I’m not overly surprised she’s figured this out. “No,” I admit.
“You’re just going with me to Glenview.”
I nod. “I’ll make sure you get there safe. Then I’ll turn back.”
“But you’ll lose a whole day!” She tilts my face toward her. “Two days when you count the backtracking. Go, Cole. In the morning. Or now, if you need to. Don’t stay for me.”
“Listen, I ain’t gonna leave you right now. It’ll be hard enough doing it tomorrow night at the reserve center. But I ain’t leaving now, okay? I gotta make sure you get back to your parents. That you’re safe. Or, or I just…I don’t know…I just couldn’t take it.”
“You really do care about me,” she whispers softly. “Tough, gritty Cole.”
“Shhh,” I tell her, smiling. “Don’t tell anyone.”
She kisses my cheek softly. A sweet gesture.
“After I find Dad and Jay, I’ll come to Glenview,” I tell her.
Her eyes shine clear as glass. “I don’t want you to make me any promises.”
“I take my promises seriously.”
“That’s the trouble.” She lets out a frustrated breath. “You could die trying to get back to me. I’ll be safe in town—at least, I hope I will. And you and your family can find someplace safe, too—I have no doubt about that. You guys are like the ultimate Boy Scouts. Don’t leave them again to search for me.”
“Unfortunately,” I whisper, “I’m as bad as you at following directions. I’ll find you again, Ava.”
“Cole, I’m serious! Don’t—”
I put a finger over her soft mouth. “Shhh…we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We gotta make it to Glenview first. No, actually we’ve gotta sleep first. We’re supposed to be resting. Tomorrow will be rough, and we need to leave at daybreak if we wanna reach town before sundown.”
She closes her mouth, letting it form a stern line. “Only if you promise to sleep also. You’re as exhausted as I am.”
I make a face at her.
“We’re safe here,” she reminds me. “Close your eyes. Rest.”
I pull her close again, letting her tuck her face in the crook under my chin—where she fits so perfectly. Her soft warmth is as good as a sleeping pill. Within a few minutes, I’m fighting to keep my eyes open. The dark autumn night settles around us. Sudden moonlight spears through a gap in the clouds. I take one last careful look at the surrounding terrain. On either side, the riverbank is quiet and empty.
Ava’s right. I do feel secure here. I close my eyes.
…
Cole is snoring. Loud. In my ear.
I shift onto my back. The crescent moon rides midsky, high above the treetops.
The snoring noise again. I nudge him with my knee.
When he murmurs, his deep voice sounds groggy. And sexy. Very, very sexy.
His body is curled into mine. My fingers trace his arms, making his grip tighten around my hip. A low groan escapes his lips.
His mouth moves to my ear. “You are making it very, very difficult to be good.”
“I don’t want you to be good,” I admit.
His lips meet mine.
And then the snoring noise again. But wait, how can he be snoring if he’s kissing me?
Oh crap. It’s not snoring.
Cole hears it, too. “Don’t move,” he whispers, his lips still on my forehead.
The noise repeats. Not snoring. Growling. One voice. Two. Then too many to count. Fear pierces me like a knife.
I raise up, but Cole pulls me back. “Stay low,” he mutters.
“It’s the fire.” I glance at the coals where we’d left water boiling for cocoa. “It must’ve drawn them here.”
Still crouched in the sleeping bag, I lift my head just enough to study the bank where we’d tied the rope to the tree. The dark night is lit by many eyes. Pale, luminous white eyes. How many? Forty? Fifty?
I whimper, fighting the urge to duck my head back into the sleeping bag.
Already, the air is filled with a familiar smell: meat and dirt and rot.
“Quick,” Cole whispers, snagging my pants off the nearby tree limb. “Get dressed.”
My yoga pants are dry, but stiff as a board. I wriggle into my tee and jacket. Running his hand along the ground, Cole finds my purse, helps me slip it over my shoulder.
“There’s a chance they ain’t seen us yet. Just the fire.” Beside me, Cole eases into his clothes, trying to stay below the sightline. “Let’s crawl to the other side of the island. Cross to the opposite bank.”
In the dark? Without a rope? In that current?
Around us, moans echo in the chill air until they come from every direction.
We disentangle ourselves from the sleeping bag.
