Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(29)
Around my neck, the penny is now cool against my skin, no longer icy. The small shift lets me know that my time ain’t up, at least not today.
We take a step forward, and the shamblers attack. They’re slow and ungainly, tripping over their own feet, tangling in the dense underbrush, dragging themselves along the ground when they can’t find their footing. Old shamblers are the best. They’ve lost enough of their humanity that they’re dog-dumb, attacking without any sort of organization. Newer shamblers are as fast as regular people, but the long dead are like grandmas, shuffling along. Their danger comes from the large packs they travel in. Killing ten people at once may not be difficult for three people trained in combat, but it’s hard for a lone person green as the grass.
I cut down the little girl first. The sickle whistles as it slices through the air, singing in the moments before it separates her head from her body. The gore that gushes out ain’t blood but a thick black ooze. The smell, of dead and decaying things, is the worst. But this ain’t my first waltz, and I keep moving through the pack, letting my blades do the work.
My sickles ain’t like regular blades that you’d use in the field. Instead of a crescent moon curve they’re a half-moon, the blades weighted and sharpened on both sides to easily cut in either direction. They’re designed to separate a head from a body, since that’s the quickest way to put a shambler down. I like to call this harvesting, because you can’t really kill the dead, can you? Plus, it soothes my soul to think I’m doing some good when I end a shambler, sending them on to their well-deserved immortal rest.
I cut through a woman in an old-fashioned dress, noticing her long bedraggled hair more than her features. When her body falls to the ground I turn to harvest a large man crawling toward me, his mouth opening and closing without making a sound, his clothing that of a field worker. His dark head separates easily from his body. I spin and let my blades cut through the neck of an old white woman lunging for my throat, her stringy gray hair hanging loose. Her slate strands pick up leaves and twigs as her head rolls away from me across the forest floor. It’s such an odd detail to notice in the heat of the fight, but that’s just how it is sometimes.
And then, there is no more movement.
I breathe heavily, my sickles and hands covered in the inky mess that is a shambler’s blood. Katherine removes the head of a bearded man, shoulders heaving as she searches for any more dead. Jack is bending down and wiping his long knife off on a younger woman’s dress. Everyone seems fine.
“No bites?” I ask between heavy breaths as I wipe my hands off on my trouser legs. Both Katherine and Jack shake their heads. “All right.” I glance at the sky and the increasingly pink horizon. The world had already gone to shades of gray as dawn approached, but now colors are starting to bloom. It didn’t take us long to take down the pack, but it was time we didn’t have. “Me and Kate are going to have to run back to make it before classes start. We need to meet up again to figure out how we’re going to deal with this.”
“What’s there to figure out? The Spencers are out there somewhere, and my sister is with them.” Red Jack’s jaw is set, and there’s a ruthless glint to his eyes that makes me think he’s got murder on the mind.
“That’s great and all, but did you hear one clue in that conversation that could tell us for certain that they’re still alive, and if so, where they’ve gone? There’s still a lot of country between here and the closest protected city. We set out half-cocked on a rescue mission, we’ll get taken down by shamblers before we’re five steps past the county line.”
“You say ‘we’ like you’re involved in this, Janey-Jane. Like you get a vote.”
My temper flares at his dismissive tone. “Oh, so now you don’t need my help? After I snuck out and spent most of the night huddled in a shamblers’ hole, you can suddenly handle this all by yourself? You’re too good for my blade work?” I’d like to carve my initials into his fool face.
Jackson’s voice is even. “This is my problem, and I’ll handle it myself. I trust you ladies can find your way back to your school.”
And just like that, Jackson, the boy I once kissed in the moonlight, is gone, replaced by Red Jack the ruthless criminal. There ain’t no arguing with him once he’s got his mind set like this. “We’ll be fine,” I counter. “Don’t you worry none about us.”
He gives me a curt nod and bows fluidly to Katherine. “Thank you for accompanying us on our trek this evening. It’s nice to know that such a beautiful rose can use her thorns effectively.”
Katherine nods and gives a polite smile at the compliment. Without a backward glance in my direction, Jack sets off on his own course through the woods.
Katherine looks at me, and I point my sickle behind her. “Road.”
She nods, and we walk. Once our feet hit the hard-packed earth we set off in a run, settling into a pace just light enough for speech.
“These . . . sickles . . . are . . . great. Where did you get them?”
I scowl. Katherine would have to ask the one question I don’t feel like answering. “The set you have came from Jackson. Keep them. I like these better.”
Both sets came from Red Jack, of course. The set that Katherine holds were a birthday present. The set I hold? A parting gift. There is probably something to be said about the fact that the gift I got when he put me aside was nicer.