I reach for my gun in the back of my pants and cock the trigger, shooting three in close proximity. They fall forward and I roll out of the way, scrambling with the thick grass to get on my feet.
“Alex!” Jane yells again. I race toward the bales of hay, dodging the greedy hands of the infected. One chases me down and I take a dangerous second to stop, spin, and blindly swing the hatchet at her head. I miss the neck but connect at the ear and it’s enough to do the job. I fight to get the weapon out of her skull. I wrench it out, falling back two steps and landing into something—someone hard. Hands steady my elbows and I turn, knee raised. I stop short when I come nose to nose with Finn.
“That was close,” he says, dropping his hands to cover his crotch.
“We’ve got to run. But where?” The others are running toward us. Jude is across the field shouting. Jane fires her gun, taking down an Eater reaching for Mary Ellen, and we all duck and flinch. Chaos builds as we’re mostly all in one place.
“Back to the barn? They all came from there. Maybe it’s empty.” Finn suggests.
It’s not a great plan but we need shelter. The catch with the Eaters is they aren’t terribly fast, they can just overtake you if you’re in a tricky situation. This situation is beyond tricky. Too many on all sides. The barn up at the top of a hill. Too many inexperienced fighters.
“Meet you at the top,” I say, once I realize they’re waiting for me make the decision. I take off in a sprint, heading straight at Eaters, pushing weaker ones out of my way and pausing just to incapacitate others. It’s a slog and from the corner of my eye I watch Jude do the same thing on the other side of the field. I push and kill and run and slash and fight and climb. Halfway to the building, Finn and his long legs pass me and I’m relieved to have a break from taking the brunt. I’m nearly at the top of the sloping hill when I hear Mary Ellen cry behind me.
Despite my resolve not to stop, I do it anyway, finding Mary Ellen on the ground and two
Eaters bearing down. Jane cracks one in the skull but it does little to stop him. His growls are louder than the others and he pounces like a cat on the ill-equipped girl.
It’s at a time like this I really wish Walker and Davis were here.
“Shoot him,” I shout at Jane, but we’re now all targets of the latest wave of Eaters. They press down from all sides. I split the cheek of the one nearest me, and chop off the hand of another grabbing at my foot. I kick a woman in the face, her teeth still a brilliant, leering white.
Another sound rises above the cacophony, the rev of a motor—something so foreign to my ears that it takes a minute to place. The noise brings the Eaters to a surprising halt, their moans and growls cut off for a brief second—one we use to collect ourselves and massacre those closest to us.
The reprieve is short and they lose interest in the mechanical beast. My curiosity piques when I spot a small but fast-moving vehicle burst from the barn.
It’s a four-wheeler of some kind and there are two figures in the front. It zips in our direction, the wheels wide and fat, running easily over Eaters in their path.
“Hurry! Over here!” I shout as though they can’t see us. I jump over dead bodies and the now-muddy, clumped grass of the field. The small vehicle stops with a jerk and the three of us race over, Mary Ellen throwing herself in Finn’s arms. He lifts her off the ground and Jude gives me a hand. I return the gesture with my sister and we’re off the ground in the flat space behind the seats.
“Get the hell out of here,” Jane says as the remaining Eaters move in our direction.
“I don’t know where I’m going!” Finn cries, holding his hands up.
“Back to the road, back on track. We need to get to that bunker now.”
The boy slams his foot on the gas and we fly forward with a spastic lurch. I clutch the back of the seat with one hand and another is still wrapped tight in my sister’s. Finn careens down the field back to the tree line and I take a breath, feeling the familiar surge of adrenaline as it courses through my veins. As the Eaters’ howls are left behind, I stare at the blood and dirt stains on my hands and I know in this moment this is what I’m born to do.
I’m here to fight.
Chapter Twenty
The four wheeler hits every bump and divot in the road. Along the way, Jane recaps what happened before we found them. She, Finn, and Mary Ellen were under orders and protection of one of Erwin’s Mutts to go to the bunker. Seems she got the same story I did. We’re a distraction. He needs us out of the way. Chloe is too focused on our history.
“We were attacked by two Eaters near the road,” she says in my ear. I watch her finger rub over a bloody stain on her pants.
“Near the cars?” She nods and I say, “We saw them.”
“They came out of nowhere. The guard told us to run—so we did. He stayed back to fight.” She gives me a searching look. I shake my head and she sighs. “Yeah, I figured he was dead.”
I want to ask who shot him but the four-wheeler approaches a small overpass. Jude tucks the vehicle beneath the shady bridge.
The bunker is different from the others. Nothing more than a submerged space built under the bridge. There’s a thick, gray metal door that even Jane has to bend over to get through, but the road above and the concrete and earth surrounding us makes this a safe location.
It’s perfect, really. Too perfect.
I grab Jude by the arm. “Do you think this is a trap?”
He looks at the rusty door. “This? Maybe. That clusterbang back there? Probably.”