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There were bites everywhere. Most of his right forearm was gone. The meat of his hand hung on the bones like a loose glove.
And the little Han girl. Lucy? Lacey? Something like that.
Ten, maybe eleven.
She had no eyes.
They were coming toward Tom and his brother. Reaching with hands. Some of those hands were slashed and bitten. Or gone completely. None of the wounds bled.
Why didn’t the wounds bleed?
Why didn’t the damn wounds bleed?
“No,” said Tom.
Even to his own ears his voice sounded wrong. Way too calm. Way too normal.
Calm and normal were dead concepts. There was no normal.
Or maybe this was normal.
Now.
But calm? No, that was gone. That was trashed. That was . . .
Consumed.
The word came into his head, unwanted and unwelcome. Shining with truth. Ugly in its accuracy.
“Tuh . . . Tuh . . . Tuh . . .”
Benny’s voice was not calm.
It broke Tom.
It broke the spell of stillness.
It broke something in his chest.
Tom’s next word was not calm. Might not actually have been a word. It started out as “No,” but it changed, warped, splintered, and tore his throat ragged on the way out. A long wail, as unending as the moans of his neighbors. Higher, though, not a monotone. Not a simple statement of need. This was pure denial, and he screamed it at them as they came toward him, pawing the air. For him. For Benny. For anything warm, anything alive.
For meat.
Tom felt himself turn but didn’t know how he managed it. His mind was frozen. His scream kept rising and rising. But his body turned.
And ran.
And ran.
God, he ran.
They, however, were everywhere.
The darkness pulsed with the red and blue of police lights; the banshee wail of sirens tore apart the shadows of the California night, but no police came for him. No help came for them.
The little boy in his arms screamed and screamed and screamed.
Pale shapes lurched toward him from the shadows. Some of them were victims—their wounds still bleeding—still able to bleed; their eyes wide with shock and incomprehension. Others were more of them.
