strength. I flew up and my head sailed right toward the Stiff’s jaws. I screamed huskily as the Stiff dropped open its mouth to devour my face.
I threw my hands in front of me and shoved them into the Stiff’s mouth. It tried to bite down with all its force. I pulled my hands apart, keeping the Stiff’s mouth from snapping shut. It held me in the air by my legs as I hovered over it in a half sitting position.
I stared into its glossy eyes. They quivered back at me, unblinking. I groaned and pulled at the Stiff’s jaws with all my strength. Its head snapped back and the muscles holding its jaw together snapped apart with a thick wet crack. The Stiff was thrown back.
I landed over it, the Stiff’s hands still clenched to my ankles. I reached down and pried its fingers off, snapping the bones of its fingers with a swift jerk and pulling my ankles away.
I stepped away from the Stiff’s body. Its eyes gazed at me. It head wiggled slightly as it tried to open its jaw, which was no longer attached. It was still undead.
I didn’t care. I didn’t have the time or the means to put it out of its misery. The horde of Stiffs had caught up, drawn by the sounds of our struggle and were just behind me, moving between trunks of trees toward me, dark figures slinking forward against black pillars. I had to get out of there. I dashed off.
I weaved between tree trunks, splashing through leaves that scraped at my tough skin. A creek bed appeared a few yards before me. It was empty. Dried up. I glanced behind me. The horde was farther back now. I was probably just a black flit against the other dark objects in the forest, if they even still had sight of me at all.
I jutted between two more trees and headed straight for the creek. As I came to the edge I stopped and leaned, down, placing my hands on the ground to support me as I slid down the side of the dirt wall of the empty creek and lowered myself into it.
I pressed myself against the dirt wall, my hands curling around the soft soil. I put my head back and rested it behind me. I listened, waiting for the horde. I didn’t know if any had seen the direction I had headed. Hopefully, if I kept hidden long enough, they would just keep moving forward until the wave was past me and I could head back to Revenant. The Stiffs were still groaning around me in the distance, barreling through twigs and bushes without any regard. I shook my head. They were hopeless.
I dropped my head and looked to my right. Something stared back at me. I blinked. My eyes went wide. A human. A girl, maybe a couple years younger than I had been when I died. She was blonde with shoulder-length hair and bright blue eyes. She was thin and dirty in jeans, a jacket, and a tank top, and a heavy bag strapped to her back. She stared at me with round eyes and a gaping mouth. She was pressed to the dirt wall a few feet away from me. Her chest was moving up and down so quickly it looked like it was about to explode. Her head quivered and her mouth twisted open to scream.
I jumped at her, putting my hand over her mouth to silence her. She tried to break away, but I held her securely with my other arm and pushed her against the dirt mound.
“Shut up,” I hissed. This dumb hum was going to get us both killed.
I waited, holding her close so she couldn’t move. She was wiry and young, physically incapable of fighting off one Stiff let alone a horde. These types of humans never left the safe zone. I wondered what she was doing here.
I had never seen a human my age before. She was like a more colorful version of myself. She smelled different, not like the hums at Trevor’s barn. She smelled like dirt and sweat. She smelled alive. She was different. She wasn’t dead like everyone else I knew. She didn’t have the rich, dank smell I was so used to in Revenant. When she breathed, it was to sustain life, and didn’t require any effort to draw the air in and expand her lungs, as with zombies. Each breath seemed so important, and the deep, rhythmic, panicked sound of drawing in air through her nostrils and expelling it was odd and terrifying. I had never breathed so hard in my death, because I had never needed to. I was so used to the austerity and stillness of being undead. The human was something else.
I heard a noise above us. A Stiff was making its way toward the creek. I looked up to the black sky and waited. Then it fell in. A few feet away. It walked right into the creek bed, tumbled in, and smacked against the far wall a few feet from us. So dumb it couldn’t even avoid falling through a hole in the ground. The wonders that zombie school can do. It gradually pulled itself up and began looking around, its head swaying randomly on its neck. The girl tried to scream again and I pressed my hand into her mouth harder. If we didn’t move, it wouldn’t know to attack us. We were clean. No blood. It didn’t know we were even there.
