The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

Enid had done this before—walked into the wilderness. She’d met outsiders there, spoken to them. They hadn’t been dangerous, not obviously. But that had been a couple hundred miles south, hadn’t it? These were different folk.

She wasn’t worried. Couldn’t be. Half of her job was acting like she absolutely knew what she was doing.

The final bit of path, the very last remnant of the Coast Road in this part of the world, dissipated to grass, then forest soil, as trees grew up and closed in around her. After that she was on her own, following her sense of direction northward, orienting to the sun, which was arcing west in a hazy sky, and to the San Joe, now a fast-running creek a quarter-mile to the east, cutting through a steep gully. No clear path cut through the woods here. She’d almost expected to find one, given how often Hawk, Ella, and others traveled back and forth to Last House. But they must have hidden their routes, taking different ways through the forest each time. Being careful. They didn’t want to be found, which discouraged Enid. With a million places to hide out here, she mig

ht never find them.

A dozen years ago—before becoming an investigator, before Serenity, before practically her whole life—walking into the wild was easier. She didn’t have much to lose. Now she felt the pull of what she left behind. This was dangerous. She shouldn’t be doing this. Olive would be horrified if she knew what Enid had planned. Sam would be concerned. But he wouldn’t tell her not to do it. Just to be careful.

Enid needed to know.

Just like she’d done the last time she trekked off the road, she found a fallen branch. She pounded it on the ground a couple of times to test its sturdiness. With its twigs and leaves stripped off, she could use it as a makeshift staff. Both for walking, and for just in case. Probably wouldn’t need it, but didn’t want to be without it if she did. Made sure the tranq patches were in her belt pouch, within reach. Continued on, and hoped for the best.

On that first excursion into the wild, she’d been traveling the Coast Road with Dak, her former lover, and trekking overland to the ruined city had been an adventure, a lark. They’d stood on the western hills and looked out at the tangle of shadows, lost in haze, its own sub-climate of rusted steel and decaying concrete. Folk thought steel and concrete lasted forever, but they didn’t. In a hundred years even a city could be overrun with trees and swamp. People still lived there, Dak had warned her. He insisted that they were dangerous, wild, threatening. But they hadn’t been. She had met them, sat with them at their campfires. Like anyone, they were mostly concerned with getting enough to eat.

Now she walked into wild territory not with a noble sense of exploration, but with grim purpose. A quest, but she wasn’t sure she knew what she was looking for. An answer must be somewhere; she might as well look.

Those overriding questions remained: Were the people she looked for dangerous? Had one of them killed Ella? And if they had, could she expect them to tell her what had happened? What if one of them admitted to it?

Then she realized that if one of them had done it, Enid would have to be satisfied with turning around and walking home, learning the truth her only outcome. It would have to be enough. She prepared herself for that.

This might be a stupid thing she was doing. She promised Olive she’d be back home soon, and this seemed like a good path to maybe breaking that promise. Enid stopped and almost turned around right then. She would never find what she was looking for. And she was endangering herself unnecessarily.

Instead, she took a deep breath. Noticed how different the air smelled, even this little ways away from the settlement. The briny, muddy reek of the Estuary was gone. Here, the muggy thickness gave way to air that was almost cool. The cleanness of it stung her nose, and she filled her lungs. Pine trees grew straight, their branches reaching. She looked up at a washed-out sky, crisscrossed with branches. It was beautiful. Nothing like this back home. Flickers of movement caught her attention. Birds, she decided, but they never stayed still long enough for her to get a good look at them. Their calls were staccato, muffled.

Ahead a great cracked slab of concrete blocked her way. Beyond it, a fallen steel pole. Could have been a lamppost, could have been part of a building. Hard to tell now, out of all context. She couldn’t resist poking around, kicking away dirt where ruins met the ground, looking for clues as to what had been here a hundred years ago. Even in what looked like untouched woodland, the earth held remnants of what had once been towns, before almost everything had washed away. Bits and pieces left, like shells on a beach. When she got back to Haven, she could check old maps, find the names of what had once been here. But right now, she had to focus not on history but on what had happened to Ella just a few days ago.

“Sam, what am I doing?” Enid murmured. As if he would tell her anything but to follow her instinct. Trust herself.

So on she walked.

Dusk fell; she was still heading north and hadn’t seen any sign of people. She passed more concrete slabs that had once served as foundations for buildings, and evidence of a road—a strip of rotted asphalt under a series of fallen trees. The people in the ruins she’d explored a dozen years ago had used broken walls for shelter and navigated via old roads. But here, no one.

Hawk had to live somewhere. He hadn’t been carrying enough with him to suggest he was nomadic, though he might have stashed his pack nearby rather than bring it down into the Estuary with him. Maybe she should backtrack, head out through the woods in another direction.

Enid hadn’t particularly wanted to spend the night in the wild—the idea wasn’t as romantic as it had been when she was younger. But she was frustrated. Her instinct told her Hawk was out here.

Somewhere.

She followed the trail of ruins, hoping. If there were people here, they’d be living on the bones of what came before. The woods had become very quiet, the shadows long.

She felt a prickling on the back of her neck and looked around, thinking there must be something here, someone watching, but she just couldn’t see it.

This wasn’t home; she didn’t know this area. Her attackers did.

And knew just the right moment to strike.

She was in a spot where the ruins had more substance, where walls still stood, though they were stripped down, windows missing, roofs gone. A charred layer suggested a fire had come through at some point, leveling most of what had been here—a street in some hillside town. The handful of walls formed an aisle.

A trap.

She should have recognized it; instead, she’d walked right up that aisle until she had nowhere to run.

She heard a rustling through dead vegetation, something passing through air, shifting the whole atmosphere of the forest. Then the steps, a pounding on soft forest earth. She turned as he raced toward her through skeletal dead buildings. Enid planted her feet and braced her staff in front of her.

The second one came at her from behind.

His sharp inhale told her he was there. She twisted to look over her shoulder, quelled the spike of panic. He had a club, raised and ready to strike.