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16. Tori

16

TORI

Dread settled in my gut like a lead ball that morning.

It was a feeling where I knew something bad would happen. I had it the morning I went to a golf game with Jay, and I got whacked in the head because I stood too close behind him when he was about to hit the ball. I even had it the morning that I failed a big agriculture test because of lack of sleep the two nights before. I also had it the day I caught Jay cheating on me with Daisy.

So when I woke up between Micah and Nathan, the warmth that spread through me quickly took a nosedive, and I hated that.

I didn’t want the ranch to be destroyed, but the thought didn’t destroy me either because it meant going back to the Oasis with my men.

We’d equipped our bags and weapons before locking up the treehouse and heading down at the sign of first light.

Benjamin and Sally stood bundled up in the center of the clearing with my parents, Spencer, Jay, and Daisy.

The ground crunched with every step, and the breeze scraped over any exposed skin.

“Be safe out there.” Benjamin and Sally hugged us before we went over to the horses.

Daisy stomped her feet as she walked over to me with her arms crossed tight across her chest. “I’m sorry,” she gritted out before turning on her heels and going back to Jay’s side before I could respond.

I blinked a few times, and I clamped my mouth shut. I didn’t have to accept an apology when she clearly didn’t mean it. Even if she did mean it, it wasn’t my responsibility to accept an apology that I wasn’t ready to.

“Woah,” Spencer whispered, and Mom elbowed her.

“I’m glad things seem to be getting better. Steps in the right direction, at least,” Dad said, fussing with the reins on Belle before letting Jay take over.

The horses let out a few visible breaths as they kicked at the hard ground.

“How are we going to do this with so many people?” Jay asked, placing the heavy blanket on Belle’s back.

“That’s why we don’t have saddles,” Mom explained. “We’re going to be three to a horse.”

“Who’s riding with us?” Daisy asked, her wide gaze flicking to me.

“I am,” Spencer groaned, crossing her arms. “Tori’s riding with Mom and Dad, and Calix, Micah, and Nathan will be riding together.”

Nathan pouted, planting his hands on my hips and tugging me forward for a kiss. “Ride safely.”

“You too.” My heart sank at the implication of his words. Riding a horse wasn’t safe anymore. Not for the people riding or the horse itself. Not after what happened to Kovu.

“Return safely,” Benjamin said as we got on the horses. I rode on the back, holding on to Mom.

Spencer, my godsend of a sister, held on to Daisy. I knew she did it so I didn’t have to, and I loved her so dearly for that.

We left the Oasis with a blanket of unease over us. The overcast sky did nothing but make the ride dreary and cold as the sun took its time climbing higher.

The first couple of hours were uneventful aside from a couple of stragglers and the devastation left in the horde’s wake. Smaller trees were broken down, jagged ends on the parts of the trunks left, and blood and chunks of flesh scattered the ground of the forest. The rotten scent lifted the further we went, but the smell of the air was still off.

Grief shredded my chest as we passed through the spot where we lost Kovu, and I held onto my mom a little tighter.

“His body’s gone,” I croaked, silent tears streaming down my cheeks as she patted my hands on her stomach. “How is it gone?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. I don’t know,” she whispered.

I swallowed the hard lump in my throat as Dolly picked up her pace, trotting faster through the forest with the rest of the group.

“Stay alert. Watch your sides, back, and front,” Micah said, his rough voice thundered throughout the forest. “Nathan’s got his gun ready to take out any zombies we run across. If there’s any smaller groups, get off the horses and kill them. We’ll need more than just us. Sometimes after a large horde, zombies stick together in groups.”

“That’s not scary at all,” Spencer huffed.

We were fortunate to go another hour further without interruption until a bloodied body of a man stumbled out of the forest along the path.

The dread I felt this morning amped up until all I could hear was static.

Just as Nathan raised his gun, the body threw its hands up. “Don’t shoot! I’m not undead, and I wasn’t bitten!”

Nathan didn’t lower his gun, instead he had it trained on his head. “And what’re you doing out here alone?”

“I wasn’t alone!” The man’s face went red, and he started to shake. Blood caked his clothes and had dried smeared all over his skin. “I had a group I was with, but that damned horde came through and took ‘em all! Can I come with you? What’s one more person in a group your size, huh?”

“No,” Nathan answered bluntly, and the guy shook more. “We don’t know your story, and you’re acting suspicious. I’m not chancing their safety for you.”

“Nathan, the guy’s clearly in shock,” Jay started, but Micah turned his head toward him with a sharp look, and he shut his mouth.

