I joined him at the gate.
A pile of bodies lay in the center of the park. I shoved my hand into my mouth to keep from gagging. I’d seen a few piles in my day—in the beginning, when no one knew what was going on and we just wanted to get the dead bodies out of our sight, we tended to throw them into pits and piles—but this one reached at least a dozen feet into the air, taller than anything we’d managed to construct at Elderwood. I couldn’t make out all the faces, but most of them appeared to have red marks on their heads. Taken out. Shot or stabbed through the skull to prevent their return.
Logan wasn’t staring at the bodies, though.
He was staring at something on the other side of the park. Something lingering near the opposite wall.
People.
I grasped the bars, too, not entirely believing my eyes. But there were people standing there in the shadow of the wall, as far away from the bodies as they could get.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked. “Is this their new brig? Are people misbehaving so much they’re getting locked up with the dead?” Why was I surprised? Keller had already shown he wasn’t averse to stashing people in jail with a zombie. Making them share cell space with actual, proper dead people might even qualify as slightly less repugnant.
Tony and Renati came up behind us.
“I see her,” Logan said.
I scrutinized the pile of bodies, but I couldn’t differentiate one corpse from another. Still, Logan knew his sister better than me. “So she’s there,” I said. “She’s…she won’t come back.”
He tightened his grip around the bars.
“Alyssa!”
Oh. Oh, fuck, he was going off the rails.
One of the figures at the wall detached itself from the group, and began making its way over. It walked slowly, almost gingerly, like it was afraid it might topple right over.
It came toward us. As it got closer, I realized it was a woman; a short one at that, seemingly drowning in an oversized, sweatshirt and baggy jeans.
The same sweatshirt Alyssa had worn.
Tony sucked in a breath.
This was a mistake. This all had to be a terrible, terrible mistake.
“Alyssa,” Logan said. “Jesus, what are they doing with you out here?”
She was barefoot. I recognized the little blue anklet I had put on her, bouncing along on the top of her foot with every step.
Not dead, then. Not dead at all. Just locked up in this shithole—why? What the fuck was Lattimore or Keller or anyone else thinking? My relief gave way to confusion, then anger. How dare they do this to her? To anyone?
She got close to us. She wasn’t walking quite right: her limbs seemed stiff, and she swung her legs ponderously. But her lips curved into a slight smile. She was still smiling, even locked out here.
“Alyssa,” I said. “Holy shit. Holy shit, what happened?”
She opened her mouth, and for a moment no words came out. She seemed to have to force herself to draw breath, and when she did so it rattled. Christ, she needed a doctor and a warm bed and all the antibiotics they could find. “They stuck us in with the dead people,” she said, very slowly.
“Renati.” Logan’s voice had turned to ice. “Renati, I will fucking kill you.”
“I…I had nothing to…to do with…this…” The doctor’s voice came out in choked, strained clumps.
The chill had seeped into Alyssa. She shivered, and her feet were coated in a thin layer of ash. Her gaze roved past her brother and landed on me. Smile aside, she seemed largely expressionless, her dark eyes grown pale in the cold.
Wait. Outdoor temperature didn’t change eye color.
I looked closer at her eyes, my brain furiously making useless notes on what, exactly, was wrong with them. Her pupils weren’t adjusting. They were tiny pinpricks in a flat wash of ice. That’s not the point, I screamed at myself. They’re glazed. They’re nearly white. She has dark eyes, not light ones!
“Vibeke,” she said. Her voice had a strange, grating quality to it. Like she’d screamed herself hoarse.
Or her vocal cords were drying out.
No. This isn’t happening.
“Jesus,” Tony whispered.
“Vibeke, please, tell the doctor she was wrong. I’m fine. We’re fine.” She pointed behind her, at the group of people standing under the wall. At least a dozen of them were clumped together, staring at us. “It’s so cold out here…”
There had been a mistake.
But her eyes. Her eyes.
Logan stood there, silent as the dead. Or silent as the dead should have been.
My stomach twisted, nearly hurling itself up into my throat. I stepped back, clamped my hands over my mouth, and nearly crashed into Tony.
“Doc?” Tony asked. “Doc, she’s…she’s…”
Renati joined me at the fence, a quiver going through him. “There’s…how many?”
I could not count all of them, but it looked as if there might be eight or nine others by the other side of the wall.
Watching us.
“Doctor…” I had to fight for words. “Doctor, is this…did they all get that drug?”
He nodded.