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KATE
The ringing in my ears is the only thing I hear. Something heavy sits on my back and shoulders. Reed’s body is slack underneath me.
I attempt to open my eyes. My effort is rewarded by a blast of debris right in the face. I try to breathe, but all I get is a lungful of grit. Coughing bends me in half.
I try again. Pushing my nose into the sleeve of my shirt, I suck for air. I’m rewarded with a meager lungful. I suck a second time, getting more oxygen.
Bracing my knees against the hard stone beneath me, I shove. Something slides off my back with a sick wet sound. It’s a zombie body. The head and the right arm are both missing, the orifices oozing black blood all over me.
Beneath me, Reed stirs. His eyes flutter open, then snap shut as he’s assaulted by the same grime that hit me.
I crouch and press a hand to Reed’s cheek in a silent question. He nods, mouth moving in answer, but I still can’t hear. We help each other stand, holding onto one another. I wipe blood from the side of his eye. Or, I try to. All I manage to do is smear grit into the blood. Reed shakes his head back and forth, sending droplets of fresh red showering to the ground.
Absolute destruction surrounds us. The College Creek dorms lie in enormous piles of rubble. Whether by sheer dumb luck or precise calculation under pressure, Ben managed to place the explosives in just the right place on our building. The dorms on the west tipped the right way, completely barricading any entrance into the campus on this side.
I scrutinize the settling dust, alert for danger. Hands and feet move in the rubble. Only a few undead still stand nearby, moaning and turning in small circles of confusion. None are close enough to be an immediate threat.
To the east, the rest of the buildings have fallen. And emerging from the gritty air is the remaining zombie pack. They’ve reassembled around the teenage alpha zom, at least a hundred strong. She and her pack miraculously survived the explosions and are once again pushing into the campus.
The alpha clicks and keens a series of instructions. The pack spreads out on either side of her, sweeping straight for the heart of Humboldt University.
Where is everyone? Ash? Jesus? Carter? Johnny? Eric? Ben? I don’t see anyone. I can’t see my family.
I swallow against my dry, gritty throat. There has to be something I can do. Something to protect the campus. I don’t know who’s left alive, but hell if I’m going to roll over and let the swarm take Humboldt.
The buzzing in my ears recedes, allowing a new sound to make its way to my ears. Music. I hear music.
Carter.
A robin’s egg blue Caravan charges through the ruined landscape, heading straight for us. Jenna hangs out the window, waving her arms at us. Carter leans over the wheel, eyes intent.
Tears of joy leak from the side of my eyes. Carter. Jenna. Reed. Three of my kids are still alive.
Movement in my periphery. Johnny staggers out from behind a pile of rubble. Ash, Jesus, and Eric are with him. Susan extracts herself from the bottom of a metal table that somehow survived the blasts.
We all converge on the minivan as it slams to a halt.
“Mom.” Carter leaps out of the car and crushes me in a bear hug. I throw my arms around him, using the moment to dry my tears on his shoulder and gather myself. We’re not out of the woods yet.
“I took out three alphas,” Eric reports. “The fourth one had already moved past the library and was out of my line of sight when I got to the rec center. I’m sorry, I couldn’t get her.”
I give his shoulder a squeeze. “You did good, Eric.” Three was better than one or none. That still leaves us with the problem of the last alpha, though. The teenage alpha.
I stare past the ruins, my eyes taking in the seething swarm that continues to boil onto the campus. If we stand here much longer, we’ll be blotted from the face of the earth.
I have to do something.
“Ben is missing.” Jenna scans the area, brow creased in worry.
I refuse to believe Ben is dead. He’s too tough and too grumpy to die.
“Go find Ben for me.” I kiss Carter’s cheek. Not giving myself a second to reconsider the half-baked plan taking shape in my brain, I shoulder past him and jump into the driver’s seat of Skip. It’s time to improvise.
“Mom!” Carter spins around, but I slam the door.
“Take care of everyone,” I say, throwing the car into reverse.
“Mom, stop!” Carter latches both hands onto the open window. “Mom!”
To my horror, he throws up a leg, hooking it through the window.
“Get down,” I cry.
The look he gives me is fierce. He looks so much like his father my breath catches. In a maneuver that is part strength, part yoga ninja, Carter drags himself through the open window. He slides across my lap and scrambles into the passenger seat.
“What the hell, Mom?”
“I’m going to blow up the library. You need to get out, son.”
“What do you mean, you’re going to blow up the library?”
