Page 90 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
“It followedyou.” Claudia tugs Snuggles from Zeke’s grip with a motherly scowl and then hands him to me. “Someone who loved you very much made this charm to keep you safe.”
“We heard footsteps.”
“Could be the footsteps of your ancestors, bringing your protection back to you.”
Tears burn my eyes. I look upon Snuggles in a new light—how I used to—with all the innocence and love a child has for something her biological parents left. I was abandoned with Snuggles on a church doorstep as a baby. I’d always hoped he was from my birth parents. I’d always prayed he was a sign that they loved me and never wanted to give me up. “Is it possible Snuggles kept mesafefrom the fires?”
“I thought he was a beacon for Flauros.” Zeke looks heartbroken. “I thought taking it and leaving you was the right thing to do.” His eyes dart from side to side as he resifts the sands of his past. “My sister died because she didn’t have it. But it kept yousafe. I was so wrong.”
“We don’t know that for sure. There were no fires when I joined the Sisterhood.”
“Like Wes said, maybe they’d lost the strength by then.”
“Zeke.” I reach for him, but he shakes his head. The self-doubt in his eyes is harrowing, and when he meets my gaze, I see how ashamed he is. “Stop. Stop that right now. You arenotto blame.”
He scrubs his face and looks away.
“I mean it, Zeke.”
Outside, a bell rings erratically.
“The village alarm,” Orlov gasps. His usual jovial face turns hard and menacing as he pumps his shotgun.
Panicked shouts on the street hit us first, and then a blood-curdling scream.
“You must go to the church,” Claudia says hurriedly. “Take the toy with you.”
“I have no room in the pack.” I shake my head. And I need my hands for fighting.
“We will hold them off.” Orlov’s big boots thunder across the wooden floor as he crosses to the front door.
“Matei,” Claudia calls him over. “Give Vânatoare the map. I will tie the toy charm to her.”
The teen’s eyes are saucers as he jogs to the kitchen, yanks open a drawer, and pulls out a paper map. Suddenly I’m surrounded again by a bustling Romanian family barking orders and instructions. Claudia secures Snuggles to my backpack with string. Matei rambles about how to get to the church. Paula shoves the keys to their truck into my palm. Zeke. Where is Zeke?
Outside, gunshots ring out in quick succession. My heart leaps into my throat. Orlov is still by the door. With a map in one hand and keys in the other, I run to meet Orlov. Outside, along the muddy path, Zeke steadily walks away—a pistol in each hand, firing ahead at villagers who have black spider veins webbing out from their eyes.
“They’re newly infected.”
Thirty-Four
Zeke
Ifocus on the feel of reckoning in my palms, the twitch of my trigger fingers, and thebangof gunpowder igniting. My pistols recoil simultaneously. Bullets slam into the heads of two infected. The double action reloads like lightning.
We don’t have time to worry about innocents. We can’t both save these people and get to the church. I might have royally fucked up my life and Leila’s, but I can do this. I can shoot. I can clear a path.
My pistols twirl in my trigger fingers as I retarget to find two new infecteds running from different directions. I shoot one, twist and drop to a knee. Shoot the other.
“Zeke, you bastard!” Leila is by my side, her left arm wide and pointing her Smith & Wesson, her katana twirling in her right. I tense, expecting her to berate me for shooting these people but she fires her gun, putting a bullet in another infected. “You could have waited.”
“You worried I’ll take all the glory?” I smirk.
“Don’t be cocky.”
“But I am.”
“You still could have waited.”
