People were panicking.

I knew exactly where the Zombies were, so I knew which way to run. The sad part was that there were just as many people running towards the outbreak as there were people running away from it.

“GET BACK!” I waved my hands at the people chasing behind me. “GO THE OTHER WAY!”

Unfortunately, people were too panicked to hear me over the chaos of everyone mindlessly fleeing. I’d seen Master Bran handle crowds, but most of the time it was just to get people out of his way. If someone wanted to run headlong into the Zombies, he’d stand back and let them, then cremate their body after he’d taken care of the Zombies.

I didn’t want to be like that.

I began rolling fire in my palms, condensing it as I moved. I had to focus as I shouldered my way through the crowd. For their being around ten thousand people here, it felt like they were all on this side. Though that kind of made sense. The water would be the ‘safest’ place, so there was bound to be more people on this half of the city.

I threw the fireball in the air, releasing a loud BOOM as it exploded and rained little embers. People stopped running and bent down as they tried to dodge the danger that they’d been too busy to see.

“I AM BOKOR BYLER!!!” I was the only person still standing tall, so that helped me get everyone’s attention. “THE ZOMBIES ARE NEAR THE CENTER OF TOWN! GET TO THE DOCKS! THE OTHER MASTERS ARE EVACUATING PEOPLE AND YOU’LL ONLY GET IN OUR WAY IF YOU DON’T GO. TO. THE. DOCKS!!!”

The crowd split as I started moving again, but it seemed like everyone was too shocked to see me to do much more than move out of my way.

I pointed to the east. “NOW!!!”

Like a switch had been flipped, the crowd found their feet and almost all of them started moving in the direction that I’d pointed.

If the street would have been empty, I could have ran the mile to get to the Zombies in under four minutes. I was halfway there in five minutes and my strategy had to change.

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I saw my first Zombie. It was chasing after a teenage boy. While Zombies were a little slower than they were when they’d been alive, they also didn’t tire. Which meant the kid was running a race that he couldn’t win.

I pulled out my sword and ran towards him. He tripped as he sidestepped around me. Probably to try to dodge my blade, which would have never hit him. I took the Zombie’s head off in a single swing, then kicked the head back towards the body, finally throwing some fire on it to light it. Zombie blood was an accelerant, so the corpse erupted in flames with only that small bit. The next nearest Zombie was a block away, which meant I didn’t have much time to check on the teen.

“You good?” I looked him over. It looked like he might have scraped elbows, but otherwise he didn’t look injured.

The teen nodded as he got back on his feet.

“Good. Get to the docks. The other Bokor are setting up there.” A scream tore my focus away from him. I turned and saw the Zombie that I’d felt had tackled a woman.

“GO!” I yelled before running over to help.

The Zombie had already latched on to her, but she was still alive, even if she did have a few bite-sized chunks torn out of her. Which wasn’t good. One of the chunks was out of the inside of her right arm. She was going to bleed out soon if I didn’t stop the bleeding, though letting her die now might be more of a mercy than letting her go through the sickness that would probably kill her and turn her into a Zombie herself.

I grabbed the Zombie by the back of the head and forced its jaws open to get it off of her. As soon as its bite was free, I threw it on its back and pulled out my sword. I had its head off before it could stand up.

The woman managed to get into a sitting position as I piled up the body and lit it on fire. With all the fires that I was starting, there was a chance that the city might catch on fire, but honestly at that point, it would be a way of mass-cleansing the area.

“I don’t feel so good.” The brunette slumped over. She was barely keeping her eyes open, but she tried to focus those slits on me. “Don’t let me turn…” She reached out with her left hand, which threw her off balance and she face planted into the dirt street.

“Hey!” I rolled her over and checked for a pulse, but her heart wasn’t beating. I hadn’t gotten to her in time. I sighed as I lifted her up and put the corpse on top of the burning Zombie. Hopefully it’d burn away enough of her body that she wouldn’t turn. A Human body required a lot more heat than a Zombie to burn up and I didn’t have time to sit here and keep throwing fire at the corpses.

I felt for the largest concentration of Zombies. That was probably where I could do the most good, so that’s where I was going to go.

I tried not to keep score, but my mind was too aware that I’d lost one. Really it was three, since the other two Zombies had been living here this morning. I just hoped I wouldn’t lose too many more.