Elixir (Red Plague #1) (Red Plague Trilogy) (3 page)

But the pack behind me wasn’t my only problem. The entire street had been overrun since I’d left home. A lot had changed while I’d been searching for provisions. Zombies loitered in my yard, my Honda had a writhing infected in the backseat, and a hunch-backed Red stood in my open front door.

Just like that, everything I had built and gathered and protected was lost.

That home was the last one my dad had ever lived in. Its address had been on all our letters and bills and catalogs. Inside it was the hall closet where I kept school photos of my twin brother Mason, my mother’s diaries, and the clay handprint I’d made in first grade.

Poof
. Gone.

Worst of all, my guitar was in there. It and the song diary in the pack on my back were all I had left in the world that brought me any kind of pleasure.

Bile in my throat, I veered right. My pack pinched my shoulders, and the hilt of my short sword dug into my right flank, but I didn’t let either slow me down. I had to get to higher ground.

So I scrambled up the lattice on the side of Mrs. Kinley’s house, digging my shoes into window framing and scraping my arms on the roof shingles so bad they bled.

On her roof I would be safe to take a few minutes to calm my racing heart and construct a plan. Because I really didn’t want to leave my home. There was nowhere else to go.

A scream for help sounded behind me, and I flinched, my pulse exploding into overdrive. I craned my neck. Reds moaned sometimes, but I’d been secluded for so many days that the sound of someone else’s terror captured my attention one hundred percent.

Where had they come from?

Was it possible they’d been living nearby and as well hidden as I’d been? Were there uninfected people holed up in their own mini fortresses all over town? All over the world? Because after six weeks of complete isolation I’d come to believe I was the last human on earth.

It was both exciting and alarming to realize I wasn’t.

Behind me, in the path of the pack that had swollen to six Reds, a flush-faced woman dragged a young girl by the hand. The lady stumbled before righting herself. She was no runner. And neither was the little girl. She struggled to keep up.

I didn’t call out.

I’d been alone a long time. Even before the infection my dad had worked long hours and, added with his daily commute, I’d spent a lot of time by myself listening to music and writing songs on my guitar. It was the main reason I’d avoided contamination.

Unless the two girls found a hiding spot pronto they would soon be overtaken by the pack. I rooted for them, even though I didn’t reveal my position. Maybe my pale neighbor hiding behind her curtains had the right idea. Like a nervous tick, my fingers spelled out
h-i-d-e
, a holdover from a childhood spent signing with my deaf twin brother.

But the woman spotted me on my neighbor’s roof anyway, even as quiet and low as I was, and she honed in on me as if I was the answer to her prayers.

My skin got all prickly and hot. I wasn’t anyone’s saving grace.

The exhausted woman turned on her inner boosters and made it to Mrs. Kinley’s house seconds before the pack. Like some kind of superhero she grabbed the little girl by the waist and tossed her up at me.

Without thinking, I caught the child’s hands. I pulled her onto the roof beside me, and then reached for the woman. She planted one foot on the wall and grabbed both my hands.

The pack, a tidal wave of writhing arms and teeth and elbows, slammed into her. She was yanked out of my grasp, and I nearly tumbled after her into the cluster of growling and grunting Reds but caught myself at the last second. This was the closest I’d ever been to zombies, and they were scarier and fiercer than I’d ever imagined.

“Get her out of here!” the woman shouted.

Then it got real quiet except for the wet sounds of feeding.

I scrambled away from the edge, and the little girl collapsed onto my lap in a gasping, sobbing heap. Her arms locked around my waist like a metal vice, squeezing until it hurt and leaving no room for escape. Little girls with messy blonde curls didn’t normally frighten me, but my chest tightened and breathing became more difficult.

“Don’t shake hands,” my dad had said about a thousand times.

And there I was in a bear hug with a stranger.

It took a few seconds to assure myself I wasn’t going to catch 212R from this little girl.

Tapping her arm, I whispered, “I can’t breathe.”

She sniffed and pulled away, but kept the entire right side of her body, from shoulder to thigh, plastered to mine. I hadn’t been touched in so long it didn’t feel reassuring. It felt uncomfortable. I tried to stand, but she allowed me no personal space. She embraced me around the middle again, tucking her blonde head into my belly.