“Yeah, Nathan, I’m in shock. Help me out. Don’t leave me alone here to die.” The man coughed, and I saw Calix flinch. “Man, you know how it is out here. Bein’ alone will just get me killed.”

“Not my problem.” Nathan’s jaw tightened, and he cocked his pistol.

“You have two choices,” Micah said, his shoulders tense. “Get lost or get a bullet in your skull.”

The guy had a gun pointed at his head, blood all over him, and yet he didn’t act scared at all. It looked like he’d been beat up. His eyes were swollen, and he had cuts all over him. It made my skin crawl. Something was off with him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

His lip curled into a snarl, and he spat on the ground next to Belle, and she huffed at him, swishing her tail in warning. “You’re signin’ my death sentence. Fuck you all.” He glared at Nathan before slowly stepping to the side and walking back behind us.

Nathan turned, keeping the gun pointed at him until he was a good distance away, and then he uncocked the gun and put it in his holster. The horses started to trot again, and I glanced back to see the man staring at us with a glint of something dark in his eyes.

The dread didn’t let up as we left him behind.

“Why didn’t we take him in?” Spencer asked timidly.

“Yeah. That was fucked up, man,” Jay agreed.

“I don’t know. The guy looked weird.” Daisy scrunched her nose, and for once, I agreed with her.

“Just because someone looks weird doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be helped,” Mom muttered.

“Not at the risk of our family,” Dad stated, and the group fell silent. “Something was off about that guy.”

“He looked familiar,” Nathan stated in a dangerously low tone. “The ticks he was doing suggested he had bad intentions. Body language doesn’t lie.”

“Familiar how?” Daisy asked.

“The only sketchy people I’ve come in contact with like that were the ones who raided and forced Dad, Sally, and me from our homestead.”

A chill ran down my spine as we continued on. Nobody brought the man who had stopped us up again, and I wanted to leave him behind us both literally and metaphorically.

But with the icky feeling in my veins, I didn’t know if that would happen so easily.

We finally broke through the forest and into our pasture, and my stomach lurched.

The pasture had blood frozen over the ground, and the further we made it toward the house, the weight on my chest became heavier.

Nobody spoke a word as we approached, and even the horses didn’t carry on with any antics.

The white paint siding was coated in bloodied hand prints and splatters. Grief washed over me, and it was so tangible I could feel my family’s grief mirror my own. It was clear to me that our home that was once a safety bubble from the apocalypse had fallen into a disaster.

Windows were broken on the bottom floors, and the doors were banged open, even though we’d locked them before. Bones and flesh chunks were all over, and my stomach churned at the sight as we got off our horses.

The barn’s door was wide open, and another wave of mourning slammed into me—but the coop looked to be locked up as tightly as we’d left it.

My feet were moving before my mind realized where I was headed. I gripped my golf club tightly. The crunching sound of frozen body parts were all I could hear as I ran to the barn. Spencer was beside me as we threw open the other door, and relief and confusion warred within me as we took in the state of the barn.

The cows mooed, and our bull, Blaze, paced restlessly in his stall. His hooves pounded against the hard dirt floor, and his nostrils flared. Blaze never acted so aggressively, and his gaze was locked on the cow laying in the dirt.

The stall door was open, and she had blood pooling around her head.

My gaze widened, and the dread that hung overhead hit me like a ton of bricks. Calix grabbed my arm to pull me back as Micah rushed toward the cow. His brows furrowed as he glanced up.

“The cow was shot in the head, and it’s still warm.”

Blaze let out a deafening roar and charged the stall door, but it didn’t budge. It was only then that I realized he wasn’t staring at the dead cow anymore. He was staring behind us.

Nathan pivoted on his heels, gun up and ready to fire.

“Put the gun down, boy,” a creaky old voice sounded from behind us, and I turned to see an older man, older than my parents by at least ten years, with his large gun leveled on Nathan. “Fancy seein’ you again.”

Three other men came from behind him with guns trained on all of us, and my heart pounded against my ribs, causing a ringing to sound in my ears as fear clawed at my throat.

Calix held me so tight against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me. His heartbeat raced fast, and it thudded against my back as he held my trembling form.

The man from the trail stumbled from behind the rest of them with a wide grin, sweat dripping from his forehead and into his eyes. “You fuckers may not have fallen for my trap, but you fell into theirs.”

“Shut up, Tommy,” the old man barked, spittle flying from his mouth. “Didn’t we send you off to die?”

“I tried helping you get some people like before. I proved my usefulness.” He held his head up, chest puffed out.

