Page 18 of Between Two Thorns

Together, they sent the heavy metal bed into the horde of monsters.

Rose could almost hear the crunch, from the way the zombies snapped and seemed to burst with neon green flecks of dust.

Sam was free and slamming the door.

Rose squealed—an arm was caught in the door. And now it was inside the back of the ambulance with them.

She might pass out.

Sam vaulted over into the driver’s seat as Rose clung to the back of it, slapping the faux leather urgently. “Drive, drive, drive, drive, drive!” she urged, shoving forward until Del pulled her over into the seat with him.

Sam turned, cranking the bus; the engine revved and the sirens automatically sounded.

Rose saw humans flinching outside, covering their ears, but the greenish creatures didn’t even seem bothered.

“Go, Sam, drive!!” she yelled.

His hands were on the wheel but his knuckles were turning white and the hair on his tanned arms was raised. “I can’t, I’ll hit—someone, everyone.”

“You’re not hitting someone’s. Those are fucking zombies!” Rose thundered at him, pushing up from Del’s lap into the middle of the bench.

“How do you know—”

“Have you ever seen a movie in your freaking life!? Drive!” Rose leaped forward, launching herself as best she could with her wrapped foot, stomping her heel onto the accelerator pedal.

The whole rig jolted, spinning on the dirt before it gained purchase, and lurched forward.

Bodies crashed and crunched into the front of the ambulance.

Sam grabbed the wheel, steering hard out of the way of people as best he could, though someone still flew across the hood. The noise was horrendous. In a way that scraped against her skull and felt like it would take hold of Rose’s brain.

They careened off into the desert, zombies falling from the roof and clinging to the sides.

And they didn’t stop until all was dark and quiet.

Day One

SamEstradadidn’tknowhow long they drove straight into the desert.

Time had stopped having any sort of meaning the moment he registered bodies hitting the hood of the ambulance and bouncing off in the sickening way. The thud of flesh could only make that sound against unforgiving metal.

Sam, the former army medic, was no longer driving the getaway ambulance at midnight—it transported him back in time to another desolate and just as unforgiving desert. Where the sun beat down on every inch of exposed skin, and sand somehow found its way into the gap between neck and shirt and settled in every nook and cranny it could.

The Humvee wasn’t all that different from an ambulance, and though he hadn’t been driving down that dusty road all those years ago, he couldn’t make his hands unclench from the wheel in front of him, his elbows locked in and steering them ever onward and ever forward.

That was the last time he had seen bodies colliding with the hood of the vehicle he was in. Though it had been following an ear-rending explosion and a burst of fiery light—it was never something that was far from his mind.

Even if only cacti were colliding with the hood of the rig now.

“Sam?” the woman’s voice sounded like it was calling to him from the bottom of a deep well. Or maybe the medic was the one who was at the bottom of it—because it sure was dark out for an IED attack in the middle of the day.

The older man took a sharp inhale through his nose, blinked, and looked around.

He wasn’t on duty serving another tour. He wasn’t in that hellhole.

He’d traded it for another.

Sam wrenched his foot back from the accelerator petal, looking around through the dark windows as he tried to get his bearings, before he turned his head to the right and he looked over and saw his two companions.

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