Alive (The Crave) (24 page)

“No,” he whispered against her ear.

“Yes!” Resolution burned bright in her eyes. She started to scuttle toward the next window, but never made it. The voice that rang out behind them was clear as day.

“Hey! What are y’all doing out here?”

Chapter Thirty-One

The Before

In her nightmares, Eve came back to school and nothing had changed. Gage was still hanging all over Sally, he still didn’t sit next to her AP Physics, and he acted as though she didn’t exist. That was a nightmare though, and it wasn’t real.

When she went back to school on Friday, her lips still tingling from Gage’s kiss the day before, the first thing she saw was Sally McCallister. She stood in her normal clique of girls in the center of the lunchroom, only she wasn’t smiling and waving like she was some sort of princess. No, today she was crying. And she wasn’t fanning her face, having some sort of simple cry that made her large almond shaped eyes look like jewels. She was wailing. Her face a dark shade of red and her eyes screwed into two slits.

Most of the lunchroom was still taking part in their usual chatter before school began, which made Eve wonder how long she had been standing their crying. Everyone must have already gotten the full story somewhere else.

Numerous girls were coming around and patting her on the shoulder.

“But I love him! He said I was his honey bun!” Sally screeched the words and Eve came to a halt halfway across the lunch room. Could she dare hope that it was true? Had Gage really broken up with Sally? A part of her refused to believe it. She’d been preparing herself all night for the reality that things wouldn’t change.

When she got into Physics, Gage was already there. A first in the school year which wasn’t too far from completion. He was sitting in the chair he used to sit in. The chair next to hers.

Eve slid into her seat, but didn’t look at him. She didn’t know what to say or do. He didn’t acknowledge her either. She was fidgeting with her pencil, trying to think of what to say when Allison came into the classroom. She shot Gage a look full of daggers before sliding into her seat.

Eve tried not to look at him to see his reaction and failed. His face was a mask, showing no emotion what-so-ever, which perturbed her.
Did he really break up with Sally? Is he regretting his decision?

He must have felt her gaze, because he glanced over at her. The intensity reflected in his eyes was like nothing she had ever seen before. He was a guy of many expressions, but this one was different. There was a darkness to it that scared Eve…and thrilled her at the same time.

The final bell rang overhead and she opened her mouth, to say what, she wasn’t sure. She never found out because Mrs. Smithers started her lecture and Eve forced herself to look away.

Halfway through class Gage placed a folded piece of college-ruled paper slid on her desk. The uneven letters strung together to form the words scrawled inside changed Eve’s life forever.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Eve’s body tensed at the sound of the voice behind her and alarm snaked up her spine. If the gruesome scene inside the house hadn’t thoroughly freaked her out, then the angry man did.

“I’m talking ta you two.” He shoved a finger in their direction as he hobbled forward, his body stooped over a cane. In the moonlight she could see that the little hair he had was white. Another Lurker or just an old man? The answer was given with the sound of a screen door slamming.

“Uncle Bill, what’s the matter?” Bubba appeared to their left on the edge of the porch, only feet away from where they crouched.

“There’sis some people right there, Bubba.”

Gage grabbed her hand. “Time to fucking go,” he whispered in her ear and jerked her arm as he stood, and started to run. Eve stumbled as she followed him. She pulled back a bit, part of her still wanting her bag.
Maybe if they’re all in a tizzy like this, it will be easier for me to run in and get it!
She was about to tell him as much when he whirled around.

“Don’t you dare think about trying to go back and get your shit because it’s done Eve. Done.” The lethal sound in his voice pissed her off, but she knew he was right. She didn’t need her stuff, not more than she needed her life. But, damn if it didn’t feel like her heart was breaking to leave it behind. Shouting sounded from behind her from where Bubba had stood. She followed Gage around the back of the house, trying to run as fast as she could to get through the tall grass. With their hands firmly latched together she started to run toward the tree-line Landry had indicated to them earlier, but Gage pulled her in the other direction, back toward the house.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said, not even trying to be quiet anymore. There were shouts from where they just came, multiple voices. Fear coursed through Eve’s veins, making her heart beat erratically in her chest.

