The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,67
position, lying in a bed of brown leaves, semiconscious. Some drool trickled from his parted mouth.
Kate spun me around to look for any injuries. “Lift your shirt,” she ordered, and I complied. “Some scrapes and bruising, a tiny bit of blood, but not as bad as it seemed.” She side-eyed Annie. “Let’s go, partner. The crew will come get them.”
I glanced down at Pete again. “But I kinda want to show him some Bruce Lee moves.”
“Not advisable.” Kate tugged my arm, adding a squeeze. Her arm hooked into mine, and we began our walk.
Annie shouted to me, “Hey, Nate?”
Over my shoulder, I asked, “Yeah?”
“I really did like you. At the skate place. That was all real for me.” A soft sigh escaped her mouth. “And…I really hope you win.”
So many years I’d pined after Annie. Years. Jaxon told me to get over her because she wasn’t all that. And Zach never said much but he nodded in agreement when Jaxon urged me to move on. It was infatuation, not love. Annie wasn’t right for me, or better than me. I knew that now.
“Goodbye, Annie.” I hesitated. “Uh, and one more thing.”
“Yeah?” she brightened.
“I fucking hate Maroon 5. Cannot. Stand. Them.”
Kate snorted and unhooked her arm from mine. She held out her hand for me to grab.
I reached for it, but she giggled and ran ahead of me. We did this over and over. A simple game of “Kate keep away” that ended with me sneaking up to her, grabbing her backpack waist strap, and pulling her right toward me.
A scream from Annie ruined the mood. “Nate, run! Zombies! Headed your way!”
I’d limped a little before from my stiffened ankle, but had no problem breaking into a full-blown panic sprint after Annie’s zombie alert.
Adrenaline was a funny thing. It usually signaled mind-blowing excitement or outright terror. Two ends of a spectrum, same bodily reaction. In this case, it was terror. Definitely terror.
* * *
Our boots pounded into the dirt and gravel path like sledgehammers. A zombie herd had formed behind us and kept adding new members to their undead tribe. No time to contemplate a safe place to hide. Or rest. Running was our only option.
Kate tripped on a tree root and tumbled to the ground. “Shit! My ankle!”
I backtracked to her and hoisted her up under her arms. “We need to keep going. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I twisted it, but let’s go.” She continued jogging with a slight limp. Her fall looked pretty bad. We needed to elevate her leg, stat.
But of course, we had no time for that.
The moans grew louder by the second. They were barely visible, and their god-awful stench hadn’t reached us, but with Kate’s bum leg we’d be under siege in a few minutes. Not even a hundred stun guns would help us then.
Panic climbed its way up my chest, and I choked out a nervous, high-pitched cough. It almost came out as a shriek, but I stifled it, because there was no way I was going to freak out in front of Kate.
We’d slowed down to a casual jog.
We were as good as dead.
The trees surrounding us were too high to climb, especially when one of us had a twisted ankle. There were no bushes, or brush, or anything to hide behind. No miraculously placed hollow tree logs large enough for two that always appeared in fantasy movies with forest adventures.
Up in the distance, there were a bunch of boulders and…could it be? A cave? The first one we’d come across the entire competition.
I motioned toward it, and through her long winces, Kate nodded. “Yeah. Let’s hide there.”
The cave turned out to be great, except for one critical thing. Nothing covered the cave opening, so zombies could stream inside and trap us in there with no way out. In all the books and movies and shows, regular zombies could smell live humans. And their sweat. And possibly, their terror. Zero clue what robot zombies could do.