wrong,” she murmurs, and I nod my agreement.
A scream splits the air, and we both turn and watch a teenage girl run past us with terror in her eyes. Her eyes lock on us, and she slides to a stop before us, panting. “What the fuck are you doing? Run!”
“Run?” Remi repeats, looking at me and then back to the girl. “From what?”
“The zombies!” she yells like we’re dumb, and then breaks into a sprint again, glancing behind her. We both blink dumbly and stare down the street where she came from.
“Zombies… Have you met a zombie?” she asks.
“No,” I mutter as we stand side by side, watching the street. “But could be a supe, or she could be confused. Let’s check it out.”
Turning left, we follow the street the human ran down. Inside, I’m thinking it must be a prank, until we come upon the church at the end of the row of houses and both of us freeze.
Open-mouthed and shocked.
“What the fuck?” she whispers and looks at me. “Zombies, actual fucking zombies.”
She’s right. The old church building is surrounded by snarling, lumbering humans. But these humans don’t smell right, they smell dead. Their eyes are empty, and there are faded black veins crawling up their arms and across their faces. Their lips are open in a grunting sound which, yes, I must admit does sound like what I imagined a zombie would sound like. There has to be at least twenty of them surrounding the building, banging on the door and scraping at the windows, trying to get in. Beyond that, I sense the rapid heartbeats of at least ten humans trapped inside.
“I guess…we kill them?” she suggests, rubbing at her head. “I gotta admit, I’m at a loss here. What kills a zombie? Head shot? Smashing the brain?”
I laugh, I can’t help it. “You’ve been watching too much TV and films, amore. In real life, they are controlled by magic. They either need to be cut from the source, or you need to destroy their link to it by destroying them with fire or severing the spinal cord, which acts as a conduit for the magic to infect the…brain,” I finish lamely as she grins at me.
“Burn them or cut off their heads, got it.” She pockets her smaller knife, and as I watch, she pulls a sword the length of her arm from her back and winks at me. “Shall we, face changer?”
She turns, sticks two fingers in her mouth, and whistles. The zombies look over with a grunt, all of those emotionless, lifeless eyes locking on us before they start to lumber in our direction—on their magic user’s command no doubt. “Come on, dead boys. Let’s party,” she calls and then rushes towards them, swinging her blade as she goes.
I think I’m in love.
What an awkward time to be hard.
Rolling my shoulders, I jump into action, ready to help her dispatch them. We work side by side in the empty street, keeping our backs to each other but with enough room to manoeuvre as they surround us. Their once human hands are tipped with claws, and their mouths snarl and in some cases are coated with blood. But they are slow, unlike freshly raised and controlled zombies. I would imagine these have been left here to rot.
Probably the slow or damaged kind.
Remi easily hacks through their necks, and I watch her for a moment as one falls to the ground. With a yell, she slashes and stabs double handed with the sword, hacking at the neck until the head rolls to the side, and then she flicks her hair back and stands up, twirling her blade, blood coating the weapon and her face. She sees me watching and winks before spinning and impaling her blood-soaked weapon through the eye of one sneaking up on me while I was too busy gawking at my mate.
I grab the closest arm of one nearby, rip it off, and toss it away before dragging him closer. I frame its snarling, grinding cheeks with my hands, its teeth snapping together to try and get me as I add pressure and twist. Ripping its head off, I watch the magic animating the corpse extinguish in its eyes before I throw it to the ground and move on to the next. We work effortlessly together until we’re standing in the midst of all the dead zombies. Panting, Remi twirls her blade, gets to her knees, and wipes it on one of their