Page 49

The past three weeks have been exhausting.

Everyone at The Valley has worked tirelessly to fortify the fences and walls surrounding our community.

Patrols have been going out daily to pilfer for any and all resources they can find.

The plan is to outlast the enemy should they come to our gates while a few of us go in search of Doctore’s satellite labs.

No one has spotted a potential threat nearby, but that doesn’t mean we are safe.

Doctore and his men could come our way any day now.

Or maybe we are all just paranoid and expecting the worst outcome.

My best hope is that it’s paranoia.

I need The Valley to remain untouched by the evil that is Doctore.

There needs to be a safe haven for all who are looking to live, to prosper, to find purpose again.

I’ve found my purpose at The Valley in more ways than one.

I’m a daughter again.

A wife. A friend. And a warrior.

I will fight until my dying breath to protect everyone and everything inside The Valley.

And it just so happens that I have what Doctore wants.

I am his weakness. His first gladiator.

He will do anything to get me back.

As I look out the window of the car moving against the autumn backdrop of Central Pennsylvania, I take a deep breath, settling my anxious nerves.

Fight. Survive. Live.

My mantra resurfaces after months of feeling safe.

It holds more weight now than ever before because I have so much to lose, not just my own life.

Amos places his hand on my thigh, grounding me to this moment with him.

His other hand, a mechanical one that Norman had built for Amos, casually steers the wheel of the car.

The sight of it makes me nervous.

When Amos first showed me his new arm, I was happy for him.

Happy because he was happy.

“I’m whole again,” he had said to me.

Even though he was always whole to me, I kept my mouth shut.

He felt like his old self again.

He can play the piano with two hands again.

How could I take that away from him?

But I don’t trust Norman, not after the stunt he pulled by throwing me into a zombie-filled obstacle course.

Something Doctore would have gladly done to me without blinking twice.

I know Amos still holds a grudge against Norman for what he did, which is why it makes me so nervous that he accepted this new arm so easily.

Perhaps this is Norman’s way of making amends, trying to do the right thing.

I hate it, but I believe his story.

That he has broken ties with Doctore.

“This is it,” Jonah says from the back, sitting between Olivia and Kyle.

He folds up the map he’d been studying, a smaller version of the one Amos has hanging in his office.

With help from Matthew’s intel, we’ve narrowed down the area where Doctore’s satellite lab in this region could be.

It took us three hours to drive here and we didn’t have to drive through The Wall.

Knowing that Doctore and his goons are this close to The Valley makes my blood boil and my stomach wrench.

All I can do now is hope that everyone back home is okay.

That the fortifications are strong enough to hold back an attack.

Amos slows down the car to a stop, scanning the trees surrounding us.

If this was any other day, I would say the endless trees changing their colors are freaking gorgeous.

But one of Doctore’s labs is somewhere out there.

We are entering unknown enemy territory filled with danger at every turn.

Traps. Zombies. Super soldiers.

“We are not splitting up. Got it?” I say for the millionth time.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Amos says in a joking spirit.

“I thought I was your captain,” Kyle mock-whines.

“You’re my lieutenant.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Kyle says as he opens the door.

Jonah and Olivia hop out after him, readying their weapons for battle.

Amos and I join them, huddling one last time to go over the game plan.

There’s an old mining village we suspect is near the lab we are searching for.

Since we don’t know the exact spot, it could take us hours to find it.

We’ll need to find shelter before the sun goes down, even if that means we have to sleep in the car.

So we plan a path in several directions, walking thirty minutes before changing course.

After four hours and changing direction eight times through the thickening woods, Olivia spots an overlook tower.

Kyle checks our bearing before turning us toward the tower.

This will have to be our last stop before turning back to the car.

The sun is already sinking down low in the sky, warning us of the impending night time.

My skin tingles, a warning sign, as we approach the lone tower.

But there’s nothing I can see that tells me danger is afoot.

Doesn’t mean there isn’t danger out there, lurking in the shadows of the trees.

Amos slides a hand around my waist, pulling me to his side.

He places a hard kiss on my head, shaking the lingering fear from my body.

“Kyle and I will head all the way to the top. Olivia, scout from the middle. Lori and Jonah, stay at the bottom ledge,” Amos commands.

