“Light,” he said, turning toward her so she could see the complete ruin of his face, the shattered nose, the misshapen lump of cheek and jaw. He deliriously hacked the words out one by one, stuttering and shivering as he spoke. The bottom curve of the steering wheel pressed into his sternum, cutting off his air. “Pr-pr-omise?”
Wendy nodded. He squeezed her hand again and she realized that his middle three fingers had been bent completely backwards, flopping over her knuckles loosely as he squeezed her hand over and over again, as he tried to soothe
“Eddie?” he asked. His words huffed out of him on a fine spray of blood and spit. “Is…Eddie?”
Craning her neck, Wendy felt the first stirrings of pain in her back and shoulders, but no matter how she twisted, she could not see. There was no guiding noise from the back, just the dying
“Good.” Mr. Barry’s eyes fluttered closed. His lips moved but no sound came out. Wendy thought they might have formed “Eddie.”
Long moments passed. His body sagged and Wendy realized that Mr. Barry must have passed out. Without thought she loosened her hand from his grip. His arm flopped onto the roof. Wendy, shifting until she could wriggle her leg to the left, kicked weakly at the dangling car keys, careful to avoid hitting Mr. Barry. It was better that he stayed unconscious until help came. On the fourth kick the engine gurgled to silence.
From the back she heard Eddie shift, groan, and mutter, “Dad?”
“He’s sleeping,” Wendy said, closing her eyes. In the distance she thought she heard the keening wail of an ambulance. Wendy relaxed, letting the seatbelt hold her weight. She felt herself drift again and welcomed it. “Let him sleep, Eddie. He needs it.”
Time enough for Eddie to see his father broken and bloodied.
CHAPTER ONE
Piotr hefted the newest box of loot and hauled it to the back of the mill floor, wrestling it into their makeshift pantry with effort. It had been good scrounging this week, their cubby was filled to overflowing, and Piotr was grateful to finally be done. On top of the closest box was a portfolio, battered but blank inside, and underneath a grocery bag bulging with Prismacolor colored pencils. Piotr collected the pencils and the portfolio, leaving the pantry. There was no light to turn off behind him.
It was late and the mill was silent. Poking his nose into various nooks and crannies, Piotr checked on the kids he was watching over. Snoring quietly, Specs lolled in his recliner, glasses askew, with a tattered copy of
The tangle of GI Joe blankets Tubs normally nested in was empty. Piotr found him asleep in Dora’s corner; Tubs was curled under her blanket and an old duster Piotr had discarded months before. The soles of his footie pajamas were filthy and his chubby thumb was thrust in his mouth, lips smacking around it. Dora, still awake, glanced up as Piotr poked his head behind the beaded curtain that sectioned off her part of their den.
“Nightmare,” she said, jerking her thumb towards Tubs. “How’d scavengin’ go?”
“Decent overall.” Piotr eased into Dora’s room, careful to not jar Tubs as he joined Dora at the warped closet door balanced on cinderblocks, which she was using as an improvised desk. Making a mental note to see if he could scavenge a better tabletop for her, Piotr set the portfolio and pencils on top of Dora’s dwindling stack. “How’s your landscape?”
“The bark ain’t right.” Dora held up a sketch of the overgrown courtyard outside the mill, skeletal branches of the lone tree yearning towards the sky. “It’s junk! It’s all just junk.” Scowling, Dora tossed down her pencil and wiped a hand across her forehead, leaving dim charcoal smudges behind. “This pencil stinks.”
It didn’t. The Prismacolors were the best Piotr could scavenge, but Pandora’s death had left her eternally at the age where every artist’s block was a major disaster, and Piotr’d long since learned to ignore her hysterics. He mussed her hair. “Keep trying. It’ll come.”
“Yeah, yeah. You stayin’ in?” Dora smoothed the ruffled strands of her white-blonde hair back behind her headband.
“At least for a while. I might walk the perimeter later.”
“’Kay. Thanks for the supplies. I know they ain’t easy to rustle up.”
He grinned.
She waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. You too. G’Night.”
Resisting the urge to ruffle her hair again, Piotr left Dora to her sketchpad and, rather than walking the long way around, gathered his will and drifted through the half dozen walls that separated her cubbyhole from his own. Some days, he thought, there were definite benefits to being dead.
Outside the night smelled of metal and salt, the scent drifting in through the rotting boards nailed over remnants of shattered windows. His corner was on the far side of the floor, away from the kids, giving them privacy. Piotr would have liked to be closer for safety’s sake but he knew they needed their space.
Once the entire San Francisco area had been filled with little groups like theirs—ghost children, nicknamed the Lost, eternally protected by teens like Piotr—but now there were darker things preying the streets, and Piotr’s makeshift family had become a rarity. It had gotten to the point that Piotr was considering leaving the dilapidated steel mill they’d taken as a home and relocating either north to the city or south into Silicon Valley. San Francisco was teeming with the living, however, as was the valley, and abandoning the relative safety of the mill was a very big decision; one Piotr was unwilling to make just yet.
Too tired to want to think further on the subject, Piotr stripped to his boxers and a tee shirt, crawling gratefully into his pallet. His window, one of the few in the deserted mill with glass still intact, gave Piotr a breathtaking view of the surrounding city and a hint of the bay stretching out beyond. Clouds drifted across the moon as Piotr sank into sleep.
Minutes or hours later, a shrill, high scream yanked him from uneasy dreams. At first Piotr thought he was in the living world again, where the sky was blue and bright and the sounds insistent, but the room was dark, and through his window clouds now rolled swiftly across the sky, obliterating the pale moonlight in shades of dark shale.
Stumbling to the window, Piotr scrubbed his eyes and squinted down at the street. Below, amid the trees, a luminescent figure, lean and white, loomed over a smaller shape, clearly one of the Lost. The kid screamed again and Piotr, snapped from his haze, shoved back from the window and pounded down the emergency stairs, leaping over rotted risers in bounds.
He was too slow. By the time he reached the ground floor both the Walker and the kid were gone; only the ice-frosted ground where the Walker had lain in wait remained. Panting heavily, Piotr glanced left and right, hoping to catch some flash of white, a telltale glimpse of the Walker’s cloak to guide him in a rescue attempt.
Nothing.
Cursing, Piotr turned to go back inside…and found himself face to face with a second Walker. The Walker, hunched over and slavering, leaned in close so that Piotr could smell the rot of its face, the black decay eating away at the skin of its cheeks. “Rider,” it hissed. “Meat.”
Stumbling, Piotr fell back, his teeth clicking painfully together as he thumped to the ground. Foolishly he’d run downstairs without a weapon, hoping to snag the child and race to safety before the Walker knew what’d hit him. Walkers were lone wolves—Piotr never expected a second one to be waiting nearby.
Fingertips sharpened to brutal spikes arced across Piotr’s upper arm, slashing his shirt into ribbons in four parallel lines of stinging pain. Hissing under his breath, Piotr grabbed his upper arm, and felt a gush of essence pour over his hand as he tried to stop the bleeding. The cuts were deep.
“Bastard,” he groaned and kicked at the Walker’s robed legs, hoping to at least push the monster back a few paces and give himself some space to scramble to his feet. Luck was with him. The Walker’s knees buckled at his
