The events of the night before came back to me, emotional and surreal, making me shiver. Last night…with Zeke’s blood and emotions coursing through me, I’d never felt so close to anyone in my life. It had been intense and thrilling and completely terrifying, seeing the deepest parts of him laid bare, knowing the depth of his feelings. Realizing he saw past my wall, too.
But now, it was another night, and we had a crazy vampire to stop and a virus to destroy. Kanin and Jackal would certainly be waiting for us, ready to set out for Eden. Briefly, I wondered if either of them could feel what I had been doing last night through our blood tie. For a moment I was horrified, then decided that I didn’t care. It wasn’t anything I was ashamed of, and besides, if Jackal had decided to check up on me and gotten more than he bargained for, well, that was his fault for spying.
But I still didn’t want him banging on my door. Taking Zeke’s wrist, I started to lift his arm away, intending to slip from the bed and back into my clothes, but there was a faint growl behind me, and the arm at my waist tightened, pulling me back.
“No,” Zeke murmured into my hair. “Don’t go yet. Just a few minutes longer.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. His eyes were closed, his face serene, except for the faint, stubborn set of his jaw. I smiled, poking the arm holding me captive. “Kanin and Jackal will be waiting for us, you know.”
“I know,” Zeke muttered without opening his eyes, though his brow furrowed slightly. “Two minutes,” he pleaded, stubbornly holding on. “I just want to lie here like this with you. Before we have to leave and face that whole huge mess waiting outside this room.”
I turned, shifting in his arms to face him. His eyes finally opened, that clear, piercing blue, watching me intently. I stroked his jaw, wishing we could lie here all night, that we didn’t have to worry about deadly viruses and insane vampires who wanted to destroy the world.
“We’ll beat him,” I whispered, a promise to Zeke, myself and everyone. “This isn’t the end, Zeke. Whatever happens, I’m not giving up our forever without one hell of a fight.”
Zeke smiled, his face peaceful, and placed a lingering kiss on my mouth. “All right, then, vampire girl,” he whispered, his eyes shining with determination. “Let’s go stop the apocalypse.”
Part III
EDEN
Chapter 16
“There it is,” muttered Kanin.
I looked up from the railing, icy wind whipping at my hair and clothes, spitting water and flurries in my face. Around us, the black, roiling expanse of Lake Erie stretched on forever, unchanging. The waves tossed our little boat, bobbing it like a cork in the water, and I kept a tight hold on the rusty metal rail surrounding the deck. Kanin stood up front, arms crossed and eyes forward, a motionless statue against the churning waves and black sky. Jackal leaned against one of the rails and alternated between gazing out over the water and shooting me knowing smirks. When Zeke and I first arrived at the dock, my blood brother had taken one look at us and barked a laugh, though, shockingly for him, the only comment he made was a rather triumphant “About bloody time.” I’d been waiting for him to say something else, bristling and ready for a fight, but so far he remained mute on the subject, which was rather disconcerting.
I tried to ignore him as I gazed out over the water, squinting in the direction Kanin was facing, searching for the island. At first, I didn’t see anything but waves and flurries, swirling endlessly in the void. Then I saw it, a glimmer of light, cutting through the snow and darkness, beckoning like a distant star. As we got closer, more appeared, until I could vaguely make out the island, a black lump speckled with dancing lights against an even blacker sky.
Zeke moved behind me, slipping his arms around my waist and laying his chin on my shoulder, gazing toward the distant Eden. I laid my arms over his and leaned into him, feeling his solid presence at my back. “Home,” I heard him mutter, his voice pitched low. “I wonder what it looks like now. If anything can ever go back to normal.”
I didn’t know the answer to that, so I just squeezed his arm, watching the lights of Eden get brighter through the snow.
The boat bounced over a wave, coming down with a jolt that snapped my teeth together, and Zeke’s hold on me tightened. The shadowy mass of the island loomed closer, the outline of trees and rocks taking shape through the darkness.
The boat finally came to a drifting, bobbing halt, several feet from land. A snow-covered shoreline, probably a beach, stretched away to either side, glittering coldly under the stars.
