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Wesker launches.
He clears the lowest bent section and squeezes through the gap, landing hard before racing straight to Carlos. Carlos drops one hand to the dog’s neck without looking, fingers burying themselves in dusty fur.
I turn sideways and force myself through the gap. The bent metal catches my jeans, ripping through fabric and skin at my thigh. Pain flashes hot down my leg.
Blood seeps immediately.
We hustle down the alley, the exposed gate behind us slowing the horde but not stopping it. Dead hands shove through the bent metal. The whole fence rattles, the padlock clanging uselessly against the warped latch.
Jacob points ahead. “This way!”
We tear down the alley, lungs burning in the cold. Clair’s rifle cracks above and behind us, each shot reminding me she is still up there.
Still exposed.
Still covering our asses.
We duck into a corner picture-framing store with a shattered sign, Ed’s Two Seconds Framing. Inside, the air smells like dust and old paper. Framed prints line the walls at crooked angles. Watercolor landscapes. Wedding photos. A cracked poster of the Chicago skyline from before the world went to shit.
Shelves slam into place behind us. Jacob and Lyla shove a display rack across the door while Trish kicks loose frames under it to jam the bottom. A tall spinning rack tips over, blocking the entrance just as the first bodies hit the glass.
The pounding starts immediately.
Relentless.
Wood cracks. Glass trembles. Picture frames rattle on the walls.
I finally step back, breathing hard, grip still tight on the hatchet. Blood, not all of it mine, drips from my hand to the floor.
SIXTEEN
WHEN JO-JO ATTACKS
LEON
Carlos stands near the center of the store, chest heaving, eyes scanning.
Counting.
His gaze jumps from Luis to Wesker, to the empty spaces where the others should be.
“There were eight of us,” he says, voice rough. “Eight.”
The number lands harder than the pounding at the door.
Luis stands beside him, silent and shaking. His face has gone gray beneath the dirt, eyes too wide, one hand still fisted in Wesker’s fur like letting go might make the dog vanish too. Wesker bumps his head against Luis’s leg with a whine.
Carlos drags both hands through his hair. He paces once, then turns and rips a frame off the wall. It shatters against the floor, glass spraying across the tile. Then another. Then another. A family portrait cracks beneath his boot, four strangers smiling from a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
“They were right behind me,” he says, voice rising. “I told them to stay close. I told them to fucking stay close.”
Another frame comes down.
“FUCK!”
His voice breaks on the word.
He stumbles backward until he hits the wall, then slides down it like his bones have finally given out. Broken glass crunches under him. He doesn’t seem to feel it.
