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I hurry from one body to the next, searching for her face. Hope flickers inside me that she made it out alive. That she found a hiding space. I pivot around, and my gaze lands on a familiar face.
“Mama!” A cry bursts from my lips, and I rush forward, dropping to my knees by her side. Blood is pouring from the deep gash across her torn throat. I can’t look at the injury, so I cup her face and place mine close to hers like she’d always do to me. Our noses touch; her skin is cool against mine. Tears fall and drip onto her cheeks. Dark brown hair spreads out around her head, her skin pale, tainted with blood. Everyone always says I’m beautiful like her with sharp cheekbones, small nose with a sprinkled of freckles, and a round face. But the only similarity I see right now are the light bronze eyes I look into.
“Mama,” the word escapes my lips.
My insides shatter like glass.
“Mama!Please. Wake up.” I hold her face, my arms trembling. “Please don’t leave me.” I won’t survive on my own. I’m completely alone.
She never responds, and I just cry at her side. Mama is all I have left in the world. My breaths billow, and I hug myself. A cold wind cuts through my hair. The rain comes down heavily now, drenching me, but I don’t move.
Mama will never drag me into her arms ever again or cover my face in kisses. She’ll never wake me up with tickles. Or hold me tight at night when the storms come. I feel so lost. So angry. So scared. My breaths don’t come easy as my heartbroken sobs float on the air.
Mama looks so peaceful lying down, her muscles relaxed as opposed to her always being tense when she was alive. My heart gives a painful throb when a gravelly snarl grows behind me.
I jerk my head up and twist around fast. Terror reverberates through my head.
A Shadow Monster stands at the corner of the house. Lanky and thin, his torn clothes hang loosely from his bony frame. He has no lips; they’ve been eaten away. Only teeth, broken and stained. That’s all I see at first. Then the bulging eyes from the gaunt face. He is so skinny… starved.
I scramble backward up on my feet, panic kicking me in the gut.
He lurches forward, groaning.
Retreating, I want the world to open up and swallow me.
But the creature doesn’t come to me. He falls to his knees in front of a dead woman and shoves his mouth into her torn stomach, eating. That slurpy sound makes me gag.
Bile hits the back of my throat. I recoil when someone brushes against my shoulder.
Spinning, I shriek to find another undead creature inches from me. Instinct kicks in, and I back away. Hair like straw dangles over her lifeless face. My heel hits something, and I fall. Hitting the ground, I shuffle backward, noting the fleshy, gory, torn-off leg I tripped over.
Fear pummels through me as my brain numbs. I can’t do this. I can’t.
The creature pounces.
I yell and flinch backward.
But it dives for the dead child beside me. My heart pounds in my throat.
The Shadow Monsters didn’t see me. How? It’s as though I’m invisible—or something.
That’s who I am. Invisible. I have to believe that or I won’t move.
I scramble to my feet and find someone’s disembodied finger stuck with so much red gung on my pajama pants.
Nausea pulses through me.
The undead’s head snaps up in my direction, eyes falling to the stain. I shove the pants down my legs and toss them aside. I recoil as the creature eyes the pajamas crumpled on the ground.
Another creature who staggers on his feet bumps into me before pushing past me. A strangled cry escapes from my lips, and I slap a hand over my mouth to silence my sobs. I back away from the river of undead coming this way through the broken fence.
God, there are so many.
Shadow Monsters were once shifters, just like me. Or maybe mere humans, or one of a number of other supernaturals in the world. Mama said the virus that destroyed our world didn’t discriminate and took everyone it could, turning them into the undead.
Not one of the Shadow Monsters so much as looks my way, but they dart to the recently dead to feed. It’s all they know.
My heart is beating too hard, too fast.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to get out of here before my strange luck runs out and they start noticing me. So I push past the horde of creatures.
Once clear, I run toward the main street, my feet now bare and bloody and in pain as I pound the worn path.
Jaine was right.Swift and silent.
