“It’s worth the risk,” Peter said, giving his beard a stroke.

“We don’t know these guys,” Darius pointed out.

“We know that they have ammo, and we’ve got food. A trade is a trade.”

Marcela studied the open space. “There could be shoot again.” Her voice was hoarse with the language she had only recently learned.

“Look, we’ll be fine so long as they think we’ve got a larger group. But anything goes wrong, we’ll give them to Leah. Same as Roseville.”

Leah’s mouth watered to that. It had been a while since she’d tasted living human flesh, and not some stray animal.

The others nodded to Peter’s plan. No longer were they the optimistic group of adventurers trying to save the world. Months had past since Reno, and each had witnessed countless instances of the unspeakable, if not performed some themselves.

There was just the four of them now. Everyone else was gone. Peter, Darius, Marcela, and Leah. Three survivors and their pet undead, desperate for the nightmare to end.

That’s what had driven them to San Jose. Talk of field testing by the CDC had lured them out of Sacramento. But the rumor had been a lie like everything else, and now they were only hoping to make it out of the city and maybe hit up the coast where they could find a boat.

A van rolled into the vacant lot they’d picked as a meet. Leah brought her scarf further up the bridge of her nose and pushed her sunglasses in. She didn’t like being there, but Peter had met their leader downtown, and embellished the size of his operation. No one knew how other survivors might react to weaker groups.

The leader stepped out, with five others behind. Harry, she’d been told, and he sure looked it. He had a handlebar mustache below long, greasy hair, with even more exploding out from his arms and legs. His denim jacket was drenched in sweat, no doubt from the extra layer of black, curled hair beneath.

“No need for the guns,” Harry said at the sight of them armed. “We’re all on the same side here.”

Peter smiled. “Yeah, I hear you, but I think we’d all feel safer with them out.”

“You’re right. Don’t know who to trust these days.” He nodded to his biggest guy. “Logan, you’re up. These people are hurtin’ for ammo. Let’s not keep ‘em waiting.”

Logan went into the van and came back with a box of assorted ammunition. After a minute of inspection, Peter gave the all clear to Darius, who scrounged their pick-up truck to do the same. Their stash had months more sustenance than they needed, the benefit of having a member among them who couldn’t consume processed food.

All things considered, the trade went well. Harry cracked jokes about this style of business being the new farmers’ market, and there was even talk of the groups joining forces. The tension began to ease, and almost disappeared entirely.

Until one of theirs drew a gun. “Shit!”

Immediately, everyone had their weapons back out.

“Talk to me, Madison,” Harry said, hands around a pistol.

Madison brushed some mohawk hair out of her face and pointed at Leah. “That one right there. I caught a glimpse of her eyes. She’s a Thinker!”

He twitched. “You sure?”

“Definitely.”

Peter raised a placating hand. “What are you doing, Harry? We had a deal.”

The sweat built on his head. “Yeah? Well that was before I knew you had a Thinker with you.”

“Don’t know what that is, Harry.”

“Please,” Leah pleaded, “we don’t know what you’re talking about!”

But the gruffness of her voice seemed to affirm their suspicions, and all now had their weapons trained on her. The pistol she’d been given trembled in her hand. Sure, Leah knew how to shoot, but she’d never done it to a person before. Enough had died by her hand from the early days of the outbreak.

“What do we do?” Darius murmured, his shotgun aiming this way and that.

Peter met Harry head-on. “Whatever you think is going on here isn’t true. Leah’s a friend. She’d never hurt anyone.”

He shook his head. “If she’s one of them, she’s not one of us.”

“She isn’t one of them. She has an immunity in her blood. It’s why we’re only passing through.”

To that, Harry laughed. “Have you people been living under a rock!? First you come back dumb, then you come back smart. That’s just how it is. We lost twelve of our people to a single Thinker – twelve good people – to a monster exactly like that bitch right there.”

Peter paused. “What are you trying to say, Harry?”

He grinned. “That ain’t no immunity. That’s the goddamned endgame of this virus! To replace us with them.”

The cracks were forming in her group. Leah could see it. Marcela and Darius watched her suspiciously from their peripheral vision, and even the gun was unsteady in Peter’s hand. All of them. All at once. They weren’t sure if she wasn’t just another zed.

No, you can’t! Leah turned their way. “Don’t listen to him! I’m your fr–”

A blast went off, and her body went limp. A cacophony of shouting erupted as Leah saw nothing but the sky above. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. Gunfire began, but the clouds had gone blurry, and then unnaturally dark…

She blinked.

The sun was suddenly high above, and her head felt more clear. No longer could Leah hear a firefight. She sat back up, only to realize that Harry and his people had magically disappeared. What had happened?

Leah felt the back of her neck. The folds of her hair were coated in something sticky, and there was a spot on her skull that was soft where it should’ve been hard. She pressed deeper. Her wrist locked up as her body seized, and she fell back down.

