Twenty years after the dead learned to hunt, Lillian Ashcroft could still recognize the sound of a human scream.
The infected made noise. They shrieked when they found prey, groaned when hunger drove them into a frenzy, and produced a wet, rattling hiss when their damaged lungs could no longer force out anything louder. But they did not scream. Only the living did that.
The sound rose from the abandoned farmhouse beyond the tree line, sharp enough to cut through the rain. Lillian stopped. The four hunters behind her did the same.
Water dripped from the brim of her hood. The forest smelled of wet earth, pine, and the faint coppery trace of blood. Another scream came from the farmhouse. This one ended abruptly.
Jonah Vale lifted his rifle. “That sounded close.”
“It was close,” Lillian said.
“You think the missing family made it this far?”
“I think someone did.”
She crouched beside a patch of mud at the edge of the road. Three sets of footprints crossed the ditch and disappeared among the trees. Two were adult-sized. The third belonged to a child. Fresh rain had softened the impressions but had not erased them.
“They came through here last night,” she said.
Jonah glanced toward the farmhouse. “And something followed them.”
Lillian studied the disturbed ground beside the footprints. Bare feet. Several pairs. The prints were narrow and uneven. Some were missing toes. One trail showed a dragging heel. Infected. At least six. Possibly more.
She stood and unslung the axe from her back. The weapon had once been used to split firewood. Over the years, Lillian had shortened the handle, wrapped the grip in leather, and sharpened the head until it could cut through bone without catching.
Jonah frowned. “You’re not taking the rifle?”
“Gunfire carries.”
“We’re already standing in the rain outside a house full of dead people.”
“We don’t know how many are inside.”
“That’s my point.”
Lillian looked over her shoulder.
Jonah was thirty-three, broad-shouldered and impatient, with a scar across his chin and the permanent expression of a man who believed caution was another word for fear.
Behind him stood Mae Bell, their medic, holding a compact crossbow against her chest. Silas Reed carried a shotgun and looked as though he regretted every decision that had led him into the forest. The youngest member of the team, seventeen-year-old Clara Finch, gripped a hunting knife with both hands.
Clara had never entered an infested structure. Lillian had argued against bringing her. Commander Holt had overruled her. Everyone in the settlement had to become useful eventually. That was how people justified sending children into places where adults had died.
Lillian looked at Clara. “Stay behind Mae.”
“I can handle myself.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
Clara tightened her jaw but moved behind the medic. Lillian turned back toward the house. It sat alone in a clearing, two stories of gray wood sagging beneath a collapsed roof. Vines covered the porch. The windows were black, and the front door hung open. Rainwater flowed down the steps in thin red streams. Jonah saw it too.
“Blood.”
Lillian raised one hand. The others fell silent. She listened. Rain struck leaves. A loose shutter knocked against the siding. Somewhere inside the house, floorboards creaked. Then came a soft, repetitive thud.
Not footsteps. Something striking a wall. Again. Again. Again.
Lillian moved into the clearing. The others followed in a narrow line. A corpse lay face down near the porch. Male. Middle-aged. Its clothing had been torn open from shoulder to waist. Lillian knelt but did not touch it.
The man’s skin was pale, but not gray. Blood still ran from the wounds on his back. Recently dead. Mae crouched beside her and checked his neck.
“He’s warm.”
“Bite?”
Mae shifted the body enough to expose the throat. A ragged section of flesh was missing.
“Yes.”
Lillian looked toward the open doorway. “Then we don’t have much time.”
Silas swallowed. “How long?”
“Could be minutes.”
Mae drew her knife. Before she could use it, the dead man’s fingers twitched. Clara gasped. The corpse jerked beneath Mae’s hand. Its head snapped sideways. Clouded eyes opened. Mae drove the blade through its temple. The body shuddered once and went still. Clara stared at it.
“That fast?”
“Sometimes faster,” Lillian said.
The girl’s face had lost its color.
Lillian stood. “You can stay outside.”
Clara looked at Jonah, then at the corpse. “No.”
“Pride gets people killed.”
“I said I can do this.”
Lillian held her gaze for a moment. She remembered being seventeen. She remembered believing there were things worse than dying. She had been wrong.
“Then stay where I put you,” she said.
They climbed the porch steps. The thudding inside stopped. Lillian froze. The others nearly collided behind her. Something had heard them. She stepped through the doorway. The farmhouse smelled of decay, mold, and human waste.
A staircase rose directly ahead. To the left, a narrow hall led toward the kitchen. To the right, the sitting room had been overturned. Furniture blocked one window. Empty tins and broken jars littered the floor.
Someone had tried to survive here. A child’s yellow blanket lay near the fireplace. Lillian’s chest tightened. She looked away. On the wall above the mantel, someone had written three words in charcoal.
DON’T LET THEM
The sentence ended there.
