Chapter One
Six Months after the Sundering
* * *
Adalynn released a shaky breath and pressed her lips together. The revenant in the road ahead spun toward her car, its limbs swinging limply with the sudden movement. The creature’s glowing white eyes met Adalynn’s gaze, and the revenant stiffened, opening its mouth wide to release an inhuman cry. Even though Adalynn couldn’t hear the sound with the windows rolled up, she’d heard its like so many times over the last several months that she could feel it in her bones.
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “We’re safe.”
“I know, Addy,” said her brother, Danny, from the passenger seat. “It’s just one, anyway.”
But even a lone revenant was dangerous.
The revenant charged toward the car with no regard for its own wellbeing, moving in an unnatural, jerky gait that looked like it should’ve dislocated the creature’s joints. The bits of flesh visible through its tattered, stained, and weather-faded clothing looked like it had been charred by weeks of exposure to the sun.
Even after six months of dealing with these things, Adalynn still sometimes had trouble not seeing them as human. When they were as damaged as this one, it was a little easier, but she’d been there in the beginning, when they’d first started getting up. She’d seen some of the worst of it.
Every one of these revenants had been a person once. But when the Sundering had split the moon in half, and the Earth had trembled like it was going to break apart, something had changed. Something had torn apart the laws of life and death as surely as the moon had been shattered. Distinguishing what was real and what wasn’t had become significantly more difficult in the time since.
The old rules didn’t seem to apply anymore.
She glanced down at the fuel gauge and clenched her jaw. The indicator was sitting on empty, and the little gas pump symbol was lit up red beneath it. They were running on fumes. They’d stopped at four gas stations—four!—and every one had been dry. She’d siphoned what she could out of some of the abandoned vehicles they’d passed, but the drops of gasoline her efforts had produced weren’t worth the danger she’d placed herself and Danny in to obtain them. Either everyone else had driven until their tanks were empty or someone had already beat her to scavenging the fuel.
Adalynn had known this was inevitable the moment they’d lucked out and found this car—she’d known they would inevitably be forced to return to traveling on foot. Until then, she would use the vehicle to get them as far from danger as possible.
Looking back up at the revenant, Adalynn slammed her foot down on the accelerator. The car hesitated a moment before lurching forward, its engine roaring like a wild beast answering the call of the challenger charging toward it.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Danny throw his hand up and clutch the handle at the top of the door frame.
“Addy, what are you doing?”
Her entire body tensed. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel until her knuckles ached. “We can’t let it follow us. You know those things will chase a car for miles if nothing else distracts them.”
Adalynn stared into the undead creature’s supernatural eyes just before impact. The revenant didn’t deviate from its head-on charge. The car struck it with a loud thunk, and the creature vanished beneath it. The whole vehicle jolted and bounced as it plowed over the body.
Keeping the accelerator depressed, Adalynn glanced in the rearview mirror. The revenant was laid out on the pavement, but it was still moving—it rolled onto its stomach and turned toward the car, using its one remaining arm to crawl after the vehicle, its legs dragging uselessly behind it. The eerie light in its eyes had not diminished—and remained fixated on Adalynn.
How long before that’s me? How long before I’m chasing Danny like that?
She didn’t ease off the gas pedal until the creature was well out of sight and far, far behind them.
“That…was messed up,” Danny said. “It’s not like in video games at all.”
Adalynn opened her mouth to tell him this wasn’t a game, but she snapped it shut again before speaking. He’d known that already; the comment was just his way of coping with yet another horror in a world that had become hell for the living. He should never have had to face this reality. No one should’ve had to face it.
“Not like the games at all,” she said instead.
Her racing heart only gradually eased, but her pulse remained as a dull, throbbing ache in her head. She drew in slow, deep breaths, trying to force herself to calm, trying to delay the impending episode.
Please just let us get a little farther. Let us find somewhere safe.
According to the dim clock on the dashboard, it had only been seven minutes since the collision with the revenant when the car started sputtering. Adalynn glanced down at the fuel gauge again. She hadn’t thought it possible, but it indicated the car was less than empty.
She lifted her gaze to scan the dense woods on either side of the road. They’d been traveling these country backroads for days, mostly at a snail’s pace, trying to find a place to serve as their sanctuary—a place as far away from the revenant-clogged cities as possible.
Even small cities were too dangerous after the Sundering; more people meant more walking corpses, meant more everything—the kinds of monsters that were only supposed to exist in movies and books. The revenants seemed the most mundane of what Adalynn and Danny had seen so far. Werewolves, ghostly entities, and creatures she could only describe as gargoyles had been amongst the dreadful beings she’d seen with her own eyes, and that wasn’t even counting the surreally beautiful man who’d given off his own golden light and seemed to have some sort of magic at his command. They’d heard rumors of much more than that the few times they’d spoken with other survivors after breaking away from their original group.
All those things were very, very real now, and all of it was terrifying, but the most frightening part was that Danny would eventually have to deal with all of it alone.
Not going to think about that right now. Focus, Adalynn.
Though the surrounding woods were beautiful, they made it difficult to spot connecting roads and turn-offs until you were already driving past them. Adalynn would’ve preferred to park the car back on some logging road or backwoods trail—out of sight of the main road—but that wasn’t feasible when the engine finally cut out. It wasn’t worth the time and energy to try to push the car off the road.
There are abandoned cars all over. What’s one more? If someone else finds it, they’ll check for supplies and gas and move on when they don’t find anything.
She guided the drifting car onto the narrow dirt shoulder. Rocks and gravel crunched beneath the tires. She winced; it was one thing to make some noise while they were driving and could outrun most threats, but it was quite another when they were about to go on foot.
Once the car was stopped and in park, Adalynn pulled the keys from the ignition and instinctively moved to slip them into her pocket. She stopped herself and glanced down at the keys in her hand. She didn’t need them anymore. Even if they found more gas—which was unlikely at this point—it would be more practical to find a new vehicle rather than backtrack to this one.