Stay with it.
I hugged the wall, sliding along the brownstones, cutting from stoop to stoop, pressing myself into every shadow and overhang. Each step was deliberate, controlled. Don’t slip. Don’t trip. Don’t make a single goddamn sound you don’t have to.
Breath even.
Heart hammering—but leashed.
You’ve done worse.
Yeah.
Not like this.
Not with them everywhere.
I buried that thought and kept moving.
Halfway there.
Then—movement. Right in front of me.
It stepped out from between two parked cars as if it had been standing there for hours. Maybe it had. No way to tell with them—no logic, no pattern, just dead stillness until something tripped a wire inside the rotted meat where its brain used to be.
Close.
Way too close.
Its head wrenched toward me. The neck moved wrong—too far, too loose, like the tendons had started to separate. Those eyes locked on. Clouded. Milky. But aware. Hungry in a way that had nothing to do with real thought.
“Shit—”
I brought the Glock up, finger tightening—
No.
Too loud. Too many.
Knife.
My hand moved before the thought finished, drawing it free in one smooth motion as I stepped in instead of back.
Commit. Always commit.
It lunged—slow, clumsy. Its jaw unhinged before its body even caught up. A thick rope of blackened saliva dripped from its lower lip.
I drove the blade up and in, straight through the left eye socket.
Resistance hit first—a sickening, rubbery pressure against the tip of the steel—then gave.
A wet, hollow pop. Then suction—the blade sinking deep, something soft and rotten collapsing around it. Fluid burstacross my knuckles, dark and thick, reeking of copper and decay, running down my wrist in warm streaks.
The body seized once. A full-body twitch, fingers splaying wide, mouth still gaping.
Then nothing.
I ripped the knife free. Didn’t wait for it to drop. Stepped past while it crumpled, already moving, already scanning.
No time to watch it fall.
