Two men struggle to subdue him. Right around the time he feels a blade slide into his thigh and then shank him a second time in the side, he falls to the ground with a clear view of Addison.
She’s pinned on her back, trying and failing to kick her attacker away. Wyatt expects a bullet to the head at any moment, but it’s like they want him to watch. The others stand there while he bleeds a river into the dirt, trying to drag himself toward her and cursing obscenities, knowing he’s useless.
He’s about to watch something terrible happen, and all he can do is lie here stemming the flow of his own blood.
And then the struggle in front of him stops abruptly.
The man on her freezes and falls backward while she scrambles away.
The others rush toward their fallen friend and turn him over, and that’s when Wyatt sees the knife handle sticking out of his eyeball.
He’s never seen one turn so fast. He’s watching someone transform into a runner right before his eyes. The body goes limp, then twitches and contracts, limbs curling into the cool air before latching onto one of the others to rip a chunk from their flesh.
“We have to get inside,” It’s Addison, who’s given that whole mess a wide berth and joined him again.
Hooking an arm under his shoulder, she helps him up. The moment he puts pressure on his leg, he cries out. It erupts from his throat like lava from a volcano and draws all sorts of wrong attention in the process.
She snaps up his fallen gun, and they narrowly make it inside before the runner slams against the glass, growling like he doesn’t have three other good meals at the ready.
They attempt to keep the door shut with sheer willpower, but he is of little help to her in his condition. His energy seeps out of him with every droplet of blood hitting the floor. Everything is spinning. He can hardly breathe. It’s gonna break in soon, and—
Addison pulls over an entire shelving unit to block the entrance. It wedges behind the counter, keeping anything out unless it comes through the window.
Oh. He offers her a slight nod. That works well enough.
“Lemme see,” she kneels beside him, peeling away his shirt to reveal blood spurting through his fingers. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He’d fuss about her fussing, but he’s too busy dying to do more than lie there. She strips her shirt off to reveal a gray tank top underneath and shoves it against his wound. Then rips hisbelt through the loops and secures it above the second hole in his thigh.
“Saw what you did,” he slurs. “That was…you were…” Words tumble out of his mouth without a single coherent thought put behind them. “So hot…that’s what it was.”
Oh shit, did he say that out loud?
“Did you hit your head too? You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew how close I am to throwing up right now,” she pauses, sitting back on her ass. “I killed someone, didn’t I? Oh my god, I killed that guy.”
“Deserved it. They’d have killed us both, but not before they all got a turn at you. Hell, maybe not before they got one with me, too. One of them kept eyeing me weird.”
“It wasn’t the same as killing the rotter in the woods. It didn’t feel the same.”
“Fresher,” he drawls. “Less crunch.”
“Wyatt, I’m serious.”
“If you hadn’t killed him, we’d both be dead.”
She saved them all by herself. Maybe he’s grinning like a blood-deprived idiot because she gives him a look, all soft and sweet with that bashful half smile. The same one he saw last time he gave her a compliment. Like she ain’t sure how to deal with it but likes it, anyway. He knows that feeling all too well.
“You’ll be okay,” she says gently, pulling the shirt away from his side. “This one is already clotting. Has to mean it didn’t hit anything important.”
She replaces her hand on his leg with his own before she disappears. He lets out a pitiful noise meant to sound like‘come back’but more closely resembles a dying animal.
“Here, eat this.” She shoves a mini donut at him until he has no choice but to eat the damn thing before she stuffs it in his mouth.
“What? Why?” Powdered sugar puffs around each word.
“I dunno, it’s all I can think of to do. They make you eat sugar after giving blood, right? I saw that on a poster once. It can’t hurt, might help.”
He doesn’t know how they’re getting out of here alive. They don’t have a kitchen timer or alarm clock to toss across the parking lot. Even if they did, there’s nowhere to go. The runner might be the first up, but the others are starting to rouse. Soon, they’ll have four of the dead trying to snack on them.
