Every other day(57)

Skylar didn’t question the command, and I didn’t have time to think about why I’d given it. She closed her eyes, and I dragged one jagged fingernail across the length of my neck, drawing blood, waiting.

One by one, the horde turned their attention from Skylar to me. One by one, they stopped scrambling for her blood. One by one, their eyes—pupil-less and without color—focused in on the line of blood I’d drawn.

I noticed the red, blinking collars on their necks a second before they lunged—each moving in tandem with the one next to it, with coordination the walking dead should never have.

Zombies were stupid and slow and incapable of anything but eating—their own bodies, others’—but this set moved with purpose, like rats through a maze.

My last thought, in the second before they closed in, was that maybe you could train zombies as easily as Pavlov’s dogs.

At the sound of the bell, circle your prey and eat her flesh.

I had no weapons. No plan. Nothing but my blood and my hands. They were coming, and there were more of them than I’d realized. Despite their increased speed, there was no grace to their movements, no rhythm. Their mouths were open, their bodies jerking as they advanced on me.

I grabbed the closest one by the arm and wrenched it off with a sickening crack, but the monster didn’t blink, didn’t howl. Instead, it returned the favor, evenly spaced, triangular teeth going for the flesh in my arms.

I fought—kicked, punched, tore through whatever flesh I could lay a hand on, but no matter how many times I hit them, or how many of them I took down, there were always more.

I was drowning.

In sweat, in blood, in the smell of death and the mounting pressure of bodies on mine. Hands on mine. Teeth, mouths, flesh on mine.

They were above me and below me. They were everywhere, and I couldn’t tell now where my body ended and theirs began. I couldn’t tell how much of the blood coating my extremities was theirs and how much was mine.

Retreat.

In all the time I’d been a hunter, that was an instinct I’d never felt before. I’d never wanted to run from a fight, never doubted that I would come out on top.

I’d never cared that maybe I wouldn’t.

But right now, in that second, gasping for breath and breathing in rot and raglike skin, I felt like I had to get out of there. Bracing my heels against the ground, I shot forward, lashing out with my elbows and putting enough space between my body and theirs that I could slam the back of my head into something else’s jaw. I felt bones giving way, felt flesh tearing—I saw the opening, and I went for it.

I crossed the room in a heartbeat, and in a single, coordinated motion, the zombies reoriented. The ones I’d laid low climbed to their feet, bones jutting out every which way. They glanced at one another with those soulless, empty eyes, in a gesture far too human to be comforting for me, and then they spread out—half on my left, half on my right, ready to surround and mob me once more.

I could feel their saliva working its way through my system. To a human, it would have been fatal, with a brief detour through madness before the final bow—but even my body had its limits.

I wasn’t losing it. Not yet. But the colors in the room seemed like they’d been dyed neon, and I felt like I was moving in slow motion, each limb weighed down by something soggy and wet.

I felt myself stumble, forced my body to stay upright.

“Kali!” Skylar’s voice broke through my haze, and I realized that she wasn’t squatting on top of the safe anymore. She was standing beside it, and it was open.

I realized, belatedly, that it wasn’t the kind of safe that held money or top secret biomedical plans. It was the type of safe that held guns.

The sight of weapons sent a familiar thrill up the length of my spine, and unconsciously, my body straightened, my fingers curving inward in anticipation of the way they’d feel against a trigger.

I’d always preferred knives to firearms, always felt that people like me were made for killing at close range, not at a distance, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and just seeing the weapons laid out before me, I knew them—inside and out, from safety to barrel.

I didn’t have time to think. I had to move, had to keep moving, because the one thing I had on the zombies was that even though they were faster than any I’d ever seen, even though they appeared to be working as a team and their venom was slowing me down—

I was still faster than a human. And thanks to Skylar, I wasn’t fighting alone.

I ducked and dodged, slammed my way through their onslaught, and got close enough to Skylar that she could shove something cool and metallic into my hand.

Six bullets. Six hits. None of my targets down.