Page 89 of What Remains

Jay froze. "What?"

Seth opened his door, rifle in hand, his eyes sweeping the scene. The ditch, the woods, the angled cars. No infected. No movement. Nothing. The perfect stillness tightened his stomach more than any visible threat.

"It's too clean."

Josie stepped out beside him. "What do you mean?"

He nodded toward the vehicles. "No blood."

She frowned, understanding dawning. "No bodies."

"Exactly."

Jay began slowly backing toward the Suburban. "Maybe people just⁠—"

A glint caught Seth's eye. Sunlight reflecting off glass—not windshield glass.

Optics.

"DOWN!"

The crack of a rifle split the morning. The round shattered one of the vehicles windshield exactly where Seth's head had been a second earlier.

Gunfire exploded from both sides of the road, bullets punching into metal, windows bursting into glittering shards that scattered across the snow.

"Trees!” Jay yelled, diving behind the Suburban.

Seth shoved Josie behind the engine block just as another round ricocheted off the hood, close enough to spray them both with paint chips. "They're flanking us!"

"At least six of them!" Jay shouted.

Cara returned fire from behind the driver's door. "They've got the high ground!"

Seth risked a glance over the hood and saw nothing—the shooters stayed hidden among the pines, patient and deliberate. Military discipline. A cold knot of certainty formed in his gut. These weren't desperate survivors. This was organized.

Another rifle cracked. Jay grunted.

"You hit?"

"I'm good!"

Metal screamed as another bullet punched clean through the Suburban's rear panel.

"We're pinned!" Cara yelled.

Seth's mind raced through options, each one coming up empty. Wrong position. Wrong terrain. No cover, save for the two vehicles systematically being riddled with bullets around them. They were losing, and everyone behind those trees knew it.

Then a different rifle answered.

Crack.

One of the hidden shooters collapsed backward out of the trees.

Crack.

Another dropped.

The precise shots echoed across the valley, and confused shouting erupted from the woods. "What the hell?" a panicked voice yelled.