Chapter Eight

A HAND PULLED HER roughly back from Sean, and she was shoved forward. “That way,” the half-Dead man said, pointing his flashlight to an opening in the wall. His touch on her upper arm chilled the skin there even through the long sleeves of her thermal shirt almost as much as the cold whisper of gun metal against the back of her neck.

“I thought you didn’t kill women,” she said.

“I don’t have a problem with shooting them. Kneel down!” he commanded the rest of her team the moment they were through the opening. He gripped her shirt and shoved her roughly onto a couch.

The room was an entirely different world. It wasn’t a hospital room at all, but a luxurious bedroom. How had the man brought it all here? A four-poster bed decorated the back wall with soft, gold-colored sheets, and the walls were adorned with a fashionable wall paper. A sitting area waited in the shadow of a towering bookshelf overflowing with literature. The man shut a tiny, intricately carved door over the small opening in the wall and turned a Dead eye to her.

“What’s your name?” Sean asked as he knelt down in front of the wall with the others.

Brandon seemed to be the only one panicking as his eyes shifted from the door and back to the man.

“Jericho. This is my Jericho. Jerry. The walls came tumbling down. Sandman. Sandy. Sanderson. Jerry Sanderson.”

She threw Sean a wide-eyed look as the man paced the room and scratched his head with the barrel of his pistol. Something was wrong.

“Jerry, good. Nice to meet you. This is my team, Finn, Jackson, Steven, Brandon, and Vanessa.”

“Vanessa. Nessa. I like that name. She’s mine now. Not your team anymore.”

“She’s more than my team, Jerry. She’s my wife. Now you wouldn’t want to hurt another man’s wife, would you?”

Jerry turned a half-Dead appraising glare on her, and when he smiled, the open, rotting cut on the side of his face gaped. “No marriage laws no more. She’s my wife now.”

“You want Vanessa?” Brandon asked.

Sean threw him a warning glance, which he promptly ignored, and Vanessa shook her head from behind Jerry.

“If you let us go, we’ll give you Vanessa.”

“Brandon!” Sean yelled.

The click of the gun as Jerry aimed it at Sean cracked against the walls of the open space.

“Listen,” Brandon said with a calming wave of his palms. “She’s yours. She cleans up pretty. You look awfully lonely here, and we can do without her. Just let us leave.”

“You ruined everything,” Jerry said. “Do you know how long it takes to get my pets in that room? To trap them there until one of you comes along to try to steal my home from me? I’ve killed all of you, all of you. This is my Jericho.”

“What happened to your face, Jerry?” Sean asked.

“Turning, turning, turning, but I won’t go quietly. I’ve been fighting the monster in me.”

Sean’s eyes swept over an assortment of vials and needles on a tray table before he dragged his gaze back up to the man’s marred face. “Were you one of the doctors who worked here? Have you been experimenting on yourself?”

“They’re my pets—my guard dogs against people like you.”

“Listen, we have a doctor who’s working on a vaccine who might be able to help you. Why don’t you come with us, and we’ll take you to him?” Sean asked in a calm voice.

“No more people. People are monsters. Can’t trust people.”

Vanessa gripped the cushion as he swung his gun from each one of her teammates to the next.

“Who first? He said I could have her, and I want her. You can’t have her.” Again, he pulled the hammer back on the old pistol in his hands and aimed it at Sean.

“Wait.” Impossible. It wasn’t physically possible for her to watch Sean die. She hadn’t been able to do it in the room full of Deads, and she couldn’t do it now. “I’ll stay with you if you let them go.”

“You’ll stay with me either way,” he said with a monstrous frown.

“Yes, yes, but if you let my friends go and I know they are all right in the world somewhere, I’ll stay here willingly. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Vanessa,” Sean warned.

“You, shut up,” Jerry spat as he lifted his gun to him again.

He worried the corner of his rotting lip as he studied her. Still under his gaze, she hoped whatever he saw in her earned her this one favor.

“Give me your gun. Now.”

Without hesitation, she pulled her unloaded Glock and slid it across the floor to him.

“And your knives.”

“I lost it while fighting the Deads down below.” She lifted the edges of her shirt to prove it to him. All that remained was an empty sheath.

His eyes turned lucid for the first time since she’d seen him poke his head out of the ceiling. “Leave, before I change my mind.”

Brandon, that traitor, bolted for the door and threw it open before the others even stood up.

“Can I say good-bye to my wife?” Sean asked. “Please. I’m never going to see her again. The least you can do is let me say good-bye.”

Moments passed with only a hard and steady look from Jerry before he nodded curtly. “Make it quick.”

Finn immediately started twenty questions with Jerry as Sean approached. His intense gaze held her like a caress, and he stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Wrapping his arms around her until his hands tangled with the edge of her shirt, he leaned down and smiled just before he kissed her. His lips were sensuous and moved fluidly against hers until her legs felt like they wouldn’t bear weight anymore. Finn spoke loudly about the best way out of the hospital as Sean whispered, “Meet at the tunnels,” against her lips.

