8. William

8

WILLIAM

B lood seeps into the fabric of my shoes, warm and sticky against my soles, but I don’t care enough to notice. My gaze locks on the lifeless figures sprawled at Max’s feet.

“Did you really have to do that?” Griffin asks, shaking his head with disbelief.

Max secures the morning star onto his back, turning to face Griffin, his eyes cold and steady, the bodies of the man and woman now lifeless. “Yeah. He wanted to turn, so he stuck his hand right into her mouth to make it happen. Said he wanted to be with her. Well, he got his wish—maybe not the way he imagined, but it’s one less rotter to deal with. The rest of humanity can thank me later. Now some poor souls in the future won’t have to face a gruesome death if I had let them go. Imagine how fewer rotters would be in the world if more people were as gracious as I.”

Their conversation is useless to me. The only thing that matters is what the old man said. Instead, they’re wasting time. Well, not me.

“Emily, that’s Emily.” I shove Griffin aside and run out of the room. When I realize they’re not following me, I bark at them over my shoulder. “We’ve already wasted enough time. We know we’re on the right track. Now let’s hurry.”

Griffin passes me up within moments. It’s unexpected, with the condition he’s in, but I’m glad to see him get some agency. We’re not going to lose her because of his fuck up.

The door creaks when we shove through it, and we hit the ground running. My legs pump, working double-time to keep up with Griffin, who’s moving with a focus that borders on manic. We were in a hurry before, but that was nothing compared to his urgency now.

“We can still catch up with her before sunrise if we hurry. The sooner we get to her, the better.” Griffin presses his hand against his side, a look of pain erupting across his face.

I quicken my pace until I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with him, both of us breathing heavy. “Grif, if we keep pushing at this pace, you’re going to collapse,” I try to reason with him. “I want to find her as much as you do, but I’d rather not have to drag your dead body to her feet. Not exactly the reunion vibe I’m aiming for.”

He huffs out a strained laugh that’s cut short by a grimace. “You need to be a more positive thinker, William. If I bust open, maybe it’ll buy us enough time to convince her to stick around and fix me up.”

“You’re seriously willing to put yourself through this and risk bleeding out?” I shake my head in frustration. “You’re insane.”

Griffin’s mouth twists into a grin. “Maybe, but I’ll take any edge I can get to make sure she doesn’t leave again.”

“Not even handcuffs worked on her,” I remind him, as the first few raindrops splatter against my cheek. They begin as a light sprinkle, then escalate into a steady downpour, the heavy drops beating against our faces and blurring our vision. I brace a hand over my eyes in order to see anything .

I look down at the vanishing tracks in the dirt. “The rain is going to wash away the footprints.”

Griffin’s jaw clenches. “Then we need to move faster.” He takes off at a full sprint, his steps pounding against the ground. Max and I fall in behind him, pushing ourselves to keep up.

“We’re going to burn out at this rate,” I call out, huffing with each breath.

“Speak for yourself.” Max soars by, morning star in hand.

“You’re going to tire yourself out swinging that thing so much. I’ll warn you right now that I won’t slow down for either of you,” Griffin warns, but Max only scoffs, his eyes wild as he twirls the weapons.

A rotter stumbles out from the shadows, its mouth gaping open, and Max brings down his morning star in one quick arc, the impact sending it sprawling. He pumps his fist in triumph, his gaze darting straight to Griffin’s middle. “You should spend more time worrying about yourself rather than how I’m running. Hate to break it to you, but you’ll be the first to drop.”

“Wait.” I grab Griffin by the shoulder, spinning him around and slamming his back against a tree with more force than I mean to. The bark splinters into the air at the impact, and I wince when I notice the flash of pain on his face. “Sorry about that.”

He growls out his frustration. “Beating me up won’t help us find her any faster.”

“Oh, can I play, too?” Max saunters over, casually swinging his morning star in loose, dangerous circles.

I ignore him and glance down when my fingers slide through a warm slickness against Griffin’s side. When I pull them away, they glisten red in the moonlight, disappearing under the rain, which pounds down harder around us. “Griff…”

He’s bleeding through his bandages .

Griffin shoves me away, and I stumble before regaining my balance. His lips pull into a strained smile. “We’re going to find her. She’ll yell at me, fix me up, and then maybe I’ll finally get to hear her side of things.” He takes a step and wobbles, but then presses on, gritting his teeth against the pain. He takes off running in the direction we were headed, forcing us to follow him.

We keep running, my eyes glued to Griffin up ahead even as the rain transforms into a relentless sheet of water. Every time he flinches or presses a hand to his side, a fresh wave of worry rises in me, but I push it down, forcing myself to match his pace.

Minutes stretch into what feels like hours, and soon our full sprint eases into a heavy, exhausted jog as the downpour finally lets up, and the rain tapers to a steady drizzle.

“Griffin.” I close the gap between us, Max still hot on my heels.

“Not now,” he snaps over his shoulder. His face remains a hard, determined mask, but I can tell his body starts to sag. He staggers, but then rights himself and continues moving. His steps turn languish.

“Gonna bleed out before we get to our girl, huh? Grand plan you got there, oh grumpy one,” Max chimes in. His edge of sarcasm is mixed with genuine concern.