Jonah whispered, “Let them what?”
A floorboard creaked above. Lillian pointed toward the staircase. Jonah nodded and took position at its base.
She motioned for Mae and Clara to search the sitting room while Silas watched the hall. The house remained unnaturally still.
Lillian stepped around a broken chair. The thudding began again. This time, she recognized the sound. A fist. Someone was pounding against a wall.
The noise came from the kitchen. She signaled to Silas and moved down the hall. The kitchen door stood half open. A bloody handprint marked the frame.
Lillian pushed the door wider with the axe head. A woman was tied to a chair in the center of the room. Her wrists had been bound with electrical cord. Blood covered the front of her dress. Her head hung forward, dark hair hiding her face.
The thudding came from the pantry. Something inside slammed against the door. The woman lifted her head.
“Please.” Her voice was barely audible.
Lillian entered. “Are you bitten?”
The woman began to cry. “Please get me out.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
The pantry door shook. The hinges strained. Lillian moved closer to the captive woman. Her name was stitched into the breast of her dress. RUTH.
“Ruth, look at me.” The woman did. Her eyes were clear. Human.
“Where are you hurt?”
“My husband.” Her gaze shifted toward the pantry. “He locked me in here with them.”
“With who?”
“My daughters.”
Lillian’s grip tightened around the axe.“How many people are in the pantry?”
“Two.”
The door slammed again. A small hand appeared through the gap near the frame. Its fingernails were missing. Ruth made a broken sound.
“They got sick during the night. Samuel thought it was the rain fever. He put them to bed.”
“Your husband is outside.”
Ruth closed her eyes. Lillian did not tell her what had happened to him.
“He tied you to the chair?”
“He thought I’d try to open the door.”
“Would you?”
Ruth looked at the small hand clawing through the gap.“They’re my babies.”
Lillian had seen people make worse choices for less. She stepped behind the chair and examined the cords. No visible bite on Ruth’s arms.
“Silas.”
He entered the room. His gaze went to the pantry.
“Oh, hell.”
“Cut her loose.”
“What are you doing?”
“Clearing the room.”
The pantry door cracked near the top hinge.
Ruth began shaking her head. “No. Please. They’re sick. They don’t understand what they’re doing.”
“They’re infected.”
“They’re children.”
“They were children.”
Ruth screamed as Lillian approached the pantry. “Don’t touch them!”
The door burst open. The first girl came through low and fast. She wore a white nightdress soaked through with blood. A section of her scalp had been torn away, exposing the curve of her skull. Lillian swung the axe. The blunt side struck the girl’s face and threw her into the table.
The second child crawled over her sister. She was younger. Five, perhaps six. One eye had collapsed inward. Bite marks covered both arms. She launched herself at Lillian.
Lillian caught the child by the throat with her left hand and held her back. Tiny teeth snapped inches from her face. The older girl rose behind her.
“Lillian!” Silas shouted.
She drove the axe head backward. The blade sank into the older girl’s skull. The child in Lillian’s grip thrashed violently. Ruth broke free from the chair. Silas grabbed her.
“No!” Ruth clawed at his face.
“She’s still alive!”
The infected child twisted and sank her teeth into the leather guard around Lillian’s wrist. Lillian felt the pressure of the bite. Not the teeth. The bracer held. She pushed the child to the floor and brought the axe down. Once. The room went silent.
Ruth stared at the bodies. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Silas released her. She fell to her knees.
Lillian pulled the axe free. Blood darkened the floorboards. The smaller girl’s fingers curled around a scrap of yellow ribbon. Lillian looked away.
The kitchen ceiling groaned. Something heavy moved above them. Jonah shouted from the front room.
“Contact!”
A rifle fired. The blast shook dust from the rafters. A second shot followed. Then Clara screamed.
Lillian ran. She reached the hall as an infected man fell over the staircase railing and crashed onto the floor. Jonah leaned over the banister, fighting another one at the top.
Mae was in the sitting room, struggling with a dead woman in a torn nightgown.
Clara stood frozen near the fireplace.
An infected boy crawled from behind the overturned sofa. He saw her. Clara did not move.
“Clara!” Lillian shouted.
The boy lunged. Clara raised her knife too late.
Lillian crossed the room and struck him before he reached her. The axe split the side of his head.
He fell against Clara’s boots. She looked down at the body. A tremor passed through her.
“I didn’t see him.”
“You see him now.”
Mae drove a bolt through the dead woman’s eye. The infected collapsed across the sofa.
Upstairs, Jonah fired again. A body struck the wall. Then came silence.
Lillian looked at Clara. “Are you bitten?”
“No.”
“Check.”
“I said no.”
“Check.”
Clara wiped both hands over her arms, neck, and face. Her fingers came away streaked with blood, none of it hers. “I’m clean.”
