Emma gives Addison a strange look, whispering something he can’t hear.
“It’s okay, you can ask him.”
It takes her a moment, and she looks more at her feet than at him, but eventually, she speaks her mind. “Wyatt, is it okay if I go up to the attic? I saw a box with some stuffed animals and other things…”
He cracks a half smile, proud of her for getting that out. “Go for it. Be careful going up the steps.”
Emma gives him the biggest smile, and he gets a smaller, almost secret one from Addison, too. Apparently, he’s deemed safe enough to talk to the kid now, and that feels better than he wishes it did.
What does not feel good in the slightest is leaving her in the house alone, but taking her with them isn’t an option. Her little legs can’t get away fast enough if another runner shows up.
Addison’s already coming apart at the seams the moment they step out the door. Her eyes are wider than a doe’s, and her head’s on a swivel, looking for threats.
He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t feeling some of that too. The runners scare the shit outta him. They’re fresher with a lot more energy than these other lazy fucks.
The area near the fence is clear for now, as far as they can tell. They waste no time getting to work, and he’s glad she came despite telling her not to. They get all the panels upright and strong enough to hold in under an hour, right around the time a scream comes from the direction of the house.
His heart falls into his stomach when Addison shoots him a horrified look. The only person it could be is supposed to be up in the attic.
They run full speed across the field, not knowing what they’ll find when they reach the other side. The screams grow more desperate as they round a corner of the house and find Emma running from a small herd.
Addison freezes when it sinks in that she’s running toward certain death. Self-preservation roots her feet to the ground, if only for a flickering moment. It overrides parental instinct in a way that requires no logical input from her brain.
He falters for a split second, too, when half a dozen rotters emerge. It’s only the fact that he’s been killing these things on a semi-regular basis since the shit hit the fan that keeps him from outright panicking, too. Addison hasn’t. He doubts she’s faced off with a single one of them. He’s still afraid. It would be stupid not to be, but she’sterrified.
That’s okay, he can handle this himself, he thinks, until a runner busts through the treeline. All he can do then is haul Addison back and away just as she begins to shake the shock of it off and head for Emma. She makes it three long strides in the direction of her daughter before he grabs the back of her shirt and forces her to stop.
She struggles against him, eyes flaring. “Let me go! Emma!”
“We can’t help her if we’re dead!”
There’s too much space and too many rotters between them and the kid, so he makes a ruckus to distract them from her trail. He doesn’t have to drag Addison with him once they become the new targets. At that point, it’s nothing but survival, and she follows him into the shed where he barricades the door.
There’s a thump a moment later that rattles the whole building and makes them both jump sky high. Then another and another as rotters pile up outside.
“We’ll get her,” he whispers. “We will, but we can’t if they kill us first.
She shoots him a glare that would shrivel him on the spot if he weren’t otherwise occupied with trying to think of a way out of this mess. She’s angry that he pulled her away, and maybe she’d got a right to be. If she wanted to throw herself into oncoming rotter teeth to give her kid a chance, who is he to say no?
He acted on reflex, picking the one he could physically grab when he wasn’t able to protect them both.
Her anger doesn’t last long, though, before something else takes over that has her breathing hard in a brand new way. She slumps against the wall, and her face creases with emotion.
“I hesitated,” she whispers sadly.
There’s hardly enough room to turn around among all the junk, and only three steps from side to side if it were clear. He stumbles over a box before fixing her with a glare.
“Save the guilt for later. There’s always time for that, trust me. We’ll be out soon. Can you hold this?” He shoves a window shutter at her.
She nods, gripping it hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
“Use it to block them if you need to. I have to break the window.”
“What?” she half yells, as if he’s lost his mind.
“They won’t leave. Even if they do, they’ll be stuck on this property. Gonna break the window and take them out with the axe.”
“There’s at least seven of them, maybe more.”
