Page 24 of Outbreak (Revolution X #1)

CHAPTER 23

Ghost

“ R ue!” Where the fuck is she? I saw her go down, shoved into the ditch by the panicked crowd, then nothing. I can’t find her. I can’t fucking find her. It’s dark, but I will pick through every eviscerated body part on the ground before I believe she is dead.

Maybe she ran… My subconscious mocks me, but I can’t believe that either. We were making progress. She was making me forget why she’s being punished in the first place. She’s had plenty of opportunities to run or ask for help and didn’t take them. She’s got to be here, lost and scared. My stomach twists when I sift through the bodies on the ground. I’m no stranger to dead bodies, but when I kill something, it stays dead. I need to find her before these fuckers get a wake-up call from hell.

As soon as I saw her go down, I grabbed a piece of rebar from the back of the truck and took off. The dead pushed the crowd into the woods, and she wasn’t lying in the ditch, so she must have got pushed ahead with them. I followed behind the massive herd of corpses until they came to a clearing and slowly dispersed in different directions.

Now I’m back tracking, searching through the bodies left behind from the checkpoint as the sun starts to peek through the trees. The dead don’t care if you’re a man, woman, or child. They tore through everyone just the same. I try to put the bodies of the kids out of my mind, but something like that has a way of burning into your brain and sticking around. I don’t do kids—I don’t care how good the money is; even a sick asshole like me has lines I won’t cross.

A bright yellow converse draws my attention in the sea of death laid out on the ground. The young couple parked behind us. I remember her sitting in her car, her foot propped up on the open door. She didn’t make it.

I don’t see her body lying on the ground though; I see Rue. My little death. The blonde’s curls transform before my eyes into long black waves with pink swirling through the lengths. The blood-splattered yellow shoes shift and become those black boots that make her feel like a badass.

I can’t breathe. It’s not her. I know it’s not her. It can’t be her. My mind is playing tricks on me. Focus ! Get out of your head and find her!

Shaking my head to clear the mental images of her dead body, I keep moving. I have to. She’s not dead until I see it with my own eyes. And I’ll scour every inch of these woods until I find her if I have to.