A Ruthless Man

A Black man studied the straight slash across Logan's throat, made more gruesome by the blood that had sprayed and dried around it. Horror and disbelief remained in the dead man's open eyes, and the sight made him frown.

He moved to Ian and pressed a hand to his neck, the dark skin of his arm standing in sharp contrast to Ian's pale flesh.

The man raised his head. "Nathan, they're both dead, and Logan died hard."

McCall counted two dagger wounds on Logan's body in addition to the fatal cut across his throat. He had clearly suffered before dying.

Nathan was a white man in his early thirties, with tousled short blond hair, a straight nose, and deep-set eyes.

Those eyes were a wolfish dark green. He was not handsome, but he was tall and broad, and the solid muscles in his bare arms projected strength and menace.

In sheer size, he could compare with Isaac,

though his muscular definition and proportions fell far short of Isaac's.

A cigarette hung from Nathan's mouth as he sat in the passenger seat of an open-backed Jeep. Another white man occupied the driver's seat.

Five more men stood around it: three white and two Black. Two carried firearms, a pistol and an assault rifle, while the other three held two axes and a machete.

Nathan gave no answer to McCall's report. He remained silent, offering neither agreement nor denial.

As a Black man,

McCall's temper ran hot. Nathan's indifference angered him, but he did not dare speak because he was no match for the man.

McCall had joined the group only a few days earlier.

His brother, a Black man even bigger and stronger than McCall, had been stabbed again and again by Nathan right in front of him. Before the man finally died,

Nathan had held him by the throat and driven a knife into him more than thirty times. His intestines and organs spilled out when he collapsed.

Afterward,

McCall joined Nathan's group and became one of his men. His hatred for Nathan went bone-deep, but he knew he could not defeat him.

A violent temper did not make him stupid. Even a tiger slept, and even the fiercest lion would one day be wounded. McCall would take revenge, but not now. Until he had the strength and the opportunity, he would wait with cold patience and hope.

If,

that was, he lived long enough to see the day.

Not far away, a white man came running toward them with more than a dozen walkers close behind. Nathan saw him and lazily waved one hand outside the Jeep.

The three men with bladed weapons—two Black and one white—jumped down with uneasy expressions. They hurried forward and fought the walkers with cautious, almost restrained movements.

The fleeing man never looked back. He ran straight to Nathan's Jeep and gasped for breath before reporting, "Boss, I saw them. At least two vehicles. They've already left."

"Which way?" Nathan's voice was low, hoarse, and resonant, the sort of voice that left listeners uncomfortable.

"East," the man answered quickly, pointing down the road.

"Ah!" A scream erupted behind him. He turned and saw a walker sink its teeth into a Black man's shoulder.

His heart lurched. He did not dare meet Nathan's eyes and immediately stepped away from the passenger side.

Nathan frowned, sighed at last, and opened the door. A gun belt circled his waist, with a silver revolver holstered at either hip.

The walkers had been put down. The other two fighters glanced at the bitten man with pity and the grim recognition that the same thing could happen to them.

Neither said a word. They turned and came back at once.

The bitten man stood frozen as Nathan approached. Against his dark face, the whites of his terrified eyes shone starkly.

"I'm... I'm not going to die, right? You can save me." No one wanted to die when life remained possible, and no one could calmly accept the fate of becoming a walker before the transformation began.

Even self-deception

could hold that crushing fear at bay for a moment.

"I know." Nathan nodded. "Turn around and let me see the wound."

The man was terrified. To everyone in the group, Nathan was a silent devil. Yet the victim clung to even a one-in-a-thousand hope, and long practice at submission made him obey the voice that ruled him.

In the end,

he turned around.

Bang!

His head burst apart, spraying blood and ruined flesh across the ground.

Thud.

The body fell. Nathan blew across the nearly smokeless barrel and turned away. "Send two men after them. If you don't find them, let it go."

Revenge

did not enter into it.

Nathan wanted supplies and nothing more. Three men were dead,

but that also meant three fewer mouths to feed. From one point of view, it was almost useful. He felt nothing for the men.

He did not even care about the attractive women they kept locked up for sexual release.

Not one of them mattered to him.