He came to rest inches from the sharp point of a tree root sticking from the ground. The proximity to impaling his skull was so frighteningly close that Clay didn’t even react, just lay there, assessing the damage he’d done to himself. If the scratches across his back were the worst of it, he would live; his bones and joints and tendons, the whole complex network of him, seemed to survive injury.
The woods around him were still, and he took his time getting his feet under him.
At least until a series of hard, descending crashes broke the silence to his left, and Clay saw a shadow plummeting far faster down the slope than he had. The shadow did a spectacular somersault, arms and legs thrown out, before it struck the nearest elm trunk, head first, and spun end over end. The impact with the tree alone would have killed an average man. But a burned zombie without a soul?
Clay struggled not to watch how the broken body unfolded itself. Run dammit! his mind screamed, and his numb feet staggered into the darkness between the trees. He ran with his hands held straight out, stiff-arming branches away before his face collided with them. His boots slipped over uneven ground; his ankle gave out more than once, but he maintained balance. Failing to do so was death now, no mistaking.
He couldn’t find the road he’d seen from above. His only option was to scale the nearest hill and hope something good appeared at the top. Legs pumping, hands grabbing for support, ignoring the burn in his lungs, the blood begging to be oxygenated in a way it hadn’t since varsity track—his heart, that lifelong drummer, struggling to maintain the beat.
Pushing himself, crawling the last ten feet to the summit, he spotted an open fairway on the other side. The golf course he’d passed earlier. Clay hurried down and hopped the chain-link onto manicured lawn. Lay down and die! his body screamed. Keep going, his mind begged, don’t look back, don’t look for—
Something squealed shrilly behind him.
Clay looked. Karney was cresting the hill he’d been standing on twenty seconds before. Apparently the mini-amp was on and picking up radio interference; its tea-kettle hiss sounded like like a battle cry as Karney gathered downward steam, spurred on by the sight of the winded prey idling below.
The grass was easier to run on at least, the ground unnaturally level. It was too early to expect much help from the moonlight, but lampposts positioned around the course helped Clay navigate. The greens were completely deserted, not even a groundskeeper to be found. Which was for the best (what could a bystander do but point and get murdered on the spot?). The image of Annie Strafford plunging the knife into Essie’s chest rose in his mind. The last thing Clay wanted was to get someone else killed.
Amid the open fairway, he risked another glance and realized Karney had crept closer, disconcertingly closer. How that was even possible on such ragged feet, on thigh muscles shriveled like overcooked steaks? Clay had no idea. But it was possible. The more Clay tired, the closer the predator drew.
The course’s front fence, and the street beyond, still lay a hundred yards off. Clay wasn’t going to get there before Karney got to him, and tackled him around the legs and— And what? Strangled him to death? Lit him on fire beside a water hazard? The myriad of horrors slowed his strides even more.
The amp suddenly squealed right behind him.
Clay veered just as a burnt hand swiped at him. He angled for a sand trap and as Karney redirected, Clay lifted a fistful of sand and hurled it into the leering face. Karney caught half in his mouth and didn’t bother spitting it out. He snared Clay by a heel and Clay kicked loose by dumb luck alone.
Stumbling, Clay gained the putting green, the hole just ahead. He grabbed at the flag like a dying man at a buoy, gasping, staring up at the red triangle with the white number 8 on it. “Pointless to run,” Karney hissed. “Just quit, quit, quit, motherfucker!”
Clay yanked the flag up and raised it in one motion. The bottom end speared itself straight through Karney’s charging midsection. The penetrating gurgle sounded like a hard stick driving into loose mud. Karney grunted, more in frustration than pain, and clacked his teeth together. And with seeming delight, he pushed himself forward, advancing along the length of the shaft. Clay used the pole as a lance, shoving him sideways, then backward. Karney fell, and Clay jammed the pole down through the green.
Stuck to the ground, the creature writhed and kicked his appendages like a pinned bug. Clay watched him struggle. It took all his restraint not to drive his boot through the burnt man’s skull. “What’s it take to kill you?” he asked.
“I wish I knew,” Karney replied, honestly.
From the dark, back the way they’d come—more movement. Clay spotted a white shadow running steadily across the fairway. Essie. Coming for him in that ghostly white fucking nightgown. “Oh, shit on me.”
“Yes!” Karney yelled, spotting her. Clay bolted off again, cutting through the rough, his head start enough to propel him safely over the front fence and through the dense, scratching hedgerow that separated the course from the public sidewalk.
Then he was racing along a residential street, heading downhill again before risking another peek.
Essie wasn’t coming.
He ran straight down the middle of the street, thinking if she could move as fast as Karney she might slip ahead on a parallel street, ambush him from the shadows of one of the houses. Approaching downtown
