The Virus Within: The Unranked (Book 4)

Ch. 27: Meeting The Runner

My eyes scanned the shrubs as I paced around the mostly dried-out human remains. Like the bodies in the trailer, almost nothing remained but the bones. Runner blood saturated the ground in several spots. Even though rain had washed the red liquid away, it had barely weakened the smell.

I found two empty shells not far from the body and followed my nose to some sort of rifle. The chamber was empty, but the blood streaking the sides showed it had been turned into a melee weapon in the last desperate moments.

The grasses were trampled, evidence of the Runner's long stay. The last man's trail continued onward. He had escaped. Runners normally abandoned a kill if more prey was around, so the man must have ducked below the shrubs or somehow got out of its line of sight and kept running.

I sniffed at his trail, but it was too old to determine if there had been weaker traces of infection in his blood. It could take up to a week for someone to turn, sometimes longer. Most turned within a day or two.

The night wasn't even half over, so I kept going northward, determined to locate the Runner. The human's trail veered away, and I didn't bother following it. If he had been infected and hadn't gotten the cure, he'd be a zombie or had been killed by one. If he had received the cure, then he'd reached some sort of safety.

Hours passed as I jogged across the terrain, tracking the Runner's scent on the air itself. Sometimes I even crossed the human's trail, although the Runner's scent was present every time, but older by several days.

Soon enough, I no longer crossed their trails and homed in on the Runner's current location. I saw the zombie long before he saw me, which was to be expected with my ability to see in the dark as if it were day.

The scent confirmed it was the same Runner who had broken into the bandit camp and chased the survivors. His missing shirt made it easy to see two large scabs on his chest that looked suspiciously like bullet wounds.

He noticed my glowing eyes and turned to face me with a growl, which I returned. Even though my eyes and growl would have informed him which rank I was, he circled closer, testing the boundaries.

I took a deeper breath, but the Runner smelled like a normal Runner, albeit one with several afterscents of human blood on him. It was one thing for a Runner to not believe my warning growl during the day when they couldn't see my eyes, but it was very rare for one to test me when I was glaring at it.

My hands shifted away from my sides in warning, which the Runner mirrored as we closed in for a First Strike match. The moment he came within range, I lunged forward with a snarl, slashing my fingernails across the back of his arm. I skipped out of range before he had a chance to retaliate.

His muscles trembled with the desire to fight as he angled his head downward and shuffled away with bared teeth. Blood dripped down his arm as he turned and grudgingly left, ungracefully accepting the loss. His path headed north, which would keep him from returning to the Stronghold anytime soon.

I shrugged out of my backpack and took out a small plastic vial. Fragments of flesh sat unpleasantly under my nails, and I used a cotton swab to flick them into a vial, then wiped the cotton over a few bloody leaves. Nina could examine them later and confirm if it was just a regular Runner. I couldn't detect any metallic undertone, but it wouldn't hurt to doublecheck.

Once I washed my hands with some water from my water bottle, I glanced at the star-laden sky. As much as I would have rather stayed out here, it was time to head back if I wanted to reach the Graydon Stronghold around dawn. With a sigh, I began jogging back the way I'd come.

~

The badger hide and carcass dangled from one hand as I waited for the guard to unbar the gate. The sun was peeking over the horizon, and people were starting to stir in the Stronghold.