It looked around dazedly, its head swiveling back and forth. Its jaw hung open. It began walking, stepping lightly through the creek in our direction, its feet squishing against the soft soil. The girl tried to break away. I held her fast. That was the best way to draw a Stiff’s attention. At a close range like this, with no open space to get to, it would catch her with ease. The girl kept struggling to get away and I held her tightly. There was no way she could escape. I was too strong.
The Stiff ambled past us. Its movements were slow and ginger. It was lost and uncertain, like it had forgotten why it had been running and what it was doing in the first place. Stiff’s had very short memories. One step followed the other slowly as it began to move away from us, its long, bony arms swaying mechanically with each footfall. Its head jerked from side to side as it walked, and as it moved past us its eyes locked directly on us. The girl froze. Its head tilted to the side and its jaw hung open, drool dribbling down its chin. It uttered a low, throaty grunt and its head swung back to the other side and it kept walking. The girl exhaled, and I could feel the warmth of her breath on my clammy palm. It was different from mine. My breath was frosty. Everything about being dead was cold, really.
I waited until the Stiff was a few feet ahead of us. Then I held up the bone of my finger toward the human and stepped lightly forward after it. It was safer to incapacitate it. Killing it wasn’t an option. I didn’t have any tools and if I smashed its skull, the blood would just attract the Stiff horde again. I snuck carefully up behind it and quickly snapped its neck, breaking its head from the spinal chord. The Stiff collapsed in a heap. Once the spinal chord was disconnected, it no longer had control of its body. It snapped its jaws wildly as its head hung loosely from its neck. It was fairly harmless now. It would die eventually.
Now to worry about the human girl. I wasn’t sure what do with her. I couldn’t let her go. Revenant needed humans. Especially ones viable for breeding. I couldn’t just eat her brains for myself. She was a much-needed resource for our town, and especially my community. That left only one option. I would have to bring her in. I brushed my hands together and turned to face her. She screamed and lunged at me, a knife in her hand. My eyes bulged and before I could react, she thrust the knife with all her strength into me.
14. DEAD WEIGHT
The knife barely pierced my skin. I was surprised it did as much damage as it had done. It hung limply from the tip out of the section between my chest and my right shoulder blade. The girl was already running down the empty creak bed, to where I wasn’t sure. I tugged the knife out. It was a tiny, rusty gold-plated dagger that looked like it was actually meant to be used as a letter opener. The wound could hardly be considered a paper cut. I slipped the knife into the belt of my safety gear and ran after the human.
I caught up to her quickly. She wasn’t very fast. It made me wonder how she had survived out here in Stiffsville. She screamed as I grabbed her and I instantly put my hand over her mouth to stifle her.
“Do you want to get us both killed?” I demanded through a harsh whisper. “Stiffs’re all over the place. You wanna attract another horde?”
She continued to struggle in my grasp.
“Listen, if you don’t calm down then I’ll kill you myself,” I said bluntly. “I’m not going to get killed by a bunch of Stiffs because of one dumb, squirmy human. Understand?”
She tried to jerk free again.
“Look, if I wanted to kill you I would have already,” I said. “Don’t make me have to.”
The girl slowly began to calm down. She stopped struggling and stood still, rigid and blank-faced.
I slowly removed my hand from her mouth, holding her securely with the other. She didn’t move. She didn’t scream.
“Good,” I said in a whisper. “Be quiet, or they’ll kill us both.”
She stared forward at me, her eyes so wide it looked like her eyelids had been pulled up over them and inside her head. Her mouth was clenched shut and she shivered uncontrollably in my grasp. Zombies tended to have that effect on humans.
“You can talk,” she breathed the words wispily.
I rolled my eyes and looked away from her. I had to figure out exactly what I was going to do now. I couldn’t let her go. I was a student of human tracking. The most important rule was to never let a human go once found unless your or another Wake’s life is threatened. But how was I going to get her back to Revenant? I could force her back to the edge of town, but I couldn’t bring a human on the bus. I’d need to find the nearest human tracker and put her in his hands. Still, our community needed humans. To give her up to another community wouldn’t