They’re all dead. They’re all dead. Everyone is dead.
Icy droplets pelting his suit. Snow?
He’s going to die unless you run. Run, run, run!
Clear footsteps in the mud, brambles snagging on his suit. Movement, about fifty metres ahead of him.
He lifted his rifle.
“Tobias!” he roared.
Charging towards them, he heard branches cracking to his left. Increasingly loud snarling. Types. Lots of them.
The trees began to thin, presenting a clear view of his target. Tobias swung Zeke around, walking backwards while he aimed his rifle at Noah. But there was no way he could shoot properly one handed, while dragging a struggling Zeke.
“Just let him go! We’re about to be overrun with types!”
Tobias continued to stumble backwards until he was out of the forest. Noah closed the space between them until he too crossed the threshold, charging out of the dense foliage and into a large, open space. He blinked, unable to process where he was. Savannah’s voice from earlier that day burst into his brain. A quarry. They were standing in the base of a quarry.
The rough, jagged walls of the quarry rose up around him, the result of years of mining long since abandoned. The ground beneath his feet was overgrown with weeds and moss, and the air was heavy with the dampness and the musty smell of rusted machinery—bulldozers and crushers lay scattered around the pit, silently watching what was about to come next.
Wolf growled as Tobias backed up all the way to a truck. Zeke, his hair a mess of blood, writhed in his bonds, fighting Tobias’s restraint on him with everything he had.Keep fighting him, baby.He’d lost his glasses at some point, his head looking naked and vulnerable without them. Tobias’s arm came up to Zeke’s neck, squeezing hard while his dagger pointed into the side of it.
“It’s over, Newman,” Noah shouted. “Let him go and you can make a run for it.”
Tobias, conflicted, flicked his eyes between Noah and the forest, where the sounds of the coming onslaught grew louder. Only seconds remained.
Wolf growled at the treeline.
Tobias’s grip on Zeke loosened.
Noah held out his hand.
Dozens of types burst into the quarry, their snarls bouncing off the high stone cliff.
Noah turned, flicking his rifle to burst-fire and began to shoot.
A gigantic typeB, with a large hanging stomach that jiggled, quickly charged towards Noah, jaws wide and ready to bite.Bang.
Two smaller typeAs, jostling each other as they scrambled along on their hands and knees, lunged for him.Bang. Bang.
He was down to his last clip. He stepped backwards to reload.
Wolf, a brown blur of muscle and teeth, threw himself at three more types, sending them flying before sinking his jaw into their necks.
“Noah!”
He turned back to Zeke and Tobias to find them surrounded by five more types. Tobias’s rifle lay on the ground—when did he run out of bullets?—and he now brandished his dagger.
At Noah’s whistle, Wolf bolted towards them, grabbing one type by the waist and sinking his teeth deep.
The other four, however, were inches away, their arms reaching out for purchase.
Noah ran.
Tobias’s eyes widened as he prepared for what was about to unfold. Still holding Zeke against his chest, his head darted from left to right.
Tobias planned his move: eyebrows knitting together and lips pressing into a hard line.