His hands brushed the bare skin of her exposed back and then something cut painfully into her flesh. Warmth trickled and pooled at the waist of her cargo pants, and it wasn’t until he pulled away with a meaningful look that she realized just what he’d done. He’d given her knife back—the one she’d hurled at the Dead to save his life. Now, he was returning the favor.

Her hands shook at the realization that if she didn’t use it, she’d become the reluctant partner of the half-monster who argued with Finn near the door.

Okay, she mouthed.

He’d kissed her too well. She was drunk with the taste of him, and her lips were warm and throbbing for more—for everything.

He was using that affection to trick Jerry. Gah, she had to get it under control and quick. Her life depended on recovering from whatever Sean had done to shock her system. Kissing Mitchell last year had been fun, but it hadn’t been like this.

Her heart pounded as Sean walked away, and she bit her lip in hopes that the pain would evoke some of the inner strength that had vanished since she’d climbed that rope.

The door shutting behind her team was the most desolate sound in the world.

Vanessa swallowed a sob as she ran down another hallway only to realize she’d gotten herself turned around yet again. What if the team had already given up on her? It had been hours. What if they decided they couldn’t wait for her any longer and left her alone in this city of Deads?

There. A map decorated a wall by a nurse’s stand, and she ran a sleeve over the front of it to clear the dust. Coughing as quietly as she could, she tried to figure out where the front exit was. It had been years since she’d read a map, and her brain function seemed to be working at approximately thirteen percent capacity. Too much had happened over the past several hours for her to be able to focus on the here and now.

A shadow shuffled across the wall of a turn at the end of the hallway. Hang the map! She bolted in the opposite direction.

Just as she recognized where she was, it was too late to slow down. Knife and light in hand, she sprinted past the room they’d been trapped in, now filled with Deads still drawn to their lingering scent. The sound of running and moaning echoed down the hall behind her, but she didn’t stop to look. Her nightmares would never let her live it down if she did. What if they’d shut the front door again? She’d be trapped, running these halls forever!

Skidding across the dirty floors, she slammed into a wall and took off for the front check-in. Light filtered in through the front glass, and she nearly cried in relief when she was able to run straight through the still-opened doors. Deads would be on her in fifteen seconds if she slipped, so she carefully thrust one foot in front of the other and booked it.

A hundred yards. Surely they hadn’t left yet.

Fifty yards. Surely she’d be able to see them from here!

Twenty-five yards. The iron woven gate was open, but all was black inside.

They weren’t there.

Not only that, but she was barreling toward a tunnel she didn’t know how to navigate. And a little moisture fear wasn’t going to keep the hungry monsters running after her from following her straight inside. She was leading them right into the dark where she’d be lost.

Something as solid as a stone wall caught her the moment she stepped into the pitch, and with a thunderous clang, the iron gate slammed behind her. She filled her lungs to scream, but Sean’s face flashed in the dim light, and she nearly melted into him.

Her breathing was shaky and labored and seemed to fill every inch of the tunnel space as the Deads reached the gate and stretched their hands through the bars in desperation.

“I thought you’d left,” she gasped. “I thought you’d left me here.”

Sean cradled the sides of her face and pressed his forehead against hers. “Never. I knew you’d get back to us.”

“To be fair, we did almost die waiting here for you,” Brandon said matter-of-factly.

The black rage Brandon’s treachery filled her with was more than she could handle. How could he even think of whining about the inconvenience she’d caused while trying to escape a psychopath and horde of Deads? One which the little twit had happily thrown her to. With a screech, she launched herself at Brandon’s stupid face.

“Ow, you’re hurting me!” he said as his back hit the tunnel wall.

“I think that’s the point,” Finn offered as she got her first good fist across his jaw.

Punching someone sounded awesome in theory, but in actuality, it hurt like hell. The possibility that she’d broken her fist right in half seemed likely, which only added fuel to the fire that was burning her up. “You gave me to that man! Just traded me like I was nothing!” Her voice was becoming shrill, but so what? She hoped she burst his eardrums.

He held his mouth as if it would flop onto the floor if he let it go, and he glared at her with shocked disapproval. “You just hit a guy with glasses.”

“Well, looks like we’re both going to the fiery place after we die, now doesn’t it? Maybe we can share a room.” With that, she shoved him out of her way with her good hand and stomped through the slush down the tunnel. And damn those boys with their echoing chuckles. She could hear every wisp of their obnoxious amusement, which only enraged her more.

Sean had been slowly gutted as they’d waited for her. He’d sworn to have faith in people more, but battling his protective instincts to go back in there to save her, which would get every one of his team members killed, sat heavy in his stomach.

He’d imagined every morbid thing that could be happening to Vanessa in that hospital, and the ache went from a mild dullness to an acute pain.

