Page 53 of What Remains

Seth's head snapped toward the treeline. Cara had already raised her bow, an arrow nocked before anyone spoke. Jay slowly lifted his binoculars.

"What did you say?" Josie asked, her voice suddenly tight.

Layla pointed deeper into the pines. "See?"

For half a second, Seth saw nothing but trunks, shadows, and falling snow. Then—movement. A face, there and gone. Another figure slipped behind a tree fifty yards farther back, someone wearing camouflage.

They were still. Too still for the infected. Watching.

"Shit. How many?" Seth snapped.

"I've got three!" Cara called, as she tracked the treeline.

Jay steadied the binoculars against the wind. "Five..." His voice hardened. "No. Six."

More shapes appeared between the trees, none of them moving toward the group. They simply stood there in the falling snow, silent and patient, and that stillness carried more menace than any charge would have.

One man stood slightly apart from the others, his eyes locked on Josie and Layla. Josie was already backing away, pulling the girl with her.

Seth's pulse hammered as he cataloged what he could see. "They're armed." Rifles. At least one shotgun. One of them carried a crossbow.

Josie scooped Layla into her arms without a word.

"Get in the truck," Seth ordered. "Now."

She didn't argue. She ran.

The man fixated on Josie didn't even flinch as she ran, his focus absolute.

"They could've shot us already," Cara whispered, never lowering her bow.

"They're sizing us up," Seth answered.

Jay lowered the binoculars, his jaw set. "I don't like this."

A bearded man in a military jacket stepped into a small gap between the trees and slowly raised one hand.

Not a wave. A signal.

Immediately, two more figures spread wider through the woods, moving with the deliberate coordination of people who had done this before.

"They're flanking," Seth said. "Move!"

Fuel cans stood abandoned, and the siphon hose hit the pavement, still dripping. Jay sprinted for the lead SUV while Cara bounded into the passenger seat beside him. Seth yanked open his driver's door just as Josie climbed in with Layla clutched tightly against her chest, the girl's face buried in her mother's scarf.

Doors slammed. Engines roared to life.

The first rifle shot echoed through the afternoon. A round sparked off the pavement just a foot from Seth's door, and he instinctively flinched, shoving Josie's head down as he slammed the door shut.

"Go!" Jay shouted over the radio.

Tires spun against icy pavement before finally catching, and both SUVs shot back toward the highway just as three armed strangers burst from the tree line behind them, weapons raised, shouting words lost beneath the engines.

None of them looked infected.

That realization settled cold and heavy in Seth's stomach as the dealership shrank in his mirror.

People. And unlike the dead, people could think.