Chapter 4
The next few days blurred together into a strange little life.
I stayed with Maya’s group while they searched for the main body of survivors.
But something odd kept happening.
Every time I rested alone, food would mysteriously appear beside me.
A packet of crackers.
A bottle of water.
Half a sandwich wrapped in plastic.
At first I thought Carter had been leaving it for me.
So I thanked him.
More than once.
I even shared half of what I found.
He’d scratch his head and accept it with the baffled gratitude of a man who did not remotely understand how he had become generous in my eyes.
Then Luna, who had zero respect for privacy or dignity, repeated his thoughts aloud one afternoon word for word.
The kitty shared food with me. Does that mean she likes me?
Carter went still.
Then he ran.
The comments practically convulsed.
I’m crying. The male lead keeps secretly feeding his own girlfriend, and she thinks it’s Carter.
He’s going feral in the shadows.
He won’t show up because he’s scared she’ll be afraid of his zombie identity.
It was Ethan.
Of course it was Ethan.
Those weren’t random supplies.
He had been following me.
Feeding me.
Watching me.
And for some reason that hurt almost worse than if he had just walked away.
If he was close enough to leave food, then why wouldn’t he come see me?
I didn’t fear him.
I missed him so much it was becoming a physical ache.
So I made a decision.
If he wouldn’t come out on his own, I’d force him.
The next morning, I casually asked Luna, “So, what do you think of Uncle Carter?”
Luna looked at him with grave concentration.
“He looks delicious.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“That is not what I meant.”
Carter moved three full feet farther away from her.
I started being nice to everybody.
On purpose.
I brought Carter water.
He looked like I had proposed marriage.
I helped Ryan reorganize supplies.
He grinned at me with uncomplicated gratitude.
I tucked a blanket over Maya when she fell asleep sitting up.
When she woke later, she only looked at me for a long second and said nothing.
Slowly, our group softened around the edges.
It happened without any of us really noticing.
Except there was always one thing I noticed.
That feeling of being watched.
It came more often.
Closer.
Like someone just out of sight, always there.
Finally, one afternoon, I asked Carter to teach me how to use a gun.
He blinked. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
He spent half an hour showing me how to hold it, aim it, breathe with it.
His hand hovered around my shoulder once or twice to correct my stance.
I let him.
That night, while we sat resting in a patch of overgrown roadside grass, Luna sneaked over and shoved a small bundle into my hands.
It was a bouquet of wildflowers tied together with a blade of grass.
I stared at it.
“Where did this come from?”
Luna leaned against my ear and whispered conspiratorially, “A super, super, super pretty uncle gave it to me.”
The comments howled.
The male lead is literally lying in the bushes pretending to be a corpse.
He bribed the tiny zombie already.
I looked around.
A patch of grass a little way off was bent in a suspiciously unnatural way.
I stood up.
“I’m going to collect some firewood.”
Maya handed me a knife. “Be careful.”
Carter started to rise too, but I shook my head.
“Luna can come. She’s enough.”
That, ironically, was completely true.
Luna was terrifying in combat.
I walked slowly toward the crooked patch of grass.
Ten feet.
Five.
Three.
No movement.
I deliberately caught my foot on a branch and pitched forward.
A hand shot out of the grass and caught my waist before I hit the ground.
My heart slammed.
Ethan.
The second he realized it was me, he let go like he’d been burned and turned to run.
“You move and I’ll kill you,” I snapped.
He froze.
Then I threw my arms around him from behind and pressed my face into his back.
“You don’t want me anymore?”
He went rigid.
His voice shook when he answered.
“But I’m a zombie.”
“I don’t care.”
I held him tighter.
“Luna is a zombie too.”
Next to us, Luna covered her eyes with both hands.
But she left giant gaps between her fingers.
“Oh,” she said.
Ethan turned slowly.
His eyes were already red.
Like he had been holding everything in for too long.
Then he crushed me into his arms so hard I could barely breathe.
“I missed you so much,” he choked out. “So much. Sienna, I missed you so much.”
My own eyes burned instantly.
Then he pulled back just enough to look at me—and immediately started crying harder.
“Why did you share my food with that idiot?”
I blinked.
“Why did you bring other men water? Why did you tuck that blanket around her? Why did you ask Carter to teach you how to shoot? His hand was on your shoulder for thirty minutes. Thirty.”
He sounded completely deranged.
The comments broke.
This is what we’re doing now? Jealous zombie boyfriend meltdown?
Meanwhile the villain already captured the female lead!
He wants her psychic power!
The main survivor group is in danger!
My head snapped up.
“What?”
Ethan was still hiccuping through his tears when I shoved him away and grabbed his arm.
“We have to go back.”
He brightened instantly. “Okay.”
Then he looked at the direction I was running and shouted, “Wrong way, Sienna!”