“It’s okay.” I awkwardly patted her ear, not sure how to soothe her. I’d never had a little sister. My twin brother Mason had never needed comforting. He was too tough for hugs, even when we were little.

“Was she your mom?” A bad taste flooded my mouth. I knew all about losing a mother.

The girl thumped her head against my midsection in a back and forth motion. “Willa took care of me.”

“Was it just the two of you?” If she came from a group, I could deliver her back to them and be gone.

“Yes.”

Great. Which meant it was now just the two of us. Because no matter how much safer it was on my own, I couldn’t abandon a child to the Reds. Not that she’d let me, anyway. Her arms remained looped above my hips.

I wracked my brain for a new game plan.

My house was overrun with zombies, now exiting the front door to investigate the pack feeding beneath us. If there hadn’t been so many, I might have tried to take back my house, but I’d never make it inside. Even as fast as I was.

Who knew how many Reds hid, unseen, inside my home.

I had to leave it all behind. Everything I owned and loved. Stockpiles of food and toiletries. Clothes. My bed. Photos. My guitar. All I had left was the pack on my back and my dad’s replica sword on my hip. A pang of grief, fresh and raw, pinged through my chest.

The little girl sniffled. “Is she dead?”

I didn’t have to look to answer definitively. “Yes. What’s your name?”

“Hunny Green.” She wiped at her face without letting go of me, streaking her cheeks with dirt. “What’s yours?”

“Maya Solomon. Can you run?”

“I’m tired.”

Though my pulse was back within normal range, I was still breathing heavily. Sweat tickled the sides of my face and the small of my back. The air was so thick with moisture it had substance, and I would be in big trouble if I didn’t replenish the fluids leaking from my pores and saturating my clothes.

I wet my lips, finding them dry and peeling. If I didn’t locate fresh water soon I was never going to make it to Raleigh.

I turned my back on my house because my stomach ached at the sight of zombies coming out of the front door. But the area around us wasn’t much more promising. Especially when the two packs below us merged and laid siege to our hiding place.

“Catch your breath. We’re leaving.” I patted her back again in a slower beat. Like the rhythm of an R&B song. Patta-pat-pat-patta-pat-pat.

She stared up at me with big, shiny green eyes. “Where are you taking me?”

“Another house,” I said, making it up as I went along. Because I didn’t know what else to do.

“How old are you?” I asked.

She squeezed me in short, painful pulses. “Eight.”

I hoped she was a mature eight because getting out of the neighborhood was going to be tricky.

The cul-de-sac to the south was crawling with Reds, but open land spread out behind my walled neighborhood to the west. No houses, no streets, just a field of grass and pine forests in the distance. Beyond the trees poked the tops of buildings in the next town over. And standing in the middle of that open stretch of dry, grassy waste was a lone zombie.

Just one.

All by himself.

Watching me.

Zombies didn’t travel alone. They hunted in packs. Maybe this one was wounded.

I hated the idea of running straight at a Red, but one was easier to outsmart than twenty. It was the best option I had.

I dragged Hunny to the far side of the sloping roof, our feet getting all tangled up because she refused to let go of my sweat drenched shirt. Below us stood a plastic playhouse atop a wedge of dead grass, and then a cinder block wall. If I could get the little girl over that wall, we were free.

Once we were out of sight of the two packs, now converging in Mrs. Kinley’s driveway, I could take time to devise a plan. A better one. Like finding another safe house. A two-story model. I could cover the ground floor with plywood or building scraps and live in relative safety on the second floor.

Then, in the back of my mind another option took shape.

A cure exists
.

Two weeks earlier my dad’s antiserum had been close to the human testing and mass production stages. If I found it and got it to the right people, a new world could slowly take shape atop the old one.

It would be dangerous to make the journey into Raleigh alone and on foot. Food, water, and shelter would be scarce. Packs of vicious Reds clearly outnumbered us.

But if I was the only person alive who had knowledge about the cure, could I let it rot in my dad’s lab? And what would my dad want me to do?

He’d paid a lot of money to install the panic room in our house to protect me from all the dangers in the world. By traveling to his lab I would be anything but safe.