“I thought we agreed to stay together.” I look up at the face of my husband, his golden eyes fixed on the top of the tower.

When he looks down at me, a smile tugs at his mouth.

“We are not separating. But we need visuals at different heights.”

I press my head into his chest, afraid to let him go.

So silly when we will literally be climbing the same freaking tower.

He will just be a hundred or so feet above me.

I can do this.

Amos kisses my head again then whispers into my hair, “I love you, Copperhead.”

He doesn’t wait for me to respond, turning abruptly to climb the stairs on the lookout tower.

Kyle follows him, then Olivia, then Jonah and me.

My heart feels like it rips in two when Amos continues up the stairs as Jonah and I remain on the bottom ledge.

I fight through the ridiculous emotions tearing at my heart with every step Amos takes away from me, and focus my attention on the ominous woods surrounding the tower.

Some of the leaves have already fallen from the trees, giving us a partial view into the woods, even from the bottom ledge.

I aim my rifle, looking into the scope, and scan the scattering of trees to my left as Jonah does the same on my right.

We walk slowly around the ledge, meeting on the other side.

“Hey, Shortcake,” Jonah says.

“Hey, pal.” I offer him a cheerful smile, which fades when I see the misery on Jonah’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need you to promise me that if anything happens to me, if I die, you won’t let me turn.”

“You won’t turn—”

Jonah interrupts me, saying, “Do you remember me telling you how the Praetorian Guard are dosed with the virus? Just enough so that if we die, we will come back. Doesn’t matter if we die from a bite. I will turn into one of those monsters and I need you to promise me you won’t let it happen.”

I try to keep my voice as confident as I can, even though dread threatens to annihilate every shred of hope.

“I promise. But, Jonah, we are going to be all right.”

“I hope so, Shortcake. Just remember, sever my spinal cord.”

A branch snaps in the distance, likely from the dampness from a week’s worth of rain.

I know it’s just the sound of nature, but I rush over in the direction of the sound and look through my scope.

Nothing.

Before I can breathe a sigh of relief, a voice calls out from the ground.

Three men approach the tower, looking directly at Jonah and me.

I quickly glance up to the landings above my head, but can’t see the others.

When I look back down, the three men have guns pointing at us, so I point mine right back at them.

But Jonah doesn’t.

“Took you long enough!” Jonah shouts.

“What?” I gasp, losing my breath at the shock of Jonah’s betrayal.

He doesn’t even have the decency to look at me.

“Legatus Jonah Rosenberg! We thought you were dead,” shouts the grizzly looking man with hay-blonde hair wrapped tightly in a man bun.

The beard covering his face is a shade darker, making it look like he rolled around in the dirt.

The other two men are lanky but just as menacing.

“Nah. I’m too tough for death.” Jonah has transformed into a completely different person.

Shoulders back, looking confident, like he has no care in the world.

“Who do you have there?” the grizzly looking one asks.

“You don’t recognize her? Doctore’s prized gladiator that ran away?” Jonah pulls me to his side and I’m too shocked to push myself away.

“I found her in a little survivor colony not too far from here.”

I look up at Jonah, so close to his throat that I can hear his pulse throbbing.

Is he scared? As if sensing my internal question, Jonah turns his eyes to me and winks.

“Play along,” he whispers before kissing my cheek.

“We got married there. It was fucking adorable.”

Jonah pulls me along, guiding me down the stairs.

With our hands tangled, I can feel the slight nervous shaking of whatever fear he’s trying so hard to suppress.

As we walk down the stairs, he asks the men on the ground how many more of them are in the area.

“Why?” lanky man number one asks.

“Because there are others nearby, Seb.” Jonah halts, pretending to see one of these “others” in the distance.

“I knew someone would be out here, so I led them straight to you.”

“How do we know you haven’t joined them?” grizzly man asks, squinting his eyes as he scans the surrounding trees.

“That you weren’t the one who sold us out?”

“Waylen, you know me. You know I am loyal to Doctore. I swore to him I would find his gladiator and I have. I had to play pretend with the locals in order to get her out. There was no other way. Bonus is that I got to fuck her whenever I wanted to, so maybe I took my time getting us out.”

Jonah squeezes my hand.

An apology for the things he is saying perhaps.

My body moves with him, but my mind is miles away.

