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Samantha said, “It’s getting dark. We need to find a place for tonight.”
One by one the girls turned away, sickened and saddened by the senseless death. Samantha watched them head up the road, moving off the road and preparing to cut across country. There were plenty of empty houses and old buildings everywhere, and they hadn’t seen a reaper now for almost two hours.
Samantha lingered for a moment longer, thinking about the killings. She wanted to find some justification for what she’d done. These dead bodies were proof that the reapers were evil.
Right? she asked herself. What I did to that woman wasn’t wrong. It was justice. Right?
The questions echoed inside her head like thunder.
She wiped at her eyes, turned away, and hurried after the others.
But then she jerked to a halt as she saw something in the thickening gloom. It was a figure sitting slumped over against a tree. Big, bulky, bleeding.
It was in near-total darkness, except for one slack, outstretched arm that was covered with blood.
The blood looked fresh.
Had it moved? Did the fingers of that slack arm twitch?
Was it a victim of the attack reanimating as a zom?
That fit the circumstances but not the timing. This massacre was hours old, maybe as much as half a day. Any dead would have risen.
Unless . . .
There were two real possibilities. A person who’d been injured and had recently passed, and was now reanimating. Or a person who was injured and perhaps dying. Alive, but badly wounded.
Samantha wanted to turn and run. This wasn’t her matter; it had nothing to do with her. If it was a zombie, then dispatching it was a dangerous waste of time. If it was a wounded person, then it would be a drag on resources and a burden when efficient flight might be the only thing that would help Samantha and her little tribe survive.
She started to turn. She actually took three small steps away from the slumped fingers, but then she stopped again.
The hand twitched again.
Samantha backed away. She wanted no part of this; she wasn’t sure she could be a participant to another death. She’d had her fill.
She turned her back on the figure and began to jog along the path taken by the other girls.
“Please . . .”
It was a single word, and she could have imagined it.
Perhaps it was not even a word.
She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut.
The word echoed in her head.
Please.
Up ahead the other girls were making good time, but Heather, the last in the line, glanced back.
“Come on!” called the girl.
Samantha nodded.
But not to Heather.
She abruptly turned and walked back to the slumped figure.
