War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Page 11

  Now to find a bike.

  I begin to scour the streets for any bicycles left lying about, trying not to be spooked by the unnatural silence.

  I’m so lost in my own quest that I nearly miss the soft footfalls at my back.

  It’s almost too late by the time I turn around.

  An enormous man is only a couple meters from me, and he’s sprinting at full speed, a sword in hand. I have only seconds to unsheathe my own weapon.

  He swings his sword overhead, bringing it down upon me, and I grunt as I hastily block his attack, his blade meeting my shorter one. I have to hold my borrowed sword with both hands to keep him at bay.

  I stare into the man’s eyes.

  Holy shit.

  They’re glassy like a doll’s and slightly clouded over. But worst of all, there’s nothing behind them. No intelligence, no curiosity, no personality.

  We really do have souls. We must because that spark of life is gone from this man’s gaze.

  Bringing my foot up between us, I kick him away, buying myself a few precious seconds.

  Now that I get a good look at him, his eyes aren’t the only thing wrong about him. His torso is drenched in blood from a stomach wound he received, and his skin is an ashy color.

  He might be moving and fighting, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this man is well and truly dead.

  I manage to drop my bow before he attacks again. My arrows jiggle in their quiver as I deflect another hit, and then another.

  I feel like an idiot. I came here assuming that whatever magic War used on his dead, it was over. I deserve the death I’m probably going to get for this sort of fuck up.

  The dead man keeps coming at me, and it’s all I can do to deflect his blows.

  I really hope my sword is sharp enough for the butchery I need to do. And it will need to be butchery. A lethal blow won’t stop this corpse.

  I grab the man’s wrist, then nearly drop it out of shock. His skin is just a touch too cool, and there’s some other element to it, like maybe the flesh is too hard, or it gives when it shouldn’t—I don’t know, something—that’s distinctly abnormal about it.

  A second later, I draw my sword down and begin sawing through his wrist. My assailant jerks his arm away, sending me stumbling into him.

  In a fit of panic I unsheathe my dagger and stab him in the eyes, grimacing as I do so.

  If he cannot see me, I might live.

  I try to remember that the man is gone, that this thing is just a puppet that can’t feel pain. And I’m pretty sure the creature really can’t feel anything because rather than fending me off, he drops his sword and reaches for my throat.

  And now my blind attacker doesn’t need to see me to kill my dumb ass. He can squeeze the life out of me perfectly fine without his eyes.

  So I desperately begin to saw at his wrist again, and when that makes no notable difference I wedge one of my feet against his chest, then the other.

  Black dots fill my vision.

  Choking.

  The water rushes in—

  No, no, no. That’s not going to happen again.

  With one massive thrust, I shove my feet against the dead man’s chest, leaning back against his hold.

  My neck rips free from his hands, and I fall hard onto the ground, choking for air. When he dives after me, I manage to roll away just in time, my weapons miraculously still in hand.

  Heaving, I drag myself off the ground.

  The dead man is scrambling to get back on his feet.

  Can’t let that happen.

  I squeeze my eyes shut against what I’m about to do, and then I bring my blade down on his neck.

  My sword hacks away at his flesh, and it really isn’t as sharp as it needs to be. It takes a few too many swings to sever his head from his body, and I’m ashamed to say that all the while I’m biting my lip to keep from screaming—just in case there are more dead around.

  Fuck this day and all its atrocities.

  Even after I manage to remove the man’s head from his shoulders, his body still moves. His arms still flail, his legs still kick; he hasn’t lost any of his motivation.

  I stagger away from him, then trip, landing hard on my ass. I press the back of my hand to my mouth, holding back a lingering sob that wants to claw its way out. The corpse picks itself up, swaying a little now that its head is gone.

  Get up, Miriam. Get up before another creature finds you.

  I force myself to my feet and back up, sheathing my sword and my dagger. My eyes keep returning to that abomination, even as I move away from it.

  And then I run.

  I don’t know how the next zombie finds me, only that I’m not out of the city before another one is tearing towards me, a sword in hand.

  Fuck.

  I’d always imagined revenants dragged and limped themselves about. I never imagined they’d be this agile.

  Then again, judging by the massive man heading my way, I’m guessing that War chose only the freshest, most equipped dead to linger on while the rest rotted away.

  These final few zombies must patrol the area for any last living people who dare to move through the city.

  I pump my arms and force my legs to move faster, though the weight of my weaponry is slowing me down. I don’t dare drop any of it. I fear I’m going to need it again soon.

  The thought of escape seems like a dream. I’ve abandoned all hope of fleeing War and his army. All I want now is to return to camp with my life.

  I make it barely a block before the corpse has nearly caught up to me. I swivel around, unsheathing my sword.

  The man comes at me like a freight train, swinging his weapon with unearthly expertise. The left side of his body is awash in blood. Other than that, he looks almost completely untouched.

  I fend him off the best I can, but he’s relentless, untiring. He swings his sword over and over again, and with every blow I block, I feel myself weakening. Despite my earlier adrenaline, weariness is setting in. I’ve been fighting too long, and I’ve just about spent the last of my energy.