Leah had never known nonexistence before. Since that first moment of waking up and seeing the world for what it was, she had never been unconscious, never slept, and never dreamed. It was strange to see the others drift out, and she had always wondered what that sense would feel like.

But this was truly terrifying. Time had passed, the world had spun on, and Leah was not there. Her soul, her essence, her life, whisked out of reality as if it had never belonged. What would’ve happened if the bullet had landed an inch closer to her brain? Would she have been gone for good!?

She turned around and shrieked. Darius, Marcela, and Peter. All were lying where they’d been standing. Each with bullet holes in their heads.

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How many had died for Leah now? Dozens of faces were ingrained into her mind. Lisa, Jin, Tomas, Amy, Alex, Johnny, Billie, Jessi, Anton and Alexei, Sergeant Aaron and Private Noah, Oliver… Now the rest were gone. They had all been people with their own stories, and families, and dreams. And all their souls were now locked in that terrible place that Leah had just escaped.

And yet, grief was not on her mind. Not now, and not for them. Her nails scraped against the concrete and she growled without intent.

They had done this. Harry and his group and the military and the cops and every other survivor who killed when they should’ve helped. Humanity’s best had died striving for something more. Now, there was no one left who mattered. Why bother developing a vaccine? The survivors were all the same. Ignorant, selfish murderers who wanted to deprive Leah of the very thing they held dear. She didn’t deserve to die because of something that had never been a choice. She deserved to experience the world for herself.

Leah stumbled over to Peter’s dead body and picked up his weapon. It was a M1911 pistol, the very one he’d avoided using on her. Now his mercy was in her hands, while his killers still lived.

She replaced the half-empty magazine with one full and put her scarf into her back pocket where she would not wear it. If Harry and his people thought of her as a monster, then she would prove them right.

* * *

Leah stared blankly at the corpse. The clothes were as rotten as always, and the sledgehammer sat ready by his side, but the head had been reduced to pulp, and his Rez was no more.

Of course Kurt was dead. He’d die before surrendering, and that was a wish their enemies were all too willing to grant. She’d been resigned to that fact since the moment she’d woken back up.

What bothered Leah wasn’t that he’d been killed, but how it’d happened. A single shot had struck his head, and disintegrating his brain. A full purge, point-blank, before he’d even recognized his end had come.

Sure, Leah could leave right now. She could scoop up what remained of the dead Hunters and Kurt to fortify her own reservoir, then fuck off into the hills where no one would find her. They wouldn’t come back until the hollows cleared, and she was skilled at disappearing.

But she couldn’t. Not anymore. Leah knew the type of buckshot that had finished Kurt off. Hades had murdered him, just as he’d murdered countless others. This injustice would not end until he was defeated, and until the Hollowing became no more.

Leah would make sure that happened, even if it killed her.

* * *

A small group of zeds wandered down the street, too close to Harry’s settlement. The security gate clicked open, and three of his guards stepped out, armed with baseball bats and face visors. It was a good strategy. Even though zeds wouldn’t be able to breach the stainless steel bars that protected the entry lot, nor the concrete wall running besides, zeds had a habit of attracting more zeds, and then this small problem could no longer be handled discreetly. With this many months after the outbreak, his people were solid, and should anything have gone wrong, Madison had them covered with a suppressed rifle from the safety of the lot.

…Which was why Leah hopped over the concrete wall to her flank.

Before Madison could see the attack coming, Leah grabbed her from behind and sunk her teeth into her neck. Madison resisted, but the taste of fresh, healthy blood after so much time sent a shock down Leah’s spine, and her strength was amplified. Madison fell with a gasp.

A shout echoed from the outside guards, so Leah drew her 1911. They were scrambling in retreat, but each body shot was easy to make, as she only cared to incapacitate and not kill. Their curses evolved into harrowing screams as the zeds finished what Leah started.

The door to their compound flew open, and Logan and a teenage boy rushed out, long barrels in hand. But Leah was closer than they’d suspected, and the short range gave her the advantage. A shot to the chest stunned Logan, and another bite to the neck finished him off. The teenager met a similar fate, though Leah used her knife to slash open his jugular in place of teeth. His young, scarlet vigor splashed against her rotted cheeks, sending another jolt through her veins.

As Leah made for the door, she caught sight of the rest of the zed herd she’d lured, now drawn by the gunshots and screams. She advanced inside, armed with knife and gun.

Panic rose like worms rushing out of the ground. Leah could feel the tension in the air. Taste their fear. And like those helpless worms fleeing the rain, she picked them off, one after the other. The settlement had been built inside an office building downtown, fortified like a bunker to keep all out. But with the main gate exposed and an army of zeds closing in, these very halls were a maze, and the attached offices they’d used as bedrooms became their slaughtering grounds.

