Chapter 5: Hunt

 

It’s just another day, Jarod tells himself. He focuses his eyes on the concrete below, on the spot where he likes to land when he dismounts from the barricade, so scuffed from his shoes that there’s a little mark there. Just another day.

But is it? There’s a different quality about the way the Hive is thrumming this morning, something in the air that tastes like desperation, and fear. Everyone knew that supplies were dwindling, but that was always a problem that was just over the horizon, something the colony could prepare for. This – isn’t anything like that. Nobody was prepared for the river to dry up overnight.

The water level hadn’t changed by the time he left the riverbank, but it’s only a matter of time until it slows to a trickle, then to nothing. Jarod had rushed to his apartment to pick up his bat, surprised that he didn’t find Gabriel there, but as long as they all knew where to meet up, things would be okay. They just need to go together.

In a brief moment of panic he looks out over the city, wondering if Tyler and Gabriel had somehow decided to head out without him. Torres wouldn’t be that reckless. As much as Jarod hates the guy, they know that they all work best together, that they need the best working together for this. But then the barricade shudders beneath his legs, and he quietly heaves a sigh of relief.

More movement comes from somewhere behind him, from the ropes, footholds, and crates that provide a sort of combination ladder and staircase for the field workers to clamber up and onto the barricade, to make it easier to quickly access the outside for when they need it. He grips the barricade with his legs, digging one hand against the wood for traction, then looks over his shoulder.

Right on cue, it’s Gabriel, working his way up the ropes. Except that isn’t a golf club strapped to his back, it’s –

“Gladys?”

“Huh?” Gabriel’s muscles strain as he pulls himself up the last inch of wall. He grimaces with the effort, then balances himself safely across the top, sitting cautiously, gripping the wood with his thighs.

“That thing on your back,” Jarod says, nodding at the weapon. “Isn’t that Gladys?”

Gabriel reaches over his shoulder, patting for the shaft. “Oh, this. Yeah.” He grins. “A gift, from Tyler.”

Which, once upon a time, was a gift from Magpie, who constructed this monstrosity – a baseball bat with nails hammered in one end – in her workshop. Gladys was just a name Tyler came up with, allegedly what he calls every weapon he uses. The nails fixed into the end of the bat faintly gleam in the sunlight. Say what you will about Torres, but the guy is immaculate when it comes to his possessions. No zombie gunk in sight.

Jarod clenches his teeth, to stop any trace of emotion from entering his features. What’s he feeling, anyway? Either envy over Gabriel getting a new toy, or jealousy over Tyler giving him little presents, like they’re supposed to be something special. Jarod swallows hard. He needs to get over that, really. Tyler has Daniel, and Gabriel has Jarod. That’s all there is to it.

“That was – nice of him,” Jarod says, hoping his nostrils don’t flare too much as he reaches for the right words.

“It was,” Gabriel says. “Since Magpie gave him the machete and everything.”

“You gonna keep calling it Gladys?”

Gabriel snorts. “As if. I’m not calling it anything. Who even names a baseball bat? That’s just ridiculous.” He scratches at the bridge of his nose. “Hey. Actually, do you want my golf club?”

Jarod raises one hand. “I’m good. Really. But are you sure you want to take it out for a run today? Don’t you want to get used to the weight first and everything?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s not all that different, really.” He lays a hand on Jarod’s, running fingers lightly over his knuckles. “It’s sweet that you care, though.”

“I always care.” Jarod scowls, or at least he tries to. Something about Gabriel’s touch takes away the edge on everything somehow, including the severity of their situation. Jarod blinks once, hard. “You’re being awfully chirpy considering how scary this all is,” he says, his tone even, but questioning.

Gabriel shrugs. “I can’t help thinking that this might be the good thing that we’ve all been waiting for. Maybe it’s like what Esther said. Maybe there really are people camped out up there looking for us.”

But if they were looking for us, Jarod almost says, they would’ve found us days ago. That’s how flares work. He says nothing instead, just gripping Gabriel’s fingers in his, as if there was some way he could take in a little reassurance through his skin. Even just a little.

“Whatever it is, we’ll be fine, Samuels.” Gabriel leans in. “We’ve survived this long. We’ve been through so much. We can survive whatever else is coming.”

Jarod almost shudders at that, at the very thought that realistically, something else truly could be headed their way, but Gabriel presses forward somewhere during the trudging of his thoughts, and their lips touch. Jarod hums against his mouth, accepting the sweetness of his lips, the clean smell on his skin, the soap still clinging to his body from the night before. Again he takes care to clamp his limps hard around the barricade, to keep from falling. This time he’s pretty sure he really does swoon.

“Ugh,” a voice says. Gabriel pulls away, and too soon.

