Chapter 400: Still Finding Me
Yuche didn’t waste time once we realized the surviving zombies were still focused on me.
He lifted one hand, and the shipping container below groaned as its walls folded inward around the herd. Bones cracked beneath the pressure, black blood sprayed across the steel, and the number of moving bodies dropped quickly.
"Keep five alive," he ordered, not bothering to see who would actually obey his order.
A market guard near the freight yard hesitated. "Why only five?" he asked.
"The rest aren’t useful," Lingyun replied like it was the most obvious answer.
Yuche stopped the compression before the last five were crushed. Instead, narrow steel partitions rose between them, trapping each zombie inside its own section and preventing them from tearing at one another.
Lingyun watched the work with approval. "Efficient," he beamed happily.
"You’re supposed to be with the healer," I reminded him.
"The healer knows where I am."
The healer stood several steps behind him with fresh bandages in her hands and the exhausted expression of a woman who had realized her patient possessed no survival instincts.
"He’s bleeding through the dressing again," the healer said, her voice completely devoid of emotion.
Lingyun looked down at his ribs as though the blood had appeared without his involvement. "That seems mildly inconvenient."
I pointed toward the couch beside the wall. "Sit."
His mouth opened, but one look at my face apparently convinced him that arguing wouldn’t end well. He sat, and the healer immediately began removing the ruined bandages.
Zhenlan moved to the broken window and studied the five separated zombies. "They shouldn’t be able to see you clearly from here."
"They shouldn’t care whether they can," Chenghai pointed out.
The other man joined Zhenlan and nodded toward an injured guard standing beside the cages. Blood covered both of the man’s arms, and the smell should have attracted every zombie in the yard.
And yet, none of them looked at him. Instead, they continued pressing against the steel in my direction.
The scar on the back of my calf began to ache even more until I wanted to hiss in pain. However, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew exactly what would happen if I so much as shifted my weight even slightly. Not to mention, the bitten leg was on the other side from my newly healed ankle. There really wasn’t a good way to shift my weight.
Couldn’t the universe just pick a side and be done with it?
I grumbled in my mind and, distracted, I did the one thing that I had already established was a stupid idea.
I shifted my weight.
Zhenlan noticed it the moment it happened, and his eyes zeroed in on my thigh as if he could see the scar from under my clothes and across the room... even if he wasn’t actually across the room.
"Your leg?" he asked like he fully expected me to deny everything.
"It’s fine," I replied before I could bite back the answer. Yeah, I walked right into that one. It might actually be annoying that the guys knew me that well. Then again, a part of me was practically purring at the idea that anyone was paying attention to me enough to know me that well.
His eyes narrowed, so I shifted my weight back before he decided to make a point of it and get the rest of the guys into the argument.
Yuche’s eyes trailed over both my legs before he turned toward Han Zhi. "Clear the upper warehouse."
Han Zhi glanced at the merchants, wounded guards, and workers still moving bodies through the corridor. "Everyone?"
"Everyone who doesn’t belong to us," he replied, which just so happened to included most of the people nearby.
Han Zhi sent guards through the stalls and private rooms, ignoring the merchants who protested until they saw Yuche standing beside the window. Their complaints ended quickly, and within a few minutes, the upper warehouse was empty except for us, the healer, and several guards Yuche trusted.
Once the doors closed, Yuche pulled steel panels from the damaged shutters and folded them around the cages below. Each zombie disappeared inside a solid metal box with no opening facing the warehouse.
For a few seconds, the freight yard went quiet. Then five bodies struck steel at the same time, and the impact echoed through the building before the scrape of fingernails began against the walls facing me.
"Well," I said, "that seems unhealthy."
"They can’t see you," Chenghai pointed out.
"I’m pretty sure that they can’t see anything, given the fact that they are trapped in a metal box," I replied, rolling my eyes.
Zhenlan opened the outer doors and drew a strong current of air through the warehouse. Wind curled around me, lifting my hair and carrying away the smells of blood, smoke, sweat, and gunpowder.
He redirected the air toward the opposite end of the district until nothing from me should have reached the freight yard.
The zombies continued clawing at the same walls.
Lingyun hissed when the healer tightened a bandage around his ribs, but his attention remained on the yard. "Maybe they’re following her power?" he asked out loud like he wasn’t sure about the answer either.
"I’m not using any," I reminded him, holding up my hands in surrender.
"The plants are."
Okay, so that was harder to dismiss.
Thin roots still threaded through cracks in the corridor floor. They’d stopped attacking, but their awareness remained close beneath my skin, waiting for another command.
I pulled my power inward and the roots loosened and settled beneath the concrete, while the weeds along the fence stopped curling toward the warehouse. Even the grass beyond the freight yard went still as I pushed the connection down until I could barely sense anything growing nearby, but the zombies didn’t change.
Yuche turned from the window. "Move her."
"I can move myself."
"I know," he replied. "But I would prefer you didn’t."
Chenghai approached before the conversation could become an argument. He didn’t try to pick me up, although I could see the thought cross his face. Instead, he offered his arm and waited.
My ankle had started aching again, so I took it.
He guided me through the rear door and into the adjoining warehouse while Zhenlan followed, keeping the wind moving between us and the freight yard. Lingyun tried to stand when he saw us leaving, but the healer planted both hands on his shoulders and forced him back onto the couch.
"I’ll carry the couch," Lingyun threatened.
"You’ll tear the wound open again."
"Rouxi is leaving."
"She’s crossing a hallway," sighed the healer, rolling her eyes.
"And that’s exactly how separation starts," Lingyun grumbled.
I ignored him and continued into the next building.
A reinforced concrete wall separated the warehouses, and stacked storage rooms blocked every possible sightline from the freight yard. Once the steel door closed behind us, the zombies couldn’t see, hear, or smell me. I’d also withdrawn from the plants, which left nothing obvious for them to follow.
Chenghai’s radio crackled, and Yuche’s calm voice came through it.
"They’ve turned."
I changed direction without warning and walked toward the opposite side of the warehouse. A moment later, metal rang below us as all five zombies struck the walls of their cages again. I doubled back toward the door, and the scraping shifted with me before Yuche confirmed the movement over the radio.
The ache in my calf sharpened as the cages followed each turn. Whatever the Devourer had left behind wasn’t waiting in the plants or drifting through the air. It was attached to me closely enough that the dead could feel every change in my position.
They hadn’t been following my face, my scent, or my power.
So, just what were they using to still find me?