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Then more.

Too many to count cleanly.

Several hit the wooden-stake barricades first. One impales itself through the stomach and keeps clawing forward, splitting itself wider with every shove. Another catches a stake through the shoulder, black blood spraying across sharpened wood as it snaps its teeth at nothing. A third trips over the tangled bodies and lands face-first on a lower spike, skull cracking open like rotten melon.

The barricades slow them.

They don’t stop.

Bodies shove through the brush in jerky bursts, faster than the old ones, fresher than the rotted things we usually pick off from a distance. One wears a blood-soaked polo shirt with half its throat hanging loose. Another has a curtain of hair plastered across its face, mouth snapping behind it like a trap. A third drags a strip of someone’s jacket from between its teeth.

They found something before us.

Or someone.

Clair reaches the oak. Her boots scrape bark, and the rifle bumps against her back as she climbs. Her bad leg slips.

I go cold.

Then she catches herself.

Gets higher.

Plants one knee against the wide branch.

Brings the rifle up.

There you are, baby.

The first shot cracks across the clearing.

The infected in the polo drops, skull bursting dark across the leaves behind it.

Then the world turns loud.

Gunfire. Groans. Orders. Arrows hissing. Blades splitting bone. The ER van rocks as Poppy crawls higher, dragging Luis behind a duffel bag full of supplies.

I fire once, dropping a corpse near Mom with an arrow sunk so deep through its eye that the tip punches out the back of its skull. My next shot folds another before it reaches Edith, its knees buckling first, body collapsing face-first into the dirt with a sound like rotten fruit hitting pavement.

Joanie’s voice cuts through the chaos. “Cover your pretty faces.”

That is never good.

She flicks a lighter, sparks a string of firecrackers, and hurls them toward the left side of the horde. The pop-pop-pop cracks across the clearing, sharp enough to make several infected jerk toward the sound. Their heads snap in unison, mouths opening as they stumble away from the vehicles and toward the noise.

Lyla drops two with quick shots while they turn.

Clair insisted we pack the metal loose, not crammed tight. “Pressure needs somewhere to go,” she said, calm as anything while Joanie stared at her like she’d found a new religion. “Otherwise it’s less distraction and more missing fingers.”

Joanie grabs one of Clair’s firework specials, lights the fuse, and lobs it over the front line.

It lands in the dirt between three infected.

Nothing.

Then the blast rips through the clearing.

Light flashes. Smoke blooms. Shrapnel scatters through the horde with a vicious metallic shriek. Nails, screws, and jagged bits of metal tear through dead flesh. One infected’s lower jaw disappears in a wet spray. Another’s knee blows sideways, sending it crashing onto a stake. A third staggers with half its face peeled open, one eye hanging loose against its cheek.