“They won’t be expecting us to head for Tim Pistol. Maybe we can run past them and they won’t even notice until it’s too late.” Gage seemed certain of this, but he didn’t wait for Eve’s confirmation. He kept going, only pausing to peer around the side of the house. She looked to and discovered that it was just as Gage had suspected. Empty. The light shining through the windows was the only thing that stood between their path and the gravel driveway. The distance to the road was farther, the pasture leading there overgrown, but there were two big storage PODs on either side of the dense driveway. The white paint on them gleamed in the moonlight.

“If we can make it to those PODs, we might have a chance,” she admitted.

“We will have to move slow though.” Gage crouched and Eve did as well. They started to move through the grass slowly. The commotion on the other side of the house and now behind them was full of shouts and curses. None of them were directed toward them. Not until Eve heard someone shout—“I see ‘em!” The voice was alarmingly close. She whipped around in time to see a boy, who couldn’t have been any older than eight years old, though his withered complexion said otherwise, pointing in their direction.

As if their brains worked in unison, Eve stood and launched into a run at the same time Gage did.
Shit, shit, shit, shit!
The word replayed over and over in Eve’s mind as they barreled through the high grass. The shouts behind them became louder and seemed to loom closer no matter how hard they ran. Grass whipped around them, slicing into Eve’s legs like knives, but she didn’t hesitate or cry out. Just kept launching her body forward away from what would surely be imminent death.

A thundering sound zinged through the air, causing Eve to gasp. “What the—”

The sound happened again, only this time it was different. Louder. And followed by two loud clicks that were the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked.
Holy shit, they’re shooting at us.

“Fuck!” Gage jerked her hand, forcing her to run faster. She wanted to fall down on the ground and duck for cover, but she knew they would be on top of them in seconds if they stopped.

The PODs loomed closer, a disguised safe haven. They could use them as a diversion and maybe get more of a lead. Eve chanced a glance back and nearly collapsed at the sight of the people chasing after them. She didn’t know what she expected. The house was of relative size probably no more than three bedrooms, so she assumed their occupants to be few, but she had been wrong. So very wrong. There had to be more than fifteen people chasing them.
Fifteen!

They had almost reached the PODs when she heard it. None of the other shouts behind her were coherent. All of them sounding like babble with the air rushing against her ears and her heart pounding like a drum beat. But these broke through all of that, clear as day.

“Fuck it, release ‘em!”

For a moment Eve was sure that these words were their saving grace. The Lurkers were going to let them go. She’d never imagined it would be that easy, that freedom was just a few hurdles away. A flash of hope illuminated her soul. She let her hand touch the side of the white metal of the POD just as the sound of a garage door flared to life. Her steps faltered along with Gage. They slowed for a fraction of a second taking in the two big doors rolling on little wheels, facing the road they had been desperate to reach.
What the hell?

The first sight of the gray decrepit hand reaching from underneath the doors explained everything. The Lurkers weren’t going to chase them anymore. Jenks were.

Gage stood with his mouth gaping as the doors to the PODs opened. The gray flesh writhing beneath the metal shouldn’t have shocked him. The idea of it made total sense, but it still did. Especially when the first one managed to squeeze out of the tiny space that was slowly opening…and started to run toward them.

Gage should have been running away, only he wasn’t. He stood there staring at the lean gurgh, whose arms were pumping at its sides and was taken back to Louisiana. To his brother’s dorm room, where he’d watched his only sibling barrel toward him with gray skin, black blood oozing from his mouth, and eyes as empty as a cloudless night. He’d stood there and realized that he’d traveled all that way for nothing. He’d almost died. His brother attacked him, his runner’s stride eating up the small space quicker than anything Gage had ever seen.

