Thicker than Blood by Madeline Sheehan

always
bottled up and buried deep down inside me, that I refused to
release it here, especially in front of these lunatics.
    And then, just when I’d thought all was
lost, a scream, piercing in its intensity and utterly familiar, cut
sharply through the otherwise silent hall.
    Leisel!
    Jumping to my feet, I lunged through the
doorway, blindly reaching for either man standing there. Punching,
kicking, clawing, biting, I attacked them with everything I had
left, drawing my strength from the sound of Leisel’s fear.

Chapter Eleven
    Leisel
    I couldn’t stop screaming. The smell was foul, vile,
enough to make my eyes water and my stomach heave. Only I didn’t
have time to lose my stomach contents. Not locked in this tiny
room, lit by a lone candle on the floor, chained to a stone altar,
my only companion a hungry infected.
    I’d never been this close to an infected
before, only Thomas and Shawn when they’d been newly turned. Shawn
had quickly ended Thomas’s life, and when Shawn had awoken as an
infected, it had been Evelyn who’d taken his.
    Although I’d seen other infected through
the years, it had always been from afar. Even our encounters most
recently, I hadn’t been up close and personal with them, not like
Evelyn or Alex had. I’d always been shielded by something, by
someone.
    Not anymore.
    My head was still pounding from the blow I’d
suffered, and the shackles around my wrists were cutting into my
skin, chafing and tearing it. But I continued pulling on them, my
adrenaline overshadowing my pain as I ran in circles around this
bloodied stone altar. I had only myself to protect me now. No one
was coming to save me, and there was no time to break down, to
freak out and give up. Not unless I wanted a very painful and awful
death.
    The infected was desperate to take a chunk
out of me. It shambled mindlessly after me, its arms outstretched,
its maw strained wide open, exposing rotten, jagged teeth. Even
worse, this was not a newly turned. From what I could tell in the
flickering shadows, this looked to be a first- or second-wave
infected. What had once been skin, smooth and plump and flush with
life, was now sunken and shriveled by age and decay, giving the
thing an overall brown and leathery appearance. It was utterly
hairless, its cloudy eyes were sunken in, and what little muscle
mass remained wasn’t enough to shield the infected’s bones from
protruding from its skin. Since it was utterly devoid of any body
hair, I couldn’t even begin to determine what sex it was.
    First-wave infected were rarely seen
anymore, most of them having been killed or no longer able to get
around as easily as in the early days after years of decomposition
had taken its toll on their bodies.
    However, this particular one had been well
cared for. No exposure to the elements to quicken the decaying
process, no human attacks had left it missing limbs or with gaping
bullet holes. Sure, it smelled something awful, like meat that had
been left in a freezer long after the electricity had gone out, but
at the same time it had been routinely cleaned, clothed…and
fed.
    This infected, as hard to believe as this was
for my fear-addled brain, had been loved. Was loved. And I’d been
so lovingly given to it for dinner. But I wasn’t going to be an
easy meal. Whereas fear might have paralyzed me in the past, in
this tiny room it had become my motivation.
    With the stone altar the only thing keeping
the creature from easily getting to me, I ran left, then right,
then left again, or sometimes in a complete circle, as it slowly
but surely continued to come at me. It was a tireless creature,
uncaring about the energy it expended, whereas I was the opposite.
I was cold, exhausted, my body not yet recovered from Lawrence’s
final beating. I didn’t have Alex’s physical strength or Evelyn’s
seemingly tireless stamina, and although I wasn’t out of shape, I
certainly wasn’t in the best condition. Eventually I would tire or
make a mistake,