Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(30)
We passed house after house, the windows dark, no signs of people or of infected, but we kept running, not wanting to stop until we were as far away from this place as possible.
Eventually the houses were spaced farther apart. The road was wider here, the trees larger and thicker, their heavy branches blocking the moonlight. I slowed first, my steps staggering, my chest burning from breathlessness. Leisel’s body was pressed heavily against my side, and she smiled at me, seeming glad for the reprieve.
“Alex,” I called out, my voice strangled, my throat dry and sore from exertion.
Still jogging ahead of us, he turned, slowing down when he saw we were unable to keep up with him. Nodding, he circled back around to us, taking the place on Leisel’s right.
“We can’t stop yet,” he whispered hoarsely. Sweat glistened on his forehead as he looked at Leisel. “Are you okay?”
Leisel raised her head, her glistening eyes meeting Alex’s. “I’m okay,” she answered, sniffling.
She didn’t sound okay, not even a little okay, yet the fact that she was attempting to be strong given our current situation made me almost smile. Almost.
We traveled without speaking for what seemed like miles, the sound of our footsteps accompanied by the trilling of crickets and the breeze rustling through the top of the trees. My feet were sore, aching with a tiredness that they hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the sort of pain that reminded me of the world before the infection took hold.
Strangely, it felt good.
Good, only because it reminded me that I was finally free.
Chapter Thirteen
Leisel
We walked all through the night and straight into morning, not stopping for anything other than bathroom breaks. We walked until my feet were numb, and my legs and arms were aching with fatigue and strain. And then finally, when I wasn’t sure I could go any farther, when I had begun to sway from exhaustion, growing dizzy with hunger, Alex finally stopped walking. He stopped so abruptly, I almost slammed into the back of him.
“What?” I asked, looking around. I saw nothing, only the heart of the forest we’d been traveling through for miles now. Nothing but trees, a veritable color wheel of leaves, and the dirt beneath my feet.
“We can sleep here,” he said, gesturing with his gun. My eyes followed the barrel of the weapon to a nearby tree.
“Oh,” I said, sighing happily.
The small hunting platform looked quite rickety, obviously unused in some time, and weathered by the elements. The rope ladder hanging from it was tattered and heavily frayed, but I couldn’t have cared less. I was dead on my feet and would have passed out right there on the ground if it would have been safe to do so.
The past couple of days were finally catching up with me. The exertion, the trauma, the heartache, and everything that went along with it all. My body was thoroughly exhausted, hardly a drop of energy left inside me, as was my mind. But it wasn’t safe down here, and we didn’t have the luxury to sleep in shifts. Neither Evelyn nor Alex had slept since leaving Fredericksville, and what little sleep I’d gotten on the road hadn’t been nearly enough. This was the perfect place to catch a few hours of shut-eye without having to worry about any stray infected happening on us.
“I’ll go up first,” Evelyn offered quietly.
I looked over at my friend, searching her dirty, bloodstained face for a reason behind her recent silence. It wasn’t like her to be so quiet, and yet for the past several hours she’d hardly said more than a few words.
“Hey,” I said, reaching for her. Threading my fingers through hers, I pulled her several feet away from Alex, attempting a semblance of privacy. “Did something happen?” I whispered, purposefully brushing a lock of her hair out of her eyes in an attempt to gain her full attention.
Her head raised and she finally looked directly at me, her beautiful and poignant features twisted with pain, her big blue eyes so full of sorrow. Seeing this, seeing her so openly hurting and vulnerable was so unexpected, so unlike Evelyn, that I had to catch myself from taking a startled step backward. She seemed so broken, even worse than before.
“Eve,” I said, my voice cracking. “What did they do to you?”
It hadn’t occurred to me until now that something else, other than being sacrificed to an infected, could have happened to Evelyn.
“Other than having to endure mass at gunpoint and terrible singing?” she joked, attempting a smile. But like her words, her forced happy expression fell flat.
Her false smile fell away and she sighed, giving my hand a squeeze. “I thought you were dead, Lei,” she admitted in a small voice. “And there was nothing I could do. And all of this…” She shrugged and looked away, her eyes scanning the forest. “This would all be for nothing then.”
I felt a prickly sharp sensation in my chest, not unlike pain, but at the same time the feeling went deeper than any sort of physical pain could.
“I’m not your responsibility,” I told her gently, rising emotion causing my eyes to fill. “And you’re not mine. We’re in this together, Eve, because without you, all this would still be for nothing.”
“Seems sturdy enough,” Alex called out, drawing our attention up into the tree. Standing on the platform, Alex peered down at the two of us and kicked at the rope ladder. “Welcome to Hotel de la Zombie.”