Page 53 of Hollow Valley

“Are you at it now?”Fergus asked, and I opened my eyes again to see him watching me with a curious kind of awe.“Were you talking to them?The zombies?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t call it talking,” I said, sheepishly explaining something that felt so innate to me.“Not like a conversation.But I was signaling for them to stay away.”

“And that works?”Leandro asked, watching toward the trees as if he half-expected a horde to come stumbling out.

“You saw it work back at the Revvers,” Fergus reminded him.“Or have you forgotten already how Stella saved us?”

“No, I haven’t,” Leandro said with an embarrassed grin.“It’s just that it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around.”

“It’s like anything else in life,” I said.“You get used to it with enough time.”

“Do you feel it?”Fergus asked.“When the zombies are close by?”

“Indirectly,” I said.“Their scents make me feel a certain way.I think that’s how it is for them, too, but they don’t have rational thought anymore.I can still deliberate and make choices for myself, so I don’t feelcompelledto react to the pheromones the way they do.”

Suddenly, Edie screamed, and I looked back to see her frantically scooping Fae out of the water.

“What’s wrong?”I shouted, but already, I was swimming back toward the shore as quickly as I could.

“There was a leech!”Edie yelled, and by then, Fae had started crying, and Boden was rushing down to join them.“Fae had a leech on her leg!”

When the lake was shallow enough that I could touch the bottom, I started running.It wasn’t until the water was about knee-deep that I finally slowed some, catching my breath, while Edie and Boden doted on Fae on the shore.

“Is she okay?”I asked as I approached.

“She seems to be,” Edie said, and then she looked back at me.Her eyes widened with horror, and she gasped.“Stella, you’recoveredin leeches!”

I glanced down at myself, and immediately noticed a dozen slimy wriggling worm-like creatures had attached themselves to me.Most of them were around an inch long, but the one latched onto my calf had to be half a foot in length, all of them swelling as they sucked my blood.

I screamed because I couldn’t help myself and started yanking them off of me.Boden yelled for us to get out of the water, but I was already racing to the shore as quickly as I could.

“We’re away from zombies, and still there’s some fecker trying to sink his teeth in us,” Fergus muttered, as he joined us on the shore and pulled a swollen leech off his chest.

32

Stella

The heat finally broke a week later around the time the rolling foothills gave way to a rugged alpine pass.We were in the final stretch before we’d reach Xwechtáal, where we would be able to get some respite.

By then, we were all in desperate need of a break.Dougal’s condition hadn’t worsened, but it hadn’t improved, either.The task of maneuvering his stretcher up uneven elevations had increased the work exponentially.

Everyone managed it without complaint, and when things felt especially treacherous, all four of us would grab a pole and get through it.But that didn’t change how taxing the trek had become.

Our rations were dwindling, as game grew more scarce the higher we climbed.The last fresh meat Edie had gotten were a few ground squirrels, and that had been ten days ago.We had to make do with our dried meats and stretching our last bits of flour out in brittle hardtack biscuits.Most mornings, Fergus and I were out foraging to supplement our provisions.

He was also hoping to find wild yarrow (Achillea millefolium), which could help Dougal.So far, he hadn’t had any luck on that particular herb, but he did manage to find wild raspberry leaves that he brewed into a tea.Dougal said it settled his stomach a bit, so that was something.

The others managed better than I did without fresh meat, but I tried to keep my hunger to myself.I didn’t want to explain the constant cravings or my frequent dreams of tearing into the soft warm flesh of any living thing I could get my hands on.

I was hardly sleeping as it was.A few hours here and there when I was certain that Boden or Edie were awake.The others thought I hardly slept to repel the zombies away, and that was part of it.But I was far more worried about summoning them again.

Finally, the village of Xwechtáal came into view, but even from a distance, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.Both Lazlo and Alphie had assured us that while small, Xwechtáal was friendly to outsiders and boasted an inn that served food in the evenings.

As we approached, all I could really see was the fence, if it could even be called that.It was a defensive barrier made of sharpened logs driven into the ground at staggered angles with their aggressive points aimed outward, and not a gap between them to let anything through.The logs were lashed together with thick, rusted strands of barbed wire, and a few corpses of zombies had been left tangled in it to rot.

In general, the wall of splintered wood and twisted metal did not look very welcoming.

“Is that our destination?”Leandro asked, sounding as skeptical as I felt as Xwechtáal loomed on the horizon.