I had been on kitchen duty for all of two hours when things went, shall we say, pear-shaped?
CRASH!
“Sasha! Are you doing this on purpose? How many is that now? Heavens, child, what are we to do with you?”
Deborah, the most senior cook, came bustling over and immediately began sweeping up the glittering remains of what was once a perfectly good plate.
A perfectly reasonable question, to be fair. It was, after all, the fourth one I’d managed to shatter in under an hour.
“Listen, dear,” she hissed, glancing nervously toward the doorway. “If you keep making a scene, you’ll get on their bad side, and trust me, you don’t want that. You have to be careful about every little thing in this place.”
After a quick check for eavesdroppers, she bundled the shards into a cloth and unceremoniously dumped them in the rubbish bin.
Sorry, I thought, wincing. It wasn’t like I wanted to cause a diplomatic incident with the crockery. What’s a girl to do when her own body stages a mutiny?
“Sit down for a moment and catch your breath, dear.”
“I am so sorry,” I mumbled. “Is there… maybe an easier job I could do?”
“Washing dishes is the easiest job there is.”
Right. Well, considering I had nearly set the kitchen on fire attempting to toast bread and almost lopped off my own finger while menacing a carrot, she had a point.
Dishwashing was clearly the path of least destruction.
Feeling profoundly awkward, I tucked myself into a corner where I wouldn’t be a danger to life, limb, or dinnerware.
Deborah sighed and worked twice as hard to make up for my general uselessness.
“You said you have a husband and a son, didn’t you? In that case, you have to endure, no matter how difficult it gets. Where else can a family stay together like this? Out there, your life is on the line every single day.”
She told me she’d lost her own husband, her daughter, and her son-in-law in the chaos. Despair had shattered her life, she said, but with her granddaughter to care for, she couldn’t simply give up.
“Anyway,” she said, her tone brightening slightly, “seeing as you’re so clumsy in the kitchen, I take it your husband does most of the cooking?”
Yoan? Cooking? The mental image of my stern, stoic Yoan tied up in a frilly apron was so fundamentally wrong that I had to physically shake my head to banish it.
When I only offered a vague, noncommittal smile, Deborah’s expression softened.
“That’s good. A man needs a gentle side like that for a happy home. You married well.”
“Right, well…”
“If we can just hold on here, this hell will eventually end, don’t you think?” she said, her voice wistful. “Then your little family of three can live happily together.”
“We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t get us all kicked out before then.”
The dry contradiction came from a young man named Zenon, who had just walked into the kitchen. He’d had an odd, prickly air about him from the moment we were introduced.
He set a crate of fruit in the corner with a thud and shot me a look. “What are you doing? Standing in the corner for punishment?”
“Huh? Oh, no, it’s not…”
“I told her to take a short break,” Deborah cut in smoothly.
“So you caused another incident.” He was annoyingly sharp.
“It’s her first day,” Deborah said, ever my defender. “We should be a little understanding and teach her gently.”
“It doesn’t matter if she’s good at it or not,” Zenon replied, his expression flat. “We aren’t the ones who decide if she’s useful. They are.”
Deborah offered a bitter little smile and went back to stirring a large pot with a ladle.
“What can we do? We just have to keep our chins up. People like us can’t fight the dead. At least in here, we’re protected.”
Her words were half-resigned, but a tiny thread of hope still clung to them. It was heartbreaking. It seemed the scoundrels running this fortress had already conquered everyone’s minds.
As if fighting the undead wasn’t difficult enough, now I gotta deal with garden-variety human filth, too…
My initial goal had been to eliminate the people blocking the search for the immune, but now that I was on the inside, I found myself getting angry for entirely different, more personal reasons.
“You know, Miss Sasha,” Zenon said, far too casually, as he began unpacking the fruit, “you don’t really seem like someone who just came in from the outside.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a complete mess out there, isn’t it? You seem awfully calm for someone who just came from that. The way you talk, your expression… all of it.”
Well, that’s because I’m a zombie…
It wasn’t that I was calm, exactly; it was that my facial muscles were stubbornly uncooperative. He was entirely too observant for my peace of mind.
“I was just lucky. I haven’t had to face many of the dead directly,” I said.
“Is that so?”
“My husband was a soldier,” I added quickly.
“I see. And what about you, Miss Sasha?”
“Me? Oh, I… I looked after our child at home.”
“Your hands look rather rough for someone who just minds a child.”
“…I also do a bit of farming.”
