it. Its core nervous system still tried to respond, even after Re-Animus exposure.
In the restaurant, someone sobbed.
The shambler veered away, shuffling down the line of tables. I followed, my blade drawn, freezing as it turned a corner and doing my best to remain silent as I closed in on it. All I needed was for it to stay focused on something else.
The sobbing continued, from under a wide, circular table covered with a red tablecloth. If there’d been a Re-Animus in control, the shambler would have pulled off the cloth and looked under it. Instead, it bumped into the table and shuffled in circles. Each time, it swung loose arms, and each time, came up empty.
When it came around to face me, it stopped. The malfunctioning brain couldn’t pick out what I was. Wouldn’t know me as a field operative of the BSI. But it could tell I wasn’t a piece of furniture. The empty eyes stared out at me, waiting for me to move. It raised a hand with raw fingertips toward me. Buried in a fine suit, this meat-skin would have fit in perfectly during dining hours, if it weren’t for the fact that it seemed to prefer its meal on the hoof—or the sneaker.
The meat-skin lunged for me.
I stepped to the side, swinging my knife at its outstretched arm. The amber coating on the blade flashed, black smoke pouring out where I’d scored a hit, and the shambler moaned in pain, almost as loudly as I did from the exertion.
The wounded shambler raged about, flailing arms, lurching back and forth. I backed up, letting the amber do its dirty work. Every second now, Re-Animus remnants spread thinner and thinner, until it could no longer control the corpse, and I’d have another dead body.
It stumbled and threw the table to the side, death throes giving it the strength of twenty men. I’d seen them break marble before. Seen them smash their own skulls in blind fury.
Where the table had been, a woman cowered, her arms wrapped like iron around a young girl. She shrieked and kicked her feet, jerking backward.
I ran head-on between them, swinging the knife up as the shambler’s gaze locked downward, an empty thought of killing its only driving force.
Arms outstretched, it fell forward, its hands twisted into rictus claws.
I drove my blade into its heart, ignoring the black smoke that poured out like water, ignoring the flailing that smashed me in the chest, tearing my stitches.
I collapsed to the ground on top of it, then pushed my way up. The woman still wouldn’t look at me, squirming her way backward, dragging the little girl underneath another booth table.
I gasped, forcing myself to breathe through the pain. “It’s all right. I killed it.”
My words broke through to her, and her glassy eyes fixed on me. For one moment, she focused. She screamed again. Looking past me.
I took a breath of fire through cracked ribs and looked over my shoulder. Two more shamblers were emerging from the kitchen, faces and hands bloody. They paused for a moment, dead eyes scanning the restaurant. Then locked onto the booth, the woman wailing like a banshee underneath it.
They came for us all.
Six
GRACE
The constant chatter of the scanner disappeared, drowned by the crowd’s roar. They crushed each other in a mad attempt to flee. The screaming inside continued, audible even inside the car, along with the sounds of breaking glass and shattering dishes.
“You going to help or not?” Lou’s face looked the way I felt. Absolute terror, pure white fear.
I glanced down at the Deliverator, but couldn’t keep my hands from trembling just thinking about it. I’d passed the mandatory firearms training course when I joined the BSI. Knew the gun wouldn’t bite. Knew it could kill. “Call for help. Get another field team down here.”
He shook his head, patting the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “Jesus, lady, there’s co-orgs showing up everywhere. There’s not going to be another team.”
I offered him the Deliverator. “I could do more harm than good in there. You do it. I’m a translator.”
“That badge says different.” He looked at my BSI badge, almost accusing me.
Field pay. Field operative. Didn’t the director tell me this would be safe? I didn’t sign up for killing co-orgs. I didn’t sign up for killing spiders. One look at Lou said he might be the only person in the situation more terrified than I was.
From the safety of my office, taking on the dead seemed so much easier. For