Page 76 of Doomsdate

Good god.

Everett’s there behind me, supporting my back and keeping me from falling into the tire’s middle, or worse, the throng of zombies slowly coming online. There’s no escaping it, though—we have to jump down, we have to run, and we have to be fast.

“Grab my waistband!” I yell at Everett. Without question, he sinks his warm fingers into the back of my jeans possessively. I love the way he trusts me, and I vow to do better by him on this, too. Because Everett knew Connor was dangerous while I was still asking about supplies.

With my feet braced apart and Everett’s strong grip keeping me level, I sink both machetes into the skulls of the zombies waiting below. With Everett grounding me, I clear a few more out of our way, but more are coming.

“On the count of three, we jump down, and we run like hell for that playground. Only hack who tries to eat us, okay?”

“Wait!” Everett unlatches the metal grate of Chicken’s carrier and pulls the small gray cat out. She’s pissed, but seems less so after he deposits her onto his shoulder. She hunches over hissing, claws out like a gargoyle. He flings the carrier at a zombie’s head, hard, knocking it over like a bowling pin. “Okay!”

“One, two, three!” We leap, side by side, into the street. Heads turn toward us, as though their glazed, gleaming eyes still see. Maybe they can, or maybe it’s our smell guiding their clumsy feet forward. We run through the maze, gagging from the stench, until we reach the exit onto the road.

The moaning grows, rising around us like a specter, everywhere and nowhere, pulling at my insides with a sick, nauseating tug. I run faster. Force my feet to grind into the pavement, propel my body forward. I want to look at Everett, want the assurance he’s right behind me, that he’s still there. That he’s still him. But I can’t. If I turn, I’ll stumble. I’ll trip.

And what if he’s not? What if I’m alone?

Hands buffet me, fingernails scrabbling against my skin, seeking purchase in my flesh. The slash of my machete parts heads from bodies, splits jaws in half. A woman in a nightgown appears suddenly beside me, groans in my ear as I try, and fail, to pull my machete out of an old man’s head. A red line appears between her glowing eyes, ending at her nose, and she sinks to the concrete.

Everett’s still behind me.

We’ve reached the grassy hill, and already the zombies begin to slow behind us, their ability to traverse anything but flat ground incredibly limited. We don’t slow down, though, and there are still zombies in this park. Just fewer of them, and that is advantage enough. Everett wheezes behind me. Something crunches.

“Fuck! My glasses!”

“Keep running, I’ll lead you!” I grab at his hand and pull.

The playground is just ahead. Ignore the children standing there, eyes wide and glowing. Ignore their missing limbs. Climb the ladder, keep going as the bloody soles of my shoes slip and squeak.

I reach the top of the fort. There’s a teenager in there, two, but they’re already white-eyed and snarling. I kick one in the face, and it tumbles down the slide on its back, taking the other one with it. The surly teen zombies land in a pile at the bottom. As the fort’s newest residents, I collapse onto my ass and scoot quickly to make room for Everett next to me. Chicken mrreaahs testily as she hops down from Everett’s shoulder and bunches up in the corner, her fur spiked.

One of the horror-children below rams the base of the ladder but is unable to do much else. Everett leans over and squints as the blond child rams the ladder again, making a resonant bong.

“Well, this is going to mess me up for forever,” he says, then leans back in. “Pretty glad I don’t have my glasses to see it, actually.”

“Your glasses! What a disaster.” I rub my temples and sigh. “We’ll look for them tomorrow, as soon as we can leave.”

“Guess we’re spending the night up here,” Everett muses as he gazes through the little plastic window to the packed street beyond. “We do not want to go to this block party.”

I take a deep, shuddering breath in. “Gramps will be so worried when I don’t check in tonight.”

Everett’s face falls, and I realize for the first time since I woke up in Connor’s gym the broader implications of our kidnapping. “Oh, Everett. Your family! The helicopter—we missed them!”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice loaded and heavy. “Not good. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I look at his lowered face, the tired line of his jaw.

“Well, it’s a good thing I do.”

He glances up at me, tentative. “What?”

“You rescued me back there, which kind of makes me your responsibility, if you think about it.” I smile as I parrot his words back to him. Was it only three days ago that he threw that at me in his living room?

He huffs. “More like you rescued me. Again.”

“Well, then you’re my responsibility, too. I guess our road trip just has to continue.”

“Maisie.” His eyes, so big without his glasses, look at me fondly and with a relief so palpable I could reach out and touch it. “Have I ever told you you’re the best survival partner ever?”