I took a step toward him, fist at my side, every muscle begging for release. “Go the fuck home.”
Dustin hesitated. For a second, I thought he might test my restraint, and a hidden part of me wanted him to try. Then his composure broke, and he scurried back into his hole.
I waited until he’d shut what was left of his door, the gleam in his eye a reminder never to let my guard down.
“He’s gone.” Sadie tugged me back to our observation spot, clearing a foggy patch with her palm. “Forget him. We’ve got scarier things to worry about.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. At least we knew what to expect from the infected.
“Look.” Willow tapped the glass urgently, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Shhh.” Laura grabbed her hand. “We don’t know if noise matters yet. Where?”
“Over there.” She pointed to the opposite side of the road, where three green wheelie bins were grouped together at the curbside, waiting for a garbage truck that would never come.
From Willow’s other side, Tim leaned in until his forehead was almost pressed to the door. “What are we looking at exactly?”
There was a movement in the narrow gap between the bins. Too low to the ground to be a person, too big to be an animal. My brain still wanted to connect it to something human, something that made sense. A kid, a dog, anything but the word none of us wanted to say out loud.
I slipped my arm around Sadie and drew her against my side. Were we about to see our first zombie? Fuck. Did Iwantto?
“Is it… is someonecrawling?“ Laura wiped the glass again as sobbing reached us from the other side of the door. Hitching breaths with hopeless silence in between. “Maybe you shouldn’t be watching this, sweetie,” she said as an afterthought.
It didn’t matter. Even if we shielded Willow from it now, she’d still be exposed to it tomorrow, and every day after that.
“I’m not scared,” she said. “I’ve already seen them on the news.”
My gaze sharpened to a pinpoint, my fingers flexing against Sadie’s shoulder. I kept catching myself holding my breath.
“See?” Willow pointed again, keeping her hand off the glass.
Tim leaned back, flinging a wide-eyed glance in my direction. “I’m not going outside until we see what it is.”
Smart move. Blood leaked between the bins and ran into the gutter. A horrific amount streaming over the concrete—too much for anyone to survive the loss.
Adrenaline zipped through me, but I kept my feet planted. Even a week ago, I would have barged out there and helped, but not now. Maybe never again.
A door slammed somewhere above us, followed by another. Three sets of footsteps travelled together, stopping only whensomeone dropped a few weapons and swore. The metallic clang ricocheted off the walls and sent a vibration through the entire building.
Sadie jolted, and the shock had us all turning toward the stairs.
“What are they doing up there?” Laura asked. “Just throwing things straight down the stairs?”
“Not operating in stealth mode, that’s for sure.” I clocked a shadowy figure moving outside in my peripheral vision, closing in on the entrance one lumbering step at a time. Human-shaped with an inhuman gait.
Awareness rippled through me, and every nerve in my body screamed at me not to look, to protect myself from what was coming. Once I saw this fucking thing with my own eyes, it was real.
Willow didn’t have the same sense of self-preservation. “Oh, my God, Mum.Mum.”
A beat passed. Two. Then we turned just as a mangled face smashed against the door, rattling the frame and splattering the glass with blood and bits of flesh.
Laura and Tim screeched.
Sadie scrambled past me, clutching my shirt from behind.
My mouth opened and closed as I struggled to process the details.
Seeing these things on TV was bad enough, but in person and close enough to touch? It scared the shit out of me.
