Hunter Of The Dead (16 page)

He had a point. But she couldn’t stop her mind from jumping ahead to the next morning and the problem it presented. “I don’t know if I can sleep.”

“Come here.” He pulled on her arm. Eden started to resist, but then thought better of it. They both needed this right now. She lay down next to him, nestled under his arm. “It will be all right. We will rescue the survivors, escape the valley and live to make the men responsible for this suffer.”

It was exactly what she needed to hear. Eden rubbed her cheek against his chest and sighed. “Do you promise?”

“Of course,
querida
. I would never lie to you.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“We’re not leaving you.” Eden paced from one wall of the cabin and back again. She only got more annoyed when both men watched her with bemused expressions. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not being a hysterical female. I just don’t like the idea of leaving you behind to fend for yourself.”

“I have been fending for myself for quite some time now.”

“When you say stuff like that I want to shoot you.”

He had the intelligence not to laugh at her. “I know, but it does not change the situation. I cannot keep up with you, and Taro cannot carry me such a distance.”

Eden had her doubts about the last but there was no way to argue his point. “What about food? We took all the supplies when we left here last time.”

“You will leave your protein bars. You are gathering supplies from your vehicle, no?”

Damn it, he had an answer for everything. Eden ran her hands through her hair, now hanging loose down her back, and tried not to scream. “Three days. If this isn’t resolved, I’m coming back for you in three days.”

He was silent so long she thought he might argue. “If you insist.” Alejandro grabbed her hand as she stalked past him. “
Querida
, it is the only way.”

It might be the only way but she didn’t have to like it. On impulse, Eden leaned down and kissed him. She moved away too soon, but they didn’t have time to waste. “I’ll come for you.”

“I know you will,” he said softly.

Eden turned on her heel and strode out of the cabin, grabbing her pack off the floor as she did. She didn’t look back even after she heard Taro fall in behind her. The sound of the cabin door shutting echoed in the near-silence of the jungle.

Taking a moment to orient herself, she brought up her mental map of the valley. “South-east.”

Without another word, they headed into the jungle. It took all of Eden’s focus to keep up with Taro and, even then, she had the nasty feeling she was slowing him down. Despite that, they made it to the Humvee before the sun was high in the sky.

Eden tripped over her own feet when she saw what was left of the vehicle. It was on its side, its windows bashed in and its wheel axis bent. “What the hell?” She didn’t really need to ask what had happened—the infected.

They approached it slowly, watching for movement. Everything was eerily still, or maybe it was the silence of the jungle around them creating the eerie atmosphere. It didn’t really matter. Eden stopped less than three feet from the Humvee and sighed. “I’ll go in and pass the stuff out to you.”

There were few things Eden wanted to do less than crawl over broken glass into a small, enclosed space, but she did it anyways; if she wanted a comfortable job, she should have become an accountant. The phone was still safely in the middle consol where Jordan said it would be. Eden fished it out and turned it on, looking around the inside of the Humvee while it powered up. Most of the ammo was scattered among the glass. It would take hours to pick it up. But there was a box that seemed relatively undisturbed, so it would be the one they took. The remaining protein bars were, likewise, scattered. Crap.

She glanced down to find the phone was completely charged and with full bars. Fan-freaking-tastic. Eden dialed the number Jordan gave her and listened to it ring. If this went to voicemail, she was going to kill somebody.

“Hello?” a raspy male voice said.

“This Jeremy?” She didn’t have time for pleasantries, but she’d be damned before she gave their information to someone else.

“Jordan?” Jeremy’s voice perked up, making Eden wince.

“No, it’s her sister.” She glanced out the cracked windshield, but saw only trees and shadows. “I don’t have a lot of time so shut up and listen closely.” She relayed all the information Jordan told her to—where they were, what the situation was, what her suspicions were. There was a childish part of her that believed Jordan hadn’t really told him, hadn’t betrayed the team. It died when he spoke next.

“Damn it, I told her this would happen. The assignments you guys go on are too big of coincidences.”

“Whatever. Are you going to help us or not?”

“Yes.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was much calmer. “Is Jordan okay?”

Eden scowled and resisted the urge to hang up without answering.
Who the hell is this guy?
“She was fine when I left her. When can you be here?”

Another pause. “It will take some time, even with a tip like this. Twenty-four hours, maybe longer.”

It was a hell of a long time—
if
he was even coming—but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Hurry up before more people die.” She hung up.