“There’s so many,” I say, my teeth chattering. “So many.”
“Take a deep breath,” he whispers, picking up a fist-sized rock and weighing it in his right hand. “We’re safe here. As long as we’re on the island, they won’t go into the water. We’ll go to the other shore, start running—”
“Well, howdy over there!” The twangy female voice cuts through the night air. Cole’s hand tightens around mine.
Bethany.
My blood turns to solid ice.
Forty yards away, on the eastern shore, Cole’s ex-girlfriend raises herself from a crouched position. Cole and I stand, but he pushes me behind him. For once, I don’t complain.
Bethany’s teeth flash white in the darkness, a smile full of victory. “I’ve had the most interesting evening. I just been sitting here, waiting on my army to catch up—I can do that you know, go on ahead, order them to follow my trail. So I been watching y’all, and I seen my boyfriend—
my
boyfriend—kissing some little no-count ho.”
Cole swears under his breath.
“You know what that’s called, Cole? That’s called two-timing, and I don’t tolerate it. No, sir, I don’t.”
Bethany loads her crossbow. Cole spreads his arms, completely blocking my body.
Bethany doesn’t care. This time, she obviously wouldn’t mind hitting Cole. She raises her bow and takes aim.
But Cole is faster. He throws the rock with the precision of a circus performer. It hurtles across the river, knocking Bethany somewhere on her upper torso.
“Gah!” she screams, dropping the bow. In the murky dark, I can barely manage to see her massaging her shoulder.
She lifts her head. From this distance, I can’t read her eyes, but I can hear the grit in her tone. “Get him!” she screams to the herd. “Kill them both.” And then she leans forward, clutching her arm, obviously in pain.
Cole pushes me back. “Hurry. Before she loads the bow again! Get outta range.”
Cole steers us to the far side of the island. My toes dip in the water, and my shoulder hits the rough bark of the giant pine.
I look back. Zombies stand beside Bethany, shuffling and snapping their jaws.
Take it easy, Ava. No rushing. Keep being strong. Keep being smart.
I make a quick, shaky observation. “St-still just kids from the teen center. Not the Beavers. Not the country club horde.”
“Thank the Lord. Listen,” Cole says in a low, rushed voice, quickly studying the river between us and the other bank. “We’re gonna have to cross. I know it’s dark—I know the current’s strong, but we can do this. Just keep hold of my hand.”
I nod, my blood freezing even though we haven’t set one foot in the dark rapids.
“Move it!” Bethany yells to her zombies, her words filled with pain and rage. “That’s an order!”
Without meaning to, I let out a squeak of panic.
“They won’t cross,” Cole mutters to me as we plunge into the river. “Remember? Hydrophobia. Just like the wild dogs from your rabies paper. They won’t cross the river.”
But he’s wrong. Cole’s friend Jarrod—the one with the bloodstained shirt—takes a first step into the current. Any natural inclination to avoid the water is overridden by Bethany’s commands. She was right—her soldiers do what she says.
“Faster,” I say, becoming frantic. “Before she regains use of her arm.”
My feet carry me farther into the dark water. The other bank appears so far away. And we’ve got to move quickly. The rapids churn beside me.
Close. So close.
“Just keep holding my hand,” Cole mutters, and I can tell he’s reassuring himself as much as me. “Keep back from the current and we’ll be fine. Just keep holding my—”
“Ree-raw!”
I freeze. The sudden sound—from the bank ahead of us—shocks me like a bolt of lightning.
My gaze jerks upward. On the opposite shore—exactly where we were planning to cross, something moves in the darkness. Shadows explode into motion—arms, heads, and then…the white eyes.
The herd from the country club. Mr. Beaver and Bubba stand at the front.
A mass of zombies on each bank. Cole and I trapped between.
“Guess what?” Bethany yells from behind us, still trying to keep her voice calm. “I forgot to mention—I ran into your neighbor. Mr. Beaver, right? His group needed a leader, too.”
By now, the other side of the river crawls with infected from the country club. I recognize the disemboweled man in a sweater vest from the logging road; he takes a first step in the water. He’s followed by a heavily jeweled redhead in an evening gown, and endless corpses in tennis clothes—the white material streaked with blood and mud. The Beavers take the lead, dredging their stiff limbs through the river, drooling like we’re first prize in their personal redneck-zombie vendetta. Mr. Beaver slices through the water. After several days of decay, most of his skin has melted away. His eyeball hangs even lower, and I catch a glimpse of skull beneath the graying flesh.
