Beneath Blood and Bone Read online

  “You stupid fucking bitch!”

  “Told you she was a crazy one.”

  I couldn’t see, couldn’t move, could barely focus on what was going on around me. Voices and footsteps surrounded me, all muffled, muted and indistinguishable. I was shoved forward, landing face-first onto something somewhat soft—not a floor, maybe a bed. My head throbbed painfully, and sharp sensations continued to shoot up and down my back.

  “Get out of my way,” a soft and yet hard voice demanded, and despite my disorientation, I could make out the rickety clacking of wheels gliding over the floor.

  “Look at me,” the voice continued, now nearer.

  Despite my pain and confusion, I forced my head to lift. Blurrily I blinked until the angry face of the woman in the wheelchair grew clear, as did the gun she was pointing at me.

  “One move,” she said, “and I will shoot you.”

  A half growl, half scream tore its way from my throat, daring the woman to shoot.

  “Calm the fuck down!” a man yelled. Standing behind Dori, his eyes wide in disbelief, he shook his head. He too had a gun aimed at me.

  I didn’t care. I didn’t care about their guns or what they thought of me. I didn’t care that I disgusted them. I didn’t care if they hated me. I didn’t care if they killed me. I didn’t care . . .

  I screamed again, another growling, garbled explosion that expelled violently from me.

  “Will you just shut the hell up?” Dori shook her weapon at me. “Just stop screaming, or I won’t shoot to kill! I’ll shoot you in the legs and have you thrown outside the gates!”

  I’d done a good job at protecting myself so far, a decent job at treating any minor injuries I’d had, but a gunshot wound to the leg? The blood would attract the biters. They’d come for me and my biggest fear would be realized—being eaten alive, or worse, turning into one of them.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and sagged pitifully onto the mattress. As my head fell forward, all my strength gone, so did my will. Frustrated, I sobbed loudly, and then I started to cry.

  Hot and salty, the tears streamed down my cheeks. Even though my eyes were shut, I could feel the room around me, feel the walls close in and the air grow thick.

  Curling in on myself, I whimpered as I clung to the bedding, holding tightly to it as the world around me shrank and spun and faded away. Yes, yes. That’s what I wanted. To make it all go away. To fall off the edge and into oblivion forever. To never have to think about the biters, to never have to worry about these bad people, to never have to go hungry or thirsty again.

  Yes, I wanted to fall off that edge; I didn’t want to be here anymore. I hated here. I hated there. I hated everything and everyone, and I just wanted to go.

  “She belongs in the pits.” Dori’s voice floated past my ears, sounding far away and disjointed. “No one is going to touch her. She’s worth nothing to me.”

  Worth nothing. I’m worth nothing . . .

  “No one is going to fight her,” a male voice replied.

  “I don’t care,” Dori snapped. “She can’t stay here. Look at her, there’s nothing left. She’s out of her fucking mind.”

  Nothing left . . . Out of my mind . . .

  “Someone should just put her out of her misery,” another man said. “String her up in the Drunk Tank. At least she’d be useful there.”

  Yes, put me out of my misery. I couldn’t stay here; I wouldn’t stay here. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

  Dori was right. I had nothing left. I was nothing, and I wanted to go. I wanted the blackness, wanted oblivion.

  Chapter Five

  Eagle

  I should have killed it right off the bat. I shouldn’t have just stood there, letting it come at me over and over again, desperate to rip into me but without the strength to actually do so.

  But I couldn’t help it. The boy—the rotter—was no more than seven years old, his features more preserved than most of the rotters who had been outside and exposed to the elements. He’d been trapped inside the small, broken-down farmhouse all these years, surrounded by the bones of his family scattered throughout his home. Ravenous, he continued to live on, pacing the floors and clawing at the walls with an insatiable appetite for death.

  The boy lurched forward again. He tripped over the broken leg of a chair and fell toward me, his teeth snapping furiously. I swung out with very little force, my gloved fist softly connecting with his emaciated chest, sending him stumbling backward again.

