CHAPTER 7: THE MONSTER WHO SAVED HER

The creature struck the front of the truck with a force that lifted the rear wheels off the tarmac, and the whole cabin bucked sideways in a shriek of tearing metal. Aria caught a steel stanchion above her head just as the floor tilted, and across the aisle Mrs Bennett slid along the bench with a thin cry, her bandaged leg twisting beneath her.

"Hold on to me, Margaret, I've got your arm," Aria said, hauling the old woman back against the side panel.

"Isabella, I think I'm going to be sick," Maya gasped, clutching the torch to her chest with both hands while her knees knocked against the bench.

"Keep your head down and don't look at it, all right?" Aria answered, pressing Maya's shoulder toward her lap.

Up in the cab the driver was bellowing at the gearbox, and the engine screamed as he threw it into reverse. The truck lurched backwards a metre and then jerked to a halt, its rear wheel jammed against an abandoned saloon car. The guard swung his pistol toward the rear opening and fired twice, and the creature's chest blossomed with dark spots that barely made it blink.

"That's not working, nothing's working!" the guard shouted, his voice breaking on the last word as the pistol shook in his grip.

Aria looked through the gap in the tailgate and saw a man walking down the middle of the road.

He did not run. He walked with a loose, heavy stride, straight toward the thing that had just torn the front off the truck, with his bare hands hanging open at his sides. As he came into the light she saw dark metallic scales spreading across his throat and the backs of his hands, rippling like wet slate, and when he lifted his head his eyes burned amber beneath a deep scar that ran through one brow.

The creature swung its massive arm, and the man caught it.

He skidded backwards a full three metres with his boots carving grooves in the tarmac, but he did not fall. He twisted the arm until something cracked, drove his shoulder into the creature's chest and hurled it into the side of a burnt-out army jeep with a crash that rocked the truck on its springs.

"That's not human," Nicholas said, in a high, thin voice from the bench behind her. "Did you see that, Vanessa? That isn't human."

Aria did not answer him, because the creature was already clawing itself upright against the jeep, and it filled the road with a howl that rolled out across the rooftops. All along the verge, dark shapes lifted their heads and began to shamble toward the sound. The scaled man turned his head slightly, as if he were listening to something beneath the howl, and raised one hand, and the nearest shapes stopped where they stood and swayed.

She had no time to wonder at it. He launched himself at the big creature with a speed that made the air crack, kicked out its knee, drove it down to the ground and brought his fist down twice against its skull. Then the road fell silent.

He stood over the body with his chest heaving, and when he straightened Aria saw that his left sleeve was soaked dark, blood dripping steadily from his fingertips onto the road. He pressed his right hand over the gash and turned toward the truck.

"Don't move," the guard said, climbing down from the tailgate with the pistol levelled at the man's chest. "Stay right where you are."

"Put that down before you do something stupid," the man said, in a low voice that rasped like gravel in a tin.

"What are you?" the guard demanded, though the barrel dipped by a few centimetres.

"The reason you're still breathing."

"Shooting the man who just saved your life probably won't improve your afternoon," Aria said, stepping down from the tailgate with the lamp dangling from her fist.

The amber eyes slid to her, and she felt the full weight of them travel down her bandaged head, her borrowed cardigan and the cloth bag against her hip, and settle on the way she had planted herself between him and the crowd. "Do you always speak for strangers?" he asked.

"Only when someone's about to do something foolish."

"You should be more careful around things you don't understand."

"And you should be more careful about bleeding on the road, if you want anyone to take your warnings seriously," Aria said, nodding at his dripping sleeve.

His jaw shifted, and she could not tell whether it was irritation or something else. "Are you a doctor?"

"A trained medic."

"I don't need treating."

"You can decide that after I've looked at it."

"No," he said.

Aria shrugged and turned away. "Fine. I'm not going to chase a grown man round a road because he can't take help, so bleed to your heart's content."

She had taken three steps before she realised he had not spoken again, and when she glanced back over her shoulder he was staring at her with his brows drawn very slightly together, as though he had just been handed a sum that would not add up.

Nicholas had climbed down from the truck with Vanessa clinging to his arm, and he gave the scaled man a wide berth before he tugged hard at Aria's elbow. "Isabella, get away from that thing right now," he hissed. "You can't be seen talking to it."