Eden set about gathering all the protein bars and shoving them into her still-damp pack. Once it was full, she handed it out to Taro and did the same with his pack. The ammo would have to be carried in the box. It was unfortunate, but there was no help for it. They’d lost their third packhorse. At least it wasn’t huge—a perfect square of lightweight metal, roughly two feet at the sides. Most of the weight came from the ammo itself.

Eden gingerly crawled out of the Humvee, dragging the box behind her. It made a terrible racket, the box shattering more glass as it came through the window. She looked up and met Taro’s gaze. “Yeah, I know, but it was make a hell of lot of noise or leave it in there. Which do you prefer? Give me a minute.” After a quick look at his armor, she decided he was good. Eden crawled back into the ruins of the Humvee and snagged a set of the body armor. Climbing back out again, she stripped down to her underwear and pulled it on.

He picked up the box and jerked his head west.

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get out of here.” The words were barely out of her mouth when a pair of infected lumbered into the clearing. Eden waved a hand when Taro started to put the box down. “I got this.” It wasn’t like they’d be much of a challenge, being old dead and all. They were the first truly decomposing zombies she’d seen since entering the valley.

Eden slid her bolo from its sheath and rolled her shoulders. For the first time in her life, she actually wanted a vacation from fighting these monsters. Her quick breath nearly made her gag, the smell of the zombies becoming overpowering as they got within reach. She kicked the knee of the one on the right and shuddered when it cracked clean in half, sending the infected toppling. Two quick strikes and they were both truly dead.

She spit, trying to get the taste out of her mouth. It didn’t work. “Come on.” They had to get out of her before she started puking. Taro, of course, was completely unaffected. In fact, he looked downright amused at the faces she made as she grabbed her pack and took the lead.

They made good time, better than she would have expected. It would figure Taro had no problems lugging around a box of ammo and his pack. He wasn’t even breathing hard by the time they made it back to the river.

Eden eyed the quickly moving water. She didn’t have a great track record with it so far but that was going to change starting now. “How do you want to do this?”

He shot her a flat look and waded into the river, holding the box above his head.

“Show off,” she muttered as she followed him. Eden was painfully aware of both the current and the threat of infected. They hadn’t seen any since leaving the Humvee—which meant the group was still roaming around here somewhere. Joy.

She made it across with no more than some wet clothes. As soon as her feet were on dry ground again, Eden drew her
bolo
. She nodded to Taro to make sure he was okay with still carrying the box. He gave her a ghostly smile and she shook her head. What the hell did these twins eat? They were damn near superhuman.

Every sense on high alert, Eden led the way through the valley. There was nothing, no sign of the infected, no sounds from wildlife, nothing but a stale breeze bringing the scent of the dead. Something was wrong.

She looked back at Taro to find he had a similar expression of worry on his face. Without needing to speak, they picked up their pace.

It still wasn’t fast enough. They had to slow down for trees and bushes and all manner of things. But through it all, a wild pulse beat at the back of Eden’s mind, urging her on, screaming that Jordan needed her.

They ran and ran until Eden’s legs gave out. She fell to her knees, barely rolling out of the way before Taro mowed her down. He stopped, legs shaking.

“Five minutes,” she gasped.

He nodded and let the box drop, sinking down next to it. She dug a bottle of water out of her pack and handed it to him.

“When I get home, I’m buying a Big Mac.” When he stared blankly at her, Eden sighed. “You don’t care, I get it. Just deal with it.” She took a long drink of her water and did a mental check of her body. Everything seemed to be in working order, albeit tired working order. Her arm was throbbed dully in time with the side of her face. She was practically her old self again.

“We need to slow down or we’re not going to be of any use to them.” Eden grunted as she climbed to her feet. “You okay to keep going?”

The look he gave her told her how stupid the question was. “Of course you’re ready. You’re Superman.” Struck by the insane urge to giggle, she started forward, falling into a ground-eating lope.

She made them stop twice more before they heard the moans of the infected outside the survivors’ fence. Eden held up a hand and they slowed, creeping forward until they were close enough to see the fence.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. There were more infected, nearly a hundred. Where the hell were they coming from? Was someone airlifting them in or had the village really housed over three hundred and fifty people?

Next to her, Taro’s entire body went tense. Eden spun around, expecting an attack from behind, but the jungle was empty. Confused, she turned back in time to see the fence open and the infected pour into the survivor’s compound.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Eden whipped her
bolo
out. She didn’t need to look to know Taro had drawn his weapon as well. They raced across the open space, colliding with the infected at the back of pack.