  The sound of hooves thunder at my back.

  “Cease!” War’s deep voice rings out.

  At once, my attacker falls to the ground, inanimate once more.

  The hoof beats at my back don’t slow.

  “Miriam!” War roars.

  I turn to face him, my entire body rising and falling with my labored breathing.

  The unflinching warlord is stoic no longer. His face is a mask of fury.

  The horseman is off his mount in one fluid movement. And then he’s running to me. “What in God’s name are you doing?” he bellows. When he gets to me, he grasps my upper arms. He obviously doesn’t care that I’m still holding a sword.

  I heave in and out, gasping for air. I glance down at the dead man at my feet, and an unbidden shiver racks my body.

  Dear God, I’ve never seen anything so frightening and unnatural in my entire life. And it couldn’t be stopped.

  “This morning I asked you to be safe, and this is what you do?” War demands. “Did you come out here seeking death?”

  I’m still trying to catch my breath. All I manage is a shake of my head. I didn’t even know there were still zombies patrolling these streets for survivors. Of course I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.

  “You could’ve been killed!” he says, his eyes wild.

  I almost was killed.

  War releases me to curse, running a hand down his mouth and jaw.

  I take a shaky breath and pace away from him, trying to regain my composure and, more importantly, not to piss myself.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” The horseman’s voice is calmer now, more under control.

  Still, I don’t respond.

  In front of me, one of the dead begins to twitch. Then, like a marionette, the man rises. He’s one of the grotesque dead, half of his face bashed in. He approaches me, and now I stop, my hand instinctively tightening on my sword.

 
; But the creature doesn’t attack. Not that he needs to. All he has to do is walk towards me, and now I’m backing up, backing up until I bump into hard, warm flesh.

  War’s hands close over my upper arms, shackling me in place once again.

  In front of me, the dead man collapses to the ground.

  “You will answer me,” the horseman says. “And you will not leave.”

  My anger rises, filling me like poison in my veins. I rotate around in War’s arms so that I can face him.

  I mean to tell him again how much I hate him, how repulsed I am by him, but one look into the horseman’s eyes, and he knows. I don’t know if he cares, but at least he knows.

  “Why?” I say instead. “Why did you have to kill everyone?”

  Now it’s his turn not to answer.

  “Why?” I say again, more insistent.

  War’s upper lip is curled, his face grim. He doesn’t respond.

  He still holds my upper arms captive, but that doesn’t stop me from pushing him.

  “Why?” I repeat. Another push. “Why?” Another. And another. “Why why why?”

  I’m asking it like a chant and pushing him over and over. The horseman doesn’t so much as sway. I might as well be pushing a boulder.

  Now the tears are coming and I’m angry and sad and I feel so, so helpless.

  War pulls me to him, gathering me in his arms. And I just let him. My body sags against his, stupidly soothed by the embrace. I cry against his shoulder and he lets me and somehow that makes this whole ordeal even more awful.

  His hand runs over my hair again and again.

  At some point he sheaths my sword for me, then picks me up. I don’t bother fighting him. It would be about as useful as my earlier pushes were.

  Silently, War settles me onto Deimos, swinging on a moment later.

  He holds me close to him as we ride out of that city.

  “I feel you slipping through my fingers like grains of sand, Miriam,” War says into my ear. “Tell me what I’ve done wrong.”

  “Everything,” I say wearily.

  He forces me to look at him.

  “Human hearts can be fixed,” he says, like I’m the one whose perspective needs altering.

  “Can yours?” I ask.

  He searches my face. “Will that make you hate me less?”

  I don’t know.

  “I won’t lose you,” War says, a promise in his voice. “I spared you that day in Jerusalem because you were mine. And I intend to keep it that way, no matter the cost.”

  By the time we return to camp, night has fallen. The smoke from the last fires in Ashdod obscures the stars. It’s better that way. I’d hate for the heavens to see all the horrible things we’ve done to each other.

  As soon as War stops his horse, I hop off Deimos.

  Once my feet hit the ground, I pause.

  I’m ready to walk away and write War off completely, but there is something he should know.

  Turning back to him, I say, “I found the picture of my family. The one inside my tool bag.”

  The horseman stares down at me, emotionless.

  “I was absurdly grateful to you, you know,” I continue. “For a moment there, when I held that picture, I wanted to go back to those two nights we were together. I wanted to relive them differently. Better.”

  I leave him with that.

  I can feel War’s intense gaze on me as I walk away, but here there aren’t any dead for him to stop me with. Or maybe he’s done caging me in. Either way, he lets me go, and I’m left to deal with my grief and horror alone.

  Chapter 16

  I’m distracted from the walk to my tent when I pass by a cluster of women, Tamar and Fatimah amongst them. At the center of the group is the woman I saved earlier, the one who repeatedly shot War.

  She stands in front of one of the tents, surrounded by the same faces who welcomed me. Her pants are stained with blood, and her hijab is slightly askew, revealing the smallest sliver of black hair. She hugs herself, looking completely miserable.

  I cut over to the group of them, drawn in by curiosity and a deep sense of shared purpose.

