Chapter 13
Sneaking out of Camp Sunnyside is surprisingly easy when everyone assumes you’re smart enough to not sneak out of Camp Sunnyside.
Everyone I pass seems to think I have a reason for hiding inside of Rory’s jacket, keeping my head bowed as my loose hair partially conceals my face.
And, sure, they know exactly who I am. Between the blonde hair and the leather jacket I wear constantly, I can’t quite hide that I’m one of the newest arrivals, but I’ve been at camp long enough that I’m a fixture and not a novelty.
In my pocket, I have a lighter. I may be reckless, but I’m not suicidal. If I happen to sense any lurkers, the flickering flame will be enough to catch their attention. If I can engage the stare, freezing them in place, I’m prepared to book it back to Sunnyside and sound the alarm.
I just… I have to know if they’re out there. If I missed something earlier. If there’s any way I could’ve done something to save another survivor…
If there’s one thing I learned during those strange weeks at the Grave following the accident that stole my twin from me, it’s that so long as you walk around like you have a right to be where you are, no one will second-guess what you’re doing there.
Most people are too wrapped up in their own lives.
If I act like I’m supposed to be leaving camp, they tell themselves that it must be okay, then completely move on to what they’re doing.
No one stops me. I move quickly, just in case, and keep on going until I’ve ducked behind the community garden where no one should be able to see me unless they’re coming in from a late evening patrol.
The woods beyond the perimeter are darker than anything inside camp, the glow from the fires burning inside of Sunnyside disappearing quickly once I move between the trees.
I take one of the paths Veronica and the others led me down earlier, keeping the lighter held tightly in my grip for easy access.
Nothing cramps. That’s a good thing. My stomach doesn’t twist. I don’t pick up on any lurkers coming close.
I should feel relieved. Instead, every step makes me more nervous than the one before it. I’m just thinking that I’ll walk a couple of yards further and check my gut again before turning back when, suddenly, a branch cracks behind me.
I spin, flicking the lighter open, hitting the wheel and summoning the teensiest, tiniest flame at the same time.
No need. The man standing behind me is holding a flashlight.
Lurkers hate fire. It’s like they instinctively understand that their one flaw is how damn flammable they are.
But light… they can’t tolerate it. It won’t eliminate one of the zombies, though the glare of the flashlight is more than enough to have them hiding beneath their cloaks and doing everything they can to avoid it—and I so should’ve brought a flashlight with me, huh?
I step toward the light. “Mav? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, kid. ‘Cause I know it’s not what it looks like.”
I jut out my chin. “Oh? And what does it look like?”
“Like walking into the woods alone with no one backing you up. But the girl I spent the last couple of weeks keeping alive would never be that foolish. Would she?”
I sputter. “Keeping me alive? Who’s the one who let the fire go out our first night? That’s right! You did. If I hadn’t sensed the lurkers coming, they would’ve eaten your ass. And you didn’t answer me. What the hell are you doing here?” Oh my God. “Did you follow me?”
“I had to. I was heading back to the cabin after I checked in with Delilah and Veronica. I saw you leave.”
I squint at him. “And you didn’t stop me?”
“Why bother? I figured you’d go anyway. Veronica told me that three different crews went out looking for her missing people.
No one’s found them. I expected Chase to be the one to sneak out and look.
Boy’s got a hero complex,” he says, and I can’t tell if Maverick thinks if that’s a bad thing or not.
“But I should’ve known. That’s when it comes to you.
” As though he just realizes that I’m alone, Mav angles his flashlight all around.
“Where is he? You’re here. Shouldn’t he be? ”
Right. Because Maverick caught on to the fact that Chase was following me almost right after we left the Grave. He let him do it, too, and it’s no surprise that he’d guess that Chase would come running after me if he knew I snuck out.
If he knew—
“Holden!”
Shit.
I glare at Maverick.
He holds up his hands, shooting the flashlight beam into the night’s sky. “Don’t blame me.
Yeah, but the flashlight is making it easy for him to track us down. “Turn that thing off!” I hiss under my breath.
“You think that’s a good idea? What? You can see in the dark?”
No. “Enough. Now kill it.”
Too late.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they do, it’s just in time for me to watch as Chase barrels toward us.
He looks ready to kill me. Maybe Maverick.
Possibly both of us.
“You’ve gotta be… fucking hell, babe. I never would’ve… What part of there are other hunters searching did you not understand?”
