Chapter Twenty-Six
R ae wriggles out of my grip somewhere between the school and the train station. When I look back, I can’t see anyone following us, but I don’t think for a second that we’ve truly been forgotten or left alone.
I have my bat. Rae has her axe. Our packs are gone, but I don’t care about that.
We have to go. We have to get away from all this. I don’t know how I let myself get so sucked into it, but we can’t—we can’t—
“Isaac, what’s going on?” Rae asks.
I shake my head and only let out a sigh of relief when I see the train station. It’s as empty as the day we arrived, and I glance up at the old clock on the platform.
The train won’t be here for an hour.
“What happened ?” Rae insists. “I don’t understand. Why would Dane kill them all?”
“He wanted to take Mason back to the Citadel.”
“Why?”
I usher her over to one of the benches on the platform, though I’m not still when we sit. I’m twitchy, glancing at the entrance to the station, then along the tracks. They could come from any side.
Hell, Mason could send an entire horde of zombies after us if he wanted to. He could tear us to pieces.
“He’s the necromancer. Mason. He caused all this.”
Rae’s eyes flare wide. She hardly blinks as I explain everything I learnt—everything from Dane, everything Blake and I discovered inside Nia’s office.
By the time I’ve finished, I’m crying. Tears slide down my cheeks, dripping from my jaw, and my chest heaves with each breath.
Everything hurts . I’m so tired. And the worst thing of all is that part of me doesn’t really blame Mason for any of it, even if he doesn’t have regrets.
Twenty years ago, he would have been a teenager.
They said the necromancer was just trying to bring someone back.
I glance at the train station entrance again. Wouldn’t we all do that? If I asked Rae now if she could bring Autumn back, what would she be willing to sacrifice?
“We can’t go back,” Rae says, and blood rushes in my ears.
“What?”
“If everything you’ve said is true, then they’ll be waiting for us, Isaac. They’ll kill us.”
“I—” I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what to do . We stay here, then what? Will they even let us? I’ll have to see Mason all the time, and I don’t know if I want that or not.
“Isaac.” Rae reaches out gently, and another sob hiccups out of me when her hands cradle my face. “You’ve been holding everything together for us. I need you to trust me. We don’t have to stay here, but we cannot go back there.”
I inhale deeply, tears still escaping when I let that breath out again. “You’re right,” I say. She is. Of course she is. We were marked to die when we were sent up here. Even if Dane was lying about that—and I don’t think he was—do I want the Citadel to send more teams?
Do I want more people to die here?
“Come on.” Rae helps me to my feet. “We’ll talk to Nia. We’ll get our things. We can make it out here.”
“Do you want to stay?” I ask.
“I don’t know what I want to do right now. It’s all—” Rae blows out a breath. “But I don’t want to get on that train. Worse, I don’t want to die at a fucking train station, okay?”
Despite myself, I let out an amused huff. “Okay.”
We leave the train station far more dejected than we entered it. I spot Sal out of the corner of my eye as we head to the town centre, and that’s where he drops into step with us, his expression entirely sympathetic.
The climb to the church seems to take hours. My head throbs with each step, all the aches in my body making themselves known. Nothing’s broken, I don’t think, but not for Dane’s want of trying. Rae supports me, leaning her shoulder against mine.
Sal stops us just outside the gates. “No one here wants to hurt you,” he says.
“Wants to?” Rae asks.
“We won’t. Just—” He sighs. “We chose to stay, in the end. It’s a good life here, despite what you’ve seen of it.”
“You know what he did,” I say.
“I do, yeah. I’ve had more time to come to terms with it. But it’s done, Isaac. There’s no changing things.”
I press my lips together. I know that, of course. It’s not about that.
“There’s space for you here. If you want it.”
“Why would you all want us here?”
Sal shrugs. “Mason’s always been different. Distant. Even before everything, I don’t think I ever saw him smile.”
“If we stay, that doesn’t mean anything will happen between me and Mason.”
“Maybe not. I think he’ll be happy all the same.”
He slips through the gate, and I stay where I’m standing for a few moments still.
Rae squeezes my arm. “Would it really be so terrible to stay here?”
“I just—It’s all a lie. They all lied.”
Rae hums and lets out a quiet breath. “They all lied back there, too,” she says. “We just didn’t know it at the time.”
