“Someone’s going to have to take care of him when I go back,” she told Ian.
When he didn’t answer her, she glanced at him. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“You’re not going back,” he said, as though she’d lost her mind. “You can’t go back.”
“Someone has to take the antidote back, dude. There are Others dying. Rotting.”
“You would desert your people?”
She stared straight ahead. “No I would not. And that’s why I’m going back.”
He said nothing. The judgment was there, in his silence, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t care.
It wouldn’t take a lot to convince her to stay.
And that would be a terrible thing.
She bellowed into his heavy silence, “Find me a way to get it back, then. If you can’t, shut the fuck up about it.”
“You don’t want to leave,” he said, slowly, as though he finally understood.
“I don’t want to leave Z.”
He didn’t ask her who Z was. Maybe he was too afraid to.
The crows flew overhead, adding darkness to an already darkening sky. They looked like a huge, rolling storm cloud.
“It’s coming a storm,” Jim called, as though reading her mind.
She glanced back at Owen. “We’ll need to find shelter when it rains.”
“No need, Princess. There’s a tarp in the cart. It attaches to the corners and will keep him dry. If you want to continue on, we can do so.”
She nodded. “See to it.”
He rode away, leaving her to her thoughts.
The crows called back and forth to each other, and Owen’s cart wheels squeaked and groaned as the horse pulled it over the bumpy, hard ground. The quick steps of the zombies were surprisingly stealthy—the lookalikes seemed to flow instead of walk.
The electricity in the air made her press a hand to her uneasy stomach. She breathed shallowly, anxiety clouding her mind.
Ian rode back up beside her and she was a little relieved, happy for the company. Maybe he could distract her from the sharp feeling of impending doom.
Then she turned a curve in the road and surprised a band of legislators, whose messy camp was strewn across the road.
She turned her head and called, “Jim, keep the wagon back.”
One of the legislators stood, stumbled drunkenly, and then laughed. “A woman and a man. We’ll have some fun with you.” He turned toward his left. “Capture them but don’t kill them. I want to eat my dinner before having them for dessert.” Again, he laughed, and his men laughed with him.
Rune grinned. “Hello, you ugly fuck.”
The legislator pointed at her. “You won’t laugh when I’m finished with you.”
“Don’t you know who she is?” Ian yelled. His voice shook only a little.
It would have been hard for a normal person to see the legislators’ expressions in the gloominess of the fading day, but she could see just fine.
The one who’d spoken narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care who she is.” His voice sounded like sharp shards of glass were caught in the tender meat of his throat. “I’m going to rape her with my horns and rip both of you into little pieces for my men to play with.”
He took a step closer. “You please me,” he said to Ian. “I might not kill you.”
Ian, despite his paling face, kept his horse still. He lifted his shotgun.
“You and your men are dead,” Rune said.
The legislator lifted a meaty arm, readying himself to give the signal that would send his eager men after Rune and Ian.
But then, his mouth fell open and his arm stayed frozen in the air.
Rune smiled again and glanced back over her shoulder. The zombies had turned the bend in the road and stood behind Rune, a backdrop of death that frightened even the legislators.
She pointed to the sky. “Look up.”
He glanced at the sky and stumbled backward when the massive cloud of crows suddenly broke apart.
“Who are you, then?” he asked.
She shot out her claws.
“She’s the princess,” Ian said, before she could reply, and he pulled the trigger of his shotgun.
The legislator exploded.
“Dude,” Rune breathed. “I’m going to want me one of those.”
The legislators who remained roared with rage and stomped toward Rune and her army, their running steps making the earth shake.
The zombies poured around Rune and Ian like lethal water and ran eagerly to meet them.
The crows screamed and began to dive, dropping like black hail from the sky.
And Rune, her heart beating hard with delight, leapt into the middle of the battle. That was what