CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE GROWL IN THE YARD
1308 Words
The sun hadn’t yet dried the morning dew on the hospital’s rooftop when Minos entered through the east wing. His hulking figure moved past a frightened janitor and an unsuspecting nurse who fumbled her tray. The hallway lights flickered behind him as though intimidated by his presence. The air around him thickened, heavier with each step, as though the very building recognized something unnatural had entered.
He was not here to fight, nor to scare. He was here for Ron.
Minos had not slept much the night before. Something inside gnawed at him—an unfamiliar worry for the boy he had once nearly eaten but now regarded with an odd mix of irritation and care. Ron was different. Fragile, stubborn, alive. So when the boy had been hospitalized for internal complications, Minos paced the shadows of the city all night, hiding from sirens and moonlight, until now.
Ward 9B was at the end of the hallway.
Minos stepped in.
At first, he thought he had the wrong room.
Ron was sitting upright on the bed, laughing softly.
And sitting close—too close—was a woman. Well-dressed. Elegant. Refined. Her white doctor’s coat wrapped around her like armor, but her posture was far from clinical. She leaned forward, smiling with her eyes, her fingers tracing an idle shape along the rim of Ron’s hospital tray. She spoke softly, her voice calm, precise, laced with purpose.
Minos blinked.
The woman didn’t see him enter. But Ron did.
His face tensed. His mouth froze halfway through a word. His eyes shifted quickly toward the door. Panic set in.
Minos had not spoken a word, but his presence thundered in the room like a storm on the horizon.
The woman turned.
She gasped.
And Minos growled.
A low, bestial sound rolled out from his chest. Deep, guttural, primal. The kind of sound that bypasses the brain and tells the body to run.
Lady Hew jerked back, clutching Ron’s arm reflexively. Her poise melted instantly. Her jaw trembled, and for the first time in many years, she looked less like a senior physician and more like a cornered woman. Her breath caught in her chest.
“Minos—please,” Ron muttered, barely audible. His eyes widened in desperate warning. He tried to send a signal with just his gaze: Not now. Not her. Please.
But Minos didn’t blink.
The half-zombie’s nostrils flared, detecting the powdery scent of antiseptic on Lady Hew’s skin, the faint perfume she used under her left ear, the pulsing beat of her human blood.
And something else.
Possessiveness.
She was hovering too close. Her body was turned toward Ron’s. Her pupils were dilated. Minos had seen that look before—in animals, in survivors, in those rare fools who still dared love in a ruined world.
Lady Hew wasn’t just being polite.
“You,” Minos said in a voice thick with something not entirely human, “you... what are you doing here?”
Lady Hew straightened a bit, trying to mask her fear. “I’m Dr. Hew. I came to check on my patient.”
“You cling like no doctor.”
Ron sat forward. “Minos, don’t—she’s just—she’s married, okay?”
Minos turned his neck with a sickening c***k. “Then why is her scent… clinging to your clothes like fog?”
Lady Hew stood quickly. Her mind worked like a scalpel. That voice, those eyes, that skin—it wasn’t human. Or not completely.
“You’re not well,” she said, trying to reassert some kind of control. “You’re sick, or… or something else entirely.”
Minos took a step forward, his long coat trailing behind him like tattered wings.
Ron held up a hand. “Minos, stop. Please. She’s not a threat.”
But Minos wasn’t looking at Ron anymore. His eyes had locked on hers, and his face began to change.
His cheek twitched. His jaw distorted. Thin gray lines pulsed along his neck. His skin shimmered for a second, and something reptilian and decayed passed over it before snapping back into place.
Lady Hew’s instincts kicked in.
Zombie.
She’d heard rumors—crazy ones—of half-humans, hybrids, monsters who spoke and fed on both sides of the fence. But she had never seen one this close.
She turned swiftly.
The door.
She was closest.
She dashed toward it—but as she yanked it open, her body collided with a firm chest.
“Whoa—”
It was Mr. Harald. Her husband.
Tall, composed, wearing his tailored blazer and holding two paper cups of coffee in one hand, he caught her as she stumbled. Behind him stood two small boys—her sons—each holding a plastic dinosaur and blinking up at her in confusion.
“Rita? What is it?” he asked, alarmed.
But Lady Hew didn’t answer.
She turned quickly, glancing over her shoulder, expecting Minos to charge, to leap, to bare his rotten teeth. Instead, he stood still at Ron’s bedside, breathing heavily, his hands twitching at his sides.
She paused, trying to steady her heartbeat. Her boys were watching her now. Her husband was searching her face.
She brushed her coat, collected herself, and smiled—a sharp, deliberate, mischievous smile that women like her wore in political homes and sterile boardrooms.
“Nothing,” she said, wrapping her arm around her sons.
Mr. Harald studied her. “You’re pale. What happened in there?”
Lady Hew gave a small, dismissive shrug. “Just… a rather expressive visitor. You know how patients can attract strange company.”
One of the boys tugged her coat. “Mommy, are we going in?”
“No, sweetie,” she replied quickly. “Uncle Ron needs to rest.”
They began walking side by side down the hallway. Mr. Harald offered her the untouched coffee.
She didn’t take it.
Back in the ward, Ron exhaled sharply, dragging his hand down his face.
Minos hadn’t moved.
“I said she wasn’t a threat,” Ron muttered. “You nearly gave her a heart attack.”
Minos snarled softly, pacing near the window now. “She... smelt of danger. Of plans.”
“She’s a doctor, Minos. She was advising me to go through with surgery. That’s it.”
“You believe her so easily,” Minos growled. “Humans lie with pretty faces. She wore lipstick like it was war paint.”
Ron groaned. “Minos, that’s what normal people do! I’m in a hospital. Normal people show up here. Not everyone wants to eat me or turn me into some half-dead thing like you.”
Minos paused. His eyes darkened. “You say that like being like me is the worst fate.”
Ron looked away.
Silence stretched between them, sharp as a knife.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he muttered.
Minos turned to the door. His voice dropped to a murmur, almost mournful. “You did. But I forgive you.”
“Why?”
“Because I remember what it felt like… to be afraid of the things you don’t understand.”
Ron studied him then. Really studied him. The creature before him wasn’t fully undead. Nor was he fully alive. Minos was a contradiction wrapped in human skin, stitched by regret and held together with hunger.
And maybe—just maybe—he cared.
“Thanks for coming,” Ron said finally.
Minos didn’t answer. He slipped back into the hallway, the door swinging shut behind him like a whisper.
Down the corridor, Lady Hew glanced back one last time. Her boys were laughing now, pointing at a poster on the wall, and Mr. Harald was checking his phone.
She didn’t tell them what she saw in the room.
Some truths, she thought, weren’t worth the words...
- Writer