They’d ended up on the ground, Collin on top of him, snapping at him with rotten teeth. That was when Gage had begged. Not for his life, but for Collin to remember him. He pleaded with this thing that resembled his brother, to come back to him. He was all he had left, and accepting that he was one of them, a gurgh, meant that he had no one.

The begging hadn’t changed anything. In the end, he’d managed to shove a knife through Collin’s brain, but that hadn’t ended the pain. And now here he was again in the face of a runner whose skin was gray, and mouth dripping with black blood.

“Gage, come on.” Eve jerked Gage’s hand. And like the click of the button he turned it off, and realized where he really was. Standing just off Tim Pistol road watching gurghs flood out of two POD storage units. The whole thing almost sounded like a bad joke. Only it wasn’t. That became painfully clear when more gurghs flooded out of the PODs…all of them running.

“Oh my God,” Eve screamed.

Gage would have wondered at her use of the word God, considering she claimed to not believe in him anymore, but didn’t. There wasn’t time to wonder about anything because they were running. His bare feet slapping hard against the uneven asphalt of Tim Pistol. He couldn’t hear shouting anymore. Just the thundering sound of feet against pavement, and not his own.

Eve’s hand was clenched firmly in his. And he knew they were going to die. Everyone did, an inevitable fate that every human met, but that didn’t mean that he ever wanted to meet it. He liked to pretend that life really was a never-ending journey, but it wasn’t. Though Forrest Gump had been right: you never knew what you were gonna to get.

He looked over at Eve. Her hair was plastered against her face, damp from sweat, her brows furrowed in concentration, her lithe body running as hard as it could. Instantly, he was overwhelmed at the sight of her, much as he had been many times before, but mostly he’d felt it when he saw her again for the first time, from his perch in a tree when she’d been about to let the gurghs have her. He hadn’t even known it was her standing there with a death wish, yet a feeling of utter emotion had flooded him.
Not her.
The words echoed in his mind now.
Not now.
Eve deserved more than this, better than being chased down and consumed by flesh infected beasts and Gage wanted to give that to her.

In a quick half-thought out decision, he jerked her from the road pulling her across the street and into the wooded area. The gurghs weren’t far behind, and it wouldn’t be long before they would catch them, but Gage had a plan.

“No, Gage. No way.”

“Yes, Eve it’s the
only
way!”

She looked at the rushing water of the Tim Pistol creek as they came to a halt by the shore. Panic seized her throat. She had been scared when Gage had held her in the pond, but this was completely different. The water seemed to rush a hundred miles an hour in the wide creek, showing her how imminent her death really was.

“Come on.” He wrapped his arm around her middle as if he was going to pick her up and she frantically pushed him away. “They’re almost on us, Eve. We are about to die. This is our only fucking chance.”

She could hear the cracking of branches and the moans of the approaching jenks. They had managed to put some space between them once they got into the wooded area, the trees making the animated corpses clumsier than usual. Eve’s thighs burned from the fresh cuts from the trees and bushes she’d encountered along the way and her feet felt like a hundred knives had been stabbed into her flesh.

“I just—”

“Trust me.” Those words on his lips were as much of a joke now as they had been before, only she didn’t laugh. His face was hard, his eyes pleading in the moonlight. “You promised, remember?”

She had promised, and she wanted to keep it and prove to him…but what was the point? She wanted to show him she was better, that she was more than he had ever imagined. But she couldn’t do that now. Not with the money gone. The money was going to prove that she was worth something. Worth more than just the pathetic weird girl that no one ever liked.

She started to shake her head. Branches cracked behind her.

Gage grabbed her face. “I watched you walk home before you ever broke your arm. Your broken arm had nothing to do with any of it. No one made me give you a ride home, Eve. I wanted to.”

Eve wanted to shout at him. Tell him about how she had loved him from afar, how those rides home had only made her want him that much more, until he snatched it all away from her like she was nothing. Like she was shit on the side of the road. She wanted to punch him the face and tell him that she hated him. For coming back into her life like this and changing everything, for bringing the past shuddering back, but she didn’t.