The crackling of a fire is the only thing I hear when I wake up. It feels as if there is someone sitting on my chest, the pressure making it hard to breathe. Groaning, I force my eyes open, the scratchiness of being asleep for a long time making me blink rapidly.

"Good, you're awake," a soft voice says from my right.

My head pounds as I turn to look over at the person, making me wince. This room is small, only a bed, fireplace and a chair being able to fit in here. In the chair is a middle-aged woman, her skin dark as night. Her hair is pushed away from her face with a bright red piece of cloth.

"Who are you?" I ask, voice coming out raspy from disuse.

The woman stands up, walking over to me. "I'm Reseda, the village healer." She helps me to slowly sit up, any sudden movements causing me to groan. "Careful now. Your body is still healing."

"What happened to me?"

She moves back over to the fire, picking up a kettle that is dangling above it, and pouring it into a mug. "You were shot with a bullet laced with infected blood."

My breath skips, heart pounding in my chest. "Am... Am I going to become one of those?"

She shakes her head. "No. The blood was stale. It isn't meant to turn you, just slow you down enough so that the humans can catch you. If the blood was fresh and there was more of it, then we would have a problem. But it most likely came from an infected that died years ago.

"You'll be fine after you rest a while."

Taking the mug from her, I sip at the steaming hot tea, coating my throat. "How long have I been out?"

She shrugs, going to sit back down on the chair. "Almost a week."

The tea goes down the wrong throat, causing me to cough. "A week?" I sputter, setting the tea on the ground. "Are the others here yet?"

Reseda shakes her head. "Not yet. I'm sorry."

Worry settles in my gut. The only thought running through my mind is that Jesse wasn't quick enough. The infected and humans must have gotten to our pack lands before he could warn them. There were too many of them. There is no way they would be over to survive if they were not able to prepare.

A bell chimes from the entrance, a looking around a bit more, I can see that this is not really a house, more like a tent of some sort. The walls seem made of animal hide, trapping the warmth, but allowing for some air movement.

Reseda stands up, going over to a blanket tacked up on the wall. She pushes it aside, allowing the person outside to come in. It's Jordan, the man from before. He looks even bigger in this tent than he did in the caves, seeming to take up all the room.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, once he sees that I am awake.

"Like I have been hit by a truck."

That gets a smile out of Reseda, but Jordan just nods his head seriously. "Well then, we will be keeping you here instead of having you head out with us?"

"Head out where? What's going on?"

My senses seem to become hyper-aware. Now that I am listening, I can hear people running around. There is no screaming though, so no one is scared.

"The bus was spotted at the first checkpoint, five miles out. But there is also a horde of humans and infected headed straight for them. They will be ambushed when they are less than a mile away from here. We just have to get out there to clear out the infected and humans before they can do too much damage."

Pushing myself up, I grit my teeth through the pain. "I'm going with you."

Reseda shakes her head, coming over to push me back down. My pride takes a bit of a hit when she doesn't even struggle to do so, my body too weak for me to be a problem. "You'll only get yourself killed."

"That's my family. I can't just leave them out there while I'm safe in here."

"Jordan!" A voice calls from outside, catching the bear's attention.

The bear hybrid tenses up. "We can't use you right now. You'll only slow us down. Stay here." He leaves then, rushing out of the front of the tent.

I am debating whether or not to just chase after him when Reseda sighs, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet. Her strength has me stumbling, almost falling to the ground. My legs are shaky from disuse, and I barely manage to keep myself standing.

"Come on. I'm going to show you something." She walks towards the entrance of the tent, holding the blanket to the side for me to leave. It takes a bit of stumbling, but I make it out of the tent, Reseda following behind me. It is decidedly colder out here, causing me to shiver.

Reseda hands me my shoes that I had been wearing when I got here, along with my coat. She is already fully dressed, not seeming to be disturbed by the cold. Looking around, I see that no one is running around anymore. They must have sprinted to get out of here. Now, only small children and a few adults seem to be walking around, clearly trying to get things prepared for my pack mates.

"How many people live here?"

"Around three-hundred."

My eyebrows raise. "Impressive."

Reseda nods. "When the virus first spread, there were over two thousand of us. But, we kept getting hit by the infected, every time we went out to look for supplies. At one point, we got all the way down to twenty-seven." She takes a right turn when the path splits, leading us down a trail that leads to the caves I had come through. "We have slowly been growing again. But we still aren't strong enough to take out the rest of the humans and infected. They are growing strongly the wilder they get. We need to take them out before they learn how to get in here. This is a refuge, a place where we should all thrive, instead of just surviving."

"We were living," I murmur, eyes falling to the ground. "We were able to get back to how life used to be. The humans and infected had been leaving us alone."

"They were gathering," Reseda says. We reach a set of stairs, but they go the opposite way of the ones that lead to the stairs. They seem to go up the side of the steep hill right next to the caves. Too many to count. My body will be hurting with every step, but I follow Reseda anyways. "They were waiting for the perfect time to strike."

"How? The infected can't think, and I thought the humans had gone insane? How is it possible that they are able to come up with plans of attack?"

Reseda doesn't turn back, watching her step as we go up the steep stairs. I hold tightly to the railings, reflexes not as good right now. If I tripped, there is a good chance I would just fall all the way down the stairs.

"The humans may be crazy, but they can still strategize. Think of a predator in the wild, they may not think like us, but they can make plans of attack. That is exactly what the humans are doing. They just use the infected for brute strength. Too many of them at once is overwhelming, and that's what the humans want."

It is getting harder to breathe as I climb up the stairs, so I stay quiet. It is completely quiet up here, the only sound being the wildlife.

By the time we make it to the top of the stairs, I am barely standing. Reseda grabs my arm, taking me over to an old wooden bench. It sits right on the edge of the hill, giving a perfect view of where Jesse and I had bee a week ago. A road runs through the sparse forest, and the bus is just coming into view. On either side of the forest, infected and humans are quickly approaching.

My body tenses, and I am debating the risk of running down there when Reseda grabs my arm.

"Watch." She nods her head over to our left.

Turning, I try to find what she is pointing out. It takes me a minute to find them, but I do. Men and women, at least twenty, are hiding in the trees at the top of the hill, arrows pointed at the infected below. There must be a signal or something, because they all fire at once. Every hour finds its home in an infected or human. They reload, and the arrows are let loose again. After the third time, archers strap their bows to their back and start to run down the hill.

"We've done this many times before, Rowan." Reseda looks over at me. "We are just taking out enough to get them to turn tail and run. There are too many for us to kill them all."

The infected close in on the bus. While from here I can't hear their growls, I bet they are terrifyingly loud to everyone on the bus. They surge around the vehicle, some falling away as people from inside the bus stab them. The archers from before are still running to get to them, but they aren't going fast enough.

The infected overwhelm the bus, climbing on top and making it rock from side to side. The archers are just making it to the ground when the bus tips over, rolling twice before landing upside down. A few infected are taken out in the process, but there are still too many.

"Oh shit," I whisper, standing up from the bench. Reseda doesn't even bother to stop be this time as I run down the side of the cliff, adrenaline pumping through me. There is no way I can stay up here and watch as my pack gets picked off.

Grabbing the nearest stick, I run as fast as I can, heart pounding as I imagine Matty's terrified face.

I'm coming, love. Just hold on.