If I left him here in the girls’ bathroom, I might come back and find him unresponsive or already changing. I struggled to think clearly, but my clear-thinker seemed busted. I should have left him there. Dad might have shot him just to cut down on the variables; he would definitely be telling me to get a move on. The longer I stayed here, the more dangerous it was.
I didn’t have anyone else, and I was the reason Graves had been bit. It must hurt like hell.
“Dru.” He couldn’t speak louder than a sandpapery whisper, and his fingers dug in with feverish strength. I was going to bruise there, too—if I hadn’t already. There didn’t seem to be an unbruised place on my body. We were both in pretty bad shape.
Another thought rose: Graves’s arm awkwardly around me while I cried. He hadn’t asked questions or tried any funny business.
I couldn’t leave him here.
“All right,” I told us both. “Stay right behind me. Move the way I do. We’re going to try to stay under cover. How many different ways can you get me down to your room?”
The relief crossing his transparent face bit me hard in the chest. If he hadn’t been so pale, he would have looked like Christmas. “Four or five. Take your pick.” He swayed, caught himself, and tried to straighten. “I’ll keep up. Just don’t leave me.”
Four or five different routes was good news, if I kept him conscious enough to navigate me. “Okay.” I tried again to think clearly, failed just as miserably as before. “I need my bag, and our best option’s a bus route that’s still going out east. Are any going to be running?”
“The 53.” He nodded, his hair flopping in his face. Even his nose looked pale, for God’s sake. “Runs all night, even when it snows. I can get you there.”
I took an experimental step toward the entrance. He swayed after me, and I thought I had maybe twenty minutes before I had to hold him up.
Move it, Dru. “Okay,” I said again. “You and me, Graves. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 12
The buses were still running. Chained up and slow as hell on their nighttime schedule, but they were still running in the right direction, and we had our first bit of luck catching the 53 almost as soon as we got to the stop across the main thoroughfare from the mall.
We looked normal enough, shivering and cold; bus drivers don’t look too closely if you don’t seem actively inebriated. A cab was a lost cause—it also occurred to me during the wait at the bus stop that cabbies are probably inordinately curious about their passengers. That was no good.
I watched my house from the corner, shivering in my boots. Graves slumped against me. He’d been almost okay on the bus, but now his head hung and strings of wet curly hair fell in his eyes, curtaining his milk-pale face. His eyes were dilated again, and his lips were close to blue.
Snow in my front yard was pristine. The truck was still missing from the driveway. The light in the living room was on, a rich golden glow in the gloomy orange snow-city light. Thick flakes of white whirled down; both of us were covered in the stuff because I’d dragged Graves off the bus two streets away. He’d almost pitched headfirst into a drift, and we had to walk in the road because of the snowplows racking up mountains of frozen, slushy chunks of ick in the gutters. The sidewalks were damn near iced over and impassable, and sand crunched under my boots. Our tracks would be obliterated in less than half an hour.
Can werwulfen track through snow? Especially if they have a blood trail—I’ll bet they can smell it. I shivered at the thought. I didn’t even want to think about what the burning dog and the werwulf had been looking for.
Because there was only one answer for that, wasn’t there? It was an answer I’d run up against on the bus, the gun a cold weight in my pocket and Graves slumped against me, his head bobbling a little bit as we were bounced around.
It looked like nobody had messed with the house. It looked like the shooting had gone unnoticed. Snow made sound carry itself around weird, and the house had been pretty closed up. I wondered if anyone would have found me yet if the zombie had done what it set out to do.
Now there was a nice, happy thought.
There was no cover, but I didn’t want to struggle around through the drifts to the back. For one thing, I didn’t want to see the shattered debris of the door the zombie had come through any sooner than I had to. For another, Graves was slumping more and more heavily each passing second. I was doing okay keeping him moving, but I didn’t feel up to carrying him if his legs gave out.
“Come on.” I didn’t say it nicely. I all but dragged him up over the mountain range of road-snow piled at the bottom of our driveway. Then it was slogging through snow midway up my shins, each step dragged down with powdery, icy weight. My nose dripped and my cheeks were raw. My fingers felt like frozen sausages. Graves started making a thin noise in the back of his throat, like he was going to pass out.
I didn’t blame him. I bet his shoulder hurt like hell. Wulf bites are messy; they grind a lot when they clamp down. He was lucky to still have some use of his arm, his hand tucked limply in his pocket to keep him from looking like Frankenstein’s monster. The wound had been still raw and messy when I peeled up the bandage to check it, just after we got off the bus; a good sign for him not changing just yet but a bad sign for him possibly staying out of unconsciousness.
I dug in my coat pocket for my keys. “Don’t you dare pass out on me now, soldier,” I hissed. The strap of my bag cut into the space between my shoulder and neck, and with Graves’s unwounded arm over my shoulders I felt like Atlas holding up the world. I was so tired even my eyelashes hurt. My back was a solid chunk of pain, my side flaring with a red sensation, just under a really bad stitch, with each breath.