I jerk a thumb toward the back of the van. “The beer kegs. They’re full of fermenting liquid. We have a bomb on wheels, sweetheart.” I meet his gaze. “I’m going to blow the side of the library. If I’m lucky, it will be enough to bury most of those fuckers and solidify our barrier.”
Carter stares at me, mouth agape. “Mom, there’s a shit load of zombies between us and the library. We’ll never make it.”
He’s right. In the last sixty seconds, the alpha and her pack have massed outside the library.
“I got this, Mamita.”
I turn in surprise to see Jesus standing by the open driver’s side window. The dents in his forehead stand out under the bright morning sun.
“I’ll clear the way. You get the bomb to the library.” His eyes are hard, focused. “Creekside crew! ¡Mi familia!”
Before I can form a sentence, Jesus fist pumps the air and sprints away, shouting at the top of his lungs. He streaks in the direction of the rubble, firing his gun into the air.
A keen crescendos, mixed with howls and growls. Like a giant amoeba, the pack flexes and rotates, oozing in the direction of Jesus.
“Drive!” Carter shouts. His blue eyes flare, and he jumps into the back. “I’ll get the kegs ready. It’s a good thing Jenna and I decided to age this ale or we wouldn’t have a bomb right now.”
There isn’t time to argue. There isn’t time to debate. There isn’t time to pull Jesus back to safety. There isn’t time to grab Carter by the scruff of his neck and heave him out of the van.
I do the only thing I can. I slam my foot on the accelerator and zoom toward the library.
“How are we going to detonate these?” Carter yells.
A glance over my shoulder reveals him packing lumps of C-4 around the base of the kegs. He has the kegs on their sides, the fermenting liquid leaking out all over the floor.
“Grenade.” I tap my belt, touching the only grenade I have. In the confusion of the morning, I can’t even recall how it ended up there.
“That’ll work,” Carter hollers. “The van has cruise control. We paid extra for it.”
“You paid extra for cruise control?” I shout back, recalling the shitty state of the van when I first saw it. I can’t imagine paying extra for any special feature on this rust bucket.
“Yeah, Jenna likes cruise control.”
I zip past the tail end of the swarm, straight through the corridor Jesus made for us. A blur of rotting skin and dark blood fills my periphery. A look in the rearview mirror shows several dozen peeling off to pursue us, but most of them continue after their alpha. After Jesus.
“It’s time for you to get out, son. I’ll take it from here.” I slow the van just enough so he can jump out.
“No way, Mom.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll put the van in cruise control and jump when I’m closer. I’ll have a better chance of pulling this off if I don’t have to worry about you.”
Carter narrows his eyes at me. “Okay. But you have to promise to jump. No kamikaze stuff.”
“I promise, sweetie. I don’t plan on dying today. Who’s going to take care of you guys if I’m not here?”
Carter flings open the passenger side door. The pavement whizzes past.
He turns for a bare second, our eyes meeting.
“I love you, baby.”
“Love you, too, Mom. See you soon.”
With that, he leaps. Even above the hum of the engine, I hear the impact of his body on the ground.
Carter.
I grip the steering wheel and zoom away, streaking toward the library. A glance to my right shows Jesus on top of a statue between the College Creek rubble and the library. He fires his gun into the air, doing his damnedest to draw the alpha and her pack.
I swerve around a group of stragglers. The library looms before me, a wide megalith of dark cement. All that knowledge. And I’m about to blow it all to hell.
Setting the accelerator to thirty, I punch the cruise control button. Then, I pull the pin, toss the grenade, and throw myself out of the van.
I have a brief glimpse of the grenade rolling across the floor of the van—then I crash headlong into a bush. Pain explodes as I tear through the plant and hit the ground on the other side. The grenade detonates, ripping through the air with an explosion.
The library leaps from its foundation. It seems to hang, suspended above the ground for several seconds.
The library crashes down as though in slow motion. It strikes the ground with a boom and ripples through earth and air. The rumble rolls outward, sending the building forth in every direction. A landslide of cinderblocks buries the left flank of the undead swarm. The rest are swallowed in an expulsion of flying debris—including the statue where Jesus is perched.
“Jesus!” I scream his name.
A cloud of grit and debris hurtles toward me. I curl into a ball and throw my hands over my head. The exposed parts of my skin burn as thousands of tiny particles scour over me like sand paper.
Then silence descends.
A few moans pepper the air. I raise my head, blinking through grime-encrusted lashes. The dust begins to settle, revealing a massive mound of misshapen debris all around.
There is no sign of the alpha, no sign of her pack. They are buried beneath the remains of the library.
“Jesus.” I try to stand, but my legs give out on me. I hurt everywhere. My eyes scour the rubble as I search for some sign of him.
