Page 33 of After the Burn

The realization hit almost instantly.

“Great. Just fucking great.” I mumbled under my breath.

The second guy looked worse.

Pale.

Eyes sunken.

Jaw trembling visibly from here.

“Bag,” rifle guy rasped. “Now.” His voice faltered halfway through the word as both men moved closer.

My grip tightened slightly against the bottle in my hand. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Yes, we do.” Crowbar guy laughed weakly, pacing restlessly as if he physically couldn’t stay still. “You got pills?” he asked suddenly.

There it was.

They didn’t care about food or water. Just pills. I’d seen enough people like them on the road to know withdrawal was its own kind of infection.

Rifle guy swallowed hard enough that I saw his throat move. “Painkillers. Xanax. Anything.”

Something ugly settled low in my chest.

The world ended, yet somehow people were still trying to outrun themselves and their problems.

“We don’t have enough time for this,” crowbar guy muttered frantically. “Just take the damn bag.”

The rifle trembled slightly as the other man aimed the barrel higher toward my chest.

The shaking barrel worried me more than either man did. One twitch, and I was dead.

“I don’t have what you’re looking for,” I said carefully.

“You’re lying.” He dropped the gun slightly and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I know you’ve got something.”

It sounded more like wishful thinking than anything else.

Months ago, they might have found enough to keep going. Now the pharmacies were stripped bare, and desperation had eaten through whatever restraint they had left.

Both men looked hollowed out from the inside and desperate enough to do something that would most definitely cost them their lives.

Crowbar guy suddenly rushed forward first.

He obviously lacked the advanced senses I’d gained after the fever. Because to me, it looked like he was moving in slow motion.

I moved automatically before he reached me, catching his wrist and twisting hard enough to make the crowbar drop into the creek with a loud splash.

He screamed instantly, and rifle guy panicked. The gun fired wildly through the trees. Birds took flight overhead as I slammed into him before he could pull the trigger again, knocking the rifle sideways as both of us crashed into the dirt near the creek bank.

Too easy. Again. The thought bothered me more than the fight.

The other guy swung wildly at my face.

I blocked the hit without thinking and drove my elbow hard into his ribs instead.

Something cracked.