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He screams.

Clair fires, dropping the first one.

Three more rush in.

For one breath, I think he might make it.

Then his foot slips.

The horde yanks him down.

He disappears beneath arms, mouths, and jerking shoulders. His scream punches through the street, then cuts off wet.

Luis sobs.

Carlos lunges toward him.

Jacob catches Carlos by the back of his jacket and hauls him away before he can throw himself into the pile.

“No!” Carlos screams, fighting him. “No!”

A girl with a long braid grabs Luis’s arm and shoves him toward us. “Run, idiot!”

An infected in a torn postal uniform catches her from behind, teeth sinking into the exposed place between her neck and shoulder. Her whole body locks. The pipe drops from her hands and bounces once against the pavement. She reaches for Carlos, fingers stretching through the air, but another corpse grabs her wrist and pulls her arm wide.

Carlos turns.

Too late.

The girl’s eyes stay on Carlos until the dead drag her down.

The rest of the kids scream, but the street doesn’t give them time to break. It only gives them more bodies.

Luis stumbles near the fence. His foot catches on a loose chunk of concrete, and he hits the ground and rolls as one of the infected lunges for him.

I surge forward to close the distance, hatchet ready in my hand. The infected reaches for Luis with swollen, blistered fingers, its face split open from nose to jaw.

I swing.

Bone cracks. Its jaw splits. Something wet bursts across my knuckles.

It keeps coming.

I swing again, harder this time. The blade sinks deep into its skull with a dull, meaty thunk.

It goes limp.

I grab Luis by the collar and haul him up. His feet scramble for purchase, shoes slipping on blood-slick pavement.

Another one lurches in from the side, face half gone, one milky eye rolling toward me.

I shove Luis behind me and step in, hatchet rising.

A shot cracks overhead.

The infected drops ten feet in front of us, skull blown open like it got kicked from the inside.

Another shot.