"You lost the right to tell me who I can speak to the day you left me on the floor," Aria said, shaking his hand off.

"You'll regret provoking me, I promise you that." His voice dropped, and his fingers closed round her wrist.

A shadow fell across them both, and the man with the amber eyes had stepped up beside her without making a sound. "Is there a problem?" he asked, looking at Nicholas, and he did not raise his voice at all.

Nicholas looked at the eyes, then at the scales rippling along the man's forearm, and he let go of Aria's wrist and took a step back, and then another. "No," he said. "No problem."

"I can handle my own arguments, you know," Aria said, rubbing her wrist and not looking up at the man beside her.

"I never said you couldn't," he answered.

She spent the next quarter of an hour among the wreckage, because a man in a delivery jacket had been thrown against the tailgate and was sitting with his arm folded against his chest, his face the colour of tallow. She found the collarbone with her fingertips, told him gently that it had snapped, and fashioned a sling from a torn blanket with her teeth clamped round one end.

When she straightened, the scaled man was still standing a short way off, pressing a rag against his forearm, and the cloth was dark from wrist to elbow. She walked across with her kit and held it out.

"Let me see it."

"Why do you keep insisting?" he asked, without taking his eyes off the road.

"Because I've watched people bleed to death from wounds they thought were too small to bother about," Aria said, and she waited.

He looked at her for a long time. Then he stretched out his arm.

The gash ran from his wrist halfway to the elbow, and as she peeled the cloth away she saw that its edges had already begun to pull together, the flesh knitting before her eyes with a faint crawl of scale at the margins. She did not let her fingers pause. "How long does this normally take to heal?" she asked.

"You ask too many questions." He drew the arm back an inch.

"You can stop answering them whenever you like," Aria said, taking his wrist firmly in her free hand and swabbing the wound with antiseptic. "Fast healing doesn't mean you can't get an infection, you know. It might just mean you get a very fast one."

He said nothing. She worked in silence and wrapped the dressing round his forearm in firm, even turns, and she became aware, somewhere around the second knot, of how close he stood and how still, and of the heat that came off his skin like a stove. She pulled the last tie tight and stepped back.

"We're done here," he said.

"You're welcome."

"I didn't thank you."

"I noticed," Aria said.

"The checkpoint's lost," the driver called, climbing down from the cab and wiping his face on his sleeve. "The road's blocked all the way up, and this wheel's wedged for good."

"There's a service station about six kilometres east, off the main road," the scaled man said, folding his bandaged arm across his chest. "Keep to the verge, and don't take the highway or you'll draw the rest of them down on you."

"How do you know the area?" the guard asked, still holding his pistol loosely at his side.

"I've been walking this district for days."

"Is it actually safe, or are you picking somewhere to leave us?" Aria asked.

"I don't owe you where you go," he said.

"But you're the one pointing the way."

"I'm offering information, not protection."

A low, rippling moan rolled up from the road behind them, and then another, and the infected that had stood swaying beside the verge lifted their heads and began to move. The man turned toward the sound, and his shoulders tightened. "You have very little time," he said quietly.

Aria looked at the crippled truck, at the man in the sling and at Mrs Bennett's grey face in the doorway, and she shouldered her bag. "Maya and I will follow you," she said. "But I'm not going to do everything you tell me."

"I've no interest in babysitting anyone," he said.

"Good," Aria said. "I don't need one."

He turned without another word, and she followed with Maya beside her and the rest of the survivors hurrying behind.

The service station crouched at the end of a cracked forecourt, its canopy sagging over rusted pumps and its glass doors dark against the dusk. They were fifty metres from it when the man stopped so abruptly that Aria nearly walked into his back.

"What's the matter?" she whispered.

He lifted his hand, and the whole line behind her froze. From somewhere inside the building a low, rattling growl answered the distant moans on the road, and the amber eyes narrowed while the muscles stood out along his bandaged arm.

"There's something in there already," he said.

Aria looked at the black entrance, and she tightened her grip on the lamp until the brass dug into her palm.

"Stay behind me this time," he said, turning his head slightly toward her.

"Don't get used to giving me orders," Aria answered.

Behind the glass doors, something large shifted in the dark.