“As a matter of fact, yes, it is. She’ll stitch me up.”

Max’s voice turns cynical. “What makes you think she’ll even stop for you? She left once; she’ll leave again. People always do.”

“Because she doesn’t walk away from those who need her, regardless of whether they deserve her help,” I bite out, my tone sharp. “That’s the kind of person she is. Even if she shouldn’t, she’ll still do it. She’s too good for us.”

It’s true. There’s no way guys like us could ever deserve someone like her.

“Got that right,” Griffin adds. “Oh, what now? Hold up.” He stumbles, his body wanting to continue on, but his feet want to stay behind.

Griffin presses his weight forward to get loose, but he only sinks down more. He yanks his foot free, but the shoe remains stuck behind in the muck.

“Damn it.” He glares down at the shoe, now half-buried in the mud, before lifting his bare foot free. I can see the contemplation on his face. He’s thinking of continuing barefoot.

“Now that’s a mud pit,” I say, ignoring Max’s rolling eyes. “And look, great news.” I kneel to the ground, with my forearms resting on my thighs, and I look more closely at the mud.

“Unless Emily is there and I can mud wrestle with her, I don’t see any great news,” Max says.

Ignoring him, I reach forward, sinking my hand into the mud until my fingers close around something solid. With a grunt, I yank it free and hold it up for the others to see. Emily’s shoe, coated in mud, dangles from my hand. “She came this way. I bet she’ll be moving more slowly now with only one shoe.”

An involuntary smile teases my lips at that thought. If she’s slowed down, it means we can catch up sooner. Then my smile turns into a frown when I realize her moving slower also means she’s more vulnerable, and easier prey for any nearby rotters or dregs. Damn it, we need to find her first.

Maybe I shouldn’t be trying to slow Griffin down after all. He might have a point to his self-detrimental madness.

“Hold on to it,“ Griffin orders, his voice rough with tension. He looks around, peering through the rain, his brows furrowing. “It’s impossible to see more than a foot ahead in this storm. How you even spotting that is beyond me. ”

I pull out the small object I placed in my pants’ zipper pocket. “The same way I saw this.”

Max’s eyes widen when he sees the compass, the same one I went to retrieve while he distracted Emily. “So, are we pick pocketing now?”

“What? No,” I shake my head at his ridiculousness. “She must have dropped it in the mud back there. It was lying next to a dead rotter. Scared the shit out of me for a moment.”

Griffin grabs the front of my shirt and pulls it closer until we’re nose-to-nose. “You found something of hers and you didn’t say anything?”

I loosen his grasp and shove him away. “I tried to tell you guys, but you were too busy trying to kill yourself in order to find her. You wouldn’t listen to me. Maybe next time you’ll listen, yeah?”

The rain is pouring down even more heavily now, making visibility almost nonexistent. The urge to find her only intensifies the closer we get. As long as she keeps dropping breadcrumbs, we’ll have her back before sunrise.

“Let’s go. We’ve still got more ground to cover.” Griffin locates her fading footprints and follows as quickly as he can manage. With the rain washing away her tracks, we’re really running out of time.

Normally, staying calm is second nature to me. It’s kept me grounded, and kept me steady, even in the worst of times. The only time my calmness slipped away was when I fell into that trap with the rotters, and then Emily jumped in to help me. She leaped in feet first with complete disregard to her own safety.

Griffin is right. She will do anything to help anyone. Even when it puts her in danger. She could have run away from us that day when she saw me trapped down there, but she didn’t. Now, all I can think about is her somewhere out here, alone and vulnerable .

We don’t deserve her at all. So then why can’t I let her go?

Griffin’s determination must be rubbing off on me, because all I can feel is anguish, thanks to the thoughts running rampant through my mind. With the compass secure in my pocket once again, my fingers clench around the shoe. Every muscle tenses with frustration and fear and—fuck, I don’t even know anymore. I barely notice the icy rain as anger warms me from the inside, beating away my calm until I feel it splinter.

Being calm. Keeping any temper and anger under control for the sake of those around me. Remaining calm, cool, and collected, even when it killed me inside. I did it well. So well, that I stood by and did nothing while she disappeared from our lives, for good.

Always the calm one.

My body shakes with emotion.

Clenching my fists, I tip my head back and yell out her name as loud as I can. When it blends in with thunder, I shout out again and again until Griffin covers his hand over my mouth and Max holds a knife to my throat. The blur of emotional fury dims, and I see the stern and concerned faces of the only two guys in the world I can trust.

“Now, I love a good rotter bloodbath as much as the next insane man but getting us killed or infected won’t help us find her.” Max hisses the words into my ear before letting me go with a hard shove.

My breath comes in ragged gasps, the rage and fear twisting inside me.

Then, through the sheet of rain, I catch the faint sound of moans in a haunting chorus that whispers over the storm. They’re close, searching for us. The worst part of it I led them right for us with my uncontrolled outburst. I can almost make them out ahead, their bodies dragging through the mud, gray hands reaching out. They stumble and slip into a slick mud pit nearby, one after another, in a grotesque, shuffling dance.

Griffin waves us forward, and we arc wide around the pit, picking up speed. There’s no point wasting precious time taking them out. Nothing is going to slow me down from getting back to her. Not the living, and not even the dead.