The old man gave a rattled sigh before moving his gun over and shooting Tommy in the face then settled it back on Nathan.

All the blood in my body plummeted to my feet as Tommy’s blood poured out of his head.

“He was bitten. Couldn’t chance him turnin’ could we?” The man took another step forward before tilting his head. “Any last words, boy?”

A whimper pulled from my throat as I trembled in Calix’s arms, and the man’s gaze locked on mine before he smiled, showing off rows of rotten teeth.

“Found another poor woman to sink your teeth into?” His slimy gaze slid back to Nathan as he raised a brow. “Does she know about what you did to my daughter? What you’ll do to her?”

“What I did?” Nathan shook his head, still pointing the gun at him. “She’s the one who gained my trust before betraying my family and me. Not the other way around.”

“You slept with her!” he shouted, spit flying everywhere. “You slept with her, and now she’s dead because you had to think with your dick!”

He turned the gun to me, and the men behind him leveled their guns on everyone else, including Nathan.

Staring at the end of a gun made my mind turn off, and it was a sort of out of body experience I wished I never had happen.

“You seem to like this one, but why is someone else holding her, eh?” His gun waved between Calix and me, but Calix didn’t waver. He held onto me tighter than he ever had.

“Don’t fucking hurt her,” Nathan growled, and the man sneered.

“You knocked my daughter up, and she died because of it.” He chuckled weakly. “It’s only fair I kill someone you hold dear. Maybe I’ll just kill both of them.”

“That’s impossible!” Nathan shouted, the hand holding his gun shaking. “I couldn’t have gotten her pregnant. I didn’t even come! She must’ve been with someone else!”

The man went tense before whirling the gun back to Nathan, walking up closer until the barrel rested against Nathan’s forehead, and Nathan’s gun butted up against his chest.

The men behind him moved their guns to Nathan only. They looked just as pissed off as the old man did, all but one. One looked jealous and guilty.

“Say that again,” he dared as Micah’s arms replaced Calix’s, but I was too focused on the gun put to my boyfriend’s head.

Fear paralyzed me to the spot, and I struggled to breathe.

“When did she die?” Nathan asked quietly, his chest heaving up and down.

“She died about a year ago.” His lips curled in disgust.

“You raided our home over two years ago,” Nathan said carefully. “The timeline doesn’t match up. I couldn’t have been the one to get her pregnant.”

The man blinked before rage boiled beneath his already simmering murderous intent. “Shut up, you little shit! She wouldn’t have had the chance to find another outsider without me knowing!”

“Maybe it isn’t an outsider,” Nathan retorted smugly before knocking his arm into the gun and tackling the old man. Both his and the man’s guns flew to the ground, and their fists pounded into each other.

The men behind him couldn’t get a clear shot since they were rolling in the dirt, and for that, I was grateful.

But the old man ended up getting the upper hand, and Nathan rolled on the ground, only a few feet from the bleeding, infected dead body in our barn. His boots kicked into Nathan’s side before my vision pulsed red.

“Get off him!” I jerked out of Micah’s grasp fast enough to swing my golf club into the back of the old man’s head. It hit with a dull crack, and the man stumbled back.

Blood dripped down his head, and before he could grasp his bearings, an arrow shot through his skull, the tip sticking out of his eye socket before his body fell forward.

Nathan scrambled to his feet before grabbing his gun off the ground.

The men at the barn doors looked at each other before turning to run, but a third arrow shot through the heart of one, and another arrow hit through the chest of the other.

Micah slung his long bow back over his shoulder and pulled me against him.

Nathan lifted his gun and shot the last guy who had only made it a few yards away.

My knees wobbled, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Nathan as he got back to his feet and winced before smiling at me with his busted lip.

“How did you three know how to get out of that situation?” Dad asked, his voice thick with fear and respect.

“The humans alive now are more dangerous than the zombies.” Micah shrugged.

“What were they doing here?” Daisy’s voice trembled. “Why did they kill the cow?”

“They’re raiders. They’ve been following the horde and scavenging what survives it,” Nathan explained bitterly. “They probably shot the cow for meat.”

“She wasn’t a meat cow. She was a milk cow,” Dad muttered, and my chest throbbed. “Might as well take advantage of the situation though.”

“I’ll help,” Nathan offered, and I frowned. “We just need to clear the house and coop first.”

Nerves fluttered in my stomach. The ranch was a disaster from the horde, and I doubt we would’ve survived it. But I knew we wouldn’t have survived the raiders that came through after.

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