Page 132 of After the Burn

Rotters flooded into the barn, drawn by the noise of collapsing beams. It might have been everyone’s only chance to find shelter until the weather cleared and daylight arrived.

As we resumed running, a shape emerged from the trees ahead.

“Left,” I warned her.

Taryn turned before I finished and her bat cracked across the rotter’s face.

Its head snapped sideways, but it kept coming.

“Shit!” Taryn swore, pulling her bat from bone and gore.

I stepped in, hooked an arm around its throat from behind, and pulled it back, driving the handle of my hatchet into its temple.

We both turned at hearing a moan nearby, then another right behind it.

Then another… and another.

I grabbed her arm, and we ran. Branched whipped across my face as the mud we were running through tried to keep us captive.

I couldn’t hear or see anyone else. It felt as if we were completely alone.

We kept moving.

Another rotter stumbled between two trees.

Taryn swung, but it was too high. Her bat glanced off its throat, and it came for her.

I hit it from the side with the hatchet, and the blade lodged above its ear, so it twisted for me.

Taryn drove the end of the bat beneath its chin, and its neck snapped back.

I yanked my hatchet free. “Keep moving!”

I heard Taryn’s breathing grow more labored.

Thunder cracked overhead, and she flinched. When she looked back at me, her eyes widened in alarm. “Down!”

I dropped immediately.

Her bat sailed over my head and connected with a rotter that had come up behind us.

I saw her sway and knew I had to find shelter immediately. I couldn’t risk losing her by staying out here another second.

Then, like a signal from God, lightning flashed again.

For one second, a black shape appeared through the trees ahead.

A chimney.

The burnt-out shell of the farmhouse was nearby.

We pushed toward it, and the ruins emerged slowly through the rain. A stone chimney, half a wall. Blackened beams collapsed into what had once been a kitchen.

The storm had soaked the ash-dark wood until it gleamed.

“Maybe the others hid near here?” Taryn glanced around hopefully.

“Possibly.” I didn’t want to disappoint her, but I was certain they had run in the opposite direction from us.