Minutes passed. Two. Three. Each one an eternity measured in heartbeats and the rhythmic scream of the car alarm and the sounds of dead things dragging through our neighborhood.
Two minutes.
How long does it take to reach a car fifty yards away?
How long when the street between you and it is crawling with things that will tear the skin from your body and eat it while you watch?
How long, Finn?
How long?
I looked at Fiona. She’d positioned herself near the window—the one with the narrowest gap between boards—her eye pressed to the sliver of light. Her body had gone completely still. Watching. Tracking what she could see of the street.
“How many?” I asked over Lily’s head.
“A lot.” Flat. Clinical. “A bunch. All heading east toward the alarm. None looking in this direction.”
Thirty.
Forty.
And Finn sneaking through them.
“Can you see the Suburban?”
Fiona shifted, angling her head. A pause.
“Partially. The hood and front. Something’s—” She stopped.
“What?”
“One of them. Leaning against the driver’s side door.”
My stomach plummeted.
“Leaning?”
“Not moving much. Just… pressed against it. Head down. Like it got tired and stopped.”
Tired. As if the dead got tired. As if the thing slouched against the door of our only way out needed a moment to collect itself.
“Will Finn see it?”
Fiona didn’t answer right away. Her eye remained pressed to the gap in the boards.
“Yeah,” she said. “He’ll see it.”
I almost believed her.
Three minutes.
Too long.
That’s too long.
I stared at the back of Fiona’s head, willing her to say something—anything—that meant he’d made it, he’d reached the car, he’d gotten past the dead thing slumped against the door and gotten inside.
Nothing.
