15

Hope felt herself drop from a short height and land with a thud on the ground. It was dark. Stars were high in the sky, a breeze rustled.

"Hope? Are you okay?"

It was Dean. He stood a few feet away and moved to stand beside her. Screams pierced the air and they turned around to check out the direction of the death-sounds. The screams could have been human or animal. They smelled fire. Fire and … burning flesh. Ew.

"Yeah, come on," said Hope. She wasn't going anywhere near the screams.

She was grateful to be out of her regular clothes – they had black clothing on similar to Daddy's – but running in tight pants and a padded jacket wasn't easy. They also wore leather gloves and boots, she wondered if it would be easier to transform but knew Dean would prefer human form, still not totally confident as a Wolfling yet.

The screams were far off now so they slowed down to a walk. Besides, the clothing was burning up her insides and making her itch.

Dean looked down at his own clothes with distaste. "Guess the Zs eat each other now too."

Hope's stomach turned as memories from a previous hunt her Taddy dreamed about came to the surface. "I never told you about the dream Taddy projected one night … where children were Zs. It seems a lifetime ago."

"I don't know if I'd ever be hungry enough to eat the dead," Dean grimaced. Hope pulled a face.

"Animals don't think of it in terms of eating the dead," he said. "They don't waste resources the way we do."

Hope groaned. "So you're saying the downfall of those still out there will come from the refusal to eat human flesh."

"It's a good reason to fight the enemy, wouldn't you say?"

They continued to jog along a road. Hope stole a glimpse up at the moon. A blood red moon. Surely nothing good could come from business done under a blood red moon.

They stopped at a T-intersection. No street signs. No indication of what was lying in either direction but it had to be death and bloodshed, it was always death and bloodshed at every corner, like those weird Starbucks buildings. Tadda said they were Coffee shops. Weird, a whole shop just to buy a coffee?

The rising sun was creeping up into the sky oblivious of the danger. The habit to anticipate the worst was unsettling; she shouldn't have been growing accustomed to this. Now she knew why her Parentals did not like coming out here into the Badlands.

There was another cry, this time it was directly above them. Hope looked up to see a black bird sitting in a branch high in the tree. A mockingbird, perhaps, mimicking cries it'd heard a few moments ago. At dawn, the Zs were most active. Perhaps they'd just missed out on the battle in which case they could find someplace else to be.

Dean looked up at the sky. "Dawn. We've got to get back to the school. Daylight soon. Then they move with or without us."

Another scream erupted from the bushes. Then rustling.

Hope had once gone under the water in the river while everyone was shouting and playing. The view had been spectacular; watching the fish. The scream she heard now was like being underwater. Sometimes it was best not to see the enemy coming.

But then the noises vanished.

A quarter mile down the road they stopped and saw a body lying on the road. Hope hurried over and bent down to check for a pulse.

The corpse – a woman – had a gaping hole in the side of her head. Zs wouldn't leave a corpse behind. A human had killed her.

"No pulse," Hope said.

She hadn't really expected to find a pulse since half the head was missing. She rolled the woman onto her back.

"It's fresh," Dean frowned. "Is she a decoy? How can she be dead?"

The sight of the woman's dead body shouldn't have stirred an emotion inside her when she didn't know her, but it did.

Dean bent down and moved Casey's head from side to side.

"What are you doing?" Hope asked,

"Looking for any sign of coms or a Bluetooth or whatever it is kept her alive this long. They must have some way to communicate. I wonder what happened."

He swept his hand over Casey's face and closed her eyelids. Hope was touched by Dean's tenderness. But nothing in this world tended to stay dead for long.

After a few minutes, the woman still didn't move. That was a good sign. It was also new. Hope took a moment to look around at her setting. It was a typical suburban street. Houses, trees, gardens, cars in the driveway. Except the houses were empty and the gardens were overgrown.

Cars had windows smashed, black dried old blood pooled around the doors. She imagined fragments of flesh and bone, and when she closed her eyes, she saw the setting as clearly as if it was happening now. Zs had come and dragged the families out of their cars and homes and killed them.

They'd eaten the bodies, maybe before they were dead, maybe not. She couldn't stop the images from invading her mind. She wanted them to get out of her head but they were clinging on. She wished she'd learned to meditate.

"Take a deep breath," Dean said.

She opened her eyes to realize that her breath was coming in sharp gasps.

A set of headlights swept over the rise, snapping her out of the hyperventilating state. The truck chugged away behind a plume of gray smoke. There was plenty of time to get out of its line of sight, but it couldn't be a Z driving; there was only one person that would happily find and get a truck operational after years of it sitting.

Dean stood up.

The truck continued chugging towards them. Dean kept his hand hovered over the gun on his belt. The truck stopped a few feet ahead of them.

Rhys poked his head out of the window. Their uncle glared at them.

"What are you doing out during curfew?" he asked. His eyes honed right on the corpse on the road. He didn't know they had taken off, still off coms.

"We got a feeling and … she's fresh. Was human," Hope said motioning back at the body.

Rhys looked over at the body. "The corpse showing any signs of turning yet?"

"No. She should be back up by now. it's weird" Hope replied as she swung back to stare at it as well.

Very weird.