They’d ridden about five miles across mostly barren, scorched land and were beginning to relax when the crows broke apart, shrieking.
Rune hadn’t felt settled since their near run-in with the crawlers. Jumpy and spooked, she’d been waiting for something to happen.
“Crawlers?” she asked Ian.
He shook his head, slowly, and clutched his gun. “I don’t think so.”
She peered at the sky, at the moving black shadows of the crows. The sun peeked through the clouds, and shone with a weak, yellow light off the rocks and gnarled trees.
“What is it?” Owen asked. He grasped the side of the cart and pulled himself to a sitting position. His groans were almost too quiet to hear.
Almost.
Ian held up a hand for silence, and the air, thick and oppressive, seemed to grow hotter.
Rune could hear breathing, but was unsure who was making the noise.
Not the zombies, who stood like statues, unmoving in their complete silence.
Not her—she couldn’t breathe. Her skin became coated with a slick, sticky sweat, and the fine hairs on her arms stood at attention.
The silence was full of terror, just as the day was full of danger.
The world held its breath.
And finally, she couldn’t take it anymore.
She shot out her claws.
“Fuck you,” she screamed. “Come on, then. Come on!”
It came.
The thing was similar to the metal man she’d seen the crows attacking when she’d first entered Skyll—but the one stomping toward them right then was even larger.
Enormous.
It arose from the ground and loomed like a mountain before them, impossibly tall, incredibly loud.
“Oh shit,” she said. “Never mind.”
Ian laughed. “Princess, meet Oscar.”
“Oscar?” She glanced at him. “The hell kind of name is Oscar for this mountain of metal?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t name him.”
“How do we kill it?”
“You don’t kill Oscar. You run like a motherfucker from Oscar. You wait for him to move out of the area and you come back when the chances of being flattened beneath his massive feet are a little slimmer.”
“I’ve about had enough of all this running shit,” she growled.
But then Oscar lifted a foot the size of a small house and stomped a dozen of the zombie Runes into the dirt.
“I changed my mind,” she said. “Let’s run.”
Ian nodded. “We’re right behind you.”
Oscar’s twisting metal sound hurt her ears. She urged her horse away from the hideous metal man, expecting every second that they were going to be smashed like ants beneath Oscar’s feet.
And as she kicked the horse into a fast trot away from the metal man, she got a very strong feeling that most of her guards were about to be finished before they’d even really gotten started.
And she could do nothing but run.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In her world, she was almost invincible.
In Skyll, she was not.
And that was difficult to accept.
Gunnar had warned her, had tried to prepare her. But damn.
She twisted around to watch the crows attacking the newest threat, whose roars were metallic and excruciatingly loud.
The zombies ran at Oscar, but he appeared not to notice as they broke their claws against the metal of his body.
Rune flinched each time she saw one of the claws snap off, then turned back around and led her men the hell out of there.
“Why don’t the zombies leave him alone?” she shouted to Ian. “Can we make them run?”
“They perceive him as a threat to you,” he yelled. “They’re going to take him out or die trying.”
“Shit,” she muttered.
Then she concentrated on outrunning the enormous Oscar. The crows and zombies were slowing him down, but he walked on.
Rune could have outrun them all, but she wasn’t taking herself to safety and leaving the rest of them behind.
She knew the fast, bumpy ride was hurting Owen, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
And finally, Oscar swerved off and walked away from them, causing the ground to shake as he went. His roars faded, at last, and Rune could breathe again.
“Let’s make camp,” she said. “Get some dinner and rest for a while.”
“Oscar isn’t the worst of what we’ll face trying to get to the witch,” Jim said. He rolled a cigarette, lit it, then blew fragrant blue smoke toward the sky. “There are many, many worse things in Skyll. Poor Oscar kills by accident.”
Rune snorted. “Yeah. Poor Oscar. What is he? Where does he…live?”
The crows had gathered once more overhead, their strident caws finally easing, but the zombies didn’t fare quite as well.
They stumbled into camp a couple at a time, taking up their posts around Rune and the