How are we going to get out of this?

I squeeze back in understanding, keeping my face from giving him away.

When my feet hit the grass, it takes everything in me to not look up.

Waylen takes a step toward us, examining me with suspicious eyes.

“It’s just the three of us here. The others are back at base.”

Jonah nods.

“Do you have a radio?”

“Negative.”

“We need to move fast then. The team I was with will be closing in any minute.”

“How many are with you?” lanky man number two asks.

“Three others.”

“We can take that number.”

“Not when we are at a disadvantage, Hank.” Jonah’s outrage feels so authentic.

The hairs on my arm freeze.

“How did you get them to come all the way out here?” Hank asks, suspicion brewing in his seafoam green eyes.

“Are we done with the stupid questions?” Jonah sighs, grasping my hand tighter.

“Answer the question, Jonah,” Waylen demands.

The two brooding men stare at each other for an entire minute.

A minute filled with a dreadful tension that makes my skin shiver.

Before I can take another breath, Jonah shouts up to the sky, “Now!”

The sound of gunfire ignites the air around me as Jonah pulls me to the ground.

What little breath I had inside my lungs gets caught in my throat as I attempt to yell at Jonah.

He helps me crawl under the base of the tower as the gunshots echo around me.

Not just from above, but from all around us.

Waylen lied to us. There are more Praetorian Guards hiding out of sight in the woods.

I look up just in time to see Hank get a bullet right between the eyes.

Waylen is already halfway to the trees, dragging a wounded Seb.

I make my way under the tower, crouching low as I try to balance myself and point my rifle at the woods.

Looking through the scope, I see a militia approaching us.

I shoot. Each pull of the trigger lands with a bullet in an arm, leg, throat, wherever I can get them.

But we are grossly outnumbered.

They must have found us wandering the woods long ago, or perhaps we are much closer to the lab than we thought.

Jonah collapses to the ground next to me due to having the butt of a rifle slammed into the side of his head.

I try to whip my gun around, but I’m not fast enough.

Waylen is back, grabbing my arm and pulling me out from under the tower as someone else grabs Jonah’s limp body.

Out in the open, I look up to see Amos at the top of the tower, his rifle aimed at Waylen’s head.

“Get your fucking hands off her!” he screams, making my blood curdle.

“You must be the real husband then,” chuckles Waylen.

“Come down here yourself and try to pry my hands from her.”

“No!” I shout with all my might.

“Just take me. I will go with you willingly if you let them live.”

“Lori, no!” Amos makes a move to sprint down the stairs, but Kyle stops him, barely able to hold him back.

“We won’t be letting anyone go, girly.”

Ew.

Did he just call me girly?

“You know I can rip your face off in one second.”

“Not before I sink this big, beautiful, shiny knife into your side.” Waylen presses a knife against my throat as if to make his point.

I laugh at the knife.

“You forget, I can’t die.” Without thinking, I lift my foot up and slam it down with my inhuman strength.

The loud crunch of broken bones pierces my ears before Waylen’s wailing scream.

He lets go of me enough for me to whip my head back, likely breaking his jaw.

As he stumbles backward, I grab his big, beautiful, shiny knife from his hands, preparing myself for battle.

That’s when I see Jonah.

Unconscious. Helpless.

With a gun to his head.

“Drop the knife. Surrender. And all your friends will be kept alive for Doctore to pass judgment upon.” The man holding a gun to Jonah’s head keeps my stare.

I recognize the man’s face.

He’s one of the assholes who kidnapped Jonah and me five years ago.

I growl, dropping into my fighting stance.

“A judgment that will lead to death.”

“Then should I kill him now?” He pushes the muzzle of the gun into Jonah’s temple, and before I can even think about my next move, the knife flies out of my hand, sinking into the man’s throat.

I dive toward his fallen body, pushing him away from Jonah and grab the handgun he held against Jonah’s temple.

With my body protecting Jonah’s, I chance a glance to the top of the tower.

Olivia joined Kyle at some point, both of them holding back my husband from doing something stupid.

Looking back at the Praetorian Guards surrounding me, I grind my teeth, saying, “Let them go unharmed and I won’t kill every single one of you fuckers.”

“Lori, behind you!” I hear Amos shout before the world goes black.