Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (20 page)

Growling in annoyance, I put my fingers to my lips and whistle loudly. One long, sharp call that cuts through the roar of the crowd and reaches down to Kevin. He hears it, reacting immediately, but it’s almost too late. The Risen at his feet is done, but it’s in his way. He stumbles over it to avoid the woman that he now knows is bearing down on his back. He falls to his knees, tries to stand up, but she trips over the beaten Risen as well and topples onto his back.

The crowd falls silent. They stare in disbelief, their eyes bulging in shock as Kevin Hyperion, King of the Arena, is taken to the ground by an infected.

“No!” Ryan screams from beside me.

Kevin hears his cry. The entire Hive down into the depths of the Stables hears it. It’s desperate and mournful, full of everything the boy has lost and is losing now as we watch his brother collapse under the grappling hands and dripping teeth of the one enemy we never imagined could best him. But that’s the problem – it’s not him. This entire night, this briefest of fights, has not been Kevin Hyperion. It’s been something else. Something hurting and hollow.

It’s what love has made him.

Freedom stands at the edge of the Arena. Her fingers are laced through the mesh, her eyes on his body beneath the Risen, and she rattles the cage roughly. Angrily.

“Get up, Kevin!” she demands. “Get the fuck up!”

Kevin goes with the weight of the woman on his back, letting his body go flat for half a second. Then he kicks up with his feet hard, catapulting both of their bodies up and over. He holds a handstand for just a moment but the weight of her body clinging to his pulls him over until they both land on their backs, Kevin on top of her. The blow of the impact on the ground dislodges her hold on him and he’s able to roll quickly away. He doesn’t go far. He grabs her feet, drags her thrashing body to the edge of the Arena, and swings her sideways. Her head connects with the low cement wall surrounding the exterior of the cage. Black sludge explodes over the gray cement, but Kevin’s not done. He swings her out again, then viciously whips her back, smashing her skull against the stone again. This time it’s enough. Her rotten face crumbles, crushing her brain and spilling it onto the floor in a slow pour that looks like tar. Like syrup laced with bile.

It’s taken less than three minutes, the shortest fight he’s ever fought and by far the ugliest, but he’s won. He’s alive.

As I watch him turn his back to Freedom, his face blank and his body heaving with exertion, I wonder how many more nights like this we have in store.

I worry how many more he’ll survive.

Chapter Twenty-One

Vin

It’s late. Most of the Hive is either out, asleep, or stoned. I’m slowly heading toward buzzed with a whiskey in my hand and an old leather chair under my butt, chillin’ with Dante as he sits on guard at the front door. I’m relaxed and happy, off duty and coming down from a long night of drama. The worst was there at the end with Hyperion when I worried he’d lost. Dude was off his game all night, and I thought he was sick but I see things more clearly now. They snapped into focus the moment I heard her screaming.

I take another sip of my whiskey, leaning back and thinking
there but for the grace of God go I
, and I listen to the sweet silence of the room.

The lobby of the Hive is a big open space with catwalks up in the rafters, a reception desk turned bar in the corner, and a big wall between it and the Arena made by a long fish tank that’s slowly filling up with shoes. Each one is from a fallen in the Arena. Either the zombie or the man, but either way they leave their shoes behind if they have them. It’s a depressing sight and as I kick back my whiskey I wonder who started the tradition. It sure as shit wasn’t me.

“Heard Kevin had a close call.” Dante comments.

“You mean Hyperion?”

“His first name is Kevin, isn’t it?”

“I don’t use their first names.”

“Don’t want to get attached?”

I snort. “Yeah,
that’s
my problem. Attachment.” I take a sip of my whiskey, savoring the fire it trails down to my gut. “He pulled through. He always does.”

“I bet on him.”

“You and half the wild.”

“Did you see Seven tonight?”

I frown at him, surprised by the change of topic. “Yeah. Why?”

His eyes are dark, angry. “See her face?”

“The bruises, yeah.”

“And the split lip.”

“She’s got some cracked ribs too. She’s walking soft. Kylee looked the same way a week ago.”

He shakes his head bitterly. “Fucking Bennett.”

“Fucking Bennett,” I agree in a low drawl.

“Give me the chance and I’ll take that guy out back and—“

The room echoes with a loud pounding on the door and Dante reluctantly stands up to go check who’s coming home. Probably some idiot who went out to get laid at another, cheaper gang and lost track of the time. More often than not people don’t stay out after dark anymore. No one thinking north of the equator anyway.

