“Oh, hell yes,” Bruce said.
“Everyone, stand back,” Leo ordered. The last thing they needed was for one of them to get their asses or eyebrows singed in the operation. “Jim, stand as far back as you can.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Jim gave him a mock salute as the rest of them made a wide circle around the truck. He held up the Zippo and flicked it on. A tiny flame danced on the end.
“Fuck you, assholes,” Jim said.
The silver Zippo arched through the air. It tinked into the back of the truck.
The gasoline ignited with a whoosh. Jennifer squealed in surprise as heat and flames ballooned outward. Leo just grinned.
“Best Craig fireball ever,” he pronounced.
They slapped high fives with one another before heading to the remaining truck. Jim and Tate jumped into the back with the cow. Bruce joined them while Jennifer hopped into the cab.
Anton intercepted Leo as he headed for the driver’s seat. “I saw that rock you threw,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Tell me the truth. Did you really injure your shoulder that badly? Dr. Cain said you’d never regain full movement.”
Leo sighed. He supposed there wasn’t any reason to keep it a secret anymore. He was going to be using his arm a lot if they continued to fight the Russians, which he fully intended to do.
“No. I was never injured at all.”
“But ...” Anton’s brow furrowed. “Why did you pretend? I know how much you wanted to play for Cal.”
“I did it for Dad. For the farm. For you and Lena.” Leo mentally went back to that day he’d snooped through his father’s things and found the bills.
Ever since that day, he’d wished he could unknow all that he’d learned while rifling through the desk. It had changed the course of his life.
“Dad was close to losing the farm,” he said. “He mortgaged everything to pay for Mom’s chemo. How could I help if I was off playing football at Berkley? Dad would never have agreed to let me stay. So I ... faked my injury. Dr. Cain played along when I explained the situation. I hoped that if I could get the hunting business off the ground, we’d bring in enough extra money to pay off the banks and save the farm.”
Anton just stared at him. “I—I didn’t know.”
“Sorry I’ve been such a royal dick to you.”
Anton’s mouth fell open.
The moment was almost too much for Leo. He turned his back on Anton, striding to the truck where the others waited. “Come on,” he called. “Nonna will be worried about us.”
Chapter 26Rising Dead
HAND IN HAND, DAL AND Lena ran.
Nezhit seemed to be multiplying by the second. Everyone who had been infected with the initial attack was now turning into a monster.
It wasn’t enough that they wanted to kill. The fuckers were fast.
He and Lena had dodged a large pack of them outside the foreign language department by sheer dumb luck. A stray dog ran by just ahead of them and drew the attention of the pack by barking. If not for that poor dog, Lena and Dal would be dead.
They now hugged the perimeter of the campus, hoping to avoid all large groups in the interior. Dal could still hear them. They growled and snarled. Sometimes they even barked or howled.
He wasn’t stupid enough to think they could survive a run-in with a large group of the infected. They’d barely survived an encounter with a scant handful. Their only hope of making it off the campus was to get through undetected.
They ducked behind a picnic table as a group of six infected came around a corner. Dal tightened his grip on his machine gun. He’d discarded the fireplace poker in favor of the weapon back in the science building. Lena positioned her machine gun on her shoulder. In tense silence, they waited.
The nezhit snarled their way closer, sniffing at the ground. Overhead, a squirrel darted through a tree. One infected broke away from the group and attacked the tree, hitting the bark so hard Dal heard something crack. He was a twenty-something kid, probably Dal’s age. Hell, that could have been Dal if he hadn’t gotten lucky.
The kid kicked and bit and scratched at the tree until there was blood on his fingernails and all around his mouth. When the squirrel jumped to the next closest tree, he attacked the next trunk with equal vigor.
The strength and ferocity made Dal sick with fear. They had to get out of here.
The rest of the group had gathered around a dead body on the ground. Dal squinted through the gloom, trying to get a good look at what they were doing. Though he’d seen a nezhit bite, he hadn’t actually seen them eat a human. Maybe they were into dead bodies instead of living ones, like vultures.
The thought made him queasy.
There was a light post ten feet away from the group of nezhit. Their constantly shifting bodies made it possible for Dal to see the dead body in their midst. They prodded at it, sniffing and grunting. A few of them even whined.
The body stirred. At first Dal thought it was just the effect of being poked by all the nezhit. Then he noticed the black veins on the head, neck, and arms of the body. Gooseflesh prickled the back of his neck.
The dead body slowly sat up, blinking as it looked at the ring of nezhit. It was a girl in plain jeans a flowered blouse. Dal waited to see if the infected would attack her.
They didn’t. They moved in closer, prodding until the dead girl rose to her feet. She hunched with the rest of them, bloodshot eyes scanning the area.
Holy shit. Dal’s mouth hung open.
That girl had been dead. Flat out dead with enough blood around her to fill a bathtub.
Yet there she was, upright and walking with her fellow nezhit.
There was only one word to describe a reanimated corpse. That word beat inside his head like