  You didn’t see a lot of rotters this young. The children had been the first to go, too small and weak to fight off their attackers. Usually they were people the child had loved and trusted, his parents, friends, or neighbors. The children hadn’t understood, hadn’t realized until it was too late, and by then, there was nothing left of them.

  But this one, this boy, he’d been bitten, a large chunk of grayish flesh was missing from his arm. His family, I guessed, had been unable to kill him, even after he’d attacked them.

  “E?”

  Marcus, the man who’d gutted my wildcat’s man and left him for dead, appeared on the opposite side of the living room. A mangy-looking motherfucker whose disgusting appearance was as filthy as his appetite for mayhem, he glanced between me and the rotter, his expression curious. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I snarled in response. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  The rotter, having noticed new meat, had switched direction and shambled toward Marcus. Entirely unperturbed, Marcus raised his crossbow and sent a handmade arrow slicing through the boy’s thigh. The leg folded and although tripping him, didn’t do much to deter the boy from reaching Marcus. Laughing cruelly, he raised his bow again, pointing an arrow at the boy’s other leg.

  I pulled my trigger and the bullet pierced the boy’s right temple and flew out the other, killing him instantly. He fell backward, landing hard on the floor. His wide-open eyes, clouded over with infection, now trained lifelessly on the ceiling.

  “They aren’t fucking toys,” I ground out.

  Marcus’s eyes met mine, his features pinched in confusion. “Everything okay with you?”

  Pulling my blade from my belt, I sent it soaring across the room, embedding it into the wall directly next to Marcus’s head. Wide-eyed, he glanced at the blade and then back to me.

  “Don’t ever fucking ask me that again,” I growled.

  Without a word—a damn good thing for Marcus—he nodded once and disappeared.

  I stared after him a moment before glancing back down at the boy. Stepping forward into the living room, I knelt down beside him and grabbed hold of the arrow before yanking it free. It came loose easily and released a gush of thick black liquid. After tossing the arrow aside, I dragged my fingertips over the boy’s eyelids, closing them.

  I didn’t know why I did it; I’d never done it before, usually not caring one way or another and content to let the rotters live, rather than giving them mercy. Unless they gathered in a sizable horde, the rotters posed no real threat to me. They weren’t fast anymore, the majority of them rotted to the point of putty. Mostly, like everyone else, they were just in my way.

  Gritting my teeth, I stood up and surveyed the room. This was the fourth house we’d hit, collecting what we could—clothing, bedding, dishes, whatever we could find that was still worth something today. I hadn’t been out scavenging for supplies, other than vehicles, in a long time, and now that I was out again, I remembered why I’d stopped.

  Being inside a home full of pictures and furnishings of a well-lived life, of a family, I couldn’t stomach it, didn’t want to remember it. Like everything else good that had been swept from our lives, I wished the homes, the pictures, and the memories would have gone too, disappeared like everything else had.

  I’d had a house like this once. Not a farmhouse, but something bigger and better. A row home in a thriving city, but a home all the same. Full of pictures, laughter, the television blaring, and the smell of home-cooked meals .
. .

  “Fuck this,” I muttered, then turned around and headed for the front door. Kicking it open, I descended the porch, taking all four steps at once and marching back toward the three pickups parked out front.

  I climbed inside my own truck, a monster four-wheel drive with a 6.2-liter V-8, a full backseat, a covered bed, and rigged with everything I could manage to find and fit on it necessary to survive in the wild, if it ever came down to that. Iron bars were welded over the windows, a steel-covered grill fitted with ax blades protected both the front and rear lights, metal plates were hung over the wheel wells, and heavy-duty floodlights were affixed to the roof. I always kept a healthy supply of canned and dry food along with water in it at all times, enough to last me a month. Ammunition, spare tires, and fuel as well.

  After rolling down the driver’s side window, I spat out a wad of foul-tasting saliva through the bars, still tasting the fuel I’d siphoned earlier from two deserted minivans we’d come across. Who knew if the fuel was even still good, but more often than not it was, and fuel, much like women, was worth its weight in gold these days.