Dante talks into the hole in the door. I’m too far away to understand what’s being said but he gets a frantic reply before he finally opens it. The guy who bursts in is older, easily fifty in his face but his hair is almost all white. It flies in every direction reminding me of a mad scientist in old movies. He’s got a manic look in his eyes and an eagerness in his movements that looks all natural, no mixing required. He’s not a druggy, I’m pretty sure. Just a little crazy.

“Where’s my daughter?!” he demands immediately. “Where is she?!”

“Calm down, old man, or I’ll kick you out of here,” Dante warns.

“I won’t leave without her!”

Natalie appears from the other side of the wall and comes to sit on the arm of my chair. She’s one of the older girls in the Stables, thirty or more, but she’s smart and time is being kind. Put her up in line with the younger girls and she’ll hold her own.

“What’s going on?” she whispers.

I nod toward the commotion. “The old guy’s looking for his daughter. Guess he thinks she’s here.”

“Is she?”

“How do I know?”

“What’s her name?”

“No clue.”

“What does she look like?”

“Nats,” I say irritably. “Seriously.”

“Listen,” Dante tells the old man sternly, “you either calm down or you’re on your ass on the street, and if your girl is here, she stays here. Now are you going to be calm?”

The old man huffs as he straightens his blue raincoat on his body, but he takes a step back. “I won’t leave without her.”

“Let’s talk about that once we figure out if she’s even here. What’s her name?”

“Cassandra. Cassandra Crenshaw.”

“Cassie,” Natalie whispers.

“You know her?” I ask, surprised. “Bennett didn’t tell us he took on anyone new.”

“No, he didn’t. She’s not in the Stables but she comes in a lot.” She casts me a sad look. “She comes in for the Honey.”

“Junky,” I mutter, disgusted. “Perfect.”

“She’s a nice enough girl.”

“For a junky.”

“Nats!” Dante calls in our direction. “You know a Cassandra?”

Natalie hoists herself off the chair. She walks toward them slowly, carefully leaving Dante between herself and the guy. “No, but I know a Cassie.”

“Cassie,” the old man says desperately. “That’s what she goes by sometimes. You know her?”

“I’ve met her.”

“Is she here?”

“Not right now, no.”

His shoulders fall heavily. He clasps his hands together and wrings them over and over again. “I thought she was here,” he mutters to himself. “I was so certain she was here.”

“She only comes in now and then. Most of the time she’s with…” Natalie hesitates, studying the old guy and I understand immediately what she’s doing. She’s gauging him. Whatever gang his daughter has globbed onto, it’s not good. “She’s sort of a drifter.”

“Be straight with him,” I shout across the room. All eyes fall on me but I look at Natalie hard. “Tell him the truth. It’s why he’s here.”

She narrows her eyes at me and shakes her head faintly.

“You want the truth, right?” I ask the old dude.

He nods his head emphatically. “I have to find her. I have to know.”

“Tell him, Nats. Give it to him straight, no sugar.”

She casts me once last set of daggers before turning to the man and softening her stare. “She comes here for the Honey. A lot.”

“You give her drugs?” he asks harshly, taking a lunging step toward her.

Dante moves more solidly between them. “Easy.”

“No, I don’t,” Nats clarifies. “But the Hive does, yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“I’ve seen her in here with a guy named Castor. He’s not a Hive member. He’s a Pike.”

I whistle low and ominous. Bad news all around.

The old man looks at me once quickly without emotion before turning to Natalie. For her he has softness. Gratitude. “Thank you for your honesty and your help.”

“You’re welcome. I hope you find her.”

“As do I,” he says sadly. “Though I fear from the sound of it I may be too late.”

“I hope not.”

I groan in annoyance, standing to leave before I say something that will only rile the guy up again. I leave Natalie and Dante to it because the tender hope-fest they’re all kicking off is only going to bring out the worst in me.

If you shit in one hand and hope in the other, you’ll be left standing like a lunatic with a fist full of feces. Hope is for the crazies. For the Colonists and the religious freaks writing on the billboards and the side of buildings about the glory of forgiveness, clean living, and a working Xbox. It’s for followers looking to be saved instead of fighting to survive.

Hope is for the weak.

The door bangs open and I turn, expecting to see the old madman leaving theatrically, but what I find floors me.

John stumbles in naked as a baby and covered in blood. His eyes are wide, filled with panic, and his hands shake near his throat. Or what’s left of his hands.

The fingers on his left have been chewed down to the bone.

