He handed one to Fiona.
Then one to Lily.
Lily stared down at the pan in her hands—a seventeen-year-old girl holding a kitchen utensil that had just become a skull-crushing weapon. Her face went blank, like a word repeated until it loses its meaning.
“If anything gets close,” Finn added, his gaze moving between us, ensuring every word landed, “you do not hesitate. Hesitation gets you killed. It gets the person next to you killed. You hear a sound, you see movement, you smell that rot—you swing. Keep swinging. Hit bone and hit it again and again. Don’t let them bite you.”
My fingers locked around the handle.
It was heavy, cold, and absolutely real.
I lifted my eyes to his, making no attempt to hide the terror, nausea, and desperate, unformed question behind them.
He held my gaze.
“You can do it,” he said, his voice level.
I nodded, even though my hands trembled.
* * *
We moved.
Up the stairs. Onto the roof.
The morning air hit me—raw and sharp, carrying the faint, copper-sweet stench that had settled over the city weeks ago and never lifted. The sky brightened at the eastern edge, pale and thin, a sickly dawn breaking over rooftops, dead traffic lights, and streets that no longer belonged to the living.
Finn went straight to the edge, dropping low, scanning.
I crouched beside him, close enough that our shoulders touched, my pulse so loud in my throat I kept wanting to swallow it down.
The Suburban.
Still there. Right where we’d spotted it yesterday. Driver’s door closed. Tires intact. A dark green bulk parked against the curb two houses down.
Relief sparked—then died.
Because the street beyond it—
God.
More of them.
Not clustered together anymore, but spread out, wandering. Some stood motionless in the middle of the road, heads tilted at wrong angles, mouths working at nothing. Others shuffled along the sidewalks with that horrible, broken-puppet gait—joints bending in ways they shouldn’t, feet dragging, leaving dark, wet smears on the asphalt. One crouched over something in a driveway. I couldn’t see what, and I didn’t want to. But I could hear the sound—a thick, wet tearing, punctuated by the crack of cartilage.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth.
“Finn.”
My voice came out strangled.
“Are you sure about this?”
I met his gaze, making no attempt to hide the raw, ugly fear etched on my face. My eyes burned; my throat ached.
He didn’t dismiss it or offer empty platitudes. He saw every ounce of my terror and didn’t look away.
“All we need is a window,” he said quietly. “One opening. That’s it.”