  Glancing down at my gloved hands, I pulled the leather from my fingers and stared at my dirty palms. I was itchy with all sorts of shit I didn’t want to feel, emotions I hadn’t had in so long, and never wanted to feel again.

  Wildcat—Evelyn—the bitch had gotten under my skin something fierce. These feelings weren’t something I was going to easily wipe away with a fuck and a drink. The woman had caused a ripple in the carefully constructed existence I’d managed to whittle out for myself, a ripple that for some fucking reason was sending me into a tailspin.

  Suddenly nothing felt right, least of all me. I was losing control. And for a man like me, who was barely in control to begin with, even I knew it was a dangerous thing to lose what tenuous grasp I had left on it.

  Gripping the steering wheel tightly, I clenched my hands, my dark knuckles whitening the harder I squeezed.

  Get your shit together, I told myself.

  You’ve never had your shit together, a familiar voice answered.

  Goddamn it, I needed a cigarette. Chewing tobacco. Anything to take the goddamn edge off.

  Prying my hands from the steering wheel, I reached across the cab and popped my glove box open, pulling free a flask that had once belonged to my uncle. I whipped off the cap and took a long, hard swig of honest-to-God whiskey that dated back to before the world had ended. I kept it there, bringing it out only when I really needed a taste of the good stuff.

  Only this time, the moment the familiar flavor exploded in my mouth, instead of satiating my need for oblivion, it flooded me with memories. The sound of my uncle’s laughter, his voice hoarse, raspy from too many years of smoking two packs a day, the sound of hard rock booming from inside the garage while the two of us worked on cars. The feel of his hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly just before he took his last breath.

  I was truly fucking losing it. Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes and took another swig of whiskey, hoping to drink away the past, but only succeeded in allowing more images from a life long gone to rise to the surface.

  Red hair and blue eyes.

  Dimples.

  Laughter.

  Hair matted with blood, eyes clouded with disease.

  Sunken-in cheeks.

  Snarling growls.

  My stomach clenched painfully, my face twisting with discomfort as I sank even further into my memories, feeling all the pain that came with them, every bit as sharp and as cutting as . . .

  Instantly, the familiar rage was back, manifesting itself as a dangerous hum inside my blood, causing it to boil and burn as it pumped through my body. Locking my jaw, I sat rigid in my seat, glaring down at the flask in my hand.

  It was better this way. The anger took hold of me, swallowed me whole, and made it possible for me to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  Focus, I told myself. Fucking focus.

  The voice inside me only laughed.

  Furious at myself, I screwed the cap back on the flask, then tossed it inside the glove box and slammed it closed. When I looked up, I focused again on the house in front of me, on the men filtering out of it, their arms full of pilfered goods.

  Feeling entirely not right and pretty damn sure I was losing my mind, I pushed open the door of the truck and grabbed an armful of supplies from the nearest man. After tossing the finds into the bed of my truck, I spun around and marched back toward the house for more.

  Reminiscences were for the weak. Dwelling on the shit you couldn’t change was a waste of time and a good way to get yourself killed.

  I wasn’t weak and I didn’t dwell; I did what had to be done. I stayed focused on tomorrow, and on ensuring that I would live to see it by whatever means necessary, damning to hell whatever got in my way.

  Whatever helps you sleep at night, the voice in my head sang, mocking me.

  • • •

  I didn’t sleep that night. Like most nights, I ended up tossing and turning, falling in and out of my usual stream of nightmares until morning brazenly seeped into my home. I cracked open one bleary eye and then the other, glaring at the obnoxious sunlight streaming through the torn and battered blankets I’d nailed to the wall in lieu of curtains.

  “Fuck you,” I muttered, and turned my face into the mattress. I’d never been a heavy sleeper, but since the end of the world my insomnia had only worsened. At the tiniest noise, I was up and out of bed, weapons blazing.

  Good for survival. Bad for my sanity.

