Final y.
Andy took off at a run, disappearing into the darkness behind her. She wasn’t alone. The little prick was not going to get to kill her.
Not today. A noise came from low in her throat, relief and anxiety and fear.
“Fuck, f**k, f**k.” Ali eased up on the pedal, turned the corner one-handed in a great arc of a circle and headed back toward Main Street.
The group on the corner had grown. There was help. The pick-up slowed to a crawl, seemingly of its own volition. Strength seemed to be seeping straight out of her as the adrenalin eased.
It was Santa who threw the truck door open, surprise and concern dragging at his face. His mouth hung open. “Ali? What the …”
“Finn’s shot. Back at the apartment.”
“What?” His bushy brows met. “Who?”
“Owen,” she said. The big man scrunched his face up at her and she lost it, yel ing at him. “Owen shot him and took me to the church.
He and Andy have got Rachel there, she’s infected. Do something for once, would you?”
“I’ll check on Finn.” Erin said from behind him and took off at a run.
“Good.” Ali rubbed gingerly at her shoulder, tried to catch her breath. “That’s good.”
Santa gave her a dubious sidelong glance and pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt, pushed the button. “Tom, anything happening at the front gate?”
“Nuh —” was all the man got out before the sound of more shots came from exactly that direction.
One. Two. Three shots. Then an almighty tempest of gunfire. Andy had lost it, too.
“Give me a gun.” She crawled out of the pick-up and shoved her good hand at Santa.
“You’re hurt. Stay out of the way.”
At the sound of shots, the people he had been standing with had started back down Main Street, running toward the gate. Santa followed at his heftier pace.
Ali followed the path Erin had taken and hobbled toward home, her arm nursed against her chest. Finn was propped against their downstairs front door, a gun in each hand. His skin was pasty and covered in streaks of blood.
Erin slipped out of the doorway beside him and sprinted toward the front gate.
Ali burst into violent tears, startling herself. They ran down her face unchecked while she crossed the distance between them. “You’re alive.”
“Course I’m alive. He only got me in the shoulder.” Finn gave her a lingering kiss, eyes squeezed tight. When they opened, he had his game face on. “Where’s Owen?”
“Dead, I think. And Andy’s at the front gate.”
“That’s where Dan headed to get help looking for you. What’s wrong with your arm?”
“Dislocated, maybe?”
“Al,” Finn sighed. “Upstairs and stay there. Lock the door. Lock every damn door.”
“You just got shot!”
“I field-dressed it. Go on.” Finn turned and broke into a steady if slow jog.
A chorus of moaning rose in volume down the street. But it wasn’t enough to drown out the noise of the garbage truck serving as the settlement’s front gate chugging to life.
Andy was going to let in the infected. The whole settlement was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Daniel had an aneurysm. He could feel it. Without a doubt it was going to pop if he didn’t find his girl right f**king now.
He jogged down Main Street, his small semblance of calm thinning with Finn’s blood on his hands. He rubbed his palm on his jeans, spread his fingers out and wiped off the blood in between them. His gun was slippery.
The kid was alright. He was on his feet, swearing like a trooper and finishing padding the bullet wound in his shoulder.
Daniel headed up the search party. The group gathered at the Blackstone gate would do fine for his search and rescue squad.
Someone here had to know where Owen would have taken her.
He dodged the tractor they had been tearing up the tarmac with, less than 50 meters out when he saw Andy. Then, Daniel’s feet faltered.
The young man came streaking out from beneath the shadows of a line of shop awnings to the east. He held a small sub-machine gun in his hands. The weapon pointed straight at the four men standing clueless by the garbage truck.
Andy’s mouth opened in a silent scream. A war cry.
“No!” Daniel raised his pistol, fired off three shots in the boy’s direction.
Andy started firing. His victims were clustered so close they didn’t stand a chance. The four men toppled, torn apart by the volley of bullets. Blood sprayed the road, the truck. It went everywhere, bright and beautiful in the light of the rising moon.
Andy’s head turned and the weapon followed. Bullets sprayed up stone at Daniel’s feet. He threw himself behind the tractor, hitting the ground hard while bullets punched into metal. His teeth clinked and his shoulder sang, jarred by the impact.
Then the bullets stopped. The sudden silence chil ed him to his bones. His ears stil echoed with the inferno of noise from a moment ago.
Shit.
Daniel pushed to his feet, feeling every day of his forty-odd years. He snuck a look around the side of the tractor and his gut plunged.
Andy was climbing into the cab of the garbage truck, slamming the door shut. “Oh, no.”
He aimed at the door, firing at the little prick as the truck came to life like some monster of old. Or maybe more akin to the monsters of new. The infected were wel revved up – moaning and snarling on the other side of the big machine.
“What happened?” A hand clapped down on his shoulder and one of Santa’s buddies puffed to a stop beside him.
Others didn’t stop to ask questions, opening fire on the garbage truck’s front windscreen. Glass shattered. Inside the cab Andy jerked and fell, spread across the steering wheel. His head was a ruined, red mush.
It didn’t matter. Mission accomplished.
Andy had managed to reverse back two, maybe three meters. He had almost cleared one lane of traffic and it was more than enough.
The infected spilled into town.
Gunfire filled his ears. Daniel ejected his empty clip, reached for the spare in his back pocket. A weird kind of calm took him over.
His hands held perfectly steady. They were fighting for their lives now. No question about it.
More of the townsfolk arrived, standing alongside him, taking aim. Before them, bodies staggered and flopped and fell, soon replaced by more. The horde gathered on the bridge and along the fence lines poured through the gap in their defenses. Some fell upon the four men Andy had kil ed until a hive of moving limbs surrounded the bodies.