Endless Knight(14)

Selena called after us, “J.D.!” He ignored her.

While the others held back in confusion, I followed him. “What are you doing?”


“Getting my ass out of Requiem.” He tossed me my old bug-out bag, the one I’d thought was lost forever.

I gaped down at it. “How?” He must have retrieved it from the militia. I glanced inside. They’d stolen the heirloom jewelry I’d had for trading, but left some basic supplies—and my flash drive of my family’s photos. “When did you get this?”


“Probably around the time you thought I was making out with Selena.”


My face flamed. “You left your own bag behind last night.”


“Mistake.” Catching my gaze, he said, “Woan happen again.” Then he kept walking.

I tried to keep up with his long-legged strides. “Where are you going?” So quickly? So away from me?

“Into the mountains.”


“The ones that are teeming with cannibals?” Finn called, as he and the others snatched up the various packs and jackets and started trailing us. “That’s where they live, you know, the ones who eat raw human meat, the ones I’ve seen. Does anybody listen to me?”


I did. “We’re heading out the other way,” I told Jack. “Through the bottleneck.”


“Then you’re goan to die.”


“And that wouldn’t bother you?”


His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t slow his step. “There’s a horde of zombies back there.” Bag dare. “Bigger than last night, holed up in a warehouse about six miles down the road.” He turned to address the others with a cruel look on his face. “As slow as Evie is, that ought to put y’all right in their midst by sunset.”


I couldn’t say anything about my slowness. Wasn’t like I could back-handspring my escape.

“Mountains. Or Bagger bait,” Jackson said. “That’s between you and your god. Me? I’m heading away from the closest danger.”


There were other things to be said, other questions to be asked—


“Have fun, Empress.” He sneered the word.

“Why are you so angry with me?” I knew anger was his go-to emotion, but he was shaking with it.

He whipped around and stalked toward me. “You. Ain’t. Right. None of you.”


I gasped, rocked to the core. “I-I can’t help the way I am.”


“Doan mean I got to deal with it. You doan need me to babysit you anymore.” He pulled up his hoodie, turned and trudged onward.

“Are you madder about what I am, or that I kept it from you?”


“Split it down the middle. Call it a day.”


“You—you made a promise to my mother to get me to Gran’s!”


He cast a narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder. “You’re goan to pull that shit with me? Fine. Try to keep up, ’cause I’m goan that way.” He pointed to the mountains, as if daring me to follow.

As if hoping I wouldn’t.

While I stood there in shock, Matthew drew up beside me.

“Should we follow Jack?” I asked him.

“I’ll lead you on the correct path. Let you know when you step off it.” He trotted past me, following the Cajun.

That was the correct path? The others looked at me, again like I was their leader.

“We’ll skate close to the edge,” I assured Finn and Selena. “Head south to the end of the range, then cut back for North Carolina. We won’t go deep into the mountains.”


“And if we lose our way?” Finn asked. “There are tons of mines up there. Each one’s filled with cannibals, like ants in a hill. I told you I’d never cross the Appalachians again.”


“I follow Matthew.” Jackson had nothing to do with my choice. Bullshit, Eves.

Selena almost disguised her relief that we’d stick with Jack for now. Finn almost hid his dread. Ahead, Matthew’s steps swerved as he caught rain on his tongue.

“Let’s go. . . .”


For the next half hour, we meandered through the burned-out ghost town, seeing no one, expecting no one. We did pass piles of bodies left over from the Flash, though. Stripped of clothes, they looked like stacked mannequins.

I gazed up at the mountains we were heading toward. The lower parts of the rise had once been covered with forest. The Flash had scorched the trees into charred trunks, resembling power-line poles without the lines. The ground was covered with ash.

Ash. The Flash-fried remains of trees, animals, and people. I shivered, phobic about it. Since the apocalypse, it’d swirled in the windstorms and settled in drifts against the face of that incline.

A low bank of fog poured down the nearest mountain, slinking around the base of it. When it closed in on us, that ominous feeling from earlier thickened till I thought I would choke on it.

Just when I was about to tell the others that I was rethinking this plan, a Bagman wailed behind us. Onward, Evie.

What awaited us in those dark hills?

6


We were being watched.

After trudging uphill in the mud for what seemed like hours, we hadn’t gotten anywhere near the center of this range, so it couldn’t be cannibals. Nor Arcana—none of their calls sounded close by. Nor was it Bagmen; we could hear them baying in the valley below us, held in check by the diluted sun.