“She’ll make it back to us,” Finn chanted on a loop. “She’s tough. She’s proven herself today. She can do this.”

And then she’d been there, running for her life and doing exactly as he’d asked her. She’d run straight to the tunnel even though she likely couldn’t see them in the shadows. From the way she barreled into him, she probably hadn’t known they were waiting just at the lip of the entrance.

And then she’d let him hold her. That ferocious woman let him comfort her. Some senseless pride arose in him that he’d somehow touched a jungle cat and been rewarded with a purr instead of death.

Even if it was just for a moment, that touch relieved a discomfort he hadn’t known he’d been shouldering. She’d been a warrior in there. Unblinking, no hesitation, had gone above and beyond for the team and sacrificed her own safety not once, but twice for them. She was fierce and brave, and watching her closed fist sock that dillhole Brandon in his deserving jaw was just about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

Shoving past Brandon and his perpetual pout, he caught up to Vanessa just as she came to the first fork in the tunnel. “This way,” he said. The words echoed off the moisture laden walls and sent a trio of rodents scurrying. He couldn’t even name a less romantic destination for their first almost-moment.

He leaned closer, but she pulled into herself and crossed her arms over her chest. Whatever had happened in that room up there still sat, heavy and suffocating, on her. He swallowed the cold lump that threatened to choke off his air. He didn’t even want to know. She was safe, and that had to be enough. Any more and he’d go mad hunting down the thing that had hurt her.

Stepping in front of her, he led the team through the tunnels and back to the basement of the house. The Deads had dispersed from the truck with the lack of food, and Finn took the wheel as Sean slid into the backseat next to Vanessa. There was more room to stretch because of the fall of Keeter.

Keeter.

The loss was fire on a soul that had already borne too much. Keeter’s death was on him. No matter that he’d barely made it out himself. He led them. Every mistake fell on him.

Leaning his head back against the seat, he closed his eyes against the pain of what was to come. Of telling Keeter’s wife she’d never see her husband again. Telling her she’d be raising their young son alone in a world already rich with unfairness.

Vanessa’s breathing hitched beside him as Finn turned the engine. She faced away, toward the window, with her forehead against it as if the cool pane was her salvation. For a long time, he watched her struggle to control whatever emotions were overflowing from her body. Tensed muscles, clenched hands, a tightly controlled sniffle. She was a dam in a flood, barely hanging on, and he was adrift on the current of her sadness.

Words wouldn’t fix what happened. They would only chip away at her walls until she was lost in front of the team. She couldn’t show weakness in front of them. From the way she held it in, she likely knew that already.

Her hands were so soft-looking, clamped together in her lap. Impulsively, he placed his over hers, praying it would give her some of his strength—some of his warmth.

In a move that shocked him into stillness, she turned one petite hand over and brushed her palm against his as she held on. Dragging his gaze away from their intertwined fingers, he searched the side of her jaw, wishing desperately that her hair wasn’t hiding her face. If she’d only look at him, he could see the thoughts in her expressive eyes.

She squeezed his hand once and let him go, and just like that, the moment was over and done. His palm still looked the same as it had the minute before, but it had changed somehow. Buzzing with something he couldn’t understand, he held it up and clenched it a couple of times to see if the tingling sensation was just in his imagination.

Steven watched him with a thoughtful expression from the seat beside him.

“Finn,” he clipped, in charge of himself once again. “Enough hospitals for today. We’ll hit the pharmacy and urgent care off the highway and be done for the day. After Keeter—everyone could use some time to process.”

“Yep,” Finn said, making a right turn at a dangling, unlit streetlight.

If there was even the hint of something amiss, he was calling off these last two stops. They couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes, or none of them would make it back to Dead Run River alive. And their ability to gather Dr. Mackey’s medical supplies was a mission much more important than any of their lives. The fate of the world hung on their ability to complete the job Mel had asked of them.

The deserted streets were eerily quiet, and Sean leaned forward against the seat in front of him. The further they drove, the more Finn twitched his gaze around to each window and back. Sean wasn’t the only one spooked.

“Where are they?”

Finn shook his head and turned down a side road. “Maybe the ones on this side of town were the big herd that migrated into the mountains that Vanessa and I ran into.”

“Maybe. Let’s go,” he said as the truck pulled to a stop in front of a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and general store.

“Vanessa and Finn, you’ll be serving as watch-out this time. Radio if there is any activity we need to know about. Jackson, you take the entrance, and Steven and Brandon, you’re with me.”

Vanessa’s vibrant blue eyes held his gaze. Her eyes looked so much brighter with the little bloody cuts that covered her face from the broken window glass. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but instead she slid another magazine into her Glock with a metallic click and followed him out. She needed first aid, but there wasn’t time now. The longer they stayed in one area, the bigger the risk.

And he’d be damned if he was putting her at such risk ever again.