I shrug and shake my head. He knows just as much as I do. I nudge Alex’s shoulder. “Do you think the two of us could talk?”
“I’m busy,” is all he saysbefore he walks away.
I bite back a curse as I watch him go.
The dread in my stomach writhes and expands until it’s pushing into my chest, making it hard to breathe. I don’t know what the fuck crawled up his ass, but I need to sort it out before things get worse.
Alex is refusing totalk to me.
I try everything. I try walking next to him, hoping to spark a friendly conversation between us as we cut our way through the ruined city of Birmingham, but all he does is grunt or ignore me. Next, I try putting Ollie between us, but even she can’t coax the big guy out of saying one or two words. It’s like a huge storm cloud is hovering above his head, unwilling to give him even a moment of happiness.
I hate it, and so does Ollie. Which only makes me want to fix it more.
So, when we come across another warehouse big enough to house our group for the night that’s filled with zombies, I volunteer to be on Alex’s team to clear out the place. He’s not pleased, but he doesn’t protest. Instead, the big grump just leads our team to the back of the warehouse to wait for the order to enter.
“Fuck, it stinks,” one man I don’t recognise moans, much to the agreement of the rest of the group.
He’s not wrong. The stench of decay is thick even with the rusted metal door to the back of the warehouse firmly closed. It doesn’t bode well since only a fairly large horde could give off a smell like that. But with the sun going down, we don’t have a choice.
A door at the front of the warehouse bangs open, signalling for us to move.
With more force than I expect, Alex shoves open the metal door, causing it to slam into the wall. The first thing that hits me is the overwhelming stench, worse than anything I’ve ever smelled in my life. Iswallow a gag, but the people behind me lose the fight and their lunch. The second thing I notice is the sheer amount of glowing eyes staring back at us from the dimly lit interior.
Fuck. There has to be at least two dozen zombies in here, all packed together like rotting sardines.
“How the hell are we going to kill all of those?” the same man who complained about the smell says, his voice thick with horror as we all stare at the small horde.
I slide my knife from its sheath. “The same way we do everything else, I guess; one at a time.”
“But there’s at least twenty in there! Almost double our numbers!” another person says, their voice quivering with fear.
At least they seem to have enough brain cells to do simple calculations. Always a good thing to have in someone watching your back. “At least, yeah, but not the worst odds I’ve seen.”
After everything that’s happened on this journey, this warehouse—while horrific—doesn’t faze me. I’ve survived a horde a hundred times the size of this, hid in a supermarket toilet while another horde banged on the door during the night and helped take out an entire gang camp with only three other people.
This is nothing.
Alex grunts in agreement. Fuckerstillisn’t talking to me.
“This is suicidal!” the first man shouts.
“Not if we’re smart about this,” I say, keeping my voice clipped but calm. “Use the doorway as a choke point and stab them in the head. Easy.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, the first few zombies lunge towards me.
I step back, forcing them to squeeze through the narrow doorway in order to reach us and fall into an easy fighting stance. Alex is by my side, his mouth set in a grim line and his blue eyes focused on the hordestruggling to push through the doorway. The rest of our group hesitate behind us, but I ignore them.
Shouts and yells echo from the other side of the warehouse as Tobias’s and Rhys’s group start their own fight. The stench of blood, rot, and gore thickens in the air, along with the squelching and grunts of battle. I hear a feminine yell that makes my heart stutter, my mind conjuring images of Ollie being hurt as the first zombies finally shove their way through the doorway.
All thoughts leave my mind as I slam my knife into the eye socket of the undead in front of me, killing it instantly before moving onto the next. Alex does the same, dispatching zombies with brutal precision. Behind us, our group hangs back, their fear thick in the air.
“Get your asses over here!” I bark at them as I kick a zombie that had almost reached me back before slamming my knife into its rotted skull. Only for another to take its place seconds later. “If any of you cowards get me killed, I’m haunting you for the rest of your miserable lives!”
That spurs them on. They shuffle closer, sticking to the edges, and with a hesitation that’ll probably get them killed, they start taking down the undead.
After that, the battle becomes a blur of hacking, slashing, and stabbing. Blood and gore flies everywhere, coating us in a thick paint of black and red that makes my eyes water from the stench. But no matter how many zombies we take down, more take their place. The doorway becomes clogged with bodies—both dead and undead—and the infected clamber over them, their eyes glowing with hunger and their moans becoming desperate.
Fuck. How are there still this many left?
