Chapter Eight
N ow that we’re out here, I find it difficult to just ask Mason what is truly going on.
His direct stare is disarming, and I’m on edge too, expecting a zombie to pop out and grab us at any moment.
The sun might be bright overhead, but shadows loom as we descend into the town proper, and my gaze dances from side to side, searching for any movement.
“They won’t be out in the day,” Mason says.
He leads me down to the square again, and I pause at the sight of the butcher’s shop.
My stomach lurches. Last night’s attack was so clearly targeted.
The buildings on either side are intact, but boards have been dragged off the butcher’s and the windows are completely smashed.
But how ? Zombies can’t be controlled. That’s a fact.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Mason pauses next to me, his shoulder almost brushing mine. “You’re lucky to have survived.”
“Not luck,” I say. We had a watch. We were careful.
Mason looks at me, then back at the shop again. “Maybe not,” he concedes, “but many hunters in your position would have died. Come on. I found tracks this way.”
He leads me in the direction I saw many of the zombies go, towards the west of the town. I keep a tight hold on my bat. Mason has me at his back, and he doesn’t seem concerned about that at all. As far as I can see, too, he’s not carrying a weapon.
“How long have you been living here?” I ask.
“My whole life.”
“That’s…” I can’t guess his age. He’s older than me, for sure, but whether five or ten or fifteen years, I don’t know.
His hair is shorn short, and he’s so blond that for a moment when he entered the church, I thought he didn’t have eyebrows or eyelashes.
Despite his pale skin, though, he’s not going pink the way Otto would under the sun.
“Since before the outbreak,” Mason says. He flashes me a grin. “Isn’t it rude to ask a man his age?”
“Is it?”
He smiles as though I amuse him. I don’t know what to think of him at all. He told everyone he would take me back. What if I just ask him what he was doing in the square last night?
What if I just ask him about watching us arrive yesterday?
“You remember it, then?” I press.
“Do you?”
Challenge sparks in his eyes and when he comes to a stop, I stumble. He reaches for me, grabbing my arm, and the touch is dulled through my jacket and T-shirt, but it’s firm all the same.
“Yeah,” I say, more a breath than a word. “Yeah, I remember.”
I was so young when it happened. Not even ten years old. But I remember the panic, remember my mum being so pragmatic, level-headed, getting her and me and my dad out of there and, ultimately, some place safe.
The Citadel might have its rules, but they’re there for a reason. I wouldn’t have lasted this long outside of its walls.
“Was it bad?” Mason asks. His voice is quieter now, too.
“I—Yeah. It was bad.” I look into his face, breath catching at the interest glittering in his expression. He truly cares what I have to say? “Me and my parents, we were fine in the end, but I remember it being… hectic.”
“Hectic.” Mason rolls his lips like he’s tasting the word. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“What do you remember?”
He smiles and it’s a little sad but doesn’t reach his eyes. “I remember it being hectic, too.”
We continue up the narrow lane, following it as it winds around past an old farmhouse and towards a park. There’s a swing and slide and roundabout, all rusted, paint flaking. Beyond that, the field rolls off into a forest in the distance.
“This is as far as I could trace them.”
“But you—” I snap my jaw shut.
Mason stares at me for a moment, then wanders in the direction of the swings. “Come on.”
I follow him, bemused, and frown when he sits down, strong hands curling around the chains. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Mason, we don’t have time for this.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have long before the train comes. If we haven’t found the zombies by then…” I trail off.
Mason is spinning in a circle, the chains tangling together above him. He lets go and grins as he spins back into his original position.
“What happens then?” he asks.
“Nothing good.”
“Hm.” Mason frowns. “And that’s where you’re wanting to stay, is it?”
“What?”
He shrugs and gets off the swing, bouncing into my personal space. We’re almost the same height, and when I breathe in, I get a lungful of some warming, spicy scent. “Why did you come here, Isaac?”
“To clear this town of zombies.”
“Is that why?”
