Chapter 6: Blood in the Snow
The snow began an hour into their patrol, fat, silent flakes that coated the pine boughs and erased the world into shades of gray and white. Jess kept her head down, the collar of her coat turned up, her breath a cloud that vanished almost instantly. Ellie moved ahead of her, a dark shape against the blur, her bow held loose but ready. Tommy’s idea of teamwork. A test. Jess knew it, and she was sure Ellie did too.
“Quiet out here,” Ellie said, her voice muffled by the falling snow.
“Quiet’s good,” Jess replied, her eyes never stopping their sweep of the tree line. Quiet meant nothing was hunting you. Yet.
They’d just crested a ridge overlooking a frozen creek when the first one came. It wasn’t a sound so much as a disturbance—a sudden lurch of movement from a thicket of deadfall to their left. A Runner, its skin leprous and torn, erupted from the snow with a wet, clicking snarl.
Ellie’s arrow took it in the throat before Jess’s pistol even cleared her holster. It went down gargling, black blood melting a hole in the snow.
“Told you quiet was good,” Jess muttered, but the words died as two more shapes shambled out of the white haze behind them. Clickers. Their fungal plates were crusted with ice, their blind heads swiveling toward the sound of the Runner’s death rattle.
“Shit,” Ellie breathed.
Chaos, then. Brutal and fast.
Ellie went high, nocking another arrow. Jess went low, surging forward into a crouch. Their movements were simultaneous, uncoordinated, a collision of instincts. Ellie’s arrow zipped past where Jess’s head had been a second before, thudding into a Clicker’s chest. It staggered but didn’t fall.
Jess was already inside its reach. She didn’t shoot. Bullets were precious, noise was death. She dropped the pistol, letting it hang on its lanyard, and her hand went to the serrated hunting knife on her belt. As the Clicker shrieked and lunged, she pivoted on her heel, using its momentum to guide its fall. She didn’t stab. She hooked her leg behind its knee and drove it face-first into the frozen earth, the crack of its skull on a hidden rock a sickening punctuation. Her knife found the base of its neck, once, twice, severing the cord.
She looked up, blood flecking her jaw, and saw Ellie struggling with the second Clicker. It had her bow arm pinned, its mouth gnashing inches from her face. Ellie had a hand wedged under its chin, muscles trembling with the strain.
Jess didn’t think. She moved.
She snatched the hatchet from Ellie’s belt loop—Ellie’s eyes widened in furious shock—and swung it in a short, vicious arc. It bit deep into the Clicker’s temple. The creature seized, then went limp, collapsing onto Ellie.
They both went down in a tangle of limbs and corpse.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing and the soft hiss of snow. The coppery smell of blood was sharp in the cold air. Jess rolled off, coming up on her knees, knife still in her hand. Ellie shoved the dead Clicker aside with a grunt of disgust, her chest heaving. A gash on her forehead was already welling blood, dripping into her eyebrow.
Ellie stared at her. “You took my axe.”
“You were busy,” Jess said, wiping her knife clean on the snow before sheathing it. Her hands were steady. Calm. She retrieved her pistol.
“You could’ve shot me.”
“I didn’t.”
Ellie sat up, swiping at the blood on her face. It smeared. Her gaze was locked on Jess, a new, sharp appraisal in her eyes. The anger was gone, replaced by something more intense. Curiosity. Recognition of a different kind. She’d seen the way Jess moved. Efficient. No wasted motion. Not like Jackson patrols. Not like anything she’d seen before.
They dragged the bodies into the creek bed, covering them with snow and dead branches. The storm was thickening, a blessing now. It would hide the signs. They moved to the relative cover of a massive fallen spruce, its root ball creating a pocket of shelter. The adrenaline bled away, leaving a hollow ache in Jess’s muscles and a tremor in her fingers she willed to stop.
Ellie leaned back against the log, pulling a canteen from her pack. She drank, then offered it to Jess. A simple gesture. Not trust, but a truce.
Jess took it. The water was ice-cold.
Ellie watched her, the snowfall dusting her dark hair with white. She nodded at Jess’s hands, at the knuckles which were split and raw from impact. “That move you used on the first Clicker. The takedown.” Ellie’s voice was quiet, stripped of its usual sarcastic edge. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”