She became a whirling figure of true death. Eden had never moved so quickly in her life, dodging grasping hands and snapping mouths as she hacked limbs from bodies and drove her
bolo
into head after head. She lost track of Taro, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to Jordan.

No matter how many she killed, she wasn’t moving fast enough. Every step another two would rear up or turn around, and she was forced to deal with them before she could go forward. And she couldn’t incapacitate them—it had to be a true kill.
Never leave an enemy at your back
had been one of Dad’s favorite sayings. Zombies had a nasty tendency to surprise you at the worst possible time, leaving you infected or just plain old dead.

Eden wasn’t willing to chance either. She worked to make her strikes more efficient and zombie after zombie fell before her.

Then she stumbled across the child. Even though she knew better, Eden paused. The little boy was quick—newly turned—and he got past her guard before she had a chance to bring her arm up, knocking her onto her back. The moans of the infected around them suddenly increased, perhaps sensing they had another victim at their mercy.

Eden held the kid off her with a hand on his throat, but she couldn’t force herself to see past the child’s face to the monster now residing there. Even as the other infected closed in, she hesitated.

A scream echoed from the survivor’s camp, and then another. It brought back the true reason she was there. The live children. Jordan.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. And she grabbed her knife from her boot and stabbed the child in the eye. He went limp immediately, his brain destroyed.

She didn’t have time to dwell on what she’d just done. The other infected were almost on top of her. Eden grabbed her
bolo
and jumped to her feet. Almost every single infected in front of her was a child no older than ten.

Eden backed away, shaking her head. There was no way she could do this, kill so many of them. It was one thing to do it through the scope of a rifle, it was totally another to see their faces and how little their bodies were compared to hers. Instinct demanded she protect them, not cut them down.

“No. Please.” Why was she begging? They didn’t understand. All they saw was a meal. Damn it, she was stronger than this. Eden took a fortifying breath and brought her blades back up, not sure when she let them drop to her side. She forced herself to see them as monsters. It didn’t work, but she charged into their group just the same.

No one stood between her and Jordan. Not even children.

She mowed through them, trying not to see how tiny they were, how some of them barely came up to her waist. If not for the screams from the survivors’ camp, she would have turned tail and run for the jungle, would have let someone else deal with this nightmare. But there was no one else.
She
was the reinforcements.

And then they were gone. Eden stood on an empty field, surrounded by bodies of children, covered in blood and thicker things. The rest of the infected must already be inside the camp. And yet she still couldn’t force herself to move, couldn’t drag her eyes away from the carnage surrounding her.

Taro appeared in front of her and smacked Eden with the flat of the spade side of his weapon. She jumped. “What the hell was that for?”

He jerked his head towards the survivors’ camp.

She’d been standing there too long. “I’m coming.” Eden stepped over a small boy and steeled herself. There were live children in there who needed her right now. Another round of screams went up, and she snapped into motion, flying after Taro. Even after carrying the freaking box of ammo through the jungle, he was still faster. She might have laughed if she had the breath for it.

Then they were through the gate—the gate that
hadn’t
been forced open—and into the camp. Chaos reigned. Even as she watched, the infected fell on three people, tearing them apart. Two more were dragged from the cliff as they tried to climb. Gunfire echoed from the far end of the camp, near the priest’s tent, but Eden couldn’t leave the people here to their fates. It was too late for those five, but there were others.

“You take left, I’ll take right,” she yelled. She could have taken down the five zombies in under thirty seconds if she’d had Bernice. But Eden didn’t have Bernice, so she was left to do it the old-fashioned way. She skewered the first zombie through the soft tissue in the chin. Even as it dropped, she moved on to the next and the next.

Rage fueled her, rage at whoever let them in
on freaking purpose
because of what some crazy priest said, rage at the damn priest himself, rage for the innocents she’d tried to protect who were dying anyways. Eden moved faster than she ever had, dispatching infected with an ease she’d seen before only in Taro and Kaede.
This must be what the berserkers of old felt
, she thought as she cut off the head of a newly risen zombie—the man who had spoken for the survivors.

After taking care of the infected before her, she ran towards the priest’s tent. True dark had fallen at some point while she fought and no one had bothered to light the lanterns. Probably because they were too busy being eaten.

“Taro,” she yelled.

He literally dropped out of the sky, scaring her half to death.

“Holy shit.” She glanced around. Several zombies were lumbering towards them. “Can you do something about the lights? I don’t want to be shot by Jordan and Kaede because they can’t see me.” If Jordan was dead...No, she wouldn’t go there. Eden had to believe her sister was alive or she would falter. There were people who needed her now.

