So close, yet so far away.
“Earth to Xander,” Emma yelled.
“What?” Xander threw her a scowl. Hopefully she wasn’t going to force him to comment on her diet plans.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were alive. Been trying to talk to you for the last fifteen seconds.”
“What is it?” He shifted in his seat, keeping two hands on the wheel, and stretched his arms. Both his elbows made a loud, satisfying pop.
“Why aren’t you listening to me?”
“I am listening to you.”
“But you weren’t a second ago.”
“Emma,” Xander grumbled, “don’t get all shirty with me now. What is it?”
“I saw something back there.” She pointed with a thumb over her shoulder.
Xander glanced out the rear view window, only to see the swirling dust. “What do you mean you saw something?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to get a closer look but you kept driving.”
“Is it alive? A human? Animal? Tree?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to look.”
Xander released an exasperated sigh and pressed down on the brake. “Right. We’ll have a look.”
Car doors slammed and footsteps crunched over the sand. With a palm shielding his eyes, Xander scanned the area. All the landscape offered was lonely rolling dunes and the occasional sharp rock jutting from the earth.
“This way,” Emma called and marched onward.
Her brown ponytail swung from side to side as she hurried to retrace their path. After five hundred yards of trudging across the sand, Xander finally saw it too.
He stopped short, his chest constricting. Out of the earth emerged an arm, clad in black cloth. Like a scene from some horror movie. The hand at the end was limp and green, fingers curled toward the palm.
“Um,” Emma choked. “That looks…”
“Dead,” Xander finished for her.
They stood next to each other, the only sound that of the wind whistling over the dunes.
After a moment, Emma glanced at him. “Should we get closer?” A grimace wrinkled her forehead.
“Well.” Xander inhaled deeply, trying to keep his voice steady. “I don’t believe in zombies, so I don’t reckon it’s going to attack us or anything.”
They both took slow, hesitant steps forward.
He knelt down next to the arm, the rotting flesh already stinking from being exposed to the heat. A wave of relief came over him. It definitely wasn’t Leila’s hand. But then whose was it?
Judging by the color of the skin the body was still relatively fresh. From roughly the last two days. Coincidentally, from about the time Leila would have come through the area.
“She had a male guide and a woman with her,” Emma reminded him, as if reading his thoughts.
Xander lowered himself to the ground and rested his arms on his knees. “What if it’s my doppelganger?” Now that would be too good to be true.
“Do you think there are more?” Emma asked, looking over the sand. “More corpses, I mean? What if they were attacked?”
“To be honest, I really don’t want to start digging around for corpses.”
“But what if Leila—” Emma’s voice cracked and she slapped a hand over her mouth.
“She’s not here,” Xander snapped. It was all he could do to convince himself they hadn’t stumbled over a mass grave. Leila’s grave. He raked his fingers through his damp hair. Whoever buried this person did it in a hurry. The storm must have blown the sand off of him. It would be a waste of time to dig him out—they were here to find Leila, not whoever this person was.
Neither of them would be able to identify him, anyway. What was the point? But he couldn’t deny that it would make sense to dig around. Just to make sure. There was no point in continuing the search if she was here in some shallow, sandy grave. As much as he hated to admit it, there was only one way to find out.
“What are we going to do?” Emma asked.
Xander let out a puff of air. “We’ll look for others.”
“All right.” She nodded grimly. “Good thing you packed a shovel.”
An hour later they had found a total of three. It hadn’t been difficult as most of the bodies had been buried close together, and not very deep.
They left them lying in their shallow graves, some still partially covered. From the looks of the wounds, all three of the bearded men had been shot at relatively close range.
It was gruesome. But thank God Leila wasn’t among them. Xander’s shoulders lightened. Relief. But now they’d spent a whole hour on this sickening task.
