Page 38 of When the Living Fall

He blinks up at me, eyes widening with surprise. “Emily? Didn’t you leave?”

“I did, and now I’m back. Well, for a little while at least. But I found what I needed, and now I’m here to get you.”

“You’re really good at finding things,” he says.

I can’t help the small laugh that comes out. “Well, that’s acompliment I’ll take. But first, let’s get out of here before the rotters come back.”

Josh looks past me and glances around the room at the open door I came through. “Where did they all go?”

“My friends drew them away, but that won’t last. There are too many of them, and we need to hurry.”

We almost make it to the front door when the air outside pulses with the unmistakable sound of chaos. The normal sound of rotters shuffling away changes into something else. Something larger. Something more.

Things crash, stuff breaks, and shrieks rise.

There are too many of them. They’re everywhere.

Outside, the once silent street has devolved into a battlefield. I need to help, but I need to keep Josh safe, too. Remembering our escape from the dreg hideout, I search along the outside of the building and have to hold in a relieved cry when I spot the ladder. I usher him toward it. “Climb this, and I’ll come back for you.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“Not for long. Remember my friends who came with me to help you?” When he nods, I continue. “Well, now I need to help them.”

I shift my body to keep him from seeing the scene in front of us. He’s going to see it anyway when he gets onto the roof, but at least by then he’ll be out of danger, even if my guys and I don’t make it out.

22

MAX

The horde of rotters follows behind me, drawn by the chaos I’m creating. They follow as though they’ve latched onto me like a pack of rabid dogs. What good dogs they are. Well, not nearly as good as Buddy, who tears through the rotters straggling along at the edges. He reduces the numbers, but it still seems like each one we kill only draws another in from the shadows. We’ve taken down a lot, but it doesn’t look like we’ve even made a dent.

It’s almost like they’re multiplying. What the…

I keep spinning and changing direction, each pivot dispatching another rotter or sidestepping a dead hand clawing at me, but they keep coming. Flooding from alleys, from behind overturned cars, drawn to the noise I’m making. Well, that’s fantastic.

A dead hand lands on my shoulder, and I greet it with a knife through the eye. Damn it, we can’t keep up with them. I move in an arc due to all the new rotters joining in on the dance party they were never invited to. How inconsiderate. I’m supposed to crash their parties, not the other way around. The guest list was already full.

I glimpse William fighting his own small horde. He fallsback to avoid gnashing teeth, and then lunges forward and takes care of them. Rinse and repeat. The thing that really catches my attention, though, is that Emily’s not with him. I scan around, but she’s nowhere in sight. All I can do is hope she’s found the kid and is getting him—and herself—to safety.

The dead keep coming. I dodge and weave, but my stamina is waning. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all those candy bars from the vending machine after all. At least Emily convinced me to eat some protein, or else I’d be going through a sugar crash right now. Maybe I could start an apocalyptic diet program. Sell it to people in exchange for weapons, or something. Sweet. I’ve got an entire business to start up. Now I’m going to have to survive this.

I leap to the side when a rotter tries to sink its yellowing teeth into my arm. Despite my silence and lack of movement, they remain fixated on me like a beacon. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this right now, but I’ll figure something out. I always do. Life is funny like that; it tends to keep me alive long enough to suffer more, because there’s never enough suffering in this world for dear ‘ole Max.

Right when I’m about to get boxed in, my back collides with another rotter. These fuckers are everywhere, I swear.

I whirl around, knife ready to stab through its head, but my hand stops mid-air. Emily. She’s right there, battling another rotter beside me, oblivious to my near attack. My heart pounds like crazy at what I almost did.

She glances at me, eyes flashing with worry. “I don’t know where they all keep coming from,” she says, voice ragged while she plunges her knife into a rotter’s eye socket, then yanking it free in a quick, brutal motion.

Looking over her head, I realize she’s been backing away from a horde of her own. The only way out now is to head back toward the colony. I would be fine with sending themafter Richard, but not when Emily is on the front line. Which means there’s only one thing to do.

More rotters close in, surrounding us, and I know we’re out of options. I grab her shoulder, pulling her around to face me, and she stops fighting. She senses the desperation in my eyes.

“Please don’t tell me you were bit.” Her hands move over my arms, my neck, my face, searching for wounds. Her fingertips brush across my lips, and I pull her to the side so I can stab a rotter that almost got to her, then turn back around to face her.

“No, pet, it’s not that.” I brush her hair back with a tenderness that surprises even me. It’s such a mess since she gave her only hair tie to me. She looks over her shoulder at the path leading back to the safety of the colony’s walls.

“We can make a break for it.” She nods toward the road, then takes down another rotter that reaches us. “We’ll get close enough that they’ll see us. They’ll help.”

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