  For five more minutes, I attempted to sleep before rolling off the mattress and getting to my feet. Still in the same clothing as yesterday, including my boots, I only had to strap on my weapons and grab a quick drink of water from my supply. Then I was out the door, headed toward the makeshift garage at the far end of the compound, my home away from home.

  My truck had been running a little noisy yesterday, probably because it hadn’t been used in so long, so I’d sent it in for maintenance. Much like food and water, having a working vehicle was a necessity, more so when that vehicle was built especially for surviving in today’s perilous living conditions.

  Ten minutes of walking through thick brush and I reached my destination. At the garage, a slouchy and squat structure in even worse condition than my own housing, I pulled back the tarpaulin that was the door and stepped inside.

  Oil and grease greeted me, their sharp, pungent odors infiltrating my nostrils as I inhaled deeply. I’d always liked the smell of a working garage, feeling far more at home around metal scraps and engine bits than I ever did around people.

  Two trucks were parked inside the small building, mine and another without tires, both of them on lifts. A pair of work boots peeked out from beneath my truck, and as I made my way toward them, the body attached slid out from beneath the underbelly of my truck.

  Ademar, better known to the people of Purgatory as Adam, sat up on his creeper cart and gave me a mock salute. Grease was smeared across both his cheeks, making his dusky skin appear even darker. The sight reminded me of the dirty, scrawny, half-starved young man he’d been when he found us here.

  Adam had been a pretty boy, working odd jobs as a model to pay his way through college when the infection hit. A few people here, women mostly, had even recognized him, having seen him on the cover of magazines and Internet ads, usually posing in his goddamn underwear. He’d been a stranger to hard work at the time, especially manual labor. That had all since changed.

  Bare-chested, Adam stood up, his height not quite matching mine. Wiping his hands on a rag hanging from his back pocket, he sucked in a breath and ran a dirty hand self-consciously across the scars, both long and short, that crisscrossed his torso. They were from his fighting days when he’d first arrived.

  Like everyone else without a useful skill set, he’d had to fight to earn his way when he first arrived here. Usually, though, few who survived the fights lived to be able to tell their tales. One too many pun
ches to the head usually rendered them little more than piles of muttering jelly. Sometimes, consumed with guilt for the many lives they’d taken, they ended up eating a bullet.

  But Adam had survived. He wasn’t the same afterward, not even close, but neither was he damaged. After Liv had allowed him out of the ring, he’d taken up with Tony, one of my boys and the head mechanic, and had been working in the garage ever since.

  “It’s fine now.” Adam yawned as he absentmindedly scratched his stomach. “Yo, Mensa!” he shouted. “Bring me my coffee.” Turning away, he glanced over his shoulder and beckoned me forward. “Follow me.”

  As I trailed Adam around to the front of the truck, I noticed a large plastic bucket filled with thick black goop. “That was your oil,” he said, accepting the coffee mug that Mensa handed to him, “and this bitch purrs like a kitten now.” Taking a sip of his coffee, he slurped it down noisily and shook his head. “Wish I had some cigarettes to go with this.”

  I took the mug that Mensa handed me, watching with amused disdain as he mumbled something incoherent, then quickly turned away and scampered off toward the back of the garage.

  “He doing good?” I asked, jerking my head in the direction Mensa had disappeared.

  “Yup, kid’s doing good.” With a grimace, Adam quickly downed the last of his coffee. “And this bitch will be primed and ready for you by this afternoon.”

  Mensa, as we called him, was a skinny kid of maybe thirteen or fourteen. Clever as shit, he was one of the many orphaned children who called Purgatory their home. When people met him, most initially thought he was mentally inept due to the nonsensical shit he would sometimes say, when he decided to speak at all. And while he did have a long list of problems, he was actually brilliant.

  If I had to guess, I’d say it was autism that plagued the boy, some high-functioning form of it. Still, despite his smarts, I was amazed at how such a young boy, learning disabled at that, had survived on his own for any length of time. Not much impressed me anymore, but Adam and Mensa sure as hell did.