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I wrap around her so hard she squeaks.

“Sorry,” I gasp, loosening my grip. “Sorry. Sorry.”

She shakes her head and clings tighter.

Leon climbs in after me, one arm braced protectively across both of us before his door is even shut. Jacob dives into the truck bed. Lyla follows, then Trish, Earl, Barbara, Joanie, and Carlos. Someone slams the tailgate. Someone curses. A gun fires. Something heavy hits the side of the truck with a wet thump, and a dead hand slaps against the rear window before sliding away in a smear of rot.

Edith floors it.

The truck surges forward.

Joanie screams out the back, her hands circled around her mouth as she stands with Lyla’s arms locked around her legs, “We lied, motherfuckers!”

Edith lays on the horn.

“Yes, E! Horn of justice!” Joanie yells, voice cracking with delight.

The sound blares through the lot, long and obnoxious and perfect.

The undead flood through the blown-open entrance, then through side doors and shattered glass, drawn by the music still screaming from our abandoned cars.

Gunshots start almost immediately.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Then more.

A whole storm of them.

Flashes burst behind the glass. People scream inside. Not the wild cheering from yesterday. Real screams. Terrified screams. The kind that tear out of throats when people who thought they were monsters remember there is always something hungrier.

The truck bumps over the curb and swings into a side street. Edith drives two blocks before pulling into the shadow of an old parking structure. From here, we can see the mall’s front entrance through a broken stretch of fencing. The horde continues pouring inside, a river of dead flesh drawn by music, movement, and the fresh meat trapped within.

Once Edith parks, we spill out around the truck, too wired and shaken to stay packed inside.

No one speaks.

We just watch the mall get devoured.

Emergency lights flicker red across the glass. Shadows thrash behind the doors. A person bursts out of one entrance, screaming, one arm missing below the elbow. Blood sprays from the stump in frantic pulses. Three infected drag him down before he makes it ten feet. His scream cuts off under the sound of feeding, replaced by wet tearing.

I keep my eyes open.

A fire blooms somewhere inside the mall. Orange light pulses behind the second-floor windows, followed by a muffled boom that shakes the glass.

One of mine.

One of the smaller devices we tucked near the service corridor, wired to one of Lyla’s detonators and left behind like a nasty little goodbye gift.

The flames lick upward behind the cracked panes, painting the horde in flashes of orange and black as the dead keep pressing in.

Carlos stands near the open tailgate with Luis tucked against his side, his arm locked around his brother’s shoulders. Both of their faces are wet. Neither looks away from the fire.

This isn’t joy. It isn’t peace.

It is goodbye.

To ghosts. To fear. To the place that taught them hunger could wear a human face.