Chapter Three
I clatter up the street, following its strange winding shape as I chase the man. Dark fabric flutters around a corner, taunting me. I put on a burst of speed. Breath saws in and out of my throat. I have him! I have—
I turn down an alley and hit a dead end. The man is nowhere to be seen. My heart pounds against my ribs, and I stare up at the stone wall before me, my chest hollowed out and raw.
Where did he go?
Footsteps sound on the cobblestones behind me a few seconds later. The heft of them tells me Dane has caught up.
“What the fuck , Isaac?” he hisses, slowing. He’s breathing faster than me. “You can’t just run off like that!”
“I saw someone.” My voice is faint enough to float away on the wind. I touch the wall. Rough grit strokes against my fingers. It’s solid. Real. I don’t know what else I expected. “Someone living.”
Dane looms over my shoulder like a dark thundercloud. When I glance back at him, he scowls, searching my face. For once, he can’t read me, and he doesn’t like it.
“So? You still can’t run off. What if he’d led you into a trap?”
No. The glimpse I got of him told me he hadn’t meant to be seen. Otherwise, why run? Leading us into traps… That would only work once.
The others come to a stop at the end of the alley. I frown. Slow. I don’t like that.
“I don’t know where he could have gone,” I say. “I saw him come down here.”
“Well, he’s not here now,” Blake snaps. He thinks me incompetent, but I know better. So does Dane, even when Blake looks at him for guidance. “I thought we weren’t coming up here today? We don’t know what might be around.”
“Yeah,” Dane replies vaguely. He doesn’t look at Blake. He doesn’t look away from me at all. His fixed gaze unsettles me even as Blake’s increasing irritation makes my own rise. “Come on. Let’s get set up in the shop.”
I follow him out of the alley and then stop. The church. The stranger could be in any of these houses, but the church is distant and secure and, more importantly…
It feels right. My entire body prickles with awareness. I need to go up there. Today.
“Isaac.” Dane’s voice is sharp like a gunshot, and when I only look at him, anger finally cracks his facade. It’s the first time it’s been aimed at me.
“He might have gone up to the church.”
“No. No. We aren’t going up there. Not today.”
“You’d rather sleep with a survivor running around?” I counter. “He might be able to get into all the buildings here.”
“So?” Blake sneers. “We’ll have a watch.”
I look up at the church again. The shadows. They moved , didn’t they? I didn’t imagine that.
No one from the Citadel has much in the way of imagination anymore.
“I’ll go alone then,” I say, and like when I was looking at that wall, the stranger gone, I feel an odd disconnect between my mind and my body. I’m already following him. I’m already on the way.
“Isaac,” someone says, and when I turn my head, Rae is standing close, dark eyes searching my face. “What did you see?”
“A man. White. Taller than me.”
“You’re sure he was human?”
“Yes.” I spit the word. I know the difference between human and not.
“Let him do whatever this is alone,” Blake calls, further back.
“We’ve got time,” I say. The sun is still relatively high. “It’s a good position to scout from. See if anything else is moving in this town.”
Rae’s sigh is resigned. Dane grumbles. After a moment, she shifts on her feet. “You really think this is a good idea?” she asks me.
Oh, definitely not. The risk to our lives isn’t that high, I think, but it’s not nothing, and staying in the town centre would almost certainly be safer. If that man I saw isn’t alone, we truly could be lambs to the slaughter.
But curiosity has its hooks in me, rending me open. Not just about the man—though I can’t fight this sudden urge I have to set eyes on him again—but about this unnatural town. If we spot no movement at all, something is certainly wrong here.
“We need to see if the area is clear,” I say, “and this is the easiest way. We can search the church properly tomorrow, when we have more light.”
It’s up to Dane, of course, but also it isn’t. On paper, he’s our leader, but all of us, save perhaps Autumn, know that things are different on the ground. He’s older and good at killing. That’s why they chose him.
Things can change in an instant here. They often do. And in reality, either the most experienced person or the person who most likes to kill takes charge.
