Chapter 16 #2
He blinks at me, surprised. Have I really been such a shitty friend that he’s shocked I’m comforting him? My hand tightens on the back of his head. I need to do better, be better, for him and for Ollie.
Ollie shifts until one of her hands clenches my jacket while the other snakes around my back to clutch Alex’s arm, silently comforting us both.
Alex’s arms tighten, and he lets out a shuddering sigh, much like the one Ollie did as he relaxes against us and closes his eyes.
Silent tears roll down his cheeks, but I don’t say anything.
We stay like that, clinging onto one another as the sounds of grief and exhaustion drift around us.
The squelching of approaching footsteps has me turning my head to the side.
Rhys stops a few metres away, gazing at us with pained longing.
His eyes meet mine, and he grimaces as I lift my brows at him in expectation.
We both know what he needs to do if he wants a chance of experiencing this.
He needs to apologise to Ollie and open up to her.
He blinks, and his expression shifts to his usual scowl. “We should get moving before a horde catches wind of the blood.”
I blow out a breath and nod, releasing my hold on Ollie and Alex. The three of us reluctantly pull apart to face the overwhelming death and destruction lying around us.
“How many did we lose?” I ask as I spot a few of our group lingering at a certain body. Tobias is standing off to the side, his jaw set and his eyes haunted, while Simon is standing near the mourning group, alert and watchful of his surroundings. At least we didn’t lose either of them.
Rhys swallows hard, a slight flicker of emotion on his face, but it’s gone as quickly as it appeared. “I count at least seven, maybe eight, but we won’t know until we get back to the rest of the group.”
Fuck. That’s a lot of people. No wonder Rhys is struggling to keep his emotions in check. He’s probably blaming himself, like the stubborn idiot that he is.
The four of us trudge our way through the mire and bodies to the mourning group, Harlow a silent shadow.
I’m not sure where Ketchup flew off to, but Ollie doesn’t seem concerned.
Surprisingly, Jerri is among them, silent tears trickling down her cheeks.
She has a nasty cut on the side of her face that’s steadily oozing blood and will need medical attention, but otherwise appears unharmed.
Even more surprising is the respectful nod she gives to Ollie while ignoring the rest of us.
I turn to Ollie in silent question, but she shakes her head and brushes me off. Guess I’ll have to ask later, when we’re not standing ankle-deep in carnage.
“We should get going,” Rhys says softly to the group. “Before more Scourge or infected find us.”
There are a couple of sniffles and sobs as we help the mourners to their feet.
Tobias comes over and hugs his sister, whispering in her ear that he’s grateful she’s okay before helping Simon lead everyone towards where the rest of the group are waiting.
Ollie, Alex, Rhys and I linger for a moment before following.
Until Ollie slams to a sudden stop. Ketchup sits on top of a man’s chest, pecking and chirping at him with an inquisitive tilt to her black head.
“Hey, wasn’t that guy at the Lodge?” she asks, frowning down at the bird and corpse.
The three of us stutter to a halt.
“What?” Rhys barks. “Are you sure?”
I shoot him a warning look at his tone that he ignores, his eyes boring into Ollie.
To her credit, she doesn’t even flinch at his snapped voice and instead crouches down to take a better look at the body. It’s difficult to see in the dark and with the layer of muck and gore covering him, so I’m not sure if I recognise him. But if he is…
Then we’re fucked because we’ll suddenly be running from not one gang, but two.
“Here,” Alex says, having grabbed a torch from his pack.
Ollie takes it with a small, thankful smile before turning it on and pointing it at the man’s face. “Yes, I recognise him. He was one of the guys standing at the desk when we walked into the hotel.”
Rhys’s scowl deepens. “Shit. I hoped Ethan was just an outlier and that Mark just didn’t know about him.” He turns and gazes across the corpse-strewn field. “How many of these fucks are from the Lodge?” he wonders aloud as he rakes a hand through his hair.
“If there’s more than one? Too many,” Alex says grimly as he follows Rhys’s stare.
I grunt in agreement, my stomach coiled with dread. With two gangs after us, we’re outnumbered and only barely survived this attack with heavy losses. What happens when they mount another one?
Ollie clicks off the torch and straightens, her face pale in the moonlight. “What do we—” She’s cut off by a groan at her feet.
All four of us turn our attention to the man we thought was dead as his head lolls to the side. Ketchup squawks and flutters off the man’s chest to perch on a nearby bush, staring at us with beady black eyes.
“Was that…?” Ollie trails off, her lips parted in surprise.
“He’s alive,” Rhys answers, his gaze turning calculating.
Alex is the first to move, stepping over the unconscious man to grab the front of his jacket and yank him upright. The guy groans again, and his eyelids flutter but don’t open.
“Hey!” Alex barks, shaking him. “Wake up, you piece of shit. We have questions to ask you.”
He still doesn’t wake.
Rhys crouches beside Alex and frowns down at the unconscious man.
“He could be faking,” he says after a moment of contemplation.
Reaching out, he slaps the side of the man’s face a few times, but he only groans.
His head rolls to the side, showing the side of his head to the moonlight and a nasty head wound.
I sigh. “He’s not. The side of his head got bashed in.
Probably got a wicked concussion and probably won’t wake for a good few hours.
” I glance up at the night sky. It’s difficult to tell what time it is, but even if dawn was close, we don’t have the time to linger and wait for him to wake up to question him.
But we need those answers.
Alex huffs and lets the man go. The body flops back into the mud with a loud squelch that has the big guy smirking.
Rhys arches a brow at him. “You do realise you’ll be carrying him with us, right?”
The smirk disappears from Alex’s face. “Shit.”
I snort out a laugh and shake my head. “Didn’t think that one through, did you?”
Ollie glances between us with a frown. “Why are we taking him with us?”
“To question him when he wakes up,” Rhys explains as Alex grimaces and sets about picking up the muddy body. “If he’s from the Lodge, then he might give us intel on their movements and any plans the gangs might have to cut us off.”
Her eyes widen and her face pales as the implication of what Rhys is saying sinks in. He doesn’t just mean question, but interrogate. Maybe torture. She swallows hard but doesn’t object as Alex finally slings the man over his shoulders, flinging wads of grass and muck all over the place.
“We should get moving,” he says, wrinkling his nose in disgust as a glop of muddy gore drips onto his chest. “The sooner I get this fucker off my back, the better.”
The four of us, along with a silent Harlow shadowing us and a chattering Ketchup flying overhead, trudge to the southern hedgerow where the rest of the group wait.
The mood is sombre, everyone coming to terms with what just happened, as we silently follow Rhys across the fields and onto a nearby country road.
The tension from before may have gone, but at what cost?