“This is as far as I go,” the pilot said, his voice low with suppressed fear. “I don’t want them monsters swarming my boat if I get too close.” He pointed toward Eden with a gnarled finger. “Township and docks are in that direction, along the western side of the island. But we stopped unloading people there because of the rabids.”
“Thank you for your assistance,” Kanin replied, finally moving from his spot at the front of the boat. “We’ll continue on foot from here. Allison, Ezekiel.” He glanced back at us. “Let’s go.”
Jackal snorted, pushing himself upright as we moved to follow Kanin. “What am I, chopped liver?” he muttered, and swung his long legs over the railing. There was a muffled splash as the raider king dropped into the water and waded toward shore.
Zeke and I followed Kanin, stepping from the boat into the black waters of Lake Erie. Almost as soon as we were off the deck, the engine rumbled, and the boat turned around in a spray of icy mist, heading back toward the mainland. Apparently, no one was sticking around to take us back. We’d have to find our own way off Eden.
Curling a lip at the rapidly disappearing boat, I struck out for shore. Water sloshed against my legs and drenched the bottom half of my coat, bitingly cold even though the chill didn’t affect me. Waves smacked against my arms, and the ground under my feet kept shifting as I marched doggedly toward Eden.
I was relieved when my boots finally hit solid ground. Ice and pebbles crunched under my feet as I walked up the shore with Zeke, joining Kanin and Jackal at the edge. Beyond the embankment, a dark line of trees shimmered with distant lights twinkling erratically through the branches. Aside from the churning of waves on the beach and our footsteps in the snow, everything was silent and still, as if the island itself was holding its breath.
Kanin’s eyes, dark and solemn, bored into Zeke as we drew close. “Where would Sarren be?” he asked, and even his quiet voice sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness. Zeke paused, staring into the trees, his eyes narrowed in thought.
“The lab,” he said after a moment. “The place where the scientists were working on a cure. That’s where he’ll be. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, then,” Jackal said, with a very slow, evil smile that glinted with fangs, “if the psychopath is expecting us, we shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
Sarren, I thought, as the anger, the rage I thought I’d forgotten, surged up with a vengeance. Everything that led to this moment—Kanin’s torture, the New Covington plague, Zeke’s death and Turning—all pointed to the madman who waited at the end of the road. This is it; we finally made it to Eden. Looking at Zeke, Kanin and Jackal, my small, strange, indisputable family, I clenched my fists. I won’t let him win. One way or another, it ends tonight. We won’t get another shot.
Kanin turned to Zeke again. “This is your island, Ezekiel,” he said. “Your territory. I expect you know where to go.”
Zeke nodded. “This way,” he murmured, leading us up the bank. “There’s a road ahead that will take us to the city. We’ll have to go through Eden proper to get to the lab, but there’s a lot of open space between us and the city. We could be fighting rabids the whole way there.”
Let them come, I thought, following Zeke up the rise. We’re in Eden. We finally made it. Do you hear that, Sarren? I’m here. I’m coming for you.
Slipping into the trees, we found a narrow strip of pavement that snaked away into the darkness, and we headed deeper into Eden toward the m
adman at the end of the road.
It was quiet, far too quiet, on the small paved road that cut through the fields, passing distant houses that sat empty and dark at the edge of the lots. Past the beach where we’d come in, the trees thinned out, becoming large open pastures beneath undisturbed blankets of snow. The few homes I saw, though they were neat and tidy, not falling to ruin under years of neglect and decay, didn’t account for the large number of people at the checkpoint.
“I thought Eden was a city,” I whispered to Zeke, “It is,” Zeke replied in an equally low voice. We hadn’t seen any pale, skeletal forms lurking in the shadows or distant buildings, but we knew they were out there, somewhere. “We’re on the outskirts of Eden proper right now. Most of the surrounding areas they use for farmland, as much as they can spare. The city itself is farther in.”
