When All is Lost

Chapter 57

I followed. Step for step, I followed the Judge's group and their hostages as they backtracked down the snowy lanes they'd come from. I tried to be sneaky, but there was nothing quiet about my movements. Every step I took sounded like an explosion in my ears as my boots crunched through the snow.

My only comfort was in the fact that the sounds I was making were nothing compared to the group's. If they were trying to be discreet, then they were failing miserably. They were so loud with their march that I was able to follow them by sound rather than sight.

It also helped that I had a good idea as to where they were going.

The only immediate issues I faced were the zombies that had begun to straggle behind, following after the noise. Some were ahead of me and some were behind me and I was highly aware that I was slowly being sandwiched in. All I could do was keep my pace steady and keep an eye out for escape routes.

I had only managed to capture glimpses of the group I stalked, but there were a lot of them. More than I could manage on my own. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing and as the afternoon sun began to fade behind heavy, overcast clouds, I began to wonder what the hell I was thinking. As much as I'd tried to reassure Ian, I was in way over my head.

I'm not going to live through this.

The thoughts in my head began to haunt me and I was deeply regretting my choices. It was my choice to follow the death march, but it was also my choice that led to it occurring in the first place.

You can't stop.

I knew I couldn't. I'd seen the child being carried by a tall, thin man. I had caught a glimpse of them when I'd turned a corner too quickly and had a clear sight of the group. The little girl couldn't have been more than five or six years old.

I have to save her.

But it wasn't just her. I wanted to save all of them – however many there actually were. It took all the strength and willpower I had, but I focused single-mindedly on that thought and, as the walk went on, that thought became a responsibility. Without knowing it or realizing it, those people had become my people and I was going to go to every length necessary to treat them as such.

I gripped my knife tighter, ignored the zombie tailing me, and tried to make a plan. Almost every single one I came up with resulted in my death.

Anton.

Somehow he felt like the key to my success. He was the wild card in all of this mess and if there was even a chance to get him to turn sides, I had to try.

I tried to think of a way to communicate with him, but my concentration had begun to slip. Nausea quaked my insides and I had to keep swallowing down the bile rising in my throat. My side throbbed with every tiny movement and sweat built up on my brow as I was sure a fever was setting in. Something was very wrong with my body.

Finally, I couldn't hold it in anymore. I stumbled to a street sign and clung to it as my stomach emptied itself of the little contents it had. Tears streamed down my face as I retched over and over again, choking as I tried to breathe through it.

I'm dying.

It was no longer a fear but a fact. Something was horribly wrong. I was getting sicker by the hour and it must have all stemmed from my wound. There was nothing I could do about it, however. I had to keep going and even if I gave up on helping the captured people, I still wasn't sure there was anything else I could do to treat myself.

Focus.

I remembered once hearing that if a person was ever kidnapped, they should do everything in their power to get free before getting to their kidnapper's destination or their life expectancy would drop. While our situation wasn't exactly a simple kidnapping, it was still a hostage situation and one I knew the consequences of – the warning still felt dire. With my body failing, too, I knew that acting fast was not only my best option but potentially my only option.