The Starborn Saga (Books 1, 2, & 3) (7 page)

“It’s much better, I promise. I’m not even limping anymore.”

“It was a really deep cut,” he says. “Remember? You, no pants, bloody leg, sitting on the couch less than twenty-four hours ago?”

“Yeah, I remember. Evelyn gave me some ointment, some kind of fast-healing stuff. It’s not completely healed, of course, but it’s much better.”

Connor snorts. “She’s a strange one. I’d be careful of whatever medicine she gives me.”

I look down at my leg, suddenly unsure of whether I should be happy that I can’t feel the wound. 

Connor sighs and looks in every direction. “I wouldn’t mind having company out there. Gets pretty creepy, even during the day.”

“Then let me go with you.”

“Why do you want to? What’s in it for you?”

“Honestly, I feel safer hiking in the forest all night than sleeping in a camp full of men, especially these men.”

“Ah, they’re not so bad, but I understand, I guess.derstandÀuess.d

We decide that Connor will volunteer for the first watch, and once everyone is asleep, we’ll slip out unnoticed. 

After Connor volunteers, Heinrich agrees to take the second watch, then tells me that I can have the SUV to myself. He even offers me a blanket and tells me to keep warm. It’s a nice gesture that I’m surprised to receive from the Salem leader. He says something about wanting to sleep on the ground, then walks away silently.

During the wait, I get into the back of the SUV and lock the doors so I can take a minute to look at my cut thigh. It’s healing quickly. I put more of the ointment on it and wrap myself back up. I sit and wait with the door open so there won’t be much noise when Connor comes to get me. 

I find that I’m actually a little more tired than I thought, even though I slept so long today. I don’t know how long I wait for Connor, but I’m pretty sure I’m asleep when he finally grabs my arm, startling me. 

“You ready?” he asks. 

I wipe my tired eyes and nod as I shove the pistol under my belt at my back and feel for the knife on my left thigh. In all actuality, I’m terrified to go into the forest at night, but for some reason I trust Connor. I’ve barely known him a day, and I don’t really know anything about him, but it’s just a feeling. For some reason, I want him to find his brother more than anything. I try to imagine how I’d feel if it was my little brother, Jake, stuck in the wilderness alone. I’d be worried sick. I would want someone near me who was willing to go into the forest at night too. 

As we leave the camp, my first concern is that we are leaving with no one watching it. I voice this concern to Connor, but he tells me that there is a device on the dashboard of the SUV that he set to monitor the campsite for any unusual movements. If a greyskin comes through, it will wake everyone with an alarm.

“And I’ve got the wristband if they need to contact me,” Connor says. 

“Those things seem pretty useful,” I say. 

Connor shrugs. “They can help for a lot of things, but it’s Screven’s way of keeping an eye on everyone.” 

“Aren’t we talking too loud?” I ask, not wanting to attract any unwanted attention. 

He shakes his head. “If greyskins were anywhere around, we would have spotted them earlier today.”

My thoughts instantly go to yesterday when I thought the town I was in was abandoned. Far from it. But I talk to him anyway. 

For the next three hours, we talk about everything. I learn that his parents were also killed about six years ago. I learn that he is now twenty-two years old and his brother, Aaron, is two years younger.

I tell him a little about my life, my little brother, my grandma. I tell him about how we’ve needed some kind of protection for a long time now.

“I just feel like it’s worth giving up some liberties to save the village,” I say. “It’s either that or die.”

“Or move,” Connor says.

“Yeah, but where? No place is safe from the herds.”

“I guess you’re right about that. I wish I had answers for you. I know you can’t just sit by and do nothing. It’s an unfair world that we live in.”

I’m about to say something else, but he holds up a hand for me to keep silent, and then readies his gun. I pull out the pistol from my belt and switch the safety off. 

“You hear that?” he asks.

It’s some distance away, but I do hear movement in front of us.

“Sounds like footsteps,” I whisper.  Can ce

As I finish my sentence we both hear the familiar grunt of a greyskin coupled with shuffling leaves on the ground. My grip on to the pistol is tighter. In this light there will be no chance of knowing how many there are until they’re right on top of us.”