I gazed out over a snowy field, empty now due to winter, I guessed, and remembered my own days as a Fringer, starving and scavenging to survive. Even the registered citizens of New Covington were barely given enough supplies to live, unless you made it into the Inner City, of course. How did Eden provide enough food for her people? From what I’d seen at the checkpoint, there had to be a few thousand survivors.
“These aren’t the only farms,” Zeke explained when I finally asked him. “Only a small percentage of food comes from Eden itself. There are three smaller islands—we passed them on the way here—that are solely for growing crops and raising livestock. A handful of farmers and ranchers live there year-round and ferry supplies to Eden every couple weeks.” He gazed into the field, watching the wind swirl ice eddies through the pasture. “I was only here a few months,” he admitted, “but from what I learned, the people here take care of each other, so no one really goes hungry for long, even in the lean times.”
“Huh,” I remarked, wondering what that must be like: never going hungry. Never having to worry where your next scrap of food would come from, if you could scrape enough together to stay alive another day. And even more shocking, the people here helped each other, looked out for one another, instead of hoarding their supplies or scheming ways to get more from those who had them. I’d never experienced that. Everyone in my world, before Zeke anyway, looked out only for themselves. “Sounds like they have a pretty good life here.”
“They did,” Zeke muttered. “Until now.”
The road continued farther into Eden, and we soon left the fields and farms behind. Houses and buildings became more prominent, simple but sturdy homes that faintly resembled the rows and rows of urban dwellings in the abandoned cities. Only these were whole and unbroken, with well-tended yards, walls that weren’t crumbling, and roofs that hadn’t fallen in. The houses were packed together, people literally living on top of each other in two- and three-story dwellings. Still, it was a much nicer place than anywhere I’d seen before. It was crowded, sure, but it was better than the shoddy, ramshackle settlements I’d seen outside the vampire cities, buildings thrown together with whatever happened to be lying around. These homes had been carefully built and carefully maintained, like the real towns had been before the plague. Not a hastily constructed settlement that would vanish in a few years.
Though the utter silence and emptiness made it even more eerie. Like this place was supposed to be bustling, full of people and noise and life, and it wasn’t. The world outside had been abandoned for decades, and it showed in every collapsed building, every rusted-out car, weed-choked highway, or rooftop split with trees. Everything was dark, broken, empty of life, and had been for a long, long time.
But here, there were subtle hints of a life before. A blue bicycle, leaning against a fence post, old and faded but still in working condition. A car parked on the edge of the road, doors open, dried blood spattering the front seat. A doll lay in the middle of the sidewalk, as if it had been dropped and its owner had either left it there or been hurried away. A few buildings were still lit from the inside, spilling soft orange light through the windows.
“The power plant is still running,” Zeke said, glancing at a streetlamp that flickered erratically on the corner. “That’s a good thing, I suppose.”
I peeked through an open door creaking softly on its hinges and found a small, quaint living room, a stone fireplace in one corner and a green sofa in front of it. The sofa was the only thing in the room that wasn’t overturned or destroyed. Shattered plates littered the floor, chairs were knocked over and smashed, and ominous brown streaks covered one part of the wall. I took a quick breath and smelled what I feared: that hint of decay and wrongness, lingering on the air like an oily taint. They were definitely out there, lurking in the darkness. I wondered why we hadn’t run into any of them yet.
We hadn’t gone far into the city when we stumbled across the first rabid corpse.
It lay in the road, the snow falling around it, its white, emaciated body curled up like a huge spider. Its skull had been crushed, either by bullets or something heavy, and the snow beneath it was stained black. I curled a lip, Kanin ignored it, and Jackal gave it a smirk as he stepped over the broken body and continued down the road.
As we went farther into Eden, and the buildings to either side grew taller and more crowded, the number of bodies increased. Rabids lay in the road or on the sidewalk, riddled with holes or blown apart. The military forces had not gone quietly and were probably the reason so many made it out of Eden alive. There were no human corpses in the road, the fallen having been torn apart or eaten by rabids in short order. But the telltale signs of the massacre were still there. Bones lay scattered amid rabid corpses, the tattered, bloody remains of clothes still clinging to them. A body, more skeleton than flesh, lay half in, half out of a broken store window. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman because it was so savaged. The smell of blood, rabids and unrestrained gore was overpowering, and had I been human, it would have made me violently sick.
