Two of them shuffled along the far edge of the lot, maybe sixty yards away, moving in that slow, directionless drift that meant they hadn’t locked onto anything. Another stood motionless near an overturned dumpster, its head tilted at an angle as if the neck bones had broken, swaying slightly in the wind like a loose signpost. None of them turned my way.
“Almost there,” I breathed, the words ghosting between my teeth.
I reached the passenger door, fingers fumbling for the handle—slick with blood, dirt, and sweat, my grip shot to hell, hands trembling so badly I almost couldn’t close them—and eased it open with a slow, measured pull.
The hinge creaked.
A short, sharp, metallic groan that split the silence like a gunshot.
I winced.
Still nothing. The two in the distance kept drifting. The one by the dumpster kept swaying.
I shoved the carrier onto the passenger seat, then climbed in right after it, pulling myself across the console and into the driver’s seat in one continuous motion, keeping my profile below the windows until I settled behind the wheel.
Key.
Key.
My right hand shook so violently it took three attempts to slide the key into the ignition, the metal scraping against the housing, my fingers slipping on the tacky, dark blood from the cut the skirting had carved across my palm.
I turned the key.
The engine roared to life—loud, aggressive, obscenely loud in the dead-world silence. The sound filled the lot and pressed outward against the tree line, against the empty storefronts, against everything, as if the world had forgotten what noise was and didn’t know what to do with it.
Too loud.
It didn’t matter now.
Through the windshield, I saw them react—heads snapping up, bodies pivoting, that horrible instant transition from aimless drift to hunting mode. The one by the dumpster straightened itsbroken neck and lurched forward. The two at the edge of the lot turned in unison and broke into that lurching, stumbling run that covered more ground than it had any right to.
“Hold on,” I muttered, threw it into drive, and buried the accelerator into the floor.
The car lurched forward, tires spinning on loose gravel for a heart-stopping half-second before they bit, caught, and the vehicle surged ahead with enough force to shove me back into the seat.
I didn’t slow down. I didn’t check mirrors. I didn’t think.
Bodies hit the front of the car.
The first one caught the bumper and folded. The impact shuddered through the steering column. Something crunched—loud, final—and the body rolled up the hood and over the roof with a heavy, tumbling thud-thud-thud. I tracked it by sound alone, my eyes never leaving the road ahead.
A second one came from the left—fast, faster than I expected, slamming into the driver’s side door with enough force to dent the panel inward and send a spiderweb of cracks racing across the window. Its face slammed against the glass for a grotesque instant—a smear of peeling skin, an empty socket, and a dark streak of fluid left behind as the car’s momentum tore it loose and flung it away.
I didn’t stop. I didn’t slow. I didn’t even flinch.
“Not today,” I growled through clenched teeth, blood from my palm smearing across the leather as I wrenched the wheel.
I punched through the lot, gravel and debris spraying behind me in a rooster tail. The car bucked and shuddered over whatever I hit—bodies—the undercarriage scraping and banging with every impact.
Then—open road.
Asphalt stretching ahead.
I didn’t ease off the gas until the marina had disappeared in the rearview mirror.
My hands were still locked on the wheel, joints aching from gripping too hard. My chest kept hitching as if it hadn’t yet gotten the message that the worst was over; my whole body running about three seconds behind my brain.
The cat let out a small, offended sound from the passenger seat—a short, clipped mrrp that carried all the indignation and moral outrage of a creature who had endured an experience far beneath his dignity and intended to make his displeasure known.
