“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s only ever five at most in a pack,” she whispered.
“Four here and one on the roof.”
Jackson tightened her hold on her weapon and took several, quick breaths. “No. There’s more. Listen.”
“Where—”
A zombie, the one that had found them, jumped from the garage, falling into a roll, before standing up so quickly that Jackson almost skittered back. Almost but didn’t. That would be unacceptable. The zombie would smell her fear and would come straight for her. Like animals, Jackson had long since suspected that they could sense the weakest person, and that person would never be her.
“Hello, Mr. Fucking Crash the Party,” Tye growled.
If things had not been so tense, Jackson would have rolled her eyes. “Really?”
Tye shrugged. “Just trying to mix it up.”
The zombie paused in front of them—and that in itself was odd because when did zombies ever pause with food in front of them?—before letting out a shrieking howl. The noise echoed in the space around them, unnaturally loud and menacing. It was almost like it was answering. Tye and Jackson glared.
It took one step forward, its movements jittery. Jackson could see its chest rising and falling far more rapidly than it should have done. If she stepped up close and put a hand against its chest she knew its heart rate would be frantic.
“Cross over?” she asked and next to her, she felt Tye nod.
Together they ran at it, and had it had any sense of survival it should have turned and bolted in the other direction, but of course it didn’t. With painful predictability it came straight for them.
Tye swung his ax at its head and Jackson ducked below him to swing her machete at its stomach. The weapons hit at almost the same time. Her blade—her perfectly formed blade—slicing right through the zombie’s skin, the fat, the muscle, and through to who knew what else. A moment later it crumpled to the ground. Jackson quickly averted her eyes, not wanting to see its internal organs decorating the sidewalk. God knew she’d seen enough intestines to last her several lifetimes.
They both paused, both slightly out of breath.
It was a zombie that broke the silence.
Jackson snapped into activity, sprinting across the lawn, the waist-high grass and scrub whipping around her thighs as she moved. Her foot wobbled slightly on an uneven patch of ground and she glanced down, surprised to see what looked like a hole in the muddy ground—a deep hole. Before she could work out exactly what it meant, Tye reached out to steady her.
She jumped over the hole, straight into a scraggly bush, before racing across the remaining lawn. Despite the fact she knew there were no zombies crouched and hiding in the vegetation—they didn’t have that kind of patience—Jackson couldn’t help the relief she felt as her feet touched concrete. The relief was short-lived. More zombie howls filled the air and Jackson grabbed Tye’s arm, pulling him across to the overturned SUV with her.
She crouched behind it again, trying to pinpoint the source of the howls. A moment later and she realized exactly where they were coming from. Her heart sank and she had to wipe her palms on her jeans. It was only when she did that Jackson realized she was coated with sweat, and it was cold, so the sweat chilled her skin. Or maybe it was just the fact that they were completely in the shit.
“They’re in both directions, cutting off our escape,” she whispered, trying and failing to keep her heart from racing. “Look.”
Tye followed her shaky finger and cursed softly when he spotted them. Several figures were standing on the roofs of the houses, their horrible, elongated forms outlined against the gray sky. Jackson counted five to the north, four to the south, equivalent to two other packs, and that was unheard of. Zombies never banded together in groups of more than five. Never.
“There could be more,” she added, swallowing against the words. “Waiting on the ground.”
“There’s too many,” Tye growled. “There shouldn’t be this many. What the fuck are they doing?”
Jackson adjusted her position, unwilling to think about that right now. There were far more important things to consider. Like staying alive, that one being fairly high on the fucking list. “There’s no way we can fight a pack each,” she said. “Not right now. We’d be as good as dead.”
Tye grunted at her words, most likely because he didn’t want to admit the truth of them, but there was no avoiding it. Already Jackson’s arms ached from the confrontation with the first pack. Her heart was beating far too quickly, and she was beginning to shake. That was all normal, the expected aftermath of a fight-for-your-life kinda situation, but it also meant that her reaction times would be slower, her swings a little less forceful.
“Ideas?” she asked.
“Not any you’re gonna like.”
“When do I ever?”
“We need to split the two packs,” Tye said after a moment. “Lead them in opposite directions, separate them, pick them off one by one.”
His meaning hit and she frowned. “Split us up, you mean.”
Tye shrugged. “It’s the only way. Just like when we first met, remember?”
Jackson nodded slowly, the memory of that first meeting so vivid, even now. She could recall perfectly the moment she’d realized that the man running down the street was actually alive. The first person she’d seen in what had to be well over a year. A few minutes later and they’d had no choice but to separate, Tye calling out the name of the street he was hiding on as he ran in the other direction, taking a pack of zombies with him. She’d worried all night that she’d imagined him, that he wouldn’t be there when she went looking. Only he was, and a full month later they were still surviving. Two friends, maybe the last two friends, against a never-ending number of the undead.
“Say we do this,” she said quickly. “What’s our meeting place?”
“We’ll meet by that chick store. The one you said looked like a Barbie brothel.”
Yes, she remembered it. The sign had said Kelly’s Clothing Boutique and the swooshy pink doors and windows had been oddly intact. “It’s maybe a ten-minute sprint from here,” she said.
“So I’ll take that,” Tye said, pointing to a house with its door hanging off. “I noticed a side alley behind there, leads onto a green. I’ll follow it around, baiting the bigger pack, and then come out at the end of the street. You head in the direction of the rec center and get the others to follow you. We passed it earlier remember? It’s only a couple of blocks over from the Barbie brothel, wait there for a bit, then double back.”
Jackson shivered as the zombies groaned. “Jesus, Tye, this feels like a bad idea in so many ways.” She sighed. “I swear it’s got fuck-up written all over it.”
“What other options do we have?” he asked, rotating his shoulders and taking a deep breath. Readying himself Jackson thought, the plan already clear in his mind. “Don’t tell me Jackson the bad-ass is scared.”
She glared, as, no doubt, he’d meant her to. “Scared I’ll have to come save your ass when the zombies corner you.”
“You know they’ll never take me alive.”
“That’s what worries me. You might be a dick ninety percent of the time but you’re the only friend I’ve got to watch my back. I’m not ready to lose you yet.”
He laughed, the soft, completely inappropriate sound echoing in the small space between them. “You won’t lose me. I promise. And even if you did you’d do fine. You’ve survived two years and then some. Skinny little thing like you—makes no sense and yet here you are.”
Jackson shook her head, not to deny his words, but to agree with them.
“We’ll find each other again. Don’t we always?”
“Always doesn’t mean the same thing anymore,” she said eventually. “You know it doesn’t.”
He shrugged. “It means what it means.”
“Which in today’s world is precisely nothing.” Their eyes met—his brown to her green and Jackson sighed,