I notice several small branches embedded in my skin, probably from the bush I landed on. One protrudes from my bicep. Another is lodged just below my collarbone.
I pluck them out, barely feeling the sting. My eyes continue to rove, searching for Jesus.
I want to pass out. I want to disappear into the dark.
“Kate!”
I blink in confusion. I must have hit my head. I’m definitely hallucinating. Either that, or I’m dead. Because what I’m seeing right now makes no sense.
Out of the dust and smoke and confusion comes Lila. She has three automatic rifles across her back and a string of grenades across her chest. A Sig hangs from either hip. And she’s riding a bicycle like a bat out of hell, coming straight for me. Grime and bits of blood spatter her face and clothing.
“Kate!” She leaps off the bike. It clatters to the ground as she rushes to my side. “Kate, are you okay?”
I stare at her. Maybe I’m not hallucinating. “Lila?”
“It’s me.” Her mouth tightens as she grips my hand. “I decided that if all you losers are going to die out here, I want to go down with you. It was really shitty of you guys to leave me to die with an unconscious man half-eaten by a shark. Can you sit up?”
My terrified Lila has finally pushed through. Hell of a time for a breakthrough, even if said breakthrough is taking its toll on her. Her eyes are a little too wide, her skin a little too clammy, and her hands a little too shaky for her to conceal her true feelings. She’s terrified.
Terrified, but she’s here all the same. Pride swells in my chest.
I once again try to stand. Fuck. It feels like a thousand needles are going into my skull at the same time. I groan without meaning to and plop back down.
“Kate?”
“I’m fine. We need to find Jesus. I—”
I break off as two zombies lope around a pile of concrete and smashed library computers. They’ve heard our voices and are coming straight for us.
“Look out!” I lunge to my feet—then trip on a chunk of concrete and go down. I sprawl forward, my hands scraping against the pavement.
Lila jumps in front of me, rocking back and forth in fear as she faces the zombies. Right before they reach her, she darts to the side.
“Over here, dick wads,” she calls, leading them away from me.
The zombies moan, rotating in her direction. They scratch at the empty air in front of them, searching for Lila.
I scramble to my feet as Lila stabs the first zombie through the nose. She dances backward as the second one reaches for her. I come up behind it and cave in the back of its head with my knife.
Lila and I breathe hard in the sudden silence, the two dead zombies between us.
“Thanks.” If Lila hadn’t been here, I might very well be dead right now. It’s a sobering thought. I wipe my cheek on my shirtsleeve, attempting to dislodge a clump of brain matter.
“I just saved Mama Bear.” Lila gives me a shaky smile. “Now if I could just do that about twelve thousand times, we might be even.”
“There’s no score between us, Lila. We’re family.” I glance back in the direction of Carter. He’s two hundred yards away, picking himself up out of some bushes with Jenna’s help. Good. He’s safe.
I turn my attention back to Lila. “Jesus is in there.” I point. With the dust clearing, I can just see the top of the statue.
“In there?” Her mouth sags open.
I don’t blame her. Protruding from beneath the building fragments are twitching body parts. The zoms might have been buried, but not all of them are dead.
“Come on. We have to find Jesus.” I force my feet to move.
My equilibrium returns and I’m able to walk with Lila’s help. I hurt everywhere, but I guess that’s to be expected when you jump out of a moving car. At least nothing is broken.
I pause over a zombie. The body is pinned, but its jaw continues to gnash. I stab it through the eye. No reason to leave a potential ankle biter out there.
Lila moves a few feet past me, drawing her knife. She killed her fair share of zombies at the start of the outbreak, but it’s been a while for her.
She pauses over another pinned zombie. Her chest heaves with an inhalation.
Her blade jabs down, punching through the zom’s nose.
“You haven’t lost your touch,” I say.
Lila glances over her shoulder at me, shrugs, then continues to pick her way through the rubble. We’re forced to climb over and around debris—broken furniture, shattered computers, and fragments of walls. Step by step, we inch across what had once been a large, peaceful quad for students.
Now, it’s a death zone. Lila and I pause only long enough to kill any zombies that pose a threat before continuing on.
We reach the statue. My throat closes at the sight, tears stinging the back of my eyes. The base is covered in chunks of large cement slabs.
“Jesus!” I call his name. “Jesus!”
A groan sounds off to our left.
“Jesus?” I scramble over rubble and drop down on the far side of the statue. “Je—”
Words dry up in my mouth.
“Do you see him?” Lila clambers down beside me. “Is he—oh, shit.”