  The woman’s eyes meet mine as I join the group; recognition sparks in them.

  “You’re the one who spared me,” she says. I can’t tell if she’s thankful for that, or if she wants to gut me alive for it.

  “How are you doing?” I ask carefully.

  She swallows, her eyes flicking away.

  Right.

  I give her a brief smile. “I’m Miriam.”

  “Zara,” she says.

  My eyes move to the women clustered around her. “I can help her from here,” I say to them.

  They’re happy enough to move on. There are other new recruits who need their attention.

  Once we’re alone, my gaze returns to Zara. “So you swore allegiance.”

  She’s not like me, I realize.

  Earlier, all I saw were our similarities, but after the battle in Jerusalem, the fight had gone out of me. Had I not been spared by War, my body would be food for scavengers right now.

  But not Zara.

  She fought against the horseman and maybe then she wanted to die, but when the soldiers lined her up and asked for her allegiance, she gave it. She wanted to live.

  She sighs. “Yeah.” She kicks the earth with the toe of her boot.

  When she looks at me again, I see all those deaths she witnessed. She had to watch, just like I did, as her neighbors and her friends were cut down. And then she had to stand in line and watch them get cut down all over again.

  “And this is your tent?” I ask, nodding to the home at her back.

  “It’s not mine.”

  Right. It’s some dead woman’s tent.

  I raise my eyebrows. “What did you inherit?”

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  Moving around her, I pull back a flap and peer into her tent. “Bracelets, a toothbrush, a journal, and some eye makeup.” I list off the items I see. At least the folded blanket resting on her pallet looks new.

  “I don’t want any of those things,” Zara says vehemently.

  I don’t fucking blame you.

  “You don’t have to keep any of them.”

  She looks at me forlornly. “What happens now?”

  Dropping the tent flaps, I meet her gaze reluctantly. “Do you want me to tell you what you’d like to hear, or do you want me to tell you the truth?”

  She works her jaw. “The truth.”

  I give her a sad look. “You’ll be forced to celebrate the slaughter of your city with the rest of the camp.” Already I can hear the horde gathering in the central clearing. The drums haven’t started up yet, but they will soon.

  I exhale. “After the celebration, you go to bed and you’ll wake up in that tent tomorrow and you’ll realize it wasn’t just a nightmare after all. That this is your life. It’ll be up to you what you make of it. But the pain won’t stop. War and his best fighters will hit all the surrounding communities in the next few days, and they’ll kill everyone, and you’ll be helpless to stop it.”

  “Bastards,” she swears.

  “And then you’ll be given a job—either as a soldier or as a cook or something else, and that’ll be what you do here.”

  “And if I don’t?” she challenges.

  We both already know the answer to this question.

  “Then you’ll probably die.”

  Zara glances at me. “You haven’t yet.”

  I can tell she’s remembering earlier, when I stopped War from killing her, but all I’m remembering is the feel of that zombie’s hands on my throat, choking the life out of me.

  I give Zara a long look. “Yet.”

  By the time the sun is setting, the war drums have started up. I can smell someone’s prized animals sizzling over a spit, and people are steadily streaming towards the center of camp, chatting idly like we didn’t just massacre a town. Torches have already been lit and people have changed int
o festival attire.

  I head towards the clearing, driven by my hunger. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, my empty stomach is cramping.

  I slip into line for food, and while I wait, I study the crowd. Tonight, I see something I hadn’t before. So many faces hold a desperate edge to them. They smile and act normal but there’s a haunted, hollow look in their eyes that I hadn’t taken the time to notice before.

  It was a shit move for me to assume that these people aren’t just as scared and witless as I am. They’re petrified. We’re all petrified—me, Zara, and everyone else.

  And we have good reason to be.

  Through the haze of the crowd, I see War sitting on his throne, leaning to one side as a phobos rider chats with him.

  All of my earlier emotions rise up. He sacked a city, then raised the dead to feast off the scraps of it.

  And then he saved me from his ungodly abominations.

  The horseman rubs his lower hip as he listens to the rider, his kohl-lined eyes looking as dark as pits.

  Swiveling away from him, I grab two plates of food and two drinks and head back to the women’s quarters. The torches burn low here.

  “Knock, knock,” I say when I arrive at Zara’s tent.

  I don’t bother waiting for her to answer before I duck inside. I remember how little energy I had for manners or anything else the day I arrived.

  Zara is using what’s left of the previous owner’s eye makeup to draw images on the dirt floor, though in the fading light, it’s hard to make out exactly what those images are.

  I hand a plate of food to her.

  She stops drawing to take it from me. “Thank you,” she says. “This was kind of you.”

  “I also grabbed you some wine, but …” I give her headscarf a meaningful look. “I don’t know if you want it.

  She takes it from me anyway and sets it aside with her plate. Her gaze moves from the food back to my face. She studies me a little. “Why are you being kind to me?”

  Why indeed.

  I take a sip from my own glass of wine and sit down next to her. I don’t bother asking her if I should leave. I probably should, and I also know the two of us would be all the more miserable for it.

  “Because you’re worthy of it. Also, you managed to shoot War, and I’m a little jealous of you for it.”