She’s not wrong. When she gently nudges me, I move, and together, we walk through the ruined graveyard and up into the church.
It’s empty. Silent. The door that leads to the stairs is partway open, inviting us down, but for a moment, we both stand by the altar, staring up at the stained glass.
“What do you think they’ll do when the train arrives?”
“Everyone here?” I ask.
“Hm.”
“Send it back. Destroy it. Whatever they’ve done before.”
“The Citadel will keep sending people up here.”
“I know.”
She sighs, and when I look at her again, her eyes are closed. I turn away and stare at the glass. It blurs, one burst of rainbow colour before my eyes, and then I close them, and when I open them again, my mind is made up.
It’s not just about staying here. I know I won’t be able to keep away from Mason if I do. He won’t keep away from me, either.
I need to know the truth about what he did. Why he did it.
And then… Who do I have to answer to but myself? My parents are long dead. I don’t have any other relatives. Friends.
“Come on, let’s go down,” I murmur. Rae swipes away a tear before she nods.
She helps me down the stairs, and I lead her to Nia’s office. We see no one along the way, and no one is waiting for us outside the door. Rae knocks.
“Come in.”
Nia is sitting behind her desk when we step inside. Truthfully, part of me is confused to find that Mason isn’t waiting with her. Where is he?
“Please sit.”
We take seats opposite her desk. I groan when I sit gingerly in the chair and Rae looks at me with no little concern.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Nia says, “but we’ll deal with that. How much do you both know?”
“Didn’t Mason tell you?”
She sighs and sits back in her chair. “No. He was not particularly forthcoming. Not when it came to you.”
“We know Mason is the necromancer. He raised the dead. The Citadel are trying to capture him, to control his power so they can keep the Citadel itself under control.” I shrug, regretting the movement the moment my shoulder hurts. “That’s the broad strokes of it, I think.”
“Sounds about right,” Nia says.
“Oh, and you’ve all been killing the teams that came up here,” I add. I’m not sure why. I want her to prove she won’t hurt us, I suppose. I’ve still got my bat, but I’ve really no intention of using it. “Blake and I found out about that.”
Nia goes for a smile, but it’s more of a grimace. “Ah. I was wondering where you got that gun.”
“Glad I did.”
“So am I.”
Rae shifts in the chair next to mine. “What now?”
“It all depends on what you want to do. Obviously, we’d rather you didn’t go back to the Citadel.
I think you can understand why it might not be the best choice for you, either.
But if you don’t want to stay here, we know of a few places with survivors that will likely last a while longer and will take you in. We’ve done that before, too.”
I jerk in surprise, ribs screaming at me when I do. “You have?”
“We didn’t kill all of them, Isaac,” Nia says gently. “Some of them did work out why they were here.”
Heat crawls up my face. I didn’t. Not until Dane fucking spelt it out for me.
“If we want to stay here, we can?” Rae asks.
“For as long as you’d like. We’d be glad to have you.”
Rae turns to me. “What do you think?”
No point asking to excuse ourselves. And I don’t fancy my chances with another group of survivors right now. Still, better to hedge our bets. “There’s nowhere else I can go yet,” I say, waving a hand at myself. “We have time?”
“That’s the one thing we have in abundance, I suppose,” Nia replies. “You know he wants to talk to you.”
I certainly don’t. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs by now, I think. I can’t promise anything when it comes to him, Isaac. The only way to be sure you’re away from him will be to leave.”
No. I don’t think even that will work. I don’t think I want it to.
“I’ll go talk to him. What did you do with—” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. Will the others simply become part of the horde?
“We’ll lay them to rest,” Nia says. “For good. For now, they’re laid out and warded. When we put them in the ground, they will stay there.”
“Can you promise that?” Rae asks. I remember the strange, jerking movements of Autumn’s body. I haven’t seen a zombie that fresh since the outbreak, and to have those dead eyes that still see … I shiver.
“Yes,” Nia says. Her sleeves are rolled up and when she reaches up to push a few strands of hair from her face, I see a blue mark on the inside of her forearm. “Beyond a doubt.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for now. I get to my feet with another faint groan, and Rae looks up at me, concerned.
“Do you want help?”
“No, I’ll be fine. Get some rest.”