We both stand in cold silence waiting. My vision is decent, but the thickness of the trees covers up most of the moonlight. Still, I’m able to see a tree with low-hanging branches. I tap on Connor’s shoulder and he jumps a little before looking at my face. I point to the tree, then up and he nods. 

Putting the pistol back in the waist of my pants, I start to climb the tree with Connor directly below me. We try to make as little noise as possible and we make our way up the tree. Once we’re both about twenty feet in the air, we stop, still listening for any sign of the approaching greyskin. 

At first I don’t hear anything, but then there’s more rustling. We can just make out the shape of the greyskin as it passes below us. I can tell that it has caught our scent, but it doesn’t have enough sense to know that we climbed up the tree. It stands below the tree for a few minutes, grunting. I can’t help but feel sick by it. Even though I’ve grown up my whole life with these terrible creatures, I still know that it was once a person like me.

Pretty soon, it isn’t interested in the spot where we previously stood and moves on. Connor breathes a sigh of relief and begins to climb back down, but I grab his arm. He looks at me with curiosity in his eyes, but I shake my head.

“Wait,” I say. 

“What?”

“Wait.”

I don’t know what it is, but it’s as if I sense that there are more. It’s a new feeling, one that I haven’t really ever experienced before. It’s like I feel more of them coming. We both sit in the branches for a full minute before we hear the rustling of more leaves on the ground ahead of us.

Two greyskins. Four greyskins. Ten greyskins. A herd of greyskins crosses below us.

We absolutely cannot make a sound. Though most greyskins can’t climb, they also won’t leave us alone until we either fall out of the tree or they can knock it over. If even one of them notices we are in the tree, it’s over for us. We could shoot until we are out of ammunition, but with this many, it won’t take long before we’re on the ground, thrashing and stabbing until they devour us. That’s why we’re holding our breath. That’s why we can’t make a sound. 

It feels like an eternity as they pass through. I lose count after about fifty of them. Why they are traveling through the middle of the forest like this is a mystery. I can tell they aren’t heading in the direction of the camp, so the others are safe for now.

Once the herd passes, I notice that I’ve been squeezing Connor’s hand tightly. 

“Sorry,” I say as I pull it away quickly.

“Don’t be.”

“Where do you think they’re headed?” I ask. 

“Well, unless they smell something, or heard something from far off, they aren’t headed anywhere in particular.” He looks at me with his eyebrows furrowed. “How did you know they were there? I was ready to climb down but you stopped me.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just felt it. I can’t explain, really.” And this is the truth. I really have no idea how I knew. The feeling is much like when I reached my hands up for the cranes and they came tumbling down. I wonder if this is part of the supernatural powers I’ve seemed to gain recently. I think about it almost every passing minute, curious to know if I’m the only one in the world that can do such a thing.

I climb down the tree unt C theryil my feet hit the forest floor. When Connor stands next to me he says something that sends goose bumps up and down my body. 

“Let’s follow the herd,” he says. 

“What?”

“If they do smell something, or someone, they could lead us to Aaron. For all we know they could be following a gunshot from earlier.”

“Wouldn’t we have heard it too?”

“Maybe not. I think sometimes a greyskin’s senses are heightened to make up for its loss of mobility.”

“Is that true?” I ask. 

He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s worth a try. Don’t worry, we’ll stay far enough back that they won’t notice us, I promise.”

I think it’s a terrible idea, but we are out here to find his brother, not mine. Connor hasn’t led me astray yet either. I let out a sigh and nod. “Lead the way.”

We keep a good distance from the herd. We actually can’t see it, but Connor and I are able to see the tracks enough to follow them safely, though I hope there isn’t a straggler lurking behind a tree, ready to grab my ponytail and bite into my neck. It’s a night like tonight and thoughts like these that make me think my grandma might be right about cutting my hair shorter. I touch the wavy locks with my fingertips and shudder slightly, hoping Connor doesn’t notice. 

The further we go, the more we can see what the greyskins are moving toward and why. There is a bit of flashing light in the distance, and then the sound of a gun. Connor and I look at each other with stunned looks. He takes off in a sprint, and I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea but I follow him, pistol in hand. 

