Zombified 1: The Bitten

  Chapter Two

  MELINDA DIDN'T THINK there were patrols within the compound but she kept her head up as she laced her sneakers anyway. Uncle Josiah had been grumbling about one of the elders making such a proposal but nothing seemed to come of it. Nevertheless, she kept to the shadows, hoping the navy blue of her clothing was close enough to black. The moon was full tonight, but the clouds were patchy so what light there was shifted, rendering even the shadows unsafe. In the dark, she was even more aware of how sharp the blades of grass were against her fingers and how loud the crickets really were.

  Shut up! she wanted to scream. She couldn't hear her own footsteps -- how would she hear if someone was coming up behind her?

  It took her longer to reach the barn than she thought it would. She didn’t have a watch but the skies had shifted noticeably from when it was first dark and the moon was high and white in the sky now. And this frightened her. What if she couldn’t get him out in time? What if he couldn’t run?

  She pushed those thoughts out of her mind. He's an angel, she reminded herself. Even if they had broken him, he could heal. How she knew that... she wouldn’t think about that now, because now, she had to pick a lock.

  She reached into her pocket and took out the bobby pin. It was a simple operation, really -- push and slide, until the tumblers fall apart. But it took skill, and patience, and a delicate touch. And warm hands. And daylight. And luck. She was painfully aware of how clearly she could be seen against the barn door should anybody happen to glance her way. The cult members went to bed early, adhering to the old maxim of early-to-bed-early-to-rise. But even though the windows remained dark, it felt as if the houses were watching her, accusing her, sending a silent alarm to the elders. She found herself glancing up at them from time to time, the words 'Please, be quiet' on her lips.

  Finally the lock gave, and she slipped into the barn. It was pitch black -- the sliver of moonlight that she let in disappeared as she closed the door. But after a moment, the glow of his aura spilled from behind the tractors. It was faint, but it was enough to keep her from running into the tractors and confines that he was housed with. She was alarmed at how silvery it was. Most angels had a golden aura.

  But when she saw him, he was surprisingly whole -- and naked. She had not prepared for that. She hoped Gabe was. A few scratches marred his ghostly pale skin. He blinked at her, his eyes black with pain.

  “I’ve come to get you out,” she whispered.

  He said nothing. She took a slender metal file she’d filched from the foundry and lodged it into the padlock. She took a deep breath and slammed the file and padlock into the ground so that the file crunched into the lock. A bit of shimmying, and the lock sprang open.

  “Come with me,” she whispered, wishing that the clanging as she unwound the chain from the bars of the kennel would stop. The air in the barn was still, silent -- there was no echo. Still, it would be dangerous to assume they were safe. “Stay close, and stay quiet.”

  She led him to the back of the barn where there was a smaller emergency door. She wished she knew what time it was. They would have to go out and pray that the patrols had passed or were still far enough away that they could make it to the first cornfield without being seen. Fifteen minutes between patrols seemed like a long time, but given how much open space there was between the barn and the corn field, their window of opportunity was actually quite small.

  She cracked open the emergency door -- it was chained shut. But the chain was so loose that they could both slip through the gap in the door.

  There was no one in sight. And together they ran, darting for the corn.

  The crash of their bodies against the stalks would have alerted any nearby patrol if there were one. She didn't take chances, didn't stop to listen and see. She grabbed Caleb’s hand and led him down the narrow row and to the footpath through the field -- a narrow gap between the rows where people could walk, the easier for the farmers to get home in the middle of the day to have lunch.

  They were running when, overhead, a flare burst.

  They had been seen.

  Shit.