I glanced at Hunny, my curly haired tagalong. What did she, and other survivors like her, want me to do? Find the cure or forget it?

“I’ll lower you,” I said, “and when I get down I’ll help you over the wall.”

“I’m scared.”

“This is nothing.” I kept a hold of one of her arms and, without giving her a chance to chicken out, I pushed her off the ledge.

Hunny screamed and kicked and tried to tear my hand off, but she toppled gently onto the playhouse roof, and then rolled onto the grass. I followed, got her over the wall, scrambled after, and we were safe.

One Red stood between us and freedom.

“Run as fast as you can,” I told Hunny. “He’ll chase us, but we can lose him in the trees.” I snatched her hand and sprinted for the pine forest, pulling her behind me.

“Shoot him,” she panted, dragging on my arm.

I didn’t have a gun. Only a short, engraved sword. And I didn’t intend to get close enough to the zombie to use it.

“Just keep running.”

We passed near enough to the Red to see the ruby color of his eyes and the name
Ben
stitched above the pocket of a navy blue work shirt. He had dark hair, even darker than mine, and was filthy from head to toe. He pivoted as we passed within five yards of him.

We made brief eye contact, and his mouth parted as if he recognized me. But that was impossible. People lost higher brain function after infection. Things like compassion, critical thinking, and memory were switched off. Maybe lost forever.

I’d been afraid to venture out for supplies in case I bumped into a zombie I’d known before the red plague hit. A teacher or a neighbor or even a friend.

But I got a good look at this one. I didn’t know him.

As we neared Ben, I silently pleaded with him to cooperate and let us pass unharmed. But he only hesitated about half a minute before giving chase. His heavy work boots pounded upon the grass behind us, a bass drum in a rock anthem.

This was a big mistake. I knew better than to approach a Red, even one by itself.

Hunny and I ran straight for a thick-trunked tree with low branches.

I shoved the little girl onto a sturdy branch about six feet off the ground and then swung up beside her like a gymnast. My backpack and sword made me awkward, but I crawled to my feet seconds before Ben skidded to a halt under our tree.

Squealing, Hunny climbed to the next highest branch, putting herself well out of reach of the lone Red. I pulled up on the same branch, but it was weaker than the one under my feet, and the wood creaked.

My heart racing, I let go of Hunny’s perch and gripped the rough trunk even if my feet weren’t high enough off the ground to be safe. Ben was tall and my sneakers were only slightly above his eye level.

Ben shuffled from foot to foot, growling.

I had nowhere to hide or anyway to climb higher. Fifteen feet separated me from the nearest tree. There wasn’t another branch on our pine strong enough to hold me.

Wiping sweat from my eyes with my shoulder, I resolved to hang on to the tree until I couldn’t hang on anymore.

“Maya!” Hunny reached for me. “Hurry. Climb up.”

“It’s okay,” I said, keeping an eye on the Red.

After infection, bathing wasn’t a priority. Neither were balanced nutrition or personal hygiene. He was grimy and emaciated. Dark fluid stained his clothes and skin. His hands were so dirty he may as well have soaked them in ink. And his blood red eyes seemed to glow as he stared at me.
Through
me.

Hunny whined like a lost puppy. “Hold my hand? I’m scared, Maya.”

Not willing to take my eyes off Ben, I reached up blindly, and her small fingers gripped mine.

The Red lifted his arms, and I hugged the rough trunk even tighter. If he yanked on my ankles I had to be strong enough to resist.

“Stab him,” Hunny shrieked. “Kill him!”

Even if I wanted to take another person’s life, I didn’t dare let go of the tree to pull my short sword and put myself off balance.

The Red set his hands on the branch beside my feet. I held my breath, my whole body quivering like a fresh guitar string as I waited for him to grab me.

“Don’t let go of the tree,” I whispered to myself. “Don’t let go…”

Ben didn’t appear hungry. Or filled with killer rage. He stared back at me, a curious expression on his dirty face as if he found me utterly fascinating.

He withdrew his hands and backed up half a dozen feet.

The breath whooshed out of me, and I went limp against the trunk of the tree. The flesh-hungry zombie hadn’t dragged me to the ground and tore out my insides. He’d let me go.