Page 62 of Bound in Ashes

We’d found some things, including some warmer clothes for the boy.

It was a good trip⁠—

Pop.

Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop.

I let go of the bag.

Was running before it hit the ground.

More pops.

One or two streets over.

Asia’s directions.

These shots were panicked.

The kind of pattern that told me someone was overwhelmed.

I rounded the corner of the house, vaulted the fence, and hit the street at a dead sprint.

More gunfire. Then screams.

A man’s voice.

Not hers.

She was alive.

She had to be.

I rounded another corner.

Saw her.

She was backed against a fence, knife in hand, facing down four zombies.

One of Christopher’s men was on the ground, his abdomen torn open, his intestines hanging from his hands.

The other was gone—fled or dead, I didn’t know, didn’t care.

Christopher stood ten feet back, gun raised but not firing. His hands shook.

“Shoot them!” Asia yelled.

He didn’t.

The first zombie lurched toward her. She slashed at its head, connecting with its neck, but it kept coming.

I moved like I never had before.

Grabbed the closest zombie by the back of the skull and slammed it face-first into the fence post, not caring about the splatter when its head exploded like a rotten melon.

The second turned toward me.

I buried my knife in its temple, ripping it out, and shoved the body aside.