So maybe that wasn’t Jarod swooning. Maybe that was Tyler making his way up the barricades and making the whole wall wobble. Jarod grimaces. The thought that Tyler had anything to do at all with such an intimate moment sends his insides churning – with annoyance, revulsion, or anger, he isn’t sure.

“The two of you have plenty of time to do that in your apartment,” Tyler says, his lip curled into a sneer. “Just saying.”

Gabriel chuckles. “And you don’t have any leg to stand on with that argument because you and Danny have been getting pretty handsy around the atrium yourselves.” He raises two fingers, drawing quotation marks in the air. “Just saying.” Jarod could kiss him.

A red flush creeps up Tyler’s neck. “Whatever, Anderson.” He grumbles under his breath.

This would be a good time to jam a few more barbs into Tyler’s underbelly, but there are more pressing concerns just now. Jarod clears his throat. “So, just the three of us, then?”

“We want to be quick about this,” Tyler says. “In and out. And Esther wants everyone else here to help with the water. We don’t know what’s waiting for us, so we need to approach carefully. There’s only a few guys I’d trust to do this with me, and the two of you are it.”

Times like these, Jarod could almost admit that he admires Torres’ sense of leadership. He’s just a kid, closer to Gabriel’s age, a bike messenger from before the outbreak, but when he puffs out his chest and the gray of his eyes hardens into something serious and determined, Tyler could even look something like a hero. When he puts his mind to it, Tyler can easily rise above the pettiness he sometimes resorts to, and in Jarod’s eyes, his respectability goes up a few notches. Several, even.

Tyler lifts his thumb, scratches his nail against the side of his nose, then fixes Jarod with a smirk and a cocked eyebrow. “Of course, I trust Anderson twice as much as I trust you. But desperate times, and all that.” His smirk goes wider.

And just like that, Tyler’s status comes crashing down again. Jarod plasters on a smile of his own, the smuggest he can muster.

“You’ll always be a dick, Torres.”

“Right back at you, sweet cheeks.” Tyler purses his lips and blows him a kiss. Jarod winces.

Gabriel groans. “Guys. Seriously. Priorities.”

“Right,” Tyler says, pushing his hair back and adjusting his cap. “We want to make this a quick one. We go straight upriver, follow the bank, until we find whatever it is that we’re looking for. But we also need to play this smart. Stealthy, like. There’s no telling what we’ll find out there.”

“Or who.” Jarod grits his teeth. Did he say that out loud?

Tyler nods at him. “Right. Exactly.” He pats at his shoulder, checking for his machete. “So. We all clear? We all good?”

Gabriel nods, as does Jarod.

“Right,” Tyler says. “Into the fray, boys.”

He pushes himself off the barricade, letting himself fall just far enough before reaching for a rope. He swings on it, his shoes scuffing against the ground as he lands, his machete already flashing in one hand, looking for all the world like a swashbuckler, some dashing picture of a pirate. Jarod clenches his jaw, doing everything in his power to contain his awe.

Gabriel follows, clambering down the wall like an expert, hands and feet seemingly finding the right spots to grip by memory alone, and he lands lightly with his knees bent. Anderson and Torres basically look like brothers in this light, one beautiful and strong and perfect, the other handsome and taller and faster, but also an asshole. As if hearing Jarod’s thoughts, Tyler frowns and waves his hand in a beckoning gesture. Hurry the fuck up, it says.

And so Jarod does, descending with far less grace, banging his knuckles against the wood, doubtless getting a couple of splinters in his palms, and hitting the cement unsteadily. If Gabriel noticed, he makes an effort not to show it, and he looks off into the city, eyes wide and searching. Tyler is not nearly as kind.

“So graceful,” he mutters. “Like a fawn. With no legs. Or eyes.”

Jarod glowers.

“Guys,” Gabriel hisses. A nearby clutch of zombies is already approaching.

“Right. Priorities.” Tyler stalks forward confidently, slicing at the air in front of him with ease, every movement sending the blade singing, every hack sending limbs and scalps flying in every direction. He isn’t even fighting. His body language has a lazy effortlessness that’s so at odds with the power and speed that goes into each one of his strikes. His face, it’s almost bored. Magpie was right to give him the machete. He works it like a thresher in a field. That’s when Jarod figures it out. So that’s why they’re called field workers. Oh.

“Jarod,” Gabriel says, swatting at Tyler’s leavings. He taps at his own mouth.

“What?” Jarod’s blood runs cold for just a fraction of a second when he realizes his jaw is hanging open. He bites hard and rams his mouth shut. Tyler isn’t that impressive. Not at all. He tightens his grip around the haft of his baseball bat, then closes their ranks, smashing at anything that gets nearby. It’s not a tough job considering that not much survives Tyler’s frontal assault.

But it’s insane how the ranks of the dead never seem to thin. They’ve been, what, six months out here? And the Paragon zombies just keep showing up. How big was Pleasance’s population anyway? Isn’t it about time they ran out?

