toward us.
The guard holding me was fairly strong, and he tossed me out into the courtyard like I was nothing. I landed roughly on the ground, scraping my fresh wounds painfully across the stones.
Boden was much bigger than I was, so his guard hadn’t been able to throw him as far. He landed a couple meters from the gate with an audible thud.
I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could, because I had to get to him. It was the only way I knew I could protect him.
Before I even reached him, the gates had slammed shut behind us.
Boden grimaced as I crouched down beside him, and he said, “Gates shut and the zombies are coming.”
“I know,” I said, helping him up. “Stay close to me. I can’t be super precise with directions when it comes to zombies, and I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire.”
We were both on our feet, so I finally looked up to make sure Nell was witnessing all of this. She stood on the second-story balcony in her garish robes, a serene smile on her face as she watched her judgements come to pass.
The zombies were closing in around us, but I stared up at Nell, meeting her gaze with a smile of my own.
Be still, I thought, willing my body to emit a potent musk. I never took my eyes off Nell, but I could hear the zombies falling silent around me. No hungry groans or shuffling steps. Even their jewelry stopped jingling as they went complete still.
Nell’s smile turned to confusion then shock and horror. The Revvers on the balcony with her began to murmur and whisper among themselves.
“How have you done this?” Nell shouted down at me. “What have you done to the Loved Ones?”
“I decided that they should be still,” I replied simply.
“Tell me what you have done!” Nell yelled, sounding more enraged.
“Release me and my friends, including my daughter and Dougal, and I will release your Loved Ones,” I said, hoping she would take my first offer. It was the only one without bloodshed.
Nell let out a humorless laugh. “That is not how things work here. I am the Allmother. You abide by my decisions, and there is not deviation. If you do not tell me what I wish to know, then I will have my Sentries convert your Expiation to an Execution.”
“Release us, and no one needs to be hurt!” I yelled, desperately imploring her now. “Your people and your Loved Ones will be safe.”
For some reason, my pleas seemed to only make Nell angrier. She scowled and shouted, “Sentries! Open the gates and complete this Execution!”
“Stay close,” I reminded Boden again, and I grabbed his hand.
As the gates creaked open, Benedict strode in with three other guards at his side. They took deliberate steps walking between the unmoving zombies on their way toward us, occasionally giving an uncertain glance around them.
Chase the threat away, I thought, but the pheromones that came from me smelled like rage and hunger.
The courtyard was small enough that all my commands reached them near instantaneously, and when they came to life, they practically moved in unison. The zombies ran around me and Boden – leaving us a safe island in the center of chaos – as they all overwhelmed the guards.
Benedict managed to break away and race back toward the passageway. If he locked the north gate again, it would make the rest of our plan so much harder.
Run, I commanded, and the zombies surged forward, knocking Benedict down as they raced into the passageway.
“Let’s go,” I said, still holding Boden’s hand to keep him close to me.
We moved with the horde, an untouched eye of the storm while zombies swarmed around us like a hurricane.
Benedict was on the floor of the passageway, his armor protecting him from being trampled by the zombies.
“Wait,” Boden said as I started to walk by Benedict.
The zombies parted around us when I did, and Benedict was on his back, rocking like a turtle on the dull spikes. When Boden bent down and picked up a discarded spear off the floor, Benedict held up his gloved hands out in front of him, palms out.
“Please, Nell was the one who decided,” Benedict tried to plead for his life.
“Now I’m the one who decides,” Boden said flatly.
In one swift motion, he drove the spear through the mesh of Benedict’s helmet. Straight into his good eye, deep enough to kill. Boden pulled the spear out, with the eyeball and some brain matter still stuck to the spike, then motioned for us to go on.
The zombies were all piled up at the gate at the other end, slamming into it as they tried to escape, so I stilled them long enough that Boden and I could get through. We removed the crossbar, and then I commanded the zombies to run again.
The gates popped open, and the Loved Ones were unleashed on Fort Lately.