Chapter Eleven
W e turn up nothing for the rest of the day. The remains of the zombie I destroyed have been removed, and though the shadows deepen as the sun lowers in the sky, no more emerge to attack.
And as for shadows, Mason remains mine. Dane, too, though I’m uncertain whether he wants to remain near me or to annoy Mason, who only seems more and more amused by how much he can rile Dane up.
Blake is furious the entire day, of course. Autumn and Rae are on edge, and I want to apologise, but none of this is really my fault.
The only one who shows any true interest in the matter we’re here to solve is Otto.
At some stage, Sal switches out with Callum, who follows Otto as he tries to trace where the zombie might have come from.
Otto treats him—and Lucas and Emma, for that matter—like they’re extra members of the team, and they treat him in return less coldly than the rest of us.
Still, none of that finds us another zombie.
We head up to the church again as the sun begins to set and Mason vanishes into the bowels of the building once the sky is dark, though not without sending me another heated look.
I expect Dane to bother me, but he doesn’t, just snaps out orders about who’s on watch first.
I’m taking the middle watch of the night with Otto. Never mind that Callum and Sal seem to have been left up here to keep an eye on us. No, that isn’t fair. Dane is right to have us protect ourselves; we cannot trust the others here yet.
The middle watch is the worst, of course.
A few hours’ sleep before, a few hours’ sleep after, because Nia has already agreed to let us out to hunt tomorrow.
Despite the sleep I got last night, I’m exhausted again, less from any physical exertion and more from the emotional whiplash I’m feeling from being pulled between Mason and Dane.
I stretch out on my back and settle my hands on my stomach. Moonlight filters through the stained glass window, shattering colours across the church floor. Autumn and Rae are on the first watch, and I hear them murmuring a few feet away.
Mason is an enigma to me, and though I’m still not certain why I saw him that first night, that question matters less and less.
He did not back down to Dane at all today, and the expressions that crossed his face—heat rushes through me, tension quivering in my stomach.
I do not believe he would hurt me, though I’m not certain why that is the decision he has come to.
But Dane? I think he could kill Dane. I think he just might.
I sleep fitfully, and Rae wakes me with a gentle shake when it’s time for my watch. Otto is already sitting on a pew. Sal is gone, but Callum remains, watching Otto from his post against the church wall.
“All quiet?” I murmur to Rae.
Blake snores quietly behind me; I’ve never heard that from him before.
She nods and as I extract myself from my sleeping bag, she and Autumn both settle. Otto smiles faintly when I lower myself down next to him.
“Think we’ll find anything in the morning?” he asks a few minutes later.
I shrug. We should . I killed that one zombie. They’re so rarely found alone, especially in that state.
Besides, we all saw the horde.
Otto studies my face. His eyes flick briefly to Callum when he turns his head to face forward, and Callum is still unblinkingly watching us both.
“I hope so,” I mutter. We can all feel it. Even Autumn, and she has no experience to compare this job to.
Something is terribly wrong here. They’re all hiding something from us, hiding it between reasonable words and reasonable tones—all except Mason, who doesn’t care that I know he’s hiding things because he already knows I won’t push him.
It’s not fear. I don’t want to upset him because I don’t want him to be upset.
I pull a face, staring into shadows at the corner of the church. I don’t know him well enough for that to be true, yet it is. There’s no fighting it.
“Don’t worry about it,” Otto murmurs. “We’ll get them yet.”
The day dawns grey and gloomy, and I wake to Dane’s face mere inches from my own. His hand is heavy on my shoulder, fingers digging in like he wants bruises to blossom beneath them.
“Time to get up,” he says, voice kept soft as though only the two of us are here.
I can hear the others. And when I nod and Dane moves aside, I see Mason standing in the door that leads below, expression darker than even the skies.
We all get ready quickly, keen not to lose what little light there is, and so half an hour later, we’re making our way down from the church and into Gravesend itself.
Mason strides ahead. I can’t read his face today, some distance between us I cannot surmount. Dane catches it like a hawk might and swoops in for the kill.
“Strange what they tell us back home, isn’t it?” he asks as we begin to weave our way through the narrow streets and towards the centre of town.
“What do you mean?”
“About the outbreak.”
I give him one sharp look. Someone misses a step behind us, but they don’t fall. Emma and Sal are with us today, Callum apparently getting some sleep.