Zenon’s eyes narrowed, and he studied me as if trying to peel back my skin to see what lay beneath.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet I was suddenly gripped by the very specific terror of being found out.
It was all terribly unfair.
Why is he staring at me like that? Oh, gods, did my makeup smudge?
I did try to fix it up earlier when I got some time alone… but I could hardly be as skillful as Kira.
I patted my cheeks, feeling dreadfully self-conscious.
Zenon finished his task, dusted off his hands, and added, “They don’t look like a farmer’s hands to me. But if you say so, I suppose they are.”
With that parting shot, he opened a side door and vanished from the kitchen.
He suspects me. One hundred percent.
I stared at the door he’d just closed, my mind a complete jumble.
Just then, Deborah came over and patted my shoulder.
“That’s odd. Zenon is usually so quiet,” she mused. “I bet he wants to be friends with you. Perhaps because you’re around the same age? Ho ho!”
“Ahaha… is that so?”
Deborah, bless her heart, saw the world through the rosiest of rose-colored glasses.
***
When I returned to our quarters that night, Yoan was out on guard duty. Derek and I ate a simple meal and compared the intelligence we’d gathered.
“So, this Luther fellow is the leader of the fortress, and he never shows his face in public?” I asked.
“That’s right. He apparently avoids going outside at all costs and has a second-in-command who handles everything for him.”
“The guild master Rob mentioned?”
“Apparently, the guild master is just a figurehead. The real second-in-command is someone else. But the stories about them are… conflicting. Some say it’s a woman, others say it’s a man.”
“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Apparently, this person has long, beautiful hair but also a deep voice and a towering frame, so no one’s quite sure what to make of them.”
“Well,” I said, “with a description like that, they should be easy enough to spot.”
The information Derek had gathered was invaluable. Getting to a target who refused to show his face was a problem for another day. Once we combined our findings with the others, I was sure a plan would emerge.
“Derek, you remember the meeting spot?”
“Yes. The roof of the tenth building to the right of the main gate.”
Since we had no idea what the fortress layout was, we’d agreed on a rough rendezvous point before we split up. To minimize the risk of being caught, only one person from each team would attend the meeting.
For our little group, small and nimble Derek had volunteered.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?”
No matter how capable he was, the thought of sending him out by himself made me terribly anxious.
“Don’t worry, Sasha. I’ll be back before you know it,” Derek said with a reassuring smile.
“All right. Be careful out there.”
“I will. If you run into any trouble, send a signal somehow. I’ll come right back.”
“What sort of trouble could I possibly get into sitting at home? You just worry about yourself.”
I gave him a quick, encouraging hug. After a moment of shy stillness, Derek raised his arms and briefly hugged me back before pulling away.
“I’m heading out.”
After Derek left, I was alone with nothing to do. I paced the tiny room, and a truly terrible idea began to bubble up in my brain.
Maybe I should just take a little look around?
No. Absolutely not. In novels and plays, this is precisely the moment the heroine does something foolish for no reason and ends up in a dreadful pickle.
It’s a time-honored cliché for a reason. I had to resist.
But… I’m a zombie, aren’t I? A fast one, at that.
If anything went awry, I could simply run for it.
Not like this is some prison.
If worse came to worst, I could just claim I was out for a bit of fresh air.
And with that bit of flawless, airtight logic, I decided it was a brilliant plan. I crept to the door and eased it open.
It was quieter outside than I’d expected, which only made the occasional, unearthly shriek from a walker beyond the walls all the more terrifying. Thanks to the chilling ambiance, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
After sizing up the situation, I started walking.
Ah, maybe I should’ve left a note…
If Derek or Yoan returned to an empty room, they would worry.
Nah. I’ll be back before they are.
It wasn’t as if I was planning on going very far.
***
“It’s your first day, so consider it a freebie. Go on, head home early,” Yoan’s work partner had said with an insufferable smirk. “Starting tomorrow, no more slacking! You should be grateful you were paired with a pro like me.”
The man was full of himself, but he’d at least been competent. Still, as a low-level grunt on patrol, Yoan hadn’t been able to gather any useful information.
When he returned to their quarters far earlier than expected, he found the place empty. Derek, he assumed, had gone to the rendezvous point with the others. That made sense.
But Sasha was gone, and that was wrong. The kitchen duties would have ended hours ago.
A cold certainty settled in his gut. “Something has happened.”
Without a second’s hesitation, he turned on his heel and strode back out into the night.