Natalie jumps back with a scream as he falls forward and collapses at Dante’s feet. I lurch forward, get hold of her arm, and send her stumbling into the lobby behind me. I hear her scream for help but we don’t need it. Dante and I both have our weapons in hand – me with my knife and him a long, dark length of pipe. He circles John’s body slowly, watching him closely as I move in across from him.

“I’ll get him,” Dante tells me. “You got my back?”

“Yeah, I got you.”

“Don’t let him bite me.”

“Don’t let him get up.”

“He wasn’t bitten by a monster,” the old guy says.

I hesitate, my heart in my throat but my body stalled out by the guy’s mellow tone.

Dante risks a glance at the old guy. “Are you blind?”

“Not yet,” he answers calmly. “I can see his body and his hands appear to be the only place he’s bitten.”

“Meaning he’s still bitten.”

“But not by a one of them. They had him incapacitated long enough to peel the flesh from his fingers along with the clothes from his body, and that’s the only place he was bitten? In case you’ve never noticed, the dead don’t care for fingers.”

He’s right. I remember the first time I stepped out into the new world. The bodies everywhere, piles of bones and blood and not much else. But always the fingers. Finger bones and grape jelly. Dark hair and soft skin.

I lock the memory down before it can fully form. Before I see her cough. Before I raise the gun for the last time.

“By what then?” I demand, glaring at the old guy.

He shrugs. “My guess would be a human.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yes, it is. But desperate men do crazy things.”

Dante looks at me over John’s naked ass pointed at the ceiling. “What do you think, Vin?”

I shake my head, flexing my fingers around my knife. “I don’t know. He’s right about the fingers, but people doing this? I don’t know.”

“Roll him over,” the old guy suggests. “He’s alive. Wake him up. Ask him.”

Dante licks his lips nervously. “Marlow would tell us just to kill him.”

“Yeah. He would,” I agree. “But he’s not here, is he?”

“You want to risk it?”

“I want to know if there are living people out there eating each other. Kind of changes things a little.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He swallows hard. “Same deal. You got my back.”

“Sure.”

“I wasn’t asking,” he says, kneeling down slowly next to John.

He grabs his shoulder and rolls him over quickly, his pipe raised and ready. John flops over with no resistance, his arm flapping hard onto the stone floor and his head lolling to the side. Dante smacks him a couple of times, making him groan. Finally his eyes flutter open and he stares up at Dante with a glazed expression.

“Who did this?” Dante asks. “Who attacked you? Where are the guys who went with you?”

“Dead,” he whispers. “All of them… dead… eaten.”

“By zombies?”

His eyes close, tears escaping the corners and coursing down his cheeks. “No.”

“By who then?”

“The… the park.”

“The people in the park?” I ask skeptically.

“Yes,” John mumbles, his face contorting as he clutches his mangled hand and starts to sob uncontrollably. “They’re cannibals. They’re all cannibals!”

We send for Marlow. We kick the old guy out before he gets there and we stand guard over John as he lays there naked and crying. I wish he’d go out again, slip into shock and shut up because the crying is making me uncomfortable. It’s not something you see in the wild, not from anyone hard enough to survive it, and seeing a guy I respect curled in a ball on the floor crying his eyes out is messing with my head. Part of me wants to help him but how? How the hell do you help a guy who swears up and down he watched all of his buddies get eaten alive, sat at a table while another dude made a feast of his fingers, and then was set free to spread the healing word of Hannibal Lector? There’s no Hallmark card for this. There’s no making that right.

When Marlow finally makes it down to the lobby John gets hysterical. It takes forever but he finally calms down enough to repeat what he told us to the boss. Marlow listens patiently to his story about his team being eaten alive by the people in the park and then sends for Doc. He has a blanket brought in and draped over John to cover his naked body and he leaves Andy with him to help the doctor when he gets there. The rest of us he pulls aside deeper into the lobby.

“You think the doc can fix him up?” Dante asks Marlow quietly.

Marlow shakes his head, his eyes dark. “No. He’s broken. Finished. I’m going to tell Doc to put him down.”

“Like a dog?” Yenko asks sharply.

“No. Like a man who is in a tremendous amount of pain, both physically and mentally. We don’t have enough pain killers to get him through this and even if we did it wouldn’t matter. What they did to him will leave him scarred for the rest of his life. The best we can do for him, for our brother, is to let him go peacefully and without pain.”

“He’s right,” I agree, looking each of them in the eye; Dante, Yenko, Mike, and Hector. “There’s nothing else we can do for him and he can’t make it in the wild with only one hand crapping himself every time he sees a shadow. If it were me, it’s how I’d want to go out. No pity and a little fucking dignity.”