Page 69

“You think?”

She smiled, then her nose wrinkled, and she stepped away from me, taking in the car park. “Oh crap. Look.”

I faced the same direction and clocked a pile of bodies between a couple of cars in the far corner, stacked neatly as if out of respect. They all had one thing in common. Head injuries.

“That’s a good sign,” I said. “As fucked up as it sounds, it means people are still here.”

Ava stared hard at the pile, her lips compressed. A beat later, she let out a gusty breath and tried to smile, but the expression wouldn’t hold. “No blondes. She’s not one of them.”

Cupping the back of her head, I stroked my thumb over her hair, tempted to press my lips to her forehead. Instead, I grabbed the axe from behind the passenger seat and handed it to her, leaning in again for my weapon. My fingers curled around the nail gun first, then I changed my mind and went for the pickaxe.

“Retiring the nail gun?” Ava asked, watching me through the window.

I eased back from the opening and shut the door. “We didn’t know any better at the start,” I said, gripping the handle. “Now we do.”

A movement came from the driveway, the scrape of shoes on concrete.

“Infected,” Ava said.

More than one. The footsteps staggered closer, and the rot hovering in the air intensified.

We could run for the door and hope it opened. Or take care of them now, so the noise they made didn’t bring more. “Feel like working off some tension?”

The first two stumbled into the opening, shoulders bumping together. The bigger one—a man in a torn rugby shirt with his hair caked in blood—caught our scent almost immediately.

“It’s for the best,” she said. “They’ll end up stuck back here if we don’t take care of them now.”

Three more came through behind him, then the older woman in her flannel robe and slippers.

“Stay close,” I said.

Rugby Shirt tripped over a raised corner of concrete and hit the ground hard. Before he could push himself upright, I drove the point of the pickaxe into the back of his skull.

A young woman in a hospital gown slammed into the side of a parked car before correcting course. The muscles in my back tensed as I took her down, the impact jarring my arms.

“I’ve got this one.” With an overhead swing, Ava’s axe came down hard on a bald man’s skull.

Before he’d even hit the ground, Ava was searching for her next target.

A man in a battered tracksuit came for me, the side of his mouth torn so badly it was twice as wide. My blade connected with a crack, off centre, but with enough force to send him to his knees. He fell face down and scrabbled for my leg, a desperate moan tearing from him.

I stepped away from his still-moving body.

Ava had taken out another, driving her weapon forward and ripping it away in the same breath.

My pickaxe sank into Flannel Robe, and I wrenched it free just as Tracksuit Guy on the ground grabbed my jeans. The denim tightened around my calf as he tugged, and I kicked out hard.

He held on, dragging himself higher up my leg, clutching my thigh.

I raised my pickaxe, but I couldn’t get a clean hit without risking injury.

Before I could decide on my next move, Ava’s boot crashed down on his lower back, breaking his grip and slamming his face into the concrete.

I yanked my leg free and stumbled a couple of steps away as she swooped in and finished him.

Nothing else moved. Nothing came for me.

I kept my pickaxe raised. So close.