“Well, someone’s been having fun,” Jackal remarked as we edged around a pile of dead rabids, the street and walls riddled with gunfire. A large camouflaged vehicle lay on its side by the curb, windows smashed, blood streaked across the windshield. “This place is screwed even worse than New Covington. All we need now is a mob of bat-shit-crazy humans tearing their faces off.”
Faint scratching sounds interrupted him. A rabid lay beneath one of the huge tires, its lower half crushed by the vehicle, long arms clawing weakly at the pavement. It spotted us and hissed, baring a mouthful of jagged fangs, right before Jackal drove the heel of his boot into its skull. There was a sickening pop, and the rabid stopped moving. Jackal curled a lip and scraped his foot against the curb.
“You know what? Never mind. I can do without the batshit crazy. This place is screwed enough.”
Kanin ignored him, turning his attention to Zeke. “How much farther to the lab?”
“Not far,” Zeke confirmed. “The docks and the town square are about a mile that way,” he went on, nodding toward the west side of the island. “According to the mayor, that’s where the barge crashed and the rabids came pouring out, so I’m trying to avoid the main strip by taking us around. The lab is on the outskirts of the city, near the power plant and the old airport.”
“Then lead on.”
The road continued deeper into Eden, cutting through canyons of buildings and apartments, beneath bridges and walkways from the levels above. Streetlamps glowed dimly on corners, and lights shone above us from windows and doorways, casting weird shadows over the empty streets.
“Still no rabids?” Jackal mused, gazing into dark alleys and shadowy buildings. “I thought this hellhole was so infested they couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one. Where’s the crazy keeping them all?”
“I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” Zeke muttered. “I’m surprised we haven’t run into anything else. If Sarren knows we’re coming, I would’ve thought he’d set up at least a few—”
And at that moment, of course, my leg brushed against something: a hair-thin wire stretched across the road near
the ground, almost invisible in the blackness. As soon as I felt it, I froze, but it was too late.
A bloodcurdling scream rang overhead, making me jump back with a snarl, unsheathing my blade. Zeke and Jackal drew their weapons, and we pressed back-to-back, gazing around for attackers. There was no body, human or rabid, on the balconies above, no movement in the shadows. But the scream continued, frantic and terrified, echoing through the street and over the rooftops, making me cringe.
“Where is it coming from?” I snapped, wishing I could see whoever was screeching just to shut them up. In the deathly stillness, the screams pierced the night like gunfire and probably echoed for miles. But I still couldn’t see anyone.
Kanin abruptly swooped down, snatched a loose brick from the sidewalk, and hurled it into the darkness. I saw the projectile flash through the air and hit something small on the corner of a roof. There was a crunch and then a garbled buzz. Pieces of wires and machinery fell into the road, fluttering like dead moths, as the scream sputtered into silence. Though the echoes still lingered, bouncing off the walls and ringing in my ears.
And now there was a new sound, rising over the rooftops, getting steadily closer. A skittering, hissing, scrabbling noise, the sound of many things closing in. Jackal bared his fangs in a silent snarl and hefted his ax.
“Well, ask a stupid question…”
“This way!” Kanin barked, turning down a side alley. “Before they’re all over us!”
A white skeletal figure dropped onto the road from an overhead balcony, eyes blazing, and lunged at me with a wail. I tensed, but Zeke’s machete flashed between us, and the rabid’s head hit my boots as it collapsed. “Allie, go!” he snapped as the roofs, walls and streets began to swarm with pale, spindly bodies. “I’m right behind you!”
We ran, following Kanin down the narrow, winding streets, ducking into alleys and through buildings, a screaming, hissing mob at our heels. Claws snatched at me from a side street, snagging the edge of my coat. I spun and lashed out at the same time, cutting both arms from the rabid’s body before sprinting on.