Poor Chase. I’m already pissed that Maverick followed me and blew up my spot. Now Chase is running after me, scolding me because I want to help some of my fellow survivors? He’s a safe target, and, oh, do I turn on him.
“What part?” I snap at him. “The part where none of them can sense lurkers like I can.”
“I swear to fucking God—”
“Chase.” Maverick lifts one hand. “Holden. You two, fight later. Listen now. You hear that?”
Chase’s jaw clenches. Maybe there was the tiniest twinge of relief when he found me still close enough to the borders of camp that I wasn’t in any real danger, but to have Mav cut him off in the middle of his latest tirade? Oh, he doesn’t like that.
But then his body stiffens, and I know that whatever Maverick wanted us to listen for… Chase heard it.
A moment later, so do I.
Someone is out there. There are footsteps, not-so-quiet ones as though the person tripping their way toward us doesn’t care if we know they’re coming.
Leaves crunch and branches snap, and a shiver skitters down my spine because lurkers…
the only sounds a lurker makes is a gentle moan and the slither of its cloak over the ground as it plods its way toward you.
I’m not cramping. That’s another clue that it can’t be one of the zombies coming our way. I don’t sense the monsters at all. I try again to be sure as Maverick lifts his flashlight and Chase, as always, takes his position right in front of me.
“I don’t feel anything,” I murmur.
Chase nods. He and Maverick wait, both of them stiffening, prepared to react, when there’s a rustle so close, whoever is out there is almost here—and that’s when a figure emerges from between the trees about twenty-five feet ahead of us.
It’s a woman. Her long dark hair is lanky, falling forward in her face. Maverick’s flashlight bounces off of the lenses in eyeglasses set crookedly on her nose. She throws up a hand, blocking the light because she obviously hadn’t expected to walk right into a crew of survivors.
Her dark purple blouse—the shirt she was wearing when she disappeared with Perry—is slightly disheveled, but between that and the glasses, I know exactly who she is.
“Eileen?”
She staggers toward us.
For one beautiful second, I think that’s it.
We got lucky. Somehow, she got lost in the woods, separated from Perry, and she finally made her way back.
She’s walking like her legs don’t work right.
She might be injured, but she’s here. We found her, and we can help her back to Sunnyside while Chase scolds me for taking such a risk.
I’m already plotting my responses when Chase starts for Eileen.
Maverick stops him. Throwing out his hand, blocking Chase with the flashlight, he shouts, “Grab her. Get her out of here. Now!”
Call me an idiot, but I had no idea that Maverick meant me.
I thought he was telling Chase to grab Eileen.
Nope. Both of the guys figured out what was wrong before I did.
And because I prove that I really am a shit hunter by standing there, unmoving, a real sitting duck…
Maverick snaps at Chase to grab me, and though I can tell he wants to take down Eileen, he listens to Mav.
He wraps his arms around me. “We gotta go. Holden, we gotta go. She’s a lurker.”
No she isn’t. She can’t be.
She isn’t wearing a hood.
That’s what I’m thinking the moment it sinks in. Every lurker I’ve ever seen has one eventually. Those filthy cloaks become part of them somehow, another mystery nobody understands. But Eileen is still wearing the same clothes she was wearing yesterday.
How can she be a lurker? My stomach didn’t warn me that one was near, and the air isn’t ripe with the burnt sugar stink belonging to the zombies before they reek of blood. She can’t be a lurker—
It all happens so fast. Maverick runs at Eileen, waving the flashlight, but somehow she grabs him, twisting him around so that his back is to her front, and she sinks her pointed lurker teeth into his skin right through the thin material of his t-shirt.
Fresh, I think, even as I let loose an unholy scream.
Lurkers feed on their victims until there is nothing left but fragments of bone to gnaw on.
But on the rare occasion that, oh, let’s say you get bit, but you get away, and then the lurker gets distracted by another human—like Perry, maybe—so you can escape as the venom goes to work on you…
within twenty-four hours, if you don’t take an antidote, you Turn into a lurker yourself.
That’s what I’m looking at. Eileen is too freshly Turned for me to recognize her as the monster she now is, but the hunger has already overtaken her. Of course she would return to Camp Sunnyside. If she’s still sentient, she knows she has a smorgasbord of survivor she can feed on.
And she’s starting with Maverick.