She nods. I don’t know if she’ll do that, and we both know it’ll be a while before I check back in with her.
I see no one again as I wander the tunnels, then walk back up into the church. By the time I’m up there, I feel almost like I might pass out from the pain. Sweat beads on my brow. But that desire, before, to find Mason—it’s now a need .
He’s standing by the grave when I walk out into weak sunlight. The first one. The one where he tried to raise someone who was clearly the most important person in the world to him.
He stands there, head bowed, but I don’t for a second believe that he doesn’t know I’m there. Still, he makes no movement until I’m standing directly next to him, short of breath.
“Who was originally in here?” I ask.
Mason raises his head. He blinks like he’s not at all expecting the sunlight. “My mother.”
“What happened?”
“She just… she died. She was sick all my life. When I was fourteen, it finally took her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“But it still hurts.”
He looks at me and nods. “It does.”
“What happened after that?”
“After…” Mason sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “She wasn’t from here, my mother. She moved when she was pregnant with me. I think she knew already that I’d be different, and she wanted to give me the best chance she could.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you. Magic, in the earth. She knew it would help me.”
“So she came here.”
“Yes. And she was sick, but she taught me all she knew. And after she died, they were looking for someone to take me, but all I had was our house and her books, and I knew there was no one out there who would claim me anyway, so—”
He reaches out and steadies me when I sway where we’re standing.
“You came here,” I whisper.
“I came here. I knew what I was capable of. Our neighbour’s cat got hit by a car when I was ten. My mother showed me how to raise it again. I thought… I thought it would be the same.”
When the back of his hand nudges mine, I thread our fingers together. Mason swallows hard.
“It wasn’t. You don’t understand until you try it. The power that’s involved in bringing a person back, an adult with all their complexity and complications… It tried to suck me in. It tried to take me in exchange. And that wasn’t what I wanted either. All I wanted was my mother.”
“Did you bring her back?”
He nods. “Her and the entire graveyard. I panicked. I fought. And the power in me, the power in this town I’d spent all my life in…
It was enough to keep me here, but the magic trying to pull me in had to go somewhere, and it rebounded.
The graves opened. And everyone in the town either carried my curse, or the land protected them. ”
“It gave them magic, too.”
“Just a touch. Nothing like what I have. Enough to give them the advantage.”
“They know about all of this?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “The broad strokes, at least. Nia knows all of it. She found me here after…”
“What happened to your mother?”
Mason grimaces and pushes his sleeve up, revealing that tear of a scar on his forearm. “She was already gone when I brought her back. I fought off the power, unleashed the curse, and she tried to tear me to pieces.”
“You destroyed her again?”
Mason’s eyes shine as he nods. He tugs his sleeve down again and then clutches at my hand as though he needs the lifeline.
“What about the rest of the townspeople?”
“I saved as many as I could. The curse was never born of my magic. It’s not tied to me. We killed the zombies we could here, after we begged the government—fuck, everyone —for help, and then we cut ourselves off.”
“Can you stop the others?”
“Not all of them in one fell swoop. If we had a horde here, I could control it or destroy it. I can kill them like you do, as well.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Mason frowns at me. “I thought you’d be angry. I thought you’d leave.”
“Would you have let me?”
I look him full in the face. His eyes widen. I don’t know what has him so surprised. Is he looking at my injuries now? Does he see the quiet resignation at the history he’s just told me?
Has he realised I’m not going to leave him?
I can’t. More importantly, I don’t want to.
Standing next to his mother’s empty grave, the epicentre of the thing that destroyed so many lives…
He didn’t mean to do it. I know he didn’t.
And I can’t even be angry that, given the chance to go back and change things, he wouldn’t, because he couldn’t give up on her, either.
“Yes,” Mason says, and the word sounds as though it truly pains him. “Yes, if that’s what you wanted. What you want.”
“I don’t.” I turn my gaze back to that broken headstone.
My life changed right when Mason’s did. And then, a little later, it changed again.
I threw myself into clearing towns, hunting zombies, because it felt like the right thing to do.
I swallow hard. It felt like the only way I might ever be close to my mother again, truth be told.
But who was I serving? The Citadel has kept even the survivors it sent back out under its thumb.
What if we could do something that was actually useful? “But what are we going to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you plan to clean up this mess you’ve made?”