Sparrow’s Flight by Jenika Snow Page 0,5

being with these two men turned something on inside her.

“Yeah.” She glanced down and twisted her fingers together. Sparrow didn’t want to think about it, but they wanted to know. “They didn’t know I was watching. I was getting some wild berries we had just found in the woods, and when I made my way back to their place, I saw them beating a man to death.” At their blank stares, because she knew death wasn’t new for any of them, she said, “And then proceeded to cut him up.” Bile rose from her belly at the image of them slicing open the man. “They shoved the meat they cut off in bags around their waists. And then I knew that those ‘looks’ I thought I was getting from them, the ones that made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy, meant they were sizing me up for dinner.”

Chills raced up her spine. “I don’t know why they didn’t kill me right away, but I’m thankful they didn’t. Even though this is the apocalypse, I don’t want to die, least of all like that.” She glanced at each of them after she said that. “I ran. I ran as hard as I could until I collapsed from exhaustion.” It had been one thing after another, and humans no longer held compassion or integrity. Well, she thought that… until she met these two men. “And then you found me, saved me, and here we are.” The silence stretched between them, and she cleared her throat.

“Yeah, people sure have gotten fucked up since this shit happened, but that’s what happens when the world collapses, I suppose.” Asher’s words were pitched low, and there was a hint of depression in it. “I have seen a lot of shit on the road since this whole thing started, and only one percent of it was decent.” He looked at Mason, and there was a silent communication between them. She knew, without either of them saying anything, that meeting each other had been a light in all this darkness. Maybe one day she could have that. It was a farfetched desire and honestly so miniscule compared to the bigger picture.

“It is in our nature to go after one another.” They both glanced at Mason when he spoke. He didn’t lift his gaze from the candle that was slowly starting to dwindle down to a puddle of wax. “This was inevitable. With greed, power, and war, it is in our nature to destroy everything around us, including each other.” He leaned back and scrubbed a hand over his face. Although she knew they had one disposable razor, had seen Asher using it just this morning, Mason sported day-old stubble. It looked good on him, but it also made him seem even more menacing.

“You were in the service.” She didn’t phrase it as a question, and when he flicked just his eyes to her, that was affirmation enough. Mason held her stare with an intense one of his own. His dark hair was longer than Asher’s, shaggy almost, and it hung across his forehead. His eyes were as dark as the shadows that surrounded them, and his body was just as hard as his companion’s. He had a scar on his cheek, about three inches long, but the darkness hid it from her at the moment. Sparrow remembered it all too well. She often wondered how he got it. Had it been when he’d gone to war—if he had, in fact, gone overseas—or did he get it while killing off the infected?

“What did you do before all this happened, Sparrow? Are you originally from Colorado?”

It took her a minute to tear her eyes away from Mason, but finally she forced herself to look away from the power he held in that gaze and looked at Asher. “Yeah. I lived in Thornton my whole life. After... everything, I didn’t know where in the hell I was going to go, but I knew I needed to get out of a heavily populated city.”

“No place was safe. That sickness spread faster than the fucking plague.” The air stilled at Mason’s dark words. “It was like every fucking person needed that damn flu shot after they announced it had all those cancer-curing properties bullshit. They thought it was the miracle drug of the century. They should have known man can’t play God. You fuck with shit, and this is what happens.”

Sparrow didn’t bother talking to Mason about how science saved lives, how people had