Page 97 of After the Burn

No one argued; we’d been through this before, and we all knew our roles.

At any sign of danger, all three of them surrounded me and the other females in our group.

It’s just who they were.

I could fight it, but I wasn’t an idiot. There was no doubt I was nearly as powerful as they were, but I followed their orders to keep them from worrying about me. The last thing I needed was to distract them.

We were enhanced, but an infected bite could still turn us into one of them.

We rushed out of the house into a street that wasn’t fully awake yet.

The sky was still gray, with the sun barely peeking over the horizon. Front doors opened, and people stumbled outside, most half-dressed. They were confused in a way they shouldn’t be, given how far along the apocalypse was, but I supposed some of them had never even left this town since it all began.

Until you’d traveled and seen the devastation and the number of infected, it was hard to comprehend the danger humankind was in.

An infected tackled a man before he even reached his porch. His woman screamed, and someone inside fired.

Another rifle answered.

Then another.

Within seconds…

The entire town was shooting.

A man on guard duty raised his rifle, but he was too slow. The infected in his sights would reach him long before he could fire.

Beck suddenly moved and covered twenty feet before I even realized he’d taken the first step. His fist made contact, and an infected sailed sideways through a wooden fence, its head caved in.

Lucas caught movement two houses away. “Left!” He fired before anyone else even saw it.

Adrian jerked me backward, and a second later, an infected burst from behind a truck exactly where I’d been standing. “Get your head in the game, Taryn!”

I nodded. I’d been so worried about Beck that I hadn’t paid attention to what I was hearing.

Across the square, I caught a glimpse of Gideon. He was directing people and barking orders. “Hold the line! Stop firing blindly and get the women inside!”

For a moment, I believed he could save this place. But then I noticed a woman inside the makeshift barricade screaming as a man who had been limping nearby suddenly turned and bit a large piece from her shoulder. Then he bit again…

And again.

And again.

The barricade collapsed, and I didn’t look back.

“We’ve got to get to Lila!” I yelled at Adrian, and he nodded.

Beck stopped in front of us and picked up an infected, throwing it back over the fence.

“Kill those motherfuckers! Don’t just heave them over the fence!” Lucas yelled as he bashed another in the face with the butt of his gun.

Beck punched a skinny infected with a piercing through his nose in the side of his head and wiped the brain matter off his jeans. “Don’t worry about me, teacher. I’ve got this.” He let out a manic laugh, killing infected almost faster than the eye could see.

“You better not get bit, asshole!” I yelled even as I drove my bat through the skull of a girl about my age, with one eyeball dangling onto her cheek.

“Never, Fox! There’s no way I’d jeopardize my chance to claim that sweet pussy again!” He grabbed a skinny, infected teen and broke him in half.

Did I find that sexy?