A crash sounded from the kitchen. Lillian turned.
Ruth ran into the hall. She held one of the dead girls in her arms. The child’s skull hung open where the axe had struck. Ruth’s face had become empty.
Silas followed her. “I tried to stop her.”
Ruth looked at Lillian. “You killed them.”
“They were infected.”
“You killed my babies.”
The corpse in her arms twitched. Lillian saw it. So did Ruth. The mother’s expression changed. Hope.
“No,” Lillian said.
The dead girl opened her remaining eye. Ruth smiled through her tears. “Anna?”
The child bit into her mother’s throat. Blood sprayed across the wall. Silas raised the shotgun. Ruth stumbled backward with the child latched to her neck.
“Move!” Lillian shouted.
Silas fired. The blast tore through both of them. Ruth struck the wall and slid to the floor. The child fell beside her. For several seconds, no one spoke. Silas lowered the weapon. His hands shook.
“She was alive.”
“She wasn’t going to stay that way,” Lillian said.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
The front window shattered. An infected woman hurled herself through the glass. Mae shot her in the shoulder. The bolt barely slowed her.
Another face appeared outside. Then three more. Jonah came down the stairs two at a time.
“We’ve got a herd moving through the trees.”
“How many?”
“Twenty. Maybe thirty.”
“Why didn’t we see them?”
“The rain covered the sound.”
The infected woman charged. Lillian buried the axe in her forehead. Outside, shrieks rose from the clearing.The dead had found them.
Jonah looked at the front entrance. “Back door?”
“Kitchen,” Silas said. They ran.
The first infected reached the porch as they entered the hall. Clara slipped on the blood and struck the floor. Mae pulled her up.
Lillian reached the kitchen first. The rear door was bolted. She threw it open. Three infected stood in the yard.
One wore a hunting jacket. The others were badly decomposed, their clothing hanging in damp strips. They turned together. Lillian stepped forward and swung.
The axe entered the hunter’s neck. She twisted the handle, pulled it free, and kicked the body aside.
Jonah shot the second infected through the head. Silas fired at the third. The shotgun blast tore away half its face, but it kept moving until Mae’s bolt entered its eye.
“Go!” Lillian shouted.
They spilled into the backyard. The rain had become heavier. Trees blurred beyond the fence. To the left stood a barn. To the right, open fields stretched toward the settlement road. The herd came around both sides of the house. Too many.
Lillian counted at least eighteen before she stopped trying. Some ran. Others staggered. All of them were hungry.
“The field!” Jonah shouted.
“No,” Lillian said. “They’ll surround us.”
“The barn, then.”
“Dead end.” The infected closed in.
Clara backed toward the fence. “What do we do?”
Lillian looked at the farmhouse. At the sagging roof. At the narrow foundation and the rain barrel pressed against the kitchen wall. An old generator sat beneath a tarp beside the steps. Its fuel line had been disconnected. But the can beside it was full.
“Jonah, get them to the road.”
“You just said—”
“Draw the herd east. Stay close to the fence until you reach the trees.”
“What are you doing?”
“Giving them something louder to follow.”
Jonah understood. “No.”
“That’s an order.”
“You’re not the commander.”
“I am in the field.”
The infected were nearly upon them.
Lillian grabbed the fuel can. “Go!”
Jonah swore, then pushed Clara toward the fence. Mae followed. Silas hesitated.
Lillian met his eyes. “Keep the girl alive.” He nodded and ran.
Lillian tore the cap from the fuel can and poured gasoline across the back steps. The first infected reached the yard. She splashed fuel along the siding and over the pile of firewood beside the house.
A dead man in a butcher’s apron charged her. She ducked beneath his arms and drove the axe into his spine. He fell, clawing at the mud.
Another infected seized the back of her coat. Lillian twisted, letting the fabric tear, and smashed the axe handle across its mouth. Teeth scattered across the grass. More came through the rain.
She dropped the empty can and pulled a flare from her belt. Her fingers struck the cap. Nothing. Water had soaked the striker.
The infected surrounded the yard. One climbed over the fence behind her. Another crawled from beneath the porch.
Lillian backed toward the kitchen door. The farmhouse was already full of blood. Soon it would be full of fire. The flare sparked. Red light flooded her hands. She threw it onto the steps. Gasoline ignited with a deep, hungry roar. Flames raced up the siding.
The infected stopped. For one strange second, every clouded eye turned toward the fire. Then the heat drove them into a frenzy. They rushed the house. Lillian ran in the opposite direction. She vaulted the fence and landed hard in the field. Behind her, the flames climbed toward the roof. The dead swarmed the farmhouse, battering through doors and windows as though the fire itself were alive and calling to them.
Lillian reached the tree line.
Jonah waited there with the others. “You took your time.”
“I was sightseeing.”
