Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(48)
What had once been a man, but was now a monster, was pressed up against the blood-splattered driver’s side window. His face was twisted into an unholy snarl, his teeth bared and chomping on air while his hands pawed at the glass, drawing dark smears up and down as he struggled.
“He’s newly turned,” Evelyn said, swallowing hard. “He’ll be faster than the others. Stronger too.”
“That truck looks like it might still work,” Alex said quietly. “This fire was recent. And look.” He pointed to the bed of the truck where three gas cans were neatly stacked inside, and a dark outline of liquid could be seen in all three. “Fuel.”
The entire scene was devastating. Something obviously horrible had happened here, and to people just like us, hidden away and simply trying to survive. There was no way to know what had actually occurred, but I envisioned a family, maybe some friends, who’d secreted themselves in a house in the woods only for one of them to somehow become infected. That one had probably infected everyone else, even the sole survivor who’d tried unsuccessfully to escape in his vehicle.
Tearing my eyes away from the ruins, I looked at Alex. “What should we do?” I asked, my voice thick with emotion.
It was Evelyn who answered, her sentiment starkly different from how I was feeling. “We kill it,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “And we take the truck.”
Chapter Twenty
Evelyn
We kill it, and we take the truck.
Of course we do, that was the humane thing to do, right? And we needed a truck. So why did I feel so guilty? I’d said it so candidly that I’d even shocked myself. Yes, this new Evelyn was a much more manic version of me than any other version I could remember. My violent ups and downs, my unraveling emotions with oddly thrown-in periods of indifference, it was the part of me that I’d always been able to keep hidden in the past. But here, in the great wide open, it seemed as if everything was spilling out of me, all my secret pain. It made me feel useless, and in turn, vulnerable. My typical escape from my emotions was gone, impossible without Jami here to distract me, and now I found myself questioning every thought I had, and every single action.
Scrubbing his hand across his chin, Alex scratched thoughtfully at the scruff that covered his once clean-shaven jaw. “Eve, you go to the passenger side and distract it. I’ll take the other side and open the door, and when it comes out, I’ll kill it.”
“What about me?” Leisel asked as she clutched her hammer a little tighter.
“Stay here,” Alex and I answered together.
Leisel’s lips flattened, and her gaze fell to the gravel beneath her feet. I felt a pang of guilt for brushing her off so carelessly, but the truth was she had no real experience killing these things, aside from the one at the church. She’d always been protected from them, and I wouldn’t risk losing her at the hands of one lone infected. And Alex apparently shared my feelings.
Watching as she’d looked on in horror at the smoldering pile of bones had only solidified my fears for her. She hadn’t cried, but she had been clearly horrified, telling me she wasn’t ready to take on the world outside the walls on her own, not just yet.
Nodding at Alex, I stalked toward the passenger side, my knife raised just in case. You could never trust these things to do what you wanted or expected; they lived by their own set of rules, hunger the only thing on their mind.
“You ready?”
Alex stood across from me with the truck between us. Squaring my shoulders, I brought my blade forward and nodded.
“Of course,” I said, ensuring that my tone reflected confidence and strength.
The infected thrashed, throwing its body against the window in its eagerness to get to Alex, so much so that I couldn’t imagine him paying me any mind no matter how much noise I made. Only when I tapped my blade against the passenger window did its cloudy eyes jerk toward the sound, and it launched across the bench seat, its obsession with Alex officially over.
When it plastered itself against the window, the glass audibly bent with its weight, and a slight crack began to fissure downward. Again, it slammed its face into the window, its teeth gnashing, its tongue—a dried-up and putrid slab of meat—glided across the glass, causing my stomach to turn over.
While I had its undivided attention, Alex produced another blade and opened the door, then took a step back and lifted the knife. As the scent of fresh human meat wafted into the cab of the truck, the infected seemed to pause in its thrashing, its head whipping in the other direction. All at once it growled and groaned, launching itself in Alex’s direction.
Unaware of the drop between the cab and the ground, it tumbled headfirst out of the door and promptly fell out of my sight. His knife still raised, Alex dropped to his knees and a sickly crunch echoed through the air, followed by a wet slapping sound.
As I rounded the truck, still holding my knife in front of me, ready to use it if needed, I found Alex getting to his feet, his blade in one hand, dripping with red and black sludge, and in the other a set of keys. The infected lay facedown in the dirt at his feet, utterly still.
Glancing inside the cab, I looked over the seat, the entirety of the bench covered in dried blood and unidentifiable gore. And the smell, the smell was wretched, like a combination of sewage that had sat out in the sweltering sun, along with the sickly bitter stench of death all the infected carried with them. Similar to rotting flesh, but indescribably worse.