“Not wrong!”
I sprinted toward the road.
When we reached the SUV, the scene there made my blood go cold.
Carter was lying on the ground, unconscious.
Luna walked over and nudged him with one foot.
“Still alive.”
I dropped beside him, checking quickly.
No bite marks.
Just a deep cut on his arm, bleeding through his sleeve.
I turned to Ethan in panic.
He pouted.
“I’m not that sensitive to blood. I don’t want to bite him.”
I exhaled shakily.
Luna crouched beside Carter’s wound and stared at it with unnerving focus.
“No,” I said at once.
She looked up. “One lick?”
“No.”
“A tiny sniff?”
“No.”
She pouted and wandered off, only to circle back and kick Carter again for no reason.
Then she tilted her head and said thoughtfully, “He’s thinking about setting off fireworks with the kitty.”
Ethan straightened so fast it was almost violent.
“I’ll kill him.”
He did not, in fact, kill him.
Because I made him carry Carter into the SUV instead.
On the drive, Carter slowly came to.
The second he saw Ethan in the car, he nearly launched himself out the door.
“He’s here? Why is he here?”
Nobody answered.
A second later, he blurted, “Where are Maya and Ryan?”
I told him what little I knew and asked, “What happened?”
His face darkened.
“Logan Frost.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“He used to be part of our group,” Carter said. “Maya kicked him out after he deliberately used civilians as bait for zombies.”
I went cold.
“He came back with people. Took Maya and Ryan.”
“Do you know where?” I asked.
He shook his head.
Then I turned to Ethan.
“What if we ask zombies?”
He looked at me once, then reached casually out the window, grabbed a wandering zombie by the collar as we rolled past, and gave it an order.
The comments were delighted.
That works.
They haven’t gone far. A blizzard is coming, so the villain took everyone to District Thirteen Hospital.
Most of the nearby survivors are trapped there too.
A little while later, the zombie returned, howling and pointing insistently toward the east.
Ethan translated with total seriousness.
“He says a bunch of people went into the old hospital.”
I didn’t even bother asking how he understood that.
At this point, honestly, my standards had shifted.
We drove.
By the time the hospital came into view, night had fallen hard.
There were armed lookouts at the entrance.
I looked at our little team and tried not to laugh hysterically.
Luna could pass near a zombie crowd easily.
Carter darkened his face with ash to hide how pale he was.
Ethan, annoyingly, just looked human.
Too human.
So Ethan and I half-carried Carter to the gate while Luna slipped away into the shadows.
A guard blocked us at once.
“Stop.”
I pointed frantically at Carter’s arm.
“Please help! My friend’s hurt.”
The guard glanced at the wound.
“Knife injury?”
“Some masked raiders robbed our supplies,” I said breathlessly. “They cut him when he fought back.”
The guard narrowed his eyes at Carter suspiciously.
Then, very discreetly, Ethan pinched Carter’s wound.
Hard.
Carter let out a scream so heartfelt it almost impressed me.
“I’m dying! It hurts so bad!”
The comments choked.
The male lead is absolutely cheating.
I shot Ethan a glare.
He blinked innocently.
The guard waved us through.
Another one muttered under his breath, “Why bring back a cripple?”
The first lowered his voice. “Even the injured can be used as bait.”
Ethan and I exchanged one look.
Inside, what I saw made my hands curl into fists so tight my nails bit skin.
Maya was tied to a chair.
Ryan was on the ground nearby, bruised and injured.
A man stood over them smiling with the kind of face that looked wrong even before he did anything.
Logan Frost.
He was speaking to Maya almost tenderly.
“Maya, your psychic power is too valuable to waste. Draw in ten zombies, and maybe I’ll spare him.”
Then he jammed an electric baton into Ryan’s side.
Ryan convulsed with a muffled groan.
Carter’s eyes went red with rage.
Maya clenched her teeth so hard I thought they might crack.
“Stop,” she said. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
She closed her eyes and began using her ability.
Beside me, Ethan’s expression shifted.
A few minutes later, Maya opened her eyes and glanced, very subtly, toward the entrance.
A second later, a handful of zombies shambled into view outside.
Logan counted with a frown.
“Nine,” he said. “Still one short.”
Then one of the guards burst in.
“Bad news! There are hordes coming from every direction!”
The survivors imprisoned inside started panicking immediately.
Logan raised his gun.
“Anyone moves, they die.”
The room fell silent.
The comments flashed.
The villain wants to use the female lead to experiment on zombie control.
He gathered these survivors as bait.
And then—
The ventilation shaft above us crashed open.
A tiny shape dropped straight down onto Logan’s shoulders.
Luna.
She hit him with a feral shriek and slammed him to the floor.
Ethan stood up slowly.
“Sorry,” he said. “The tenth one is here.”
All at once, chaos broke.