Page 11 of Demon Shock

My pulse raced again, and I fought to keep my gaze on hers.

Don’t show her you’re desperate.

I knew so many rules for whatnotto do but nothing about whattodo when a female looked at me expectantly. I tried to think of something to say, but she turned away and went inside before I could.

She didn’t close the door, though.

She’s welcoming me.

Trying not to move too quickly, I followed her in. Her sweet scent teased my nose, and I found myself leaning toward her alittle to breathe it in again. She moved away and shut the door, closing us into her home together.

The inside was warm and small. It reminded me of my home in Ernisi but softer. A chair waited near the fire, and her bed wasn’t far from that.

She sat on the chair and gestured for me to sit on the bed.

I saw two cats sleeping peacefully near her pillow. We had one in Tolerance. It was soft, but it didn’t like to be disturbed. So I cautiously lowered my weight at the end of the bed, away from the cats.

Ava watched me and glanced at the cats.

“Are you allergic to cats?” she asked.

“No. I didn’t want to wake them.”

She smiled slightly. It wasn’t full of humor, though. I saw her exhaustion and fear and wanted to comfort her, but I wasn’t sure how.

“Will you tell me what happened?” she asked.

“It is a long story, and you look tired. Would you like to sleep first?”

“No, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for a while.”

I nodded and started from the beginning I knew. I explained how my brothers and I had lived underground for thousands of years, not knowing other people existed on the surface or that there even was a surface until an earthquake made an opening.

Ava listened to my explanation of the hounds that had escaped from my world. How they’d bitten her people and had started the spread of an infection.

“We didn’t know anything about humans. When the first of my brothers came to the surface, they killed many humans by removing their heads. They did not know that meant death here. In our caves, we would be reborn. Mya, the first human female one of my brothers discovered, helped him understand.We don’t kill humans anymore, not even the bad ones who hurt other humans.”

Ava looked down at her hands and let out a long breath. After a long silence, she asked, “Are there a lot of bad ones?”

“Yes. But there are many good ones, too.”

She laughed humorlessly and wiped her hands on her loose grey pants. “Not much has changed in that regard then. So that’s what happened to all the people? They got sick and died?”

“No. They became infected and tried to infect others. Your people evacuated the healthy people from the big cities and bombed the infected that remained.”

“Cities were bombed?”

I nodded. “Many. Initially, the infected were stupid, so they didn’t run away. They ran toward the sound.”

“Biting…stupid…the way you’re describing them sounds like they were zombies or something.”

“That’s what Zach called them. Zombies. Undead.”

Ava’s already pale complexion grew paler.

I began to doubt the wisdom of telling her everything. I remembered how frightened the infected made humans. If Ava hadn’t ever seen one yet, perhaps?—

“Okay.” She nodded. “Zombies. What happened next?”

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