I’ve been on both kinds of teams. Dane doesn’t mind the killing—at this point, I’d say neither of us does—but he doesn’t revel in it.
“Fine,” Dane says. Blake sputters, outraged, already knowing what he’ll say next. “Let’s go.”
The path becomes steeper the closer we get to the church, and it takes almost half an hour for us to reach the gates. Dane has moved to the front. He comes to a sudden stop as he steps through the wrought iron, and as we all take in the sight that greets us, we halt, too.
“What the fuck?” Rae mutters.
I’ve seen nothing like this in any town we’ve visited before. Hundreds of places, large and small, but this—
The graveyard is destroyed. All of it. Grass has grown over dirt mounds, gravestones toppled and shattered, and the force that must have taken is beyond my imagination.
Blake makes a quiet sound in the back of his throat, and it takes the rest of us a second to catch up. It isn’t just that the graveyard is destroyed.
It’s empty .
I don’t step off the path, but I lean over to look at the grave closest to where I’m standing. A coffin lies within, wood splintered and rotting. No bones. There’s nothing to indicate a corpse was ever entombed inside.
“Is this usual?” Autumn says quietly to Rae.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rae replies. Quickly. Too quickly. Autumn knows it too, eyes sharp, and her frown only deepens.
I was wrong about the doors being closed. They’re open. Well, one is. The other lies across the steps in broken pieces.
“Let’s check inside,” Dane says.
Otto and Blake move with him, and Otto is the first to gingerly climb over the mess and into the church. Blake is next to be swallowed up by darkness.
I can’t see or hear any other signs of movement within. If the man is here, chances are he’s hiding, and I doubt we’ll find him today. He knows this town better than we do.
Rae sidles my way. Autumn is still standing on the path, but when Dane gestures at her impatiently, she scurries over to him and into the church too.
“What is all this?” Rae asks.
“I don’t know.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dane linger in the church doorway, watching us, before he vanishes inside with the rest.
I survey the graveyard again, and I don’t like the thoughts bubbling up inside of me. This isn’t how zombies work. It just isn’t. If someone is infected, they die and they turn. There have been reports of freshly dead—as in, within minutes—turning too, if the zombies dig in early.
But this? I step gingerly over the grass and study one of the gravestones. Eighteen ninety-three. It’s too long ago. Far too long. There would have been nothing within but bones.
Rae darts a look up at the church as though checking we’re alone. “You don’t think…?”
I shake my head, pressing my lips together. She can’t voice what she’s thinking aloud. Voicing it makes it real, makes the idea more likely to escape, and at best the others would hear and ignore it, but at worst…
The Citadel does not tolerate dissention. Even from its hunters.
I leave Rae standing by the path and slowly wander among the graves. Every single one of them appears to have burst open years before. Wood erupts from the earth, edges worn away by time and the elements, but still, I’m careful where I step.
Not a peep reaches me from inside the church, but that’s not strange at all. If Otto, Dane, and Blake haven’t swept the entire place, they need to be quiet. I adjust my grip on my bat. Don’t think I’ll come across anything out here, but I can’t be certain.
One lap of the graveyard tells me the damage has an epicentre. I pause by that grave, just to the left side of the church. Autumn appears in the doorway. “All clear,” she says. “There’s a locked door, but we can’t hear movement.”
Locked. Still locked? I frown. Maybe the man is on the other side of it, but this doesn’t feel like a trap.
Rae heads up to meet her and I circle the grave I’ve found. I’m right about what I can see. I’m sure of that. All the damage came from this one point, rippling through the earth and leaving destruction in its wake.
The gravestone that remains is small, plain. Moss adorns it. Dirt and rain have damaged its surface, but I reach down and brush debris aside.
The first name is entirely pitted away. I make out the surname. Hoar. The dates, too—only the years are readable.
Nineteen seventy-two. Twenty ten. Whoever they were, they weren’t that old when they died. And they died the same year everything began, all this—
“Isaac,” Rae calls. “Come on. Let’s check this place out.”
I give the gravestone one last lingering look before I walk up to meet her.