Connor decides to flank the herd from the left. So far, none of them have noticed us because of the light and gunshots in the distance. After a minute or two, I can see what all the noise is coming from. Connor stops and hides behind a set of bushes and I crouch next to him. What we see is terrifying. 

All the greyskins are making their way to a large area of boulders and rocks. At the top of one of the boulders, hanging on for dear life, just out of reach of the undead arms, is a man. He holds a shotgun in one hand, and with the other, he holds himself steady against the rock. A hundred, maybe two hundred greyskins are clamoring to get to him. I look at Connor and his eyes are as wide as they can be. 

He turns his head quickly to me, but I know what he’s going to say before the words come out of his mouth. 

“It’s Aaron!”

I don’t know what is more surprising: the fact that Connor’s hunch about following the herd was correct, or that his brother, Aaron, is still alive. Either way, I’m not so sure that announcing our presence is such a good idea. It’s still only three of us against two hundred or more greyskins.

“We’ve got to call in for help,” I tell Connor. “We can’t take all of them alone.”

Connor nods and looks down at his wristband and swears. 

“What is it?” I ask. 

“They’ve been trying to contact me, but I left the volume down.”

He messes with a few buttons on the side, then brings the wristband up to his mouth.

“Heinrich, do you hear me?”

There’s no sound for a long moment, then a voice sounds from the wristband. 

“What is wrong with you?” Heinrich yells through the radio.

“Are you near my location?” Connor asks. 

“We’re about a minute out with the vehicles,” Heinrich answers. “You better have a good reason for leaving camp without my permissi Ct m>

“Come in carefully,” Connor says. “There’s an entire herd here. We’ve found Aaron too.”

“Alive?”

“Yes. Alive. Get here with guns ready. There’s about two hundred of them.”

“Got it.”

Connor lowers his wrist and double checks his rifle to make sure it’s ready.

“You’re going to wait for them aren’t you?” I ask. 

He looks at his brother who is struggling to stay out of reach. “They better get here fast.”

The next minute is excruciating. With every passing second, Aaron looks to be losing his strength, and there’s no way to let him know that we are here to help him and that he only has to stay out of reach just a little longer. 

We watch intently as the greyskins do everything they can to reach Aaron. We continue to wait for the others until Aaron attempts to climb higher onto a bigger boulder but slips downward. A greyskin reaches out to grab his leg with both arms and begins to pull him even farther down. 

“No!” Connor yells as he lifts his rifle and aims down the sight. With a steady finger, he pulls the trigger and ends the greyskin’s existence with a bullet through the brain. 

The shot not only catches the attention of Aaron who looks up in shock, but also the attention of all the other greyskins who were reaching for the helpless human on the giant rock. 

For a brief moment, they all start to stumble toward us, but Aaron lets off another shell from his shotgun, splattering dark, greyskin blood in every direction. Now some are going after him and others are coming after us. 

“I’m out of ammo!” Aaron yells to his brother. 

We lift our guns and unload our weapons until we too are completely out of ammunition. Connor and I start to run away from the charging herd as we see the headlights driving in on the path about a hundred yards away. They stop and Heinrich and others jump out of their vehicles, guns ready. 

As they charge in, I’m able run to the edge of the rocks as the greyskins now focus on the lights in the other direction. The sound of booming guns and clanging of ammunition shells against the rocks is loud enough to attract every greyskin from miles away. Still, there are too many for the men to take them all out quickly enough. 

There’s nothing left to do but run and try to fall behind the coming vehicles under Heinrich’s leadership. 

That is unless…

“Wait,” I say as Connor begins to run. 

“We’re not waiting, let’s go.”

“Wait,” I repeat. 

I know he’s not sure if he should listen to me. To be honest, I’m not sure either, but I know these newfound powers have gotten me out of a similar mess. Maybe they will again this time. 

I reach out my hand and focus all of my attention on the small rocks all around us. I haven’t yet tried to move multiple objects at once, but I figure if I can move a giant crane, why can’t I move a lot of small rocks?