“So in addition to my friends from the rec center,” Bethany continues, “I also took charge of this little posse.” Her voice is strong and steady now. She has obviously recovered from her rock hit. “As you can see, I got a nice setup.” She shakes her injured arm. “And your asses are in trouble.”
Cole and I backtrack, retracing our steps along the riverbed until we’re on the island again.
By now, zombies are waist-deep in the river. On both sides of the island, an army of undead churns through the black water. Every few seconds, one loses its footing and with a loud splash, sinks below the surface only to reappear as its rotten body tumbles over the falls. But there are still too many. They advance, raising their arms, bony and skeletal.
Cole grabs a piece of wood from the fire.
“Go,” he tells me. “Up the tree.”
Frantically, I climb the pine knowing in my heart that is a temporary stopgap. The flimsy trunk is not strong enough to hold my weight, and it bends, creaking, dipping me over the dark water, perilously close to the rapids.
Any second, Bethany will reload her crossbow and shoot me out of this tree.
Think!
I tell myself.
There’s gotta be a way out of this.
Below me, Cole waves the burning stick. A handful of zombies reach the island, more on their way, just behind, sloshing up the shore. Cole simply can’t fight that many of them.
“Hurry, Cole! Climb up!”
He tries to scale the trunk, only making it up a few feet. “It ain’t strong enough to hold both of us!”
The pine bends further, arcing toward the water. Now I’m dangling directly above the falls, the tree threatening to snap, zombies crawling from every side. The monsters press forward, ringing Cole and the bottom of the tree.
I need a solution, but my brain is full of moans and the thunder of the waterfall and my own panic.
Cole tries to reposition himself, inching slightly higher up the trunk. The pine lurches violently. His torch falls to the ground, useless.
“Aaaagh!” I close my eyes, hanging on for dear life.
When I crack my eyelids again, Cole has lost his grip on the slick surface of the bark. My heart stutters. He’s sliding, slipping down the trunk.
“No!” I scream.
He fights, scrabbling, frantic to stay up, but there’s no traction on the bark.
“No!” I shout again. But I’m powerless to help. Cole slides to the ground.
Into the arms of the waiting horde.
His knife flicks open, slashing at the grabbing hands.
“Rawr!” Bubba Beaver’s triumphant howl rises over the bedlam. His slimy, white fingers jerk forward, quick enough to snare Cole’s wrist. Cole struggles, trying to resist, but Bubba is stronger. He pulls Cole, slowly, dragging his arm closer and baring sharp teeth.
“No!” I beg.
Cole makes one last, desperate stab with his knife, but it lands in Bubba’s chest—mortal to humans, pointless to zombies.
Bubba sinks his teeth in Cole’s bare forearm.
I am crying, pleading. “No! No! No!” But the sound can’t leave my mouth.
Twenty seconds until infection.
The world drags into slow motion.
One…two.
Cole thrashes, throwing Bubba off his arm and kicking the fire logs in the process. Sparks scatter in all directions, and the zombies draw back, desperate to get away from the fire.
Three…four.
Cole brandishes his knife. But he’s woozy. Infected. Already losing control. He staggers a few steps.
“Cole!” I yell.
And I’m sliding down the tree. Mr. Beaver grabs for me, but I’m faster—fast enough to seize his dangling eyeball, rip it from the socket, and pitch it in the river.
“Rawr?” he asks, his attention shifting to the current carrying away his eyeball.
Five…six.
My brain burns. Panic churns through my blood, but something else happens—the synapses keep firing.
Smart. Must be smart.
Seven…eight.
Time is a fluid thing. Endless seconds of startling clarity.
Prior to Pasteur’s rabies vaccine of 1951, the only cure for rabies was cauterization.
The line from my rabies paper loops through my mind.
Nine…ten.
I ease the sleeve of my jacket over my fingers, and then, in one swift motion, I reach toward the fire and grasp the handle of the pan, now empty, the cocoa water having boiled away hours ago as we snuggled in the sleeping bag. I kick the remnants of the campfire again, scattering sparks and buying myself a few more zombie-free seconds.