Leah moved slowly and meticulously, killing those she deemed a threat, and merely biting those who weren’t. They could savor their last few moments of life with the terror of knowing what would come next. The few attacks her enemies managed to land only struck her undying frame, so Leah shrugged off each with ease.

This was a massacre. How had she ever allowed herself to fear such pitiful creatures? They were so weak, so frail, so pathetic. These weren’t the hard, ruthless survivors she’d imagined. They were no more than sheep cowering to a wolf!

Only Harry put up a worthwhile fight. He had chosen the hallway on the final floor to make his stand, and managed to shred her abdomen with a shot from his double-barreled shotgun, but before he could fire off the second round, Leah had already sprung back to her feet and closed the gap. Dust exploded from the ceiling as the shell struck it, and the two went hand-to-hand.

But for all of Harry’s grit, he was beholden to pain like anyone else, and so a single stab to the shoulder was enough to weaken his resistance, with another jab straight for his heart extinguishing the rest. To his credit, even in that last moment, when his mind knew what his body was about to learn, Harry stared with contempt and defiance for the enemy that had bested him.

Leah pressed the barrel of her M1911 into the base of his chin and pulled the trigger. Not everyone deserved an afterlife.

Leah kicked open the door that Harry had been protecting and learned his truth. Three children sat huddled together, and she recognized their likeness as sharing his. As Leah studied Harry’s progeny, they closed their eyes and shivered.

Her palms were shaking and her tongue was on fire with the taste of human flesh, but still her stomach craved more. These children weren’t innocent. They were just more of humanity’s stock, waiting for their moment to strike back.

Leah closed the door behind.

When she was finished, she stumbled back downstairs and out into the street, letting the zeds pass by without thought. Rain had begun to fall, but still she marched onward.

Somewhere along the way, Leah fell to her knees and shrieked. It was an instinctive, earthly incantation over the horrors she had inflicted. Against the carnage she had bathed in. The juices ran down her cheeks, and the blood coated her clenched fists, and still she screamed. She would never die. The world would stop spinning and the sun would burn out, but still Leah would survive, and nothing would stop her!

A raspy voice beckoned behind. “Holy shit… Get a load of this badass.”

Leah stared dumbfounded at her interlopers. They weren’t human, but they weren’t zeds either. Their eyes were like hers, stained in red.

She gaped. “Who…?”

The leader stepped forth, dressed in a ruined three-piece suit and cowboy hat. He beamed, wrinkles folded over rotting flesh. “The name’s Hades, and it looks like you could use some help.”

* * *

“Come on, Dean,” Hades said through the radio. “Pick the fuck up. Do you have any idea how much of an asshole you’re making me look right now!?”

So that’s what his name was. Leah had done Dean in quick, with a stab to the back of the head as he went for a piss. There had been five more before him, and she’d consumed all with ease. Already, her Rez felt stronger than ever.

“Dean’s dead,” Leah said, holding the radio close. “And you’re next, Hades. It’s over.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” The radio cut out. Knocks hit the door, and Xander slipped back inside.

Leah had chosen her spot well. Hidden in the vent outside his interrogation room, there was no way they’d see the shot coming. She braced her strongest leg against the walls of the vent and took aim.

But then the door opened wider, and she caught sight of what sat behind. Liam was still alive and well, and Leah could no longer guarantee a clean shot.

Hades flew out the door and down the hall before she could recalculate the risk, with Xander at his flank. Shit. Dealing with him would have to wait.

Another Hunter marched into view, dressed in the black leathers of Xander’s crew, with a peacock’s feather poking out from her cap. An officer. One of his last, she suspected.

Leah squirmed around and holstered her 1911. She’d have to act fast if they were all getting out of this.

The ping of a coin echoed throughout the hall, and the officer studied the spot where it had landed. Leah squeezed deeper into the vent, and her target’s sight fell everywhere but where she lay.

When the officer walked directly below, Leah leaned back out. The officer caught sight of the penny Leah had thrown, but she had noticed too late. Squeaks flared as the officer was yanked from the neck. Her lithe frame banged against the ceiling where the vent opened up, but her arms were too wide to reach through and defend. She shouted but once before Leah bit down, the fortified enamel of her teeth far stronger than the softness of her victim’s skull. The officer went limp, and Leah let her fall back down.

With the silence and grace of a cat, Leah spun again into view and dropped. There was no time to waste. She snatched the officer’s keys and limped for the door.

“Leah…” Liam said with a gasp. “You’re alive.”

Am I? “Hold still.” She pressed the keys into his restraints.

“You came for us,” Mother said.

Mastermind tried to speak, but he’d taken a bullet to the throat, and his vocal cords were torn. Only a thin whisper creaked out, too soft to follow.

“What do we do now?” Liam asked when they were all free.

Leah went for the door. “We finish what we’ve started.”