Page 75 of Doomsdate

Just then, a crash explodes from the employee kitchen, followed by a scream. Connor turns toward the noise, and the second he does, I charge him, shoulder-first, straight into his gut.

Just like Ms. Shenandoah taught me.

The weird, breathy herrf that punches out of Connor’s disgustingly muscular abdomen is music to my ears as his feet briefly rise from the floor before he’s rammed backward, into the wall. His head claps against the mirrored glass, hard enough to leave his stupid face dazed.

“Well done, Professor!” Maisie’s eyes light up, and my heart sings from the praise.

“Get the keys!” I yell, but Maisie’s already on it, bent over and rummaging through Connor’s gym shorts pockets. She yanks them out, but not before Connor locks his fingers around her wrists and grunts.

“You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart.” He sneers at her, which quickly turns into confusion when she headbutts him neatly right in the decision-maker. With injuries to the back and front of his skull now, Connor has the real-life equivalent of the Looney Tunes birdies circling around his head. He lets go of her, hands falling limply to his sides.

More screams erupt from the kitchen, and the unmistakable sound of snarling. Ripping.

Tearing.

“Someone’s turned!” Maisie breathes out, her eyes wide. I immediately remember Weird Marching Guy, and a thrill of fear washes down my spine. “Quick, let’s go!”

I grab Chicken’s carrier in one hand and Maisie’s hand in the other, and together, we race toward the front doors. Connor’s gym-cult emporium devolves into utter chaos as the screams multiply, fold in on themselves, then explode once more. We leave it all behind, but not before Maisie grabs a couple of machetes from beside the door and leads us out into the eerie, waning light.

Maisie

I scale up the tractor tires first, then reach down for Chicken’s carrier. She hisses as she’s jostled to the back, and I cringe, hoping she won’t hold this against me. Cats don’t hold grudges, do they?

Everett scrambles up next, if not gracefully then at least adequately. The nerve of Connor calling him a “fixer-upper” grates on me all over again. But I can’t be too mad—judging by the new tenor of screaming from inside, the freshly made zombies have reached him now, too. The turning happened so fast. It must’ve been one of the people on A Crew who came in, and must’ve been from a bite, because nobody looked sick.

Guess immunity means nothing in the face of a bite, which, terrifying.

Perched on top of the tire wall, I look out at a sea of corpses. I nearly stagger off the side. The perimeter isn’t just tires, it turns out, but a maze of stacked dead bodies. The stink of it is all-consuming. So this is what Connor’s crews did with the zombies they killed.

It’s horrific. Pragmatic, but horrific.

I can’t believe I didn’t see the truth about Connor sooner.

Beyond the labyrinth of rotting flesh, upright zombies butt softly against the fortifications. They’re not fully active yet, but most are swaying in place, and some have begun to walk already. Their eyes emit a faint, flickering glow, like the light that dances on the underbellies of bridges. There are hundreds of zombies in the street, and dozens directly surrounding the gym.

And we have no Tasers, two machetes, and a furious, yowling cat.

“We can’t go down there.” I straighten to standing, wobbling as the top tire’s wall dips uncertainly beneath my feet, bowing toward its hollow middle. I quickly rebalance at the tire’s outer edge, where it’s thickest. “We have to walk the tires.”

Everett’s still breathing heavily from our escape, his legs dangling down the hollow middle of the tire stack as he sits. His eyes trail up to mine, doubtful, but maybe Connor’s cruel assessment of Everett’s abilities is still ringing in his ears, too, because he doesn’t argue and begins climbing out of the stack. The rubber groans against whatever epoxy Connor’s crew used to build this perimeter, but it holds as Everett steadies himself at the top. On this one task, he may actually have the advantage over me. While I have to jump from one tire edge across the opening to the other, or shuffle my way around the perimeter, Everett’s able to cross them with one long stride.

The zombies have begun to watch us. Pool-water eyes reflecting up to watch each of my jumps, each of his steps. And then, I hear it. The deep, rumbling undertone of an air conditioner humming in the background. It thrums on the wind’s back, like the breath of a great, sleeping monster slowly waking up. Which, I guess, is exactly what it is.

A man missing half his face thrusts himself at the nearest wall of corpses, reaching for me.

“Everett,” I say, stumbling forward. “They’re waking up!”

“Our gym friends are back, too!” The slick crunch of breaking fingers punctuates each of Everett’s footsteps.

They are everywhere, surrounding us on both sides, the neighborhood zombies held off momentarily by Connor’s flesh walls, and the gym rats directly below us to the right. God, I wish we had our Tasers. The tire wall simply isn’t tall enough for us to stay up here all night. Our best shot is to get somewhere zombie hands can’t reach. But where?

My eyes quickly scan the horizon in a clockwise sweep of terror.

Ahead, in the last patch of sunlight, appears to be the neighborhood park. At the crest of its hill, a purple roof with yellow plastic walls, a hot-pink tongue of a slide lolling out.

A fort.

“The playground, up ahead!” I take another bounding leap across a tire, arms spinning backward as one of the gym rats takes a bite out of the rubber directly by my foot and swallows.