I swallow down the truth. It’s not like survivors leaving the Citadel and repopulating the rest of this landmass matters much to me. I’ve got no interest in doing that myself. I just want a safe place to rest and a life of my own.
I can only get those things if I do this job properly.
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth.
“And that’s why you came out here with me today, is it?”
“Yes,” I lie again.
His smile tells me he knows it. He’s waiting for me, challenging me, and I don’t trust what I can’t see—I can’t see a weapon and I can’t see how he managed to hide from us twice before.
“So you don’t want to just get away from that big oaf?” Mason says, and this smile is friendlier, a kind of olive branch. I don’t dare ask him about what I saw, and he’s clearly not going to answer until I do.
And what could the answer possibly be? He was spying on us, maybe? I’d expect that.
But the zombies…
Why didn’t the zombies turn on him? Why did they come after us?
“He’s part of my team,” I say instead of asking any of my questions.
“But you don’t like him.”
“He’s fine. I just—”
“No,” Mason interrupts. He’s not smiling anymore. “I wasn’t asking. You don’t like him.”
Fear skitters down my spine because he might not have a weapon on him, but that look… That look screams danger. Mason steps even closer, eyes never leaving mine.
“It’s obvious. To me anyway.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You hate it when he touches you. But you don’t want to have him think you’re weak. Or that other one. So you endure it, but your skin crawls, doesn’t it?”
He’s silent for too long. My tongue feels clumsy when I answer. “Yes.”
“And he pushes. He wants to control you. Even with everything that he wants…” His eyes roam over me slowly, but—and I know he knows it—it doesn’t feel the same as when Dane does it. “He wants control more than pleasure. More than yours anyway.”
“That’s one thing I’m never going to find out.”
Mason’s answering smile is startled and genuine for it. “Good. Come on. No zombies here. Let’s look in town again.”
I follow him at a more sedate pace, and we leave the playground behind. He’s right. I don’t know how he can read me so well, but he can, and that’s dangerous, too.
And my reaction to him is just as dangerous. I glance at him as we walk. He might not be classically handsome in the way Dane is, but what does that matter? I’m drawn to him all the same.
It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. In seven days, I’m done.
I have to be on that train.
We’re walking past a narrow alley when I hear a familiar sound, albeit one I shouldn’t hear. A gurgling, rattling groan. A zombie with half its throat rotted away, if I had to guess. Mason hears it as well; his head turns, but he doesn’t rush to intervene.
I tighten my grip on my bat. The zombie lurches out of the shadows, rags hanging from its broken, emaciated frame. Mason clutches at my coat and I push him back.
“We need to follow it,” he says.
“We need to—” It lunges.
Not for me.
For him.
I swing without thought. My bat is an extension of my arm, and I hear a satisfying crack when the metal meets bone. The zombie snarls and turns its attention to me.
“Isaac,” Mason hisses, but I shake my head.
The zombie is, like a lot of the ones I saw last night, less rotted than it should be, but I don’t have time for dissecting clues.
I catch its knees on my next swing, shattering one kneecap entirely, and then when it jerks forward again, arms outstretched, I hit those, too.
Mason leans back against the wall, apparently content to watch. He makes a quiet sound when I bring the zombie to its knees, but I hear nothing from him when I hit it in the head once, twice, three times.
Bone and brain coat my bat, but the zombie is silent. Gone.
It’s over.
Mason pushes off the wall. My heart races, chest heaving with each breath. I’m keyed up for another fight and he sees it; he stops a few feet away and takes me in.
“You destroyed it.”
“Yeah, sorry. I know we should follow it, but it’s too cramped here. We’ll have to try to find another.”
“You saved me.”
“I—” Of course I did. We’re out here searching, aren’t we? I can’t do any of that if Mason is dead. “Yeah. You don’t have—Why don’t you have a weapon?”
Mason gives me a smile that is equal parts dangerous and devastating. “Oh, who says I don’t?”