Jarod twists from his hips, slamming his bat hard against the side of a dead thing’s head. Something cracks in its skull and its eyes go spinning as it falls to the ground. Just an endless tide of these monsters. Maybe they’re fresh recruits, brought about from when those two far stronger zombies showed up.

Funny, that. When the plague broke out across the city, the dead were as good as dead, and no one expected to see their fallen friends or family anymore. Yet something about Paragon makes corpses seek out those that they knew in life, so much that Jarod’s former boss and even Gabriel’s adoptive father rose from the dead to find them, and with horrible consequences.

Not only more powerful than the rank and file zombies Jarod had gotten used to fighting, those two had the horrific ability to attract more of them through roars and bellows, sending the dead into grotesque frenzies. Gabriel’s father, especially, left an indelible mark on both his mind and his body.

As if on reflex, Jarod reaches out for Gabriel’s wrist, his fingers making contact with skin already slick with sweat. Gabriel jerks away, his bat at the ready.

“What the hell, Jarod? Don’t scare me like that.”

“Stay close, Gabriel.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know, I just. Please.” Jarod’s eyes flit to Gabriel’s chest, searching for the edges of his scars from what skin he can see under his tank top.

Gabriel’s features soften for just the briefest moment. “I’ll be fine,” he says, more quietly this time. “Trust me.” Then he spins, smashing the nearest zombie and closing the gap between himself and Tyler. Jarod picks up the pace and closes in on them.

“Okay,” Tyler says over his shoulder. “We got through the thick of them. Gotta be more careful from here on out. Be slower, more subtle. Follow the river, like I said.”

“Or follow you,” Gabriel says. “Same thing.”

“Right.” Tyler nods, then points at an alley, arm outstretched, his muscles taut. “That runs parallel to the river. We’ll move through there.”

The three of them creep through the alley in silence, staying close to the shadows cast over the broken city by the midday sun, though Jarod isn’t even sure that keeping out of sight helps at all. The dead have a keenness to their senses that belies the corruption of their bodies, relying above all on their increased sensitivity to sound.

It’s why the Hive isn’t allowed to use guns. A single shot would be enough to attract a whole block’s worth of these things, and while the zombies can be easily felled and dealt with in small numbers, the story is very different when you’ve got about fifty of them banging on the front door.

Similarly it’s why the field workers haven’t arrived at any conclusion as to whether keeping clean or staying filthy would be the best way to evade detection. There’s been no evidence that the zombies have an improved sense of smell, though Jarod’s sure that it wouldn’t help either way. Even months after the outbreak the ruins of Pleasance are still choked with the smell of the dead, every city block thick with the overripe sickly sweetness of blighted flesh. It’s just something they’ve had to get used to, though Jarod isn’t sure he’ll ever grow accustomed to it. That’s part of why he enjoys heading to the rooftop, after all, to escape the city’s pervasive smell of death.

But stealth and senses aside, Torres’ plan seems to be working pretty well so far. For whatever reason the alley isn’t quite as thick with the dead things, and whatever creatures they encounter here are quickly put down with little fuss or noise. If they continue at this rate they’ll be able to take themselves far upriver within no time.

Jarod blinks his eyes against the wind rushing down the alley, strong enough that it tosses up traces of debris, but also blows away some of the city’s stench. The air is cool on his skin, almost a reprieve from the terrible heat of the sun, and it’s a sudden reminder of why they’re out here in the first place. He isn’t thirsty, he knows that much, but somehow his throat feels parched all over again. It’s the dust, he thinks, or the heat, and not the knowledge that the river really is running dry. He bites his lip. You really never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

“Left, here,” Gabriel says. Tyler pauses, looks over his shoulder, then nods.

This should be it, about where the flare was fired. But what are they looking for? They checked the day after it was spotted, then a week after, and nothing. No signs of life, no changes. Jarod breathes deep into the pit of his stomach, preparing himself for whatever they might find.

The three of them sneak down a smaller path, emerging in a block of buildings much like any other in the Pleasance of today: a huddle of broken concrete, dry and dead vegetation, and blood-stained asphalt. The only thing marking this area is the river and the little footbridge that runs over it. Except that this time the bridge isn’t there.

“What the hell?” Tyler hisses, retreating into the darkness of the alley. “Are you guys seeing this? Wasn’t there a bridge here?”

“It’s still there,” Jarod says. “Only broken. Look.”

The bridge was only ever big enough to accommodate two people walking abreast, apparently built to let pedestrians cross over the river to access both sides of this area, what used to be a commercial plaza. But for whatever reason the bridge has fallen, pieces of masonry strewn over either side of the river, some of it sitting in the water itself, or what little of it is left. It’s down to a slow trickle. Whatever caused all this was huge.

And it could still be out there.