“We know what happened,” I say slowly. “We were there.”
I was a child. Dane must have been a teenager, at least. Among our team, only Autumn was born after it all began, and not long after at that.
“The graves up there…”
Mason isn’t too far ahead, and I only see the way his shoulders tense because I’ve barely torn my eyes from him all morning. A barbed, ugly feeling beats against my ribs. I want him to look at me.
Why won’t he look at me?
“What about them?”
“Seems strange. Why would they look like that? Why would they be empty?”
“But the zombies…” Autumn’s quavering voice interrupts, and Dane whirls around, expression instantly furious. She swallows the rest of her words, coming to a sharp stop.
“The zombies?” Dane prompts. His sickly sweet tone is at odds with his expression. We’ve all stopped now, even Mason, who I see is looking back at us out of the corner of my eye.
For once, I can’t afford to have all my attention on him. I tighten my grip on my bat.
“I-it was a virus, wasn’t it?” Autumn says, and I’m honestly astonished that Dane’s fury can rival the certainty the Citadel has surely taught her.
“So they say,” Dane says. He smiles, quick and cruel, then turns on his heel to begin walking again.
Mason lets Dane walk past him, ignoring his sneer. His eyes bore into me instead, and his dark, flat gaze settles the neediness I’ve been unable to fight all morning.
“Best not to worry about all that,” he says and follows Dane.
I cast Autumn one final look before I scurry after Mason. Rae has her. Otto, too, and even Blake seems surprised by Dane’s outburst.
“Are you all right?” I ask, and Mason doesn’t spare me a glance. He stares straight ahead. We’re heading to the position where we left off yesterday, and at least Dane seems to remember the way.
“Perfectly well. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You—” I run my tongue over my lips and the words stick in my throat.
The next look Mason gives me is a little sharper. “Isaac,” he says, drawing out my name. “Why would I not be all right?”
“I don’t know.”
His mouth pulls like that wasn’t the right answer, and I struggle to keep up as he lengthens his strides.
In the back of my mind, I’m horrified with myself.
I hardly know Mason. For all I do know, he’s a threat, or at least wishes to be seen as one.
And here I am, chasing him around like a lost puppy.
I know better than that. I have more pride than that.
Don’t I?
It doesn’t matter. We catch up to Dane, who’s studying the alley we gathered at the end of the night before. It’s not the same one where the zombie attacked me and Mason—that was where we began.
“Where should we search, then?” Mason asks, and for a moment, I gape at him because he genuinely sounds as though he’s letting Dane take charge.
I see the glint in his eye. Dane doesn’t. He preens, chest puffing out, and gives me a lazy grin. “Work our way back up from here,” he says. “There are nine of us. Three groups of three, and we should find something.”
Mason nods. “I will accompany you and Isaac.”
Some of the wind goes out of Dane’s sails at that. I have no doubt he was going to suggest me, him, and Blake, never mind the fact that Blake despises me on a good day.
“You…”
“Nia wants us to help you, so one of us should be in each group,” Mason says and turns to the others, who’ve now reached us as well. “Emma, Sal…”
“We’ll stick close,” Emma says. She’s standing next to Otto, who glances over at Blake. Neither of them will split Rae and Autumn. I’m sure of that.
Mason looks back at Dane, eyebrows raised. All the confidence Dane had a moment ago deflates, and he clenches his jaw. Mason has just decided what we’re all doing, and at least the three of us know it.
“Fine,” Dane says. “Let’s go.”
He stomps off and I trail behind, Mason walking closer to me this time.
I watch his profile out of the corner of my eye.
I don’t know what I’ve done to anger him or upset him maybe, but I don’t like it.
I don’t like that he won’t tell me, but then I can’t really ask, not with Dane so close.
He’ll seize on any small thing and blow it out of proportion.
It doesn’t help, either, that what Dane said earlier has wormed its way into my mind. Oh, it’s not as though he had any great insight. No. The graves are strange and make no sense, considering what we’ve been told.
Why would the townspeople dig them up? Destroy everything? I might not remember the first days of the outbreak all that well, but we were not worried about the long dead. I remember that. We worried about the sick, about those who died with the virus in their systems.
The ones who came back.
A virus can’t reanimate an already dead body. How would it? There’s nothing there to bring back to life. And that applies even more at the graveyard, since many of those graves were filled decades, if not centuries, ago.