The farmhouse roof collapsed. A wave of sparks rose into the rain. The sound drew the infected away from the road. Lillian turned north.
“We move now.”
They ran through the forest. No one spoke until the screams behind them faded. Clara stumbled twice but kept pace. After half a mile, they reached an old logging trail.
A wagon waited beneath the trees, pulled by two nervous horses. Their driver, Edmund Price, sat hunched beneath an oilskin cloak. He looked past them.
“Where are the civilians?”
Lillian did not answer.
Edmund’s face fell.
“All dead?”
“One survivor,” Silas said. “Not for long.”
They climbed aboard.
Mae cleaned the cut on Jonah’s forehead while Silas stared into the trees. Clara sat opposite Lillian. Blood had dried across the girl’s cheek.
“You knew those children would attack,” Clara said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because they were infected.”
“They looked scared.”
Lillian wiped rain from the axe head. “The dead can look like many things.”
“They sounded human.”
“That doesn’t make them human.”
Clara looked away. The wagon rolled through the forest. By late afternoon, the rain had weakened to a cold mist. The settlement walls appeared through the trees.
Grayhaven had been built inside the remains of an old prison complex. Concrete walls surrounded several acres of farmland, workshops, barracks, and watchtowers. Steel sheets reinforced the gates. Spikes lined the outer barricade. Smoke rose from chimneys within.
Children worked in the fields under armed supervision. No one played outside the walls. They had learned not to. The guards opened the eastern gate when they recognized Lillian.
Commander Holt waited inside. He wore a long military coat and carried a pistol at his hip. His silver hair had been cut close to the scalp, exposing an old bite scar near his left ear. The scar was not from an infected. Human teeth left different marks. He looked at the hunters as they descended from the wagon.
“Report.”
“Farmhouse was overrun,” Lillian said. “Missing family confirmed dead. We encountered a herd of approximately thirty infected moving south.”
“Losses?”
“None.”
Holt looked at Clara. “That true?”
Clara glanced at Lillian. “Yes, sir.”
“Any bites?”
“No.”
Holt nodded toward the infirmary. “Standard inspection. Then debriefing.”
Lillian started to walk away. “Not you,” Holt said.
She stopped. “There’s someone you need to see.”
“I need to clean my weapon.”
“You can do that later.” His tone told her the matter was not optional. Lillian followed him across the yard.
Grayhaven smelled of smoke, boiled grain, and too many people living too close together. Residents watched her pass. Some nodded. Others looked away.
Everyone in the settlement knew who Lillian was. The woman who had survived the first day. The hunter who never missed. The widow who had never married. They did not know Thomas’s name. She had stopped speaking it years ago.
Holt led her to the old administration building. Two guards stood outside the basement door.
“Who’s down there?” Lillian asked.
“A scavenger patrol brought him in before dawn.”
“Infected?”
“No.” Holt unlocked the door.
The stairs below were dim.A single lamp burned in the basement. A man sat at a table with a blanket around his shoulders. He was thin, soaked, and covered in scratches. His boots had been removed, revealing feet torn raw from running. A cup of water trembled between his hands.
Doctor Vale stood near the wall. She was Jonah’s older sister, a severe woman with dark hair and little patience for superstition.
“He was found three miles west of the old city,” she said. “Alone.”
Lillian looked at the survivor. “What happened to your group?”
The man stared into the water. “There were six of us.”
“And now?”
“Just me.”
“What killed the others?”
He swallowed. “The dead.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
The man shook his head.
Holt folded his arms.
“Tell her what you told me.”
The survivor looked at Lillian for the first time. His pupils were wide with shock.
“We were searching the courthouse ruins,” he said. “There were more of them than we expected. They came out of the tunnels.”
“How many?”
“Dozens.”
“And you escaped?”
“Not exactly.”
Lillian sat across from him. “What does that mean?”
The man’s eyes filled with tears. “One of them caught me.”
Holt stiffened.
Doctor Vale said, “He has no bites.”
The survivor rubbed his wrists beneath the blanket. “It grabbed me. Had me against the wall.”
“Why didn’t it kill you?”
His breathing quickened. “I don’t know.”
“What did it do?”
The man looked toward the basement door as if he expected something to be listening on the other side.
Then he leaned closer to Lillian. “It spoke.”
The room went still. Lillian heard the old building settle around them.
“What did it say?”
The survivor’s lips began to tremble.
“At first, I thought it was just noise. Then it looked right at me.”
“What did it say?”
The man closed his eyes. “It asked me where you were.”
Lillian did not move.
Somewhere above them, the settlement bell began to ring. Once. Twice. Three times. The alarm for a breach. A guard shouted outside. Then came the crack of rifle fire from the western wall. The survivor opened his eyes.
“They followed me,” he whispered.
From beyond the settlement gates, something called Lillian’s name.