Free Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3) by Casey L. Bond Page B

from behind the wall, so I decided to have a look.”
    “When did it tell you to stop?”
    “When I saw your face.”
    Said face began to feel hot. “Stop joking around.”
    “I’m not. I was going to stay a week, maybe two. I’d been walking for weeks and thought I’d take a break. Plus, the weird outfits everyone wore in the Colony sort of threw me for a loop. I thought I’d stepped back in time. I never meant to stay. I thought the treaty was stupid, but I respected the rules everyone set up and I came to the rotation. That’s when I saw you.”
    “That’s when you bit me without numbing me.”
    He squinted one eye and winced. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
    “You said my blood was sweet. What does that mean?”
    Tage looked at the budding trees above us. Life was ready to begin anew once more. “It’s not a diet thing. Like, what you eat doesn’t determine how your blood tastes.”
    “What is it, then?”
    “It’s more that the taste of you matched your face. You were so innocent, but trying to be fearless. I could hear your heart pounding, see your muscles straining to keep you from crumbling. You should have tasted like steel, but you tasted like the sweetest sugar imaginable. It’s how I knew you were good, all the way to the marrow. You are good, Porschia. Regardless of what’s happened, you always do what’s best for everyone else.”
    “It doesn’t seem that way. I always mess everything up.”
    He shook his head. “That’s your mother talking through you; that’s not you. That’s not what everyone around you sees.”
    I doubted anyone saw good in me now. Ask any of my former neighbors. They would assume I was a blood-thirsty, crazed creature, always dangerous, never to be trusted. And I might agree. After all... “I couldn’t save her.”
    He huffed. “Your mother? People have to want to be saved before anyone or anything can help them, Porsch. You aren’t responsible for her kind of crazy. Some people just have problems that are too big for them or others to overcome. She was one of those people. Her problems consumed her, and then she consumed everyone around her.”
    “Not anymore,” I countered.
    “You don’t know that. I’m sure she’s a stellar Infected,” he teased, pretending to eat his own forearm.
    I smacked his chest. Hard. “Let’s go.”
    “Yes, ma’am. You know, an aggressive woman is very attractive.”
    “Tage,” I warned, a smile tugging at my lips.
     

     
    My senses were in overdrive. We had already taken down two does and were stalking a pack of either wild dogs or coyotes; it was hard to tell which. Once man’s best friend, dogs had become wild again, traveling in packs and living together in old homes or abandoned dens. They weren’t immune to the Infected who craved raw meat, or to the humans who needed it. And then there was me. I craved meat, too. And being in the woods, having killed two does, the craving was insatiable. I needed it. My body needed it.
    I tamped down those feelings.
    My brother needed it.
    My father needed it.
    Maggie needed it.
    The Elders were desperate, according to Tage. Yankee told him that the colonists refused to hunt with the night-walkers. Somehow they knew that Tage had brought Mercedes into Blackwater. “How do they know that?”
    “It was daylight,” Tage whispered. “Someone probably saw me. He said that he told them Roman had broken the law by bringing an Infected over the border, and that Roman had been banished. But you and I both know that is complete bullshit. Roman wouldn’t go down without a fight. He wouldn’t tuck tail and run into the woods just because the Elders said so.”
    “You still think he’s in the city?”
    “I do,” he answered matter-of-factly. “Especially now that you told me about his brother.”
    “What do we do?”
    “I’m not sure yet. We need to know if he’s there before we go charging in.”
    “I’m trying to reach Saul.”
    Tage frowned disgustedly. “I