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The infected claws at the glass, nails tearing loose, black blood streaking behind them. The crack spreads another inch.

Leon yanks the wheel right.

The car fishtails.

My shoulder hits the door hard enough to make my ribs scream. The infected swings wide, still clinging, its legs dragging behind us. Leon jerks the wheel left, scraping the rear of the car against a parked delivery van. Metal screams. Sparks spit into the dark.

The infected is crushed between the vehicles.

Its head bursts against the rear window in a wet black-red smear, skull giving way with a crunch that vibrates through the seat. Chunks of dark tissue slide down the glass, leaving one eye stuck near the corner before it drops out of sight.

“Okay,” I say, voice thin. “That worked.”

Leon gives one small shrug, like exploding a skull against a delivery van is simply proper vehicle maintenance.

The mall appears ahead, huge and dark, its broken glass face lit by scattered fire barrels and flickering emergency lights. I can almost see it the way it used to be. Bright stores. Pretzel smell. Kids begging for coins at the fountain.

The music from the other cars gets louder.

We’re converging.

Lyla’s sedan screams in from the left. Earl’s minivan rockets in from the opposite street, horn already blaring, Jacob braced out the window with the shotgun, face grim as he blasts the legs out from under a runner. The runner’s knees disappear in a red-black spray, but it keeps crawling, dragging itself forward on its elbows.

“Everybody to drop positions,” Lyla orders through the walkie. “Do not get sentimental about the cars.”

Joanie’s voice crackles back. “I named ours Sadie.”

Carlos groans. “You’ve had it for four minutes.”

“And she deserves a name!”

Leon drives straight toward the mall doors, and my stomach climbs into my throat. He squeezes my hand once, then lets go so he can grip the wheel with both hands.

The horde behind us pours down the street, pulled by the music. The noise is enormous now. Engines. Horns. Guitars. Gunshots. The growing, wet roar of hundreds of dead throats trying to remember hunger. The mob hits abandoned cars and bounces off them like pinballs.

Leon hits the brakes hard.

The car spins sideways.

My seatbelt locks across my chest, pain slicing through my ribs. The world turns into glass, pavement, and the mall’s black mouth rushing past the windshield. Tires scream. The speaker on the roof keeps blasting, distorted now, the guitar shrieking like it knows this is the end. The car slams to a stop inches from a concrete planter.

Then Leon is out.

He comes around my side before I can unbuckle, yanks the door open, and hauls me into his arms. His hand clamps around my waist, firm and careful at the same time. Clearly he wants to carry me but knows I would bite him for trying.

Behind us, the horde is almost on top of the car.

“Move!” Lyla shouts from somewhere to our left.

We run.

Or Leon runs, and I do my best impression of someone whose body has not been through a meat grinder.

The speaker keeps blasting from the roof of the abandoned car. The undead slam into it first, hands beating against the metal, bodies piling around it, then spill past toward the mall doors. One crawler gets trapped beneath the front tire and keeps dragging itself forward until the weight of the bodies behind it splits its torso open against the bumper. Black gore spills across the pavement.

Across the lot, Jacob and Earl bail from the minivan seconds before it coasts into a decorative concrete barrier with a crunch. The hood folds, the horn jams, and the sound blares nonstop, drawing another wave of dead toward the doors. Barbara leaps from Lyla’s sedan while it’s still rolling, hits the ground shoulder-first, and pops up with a curse loud enough to reach us. Lyla follows with more grace because of course she does, then fires twice into a runner closing too fast on Barbara’s back.

The dead hit the mall in layers.