Devoured by - (ebook reader browser .txt) 📖

limp in the woman’s arms.

Lance stalked forward, ready to plunge his knife into her eye when her temple exploded outward, rigidity overtaking her limbs as she fell sideways.

Eifort came up from the right, an M16 in her hands.

“Thanks,” Lance said, barely hearing his own voice over the screams of the wounded.

She gave him a nod and fell in line beside them.

The three advanced slowly as people ran into them, begging for help or trying to take their weapons. Twice, Lance thought he would have to use his knife on someone to keep them from wrestling it away from him.

A massive gunfight ahead, still not visible to them, saturated the air with manmade thunder.

Cass lunged forward, startling Lance, and plunged her axe through the top of a tent. The fabric sliced away, splitting open. A daywalker lay inside, atop a teenager of no more than thirteen. The axe split the infected’s skull, almost cleaving the head in two.

The teen’s neck was a mass of seeping gore.

Lance looked away, fighting back the urge to vomit.

“How many of them are there?” Lance asked.

Cass pulled her axe free of the tent, unimaginable bodily fluid dripping from its blade. “A shitload.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Shut up and fight, dumbass!”

Three of the daywalkers tore through a tent, a man’s screams coming from inside. Eifort took the first with three bullets to the chest. Cass spun around as she had before, and swung the axe with all her might, slicing through the neck of the first. The blade lodged in the temple of the second, shorter infected.

Lance looked back and forth from the smaller knife in his hand to Eifort’s rifle and Cass’ axe. “I’m feeling a little emasculated right now.”

No one laughed as they continued forward, determined.

A soldier rushed past them, clutching at a gaping wound on his upper arm, his face a pale mask of terror.

This place can’t come back from this. They’ll have to kill too many of their own because of the infection.

They came upon a family of three backing away from two eyeless, vascular creatures. Their bodies were further along than most, the light of day just starting to bother their skin. Eifort couldn’t get a clear shot because of the people, so Lance charged forward, throwing his shoulder into the biggest.

He fell forward, tripping over the daywalker’s feet. They bounced off the concrete, grappling at each other’s arms. It snapped at him, distended canines gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.

Lance slashed with his knife, severing two elongated fingers. It wailed and lunged for him, mouth angling for his neck.

With all his might, he jammed the knife upward, catching it under the jaw. The blade plunged in, cutting through flesh and bone before the tip embedded in its brain. Blood gushed from the wound as Lance heaved its thrashing body to the side and scrambled back to his feet.

He pulled his knife free and spun around, looking for the other creature in time to see Cass lodge her axe in its chest. As the safe zone crumbled around him, Lance couldn’t help but marvel at her ferocity.

She never hesitated.

Eifort shouted someone’s name and ran ahead. Lance lost sight of her amid the throng of fighting people and monsters.

Something grabbed his shoulder and Lance spun around, knife raised.

Doc Brown stood behind him, face stricken and pale. “It’s lost. All of it.”

“No shit.” Lance turned back, facing the carnage. “Stick with us—we’re getting the hell out of here.”

“I have to help these people! They deserve everything I have.”

“There isn’t going to be anyone left to help.” Cass pointed at the sun, now inches above the horizon. “The big boys are going to come out to play soon. If we aren’t on the water by then, it’s game over. We can’t fight the Vladdies—no one can.”

The doc watched the bloodshed around them, a solitary tear spilling from a welled eye. “Ok.”

Lance took the lead, helping those he could and avoiding confrontations he knew he couldn’t win.

They got a clear sight of the barbed wire fence when they were halfway through the parking lots. Dozens of the infected climbed through. Without soldiers picking them off as they tried to enter, the daywalkers poured through the defenses.

“Where are the guards?” Lance asked.

“Up there,” Cass gestured to the shore with her axe. “I can see the top of a big ass boat. Looks like it might have been carrying the infected.”

That didn’t seem possible to Lance. How could the daywalkers pilot a boat? They were mindless, mad creatures that were only a day or two away from sulking in the shadow of night. Walking proved difficult for some of them, let alone utilizing a ship.

A gap in the fighting proved Cass correct. Lance caught sight of a large ship, two stories with a deck and cabin on top, floating off the shore. A long plank ran from the tip, resting on the rocks a few feet from the water’s edge.

“Isn’t that one of the Gateway Clipper ships?”

“Who gives a shit?” Cass took out the knee of an onrushing daywalker, severing the joint. She swung the axe overhead as it fell to the ground, and sliced through its upper back. “It’s our ticket out of here!”

“Can you drive it?” Lance didn’t know anything about boats.

“You grab the wheel and steer—how hard can it be?”

Brown knelt beside a woman whose neck was torn away. Her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, hands grabbing onto his filthy coat. He whispered something into her ear as her movements grew sluggish. He held her, watching her face slacken, her eyes glaze over.

Lance felt sorry for the doctor, for all of them, because they thought this camp would protect them. They pretended that the nightmares outside couldn’t get in. What little hope remained in the world was dashed as the final refuge of the city fell.

Grabbing the doc’s coat, he lifted him away from the dead woman. “Come on, Emmett. We need to keep moving.”

Cass pushed ahead, straying off to the side for a moment as she freed a man from the grasp of two daywalkers. She cut them down with relative ease and moved on as the man ran away without thanking her.

Something whistled by Lance’s ear. He flinched away, ducking out of instinct.

Doc Brown grunted and fell to his knees. His coat soaked through by his left shoulder, a crimson stain spreading.

“Doc!” Lance reached for him when he heard something else zip past his head. He dove into the doctor, shoving him to his back.

Lance scanned the area in front them, trying to see if the shooter was aiming for them or if the shots were meant for the infected. He spotted the source a second later—the young soldier.

A sinister grin distorted his baby face.

He’s as mad as those with the Xavier virus.

Lance stared into the barrel of the man’s rifle as he stepped forward.

“Why?” Lance asked him as he sat up.

Brown clutched at his shoulder, teeth gritted.

“Why not? When the world goes to hell you can do whatever you want.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, I don’t think so. Now, tell me where the bitch is, and I’ll make this quick. She and I have a date.”

Past the man’s legs, Lance spotted Cass swinging at a creature hidden behind a tent. She hadn’t noticed yet that Lance and the doc weren’t with her.

“Are you deaf?” Lance held a hand to his ear, pressing the lobe forward. “All the other soldiers around here are trying to help. You’re only destroying. So go fuck yourself.”

“Suit yourself. We’ll see if a gut shot loosens your—”

The soldier’s chest hitched. The barrel of the rifle wavered before falling by his side. Spittle fell from his lips, hanging from his chin.

He dropped to his knees, his eyebrows arching as he stared at the spreading dark patch in his uniform.

Eifort came up from behind him, rifle trained on his back.

The young man fell face first into the parking lot, his head thudding off the hard surface. He didn’t move again.

“I always hated that guy.” Eifort held a hand out to Lance, helping him up. “One of those assholes who joins the military so he can kill terrorists, not to keep people safe. He’s been flakey ever since we got here.”

“Thanks,” Lance said. “But he had a flunkey following him around. You see him anywhere?”

“I found his body over there. He was shot in the back.” She tapped the dead soldier’s boot. “Rodgers probably shot him.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Because he could. The man was a psychopath.”

Lance looped his arm under Brown’s armpit and heaved him to his feet. “You going to make it, Doc?”

“I need to stop the bleeding,” he grunted through clenched teeth. “Hurts like hell.”

“Can you walk? We need to get to the boat.”

“I think so.”

“What about the boat?” Eifort asked.

“We’re using it to get the hell out of here.” Lance