He nodded and took off, beheading two zombies without even pausing. Damn, he was good.

The sounds of gunfire abruptly went silent and Eden prayed it was because they were out of ammo, not because they’d been killed. Then the approaching infected were there and there was no more time for thought. After killing the two zombies, she backtracked to the first tent on the right side and collapsed it. Two forms writhed under the material.

“Speak or I’ll kill you.” It wasn’t a full-proof plan, but she’d take her chances. Anyone stupid enough to stay silent deserved to die. Maybe she wouldn’t have thought so if the lumps were child-sized, but these were clearly adults.

There were only moans to answer her.

Eden jumped on the forms and stabbed them both through until they stopped moving. Then she moved on to the next tent and repeated the process. By the time she was done with the third tent, the lights flickered on. They weren’t as bright as before, but it was better than rushing around in the dark.

The rest of the tents could wait. Jordan needed her.

She sprinted to the priest’s tent and beyond. Jordan and Kaede stood at the top of the spring, mere feet from the approaching zombies. Behind them huddled...children. Lots and lots of children.

Jordan looked up and met her eyes. The relief there scared Eden more than anything she’d experienced so far. She’d never seen her big sister look like that. It was wrong on so many levels.

Without another thought, Eden threw herself into the back of the pack. Exhaustion was starting to catch up to her, slowing her. She moved forward, killing everything in her path. It wasn’t difficult until the zombies realized she was there—a meal so much easier to get to than Jordan’s group—and turned.

Still Eden fought, even as they mobbed her, crowding close until she could barely move, taking her to the ground. Jordan’s scream let her know exactly how much trouble she was in. There would be no coming back from this. None had bitten her yet, but not for lack of trying. Thank God she’d put on new armor, but even the reinforced fabric wouldn’t hold up to this kind of torment forever.

Eden finished off two before the press of bodies made it impossible to move her arms. An infected female sprawled across Eden’s chest, its mouth gaping, spitting blood and flesh into her face. Eden thrashed, trying to get her arm up, but it was no use. Her body was no longer her own. She could only watch in frustrated horror as the female lunged for her throat.

It never made it.

The disconnected head of the infected hit Eden in the face before rolling away into the pack. She blinked, forced to close her eyes against the blood spraying in her face. Then the infected on her arms were gone and she was able to move again. Eden didn’t waste any time chopping at the ones near her feet.

Finally free long enough to climb to her feet, she stumbled a little bit. There were just too many of them. Even with Kaede and Taro—her saviors—on either side of her. She glanced up to check her position relative Jordan’s and nearly let loose a scream of her own. With Kaede gone from the front line, the infected had closed the distance and were now attempting to mob her sister.

Eden dove into the pack with renewed frenzy. She would not make it this far only to have her sister and those kids killed. No way. A quick look around put the count of infected near fifty. It was too many for the five of them, far too many. But Eden wasn’t going down without a fight, wasn’t going down at all if she had anything to say about it.

She chopped her way to Jordan, taking out far fewer zombies than she would have liked. “I’m back.”

Jordan grunted as she dodged a grasping infected and shoved her sword through its neck. “About time. Alejandro?”

“Alive, but incapacitated.” Eden couldn’t afford to think about him right now, to worry if he was okay. “We had to leave the ammo outside.”

Jordan nodded. She spun around, kicking two zombies into the crowd. Damn it, this wasn’t working. There were just too many.

“Please tell me you have a plan.” Eden took an infected’s head, barely pulling her
bolo
out in time to defend herself against a large one who’d come up on her blind side.

“Kill the zombies. Get the kids out alive.”

If Jordan didn’t have a plan, they were dead. Eden kicked a zombie into Jordan’s range and took out another one. Most of the ones left were the newly turned. If they could just make them hold still for a few minutes, Kaede and Taro could take care of the rest.

The metaphorical light went off in Eden’s head. Of course. There was a way to make them hold still; she’d been doing it earlier with the tents. She cast a quick look around. The priest’s tent was closest. Even as the largest it would only cover so many. Still, it was a better plan than fighting themselves into the ground.

She danced out of two zombies’ reach. “Kaede, the tent.”

Kaede met Eden’s eyes over the crowd.

“Cover them with the tent!”

Understanding dawned in the other woman’s eyes. She sheared through the infected, making her way to Taro. After a few quick words, they headed for the tent.

Great, now Eden and Jordan just had to hold them off until Kaede and Taro tore down the tent and threw it over the crowd. No problem.

Yeah right.