Hidden (Book 3 of the Immune Series)

Dawn

Sakir

With Isaac on one side of me and Jaelyn on the other, the process of killing the horde of infected feels more like child's play than absolute slaughter.

Except bedtime never comes.

No one's mother calls us inside to nestle under warm covers after drinking hot cocoa.

Our game continues as the wave of infected continues.

We back towards the mouth of the cave. My left ear is filled with Isaac's heavy breathing, his grunts as the gun recoils into his shoulder. Jay's soft counting fills my right ear.

"Ten, eleven, twelve."

I wait until another infected comes into clear view and then aim the heavy shotgun at his head. My finger squeezes the trigger, and the smell of smoke explodes around my face. As I hold my ground, the gun throw my shoulder back. My arm muscles contract but hold strong.

The infected standing in front of me falls to the ground, just like the one before him and the one before her. The bodies clutter the ground in front of us, a steaming pile on the frosted grass and icy rocks.

"I'm out!" Isaac yells over the sound of Jay's gun tearing through the groans.

"Fall back, then," she snaps, not even sparing him a glance. In my peripheral, I see him nod and then disappear into the cave. Jay takes a few steps closer to me until she stands with her raised elbow in my ribcage. The ground under our feet is half rock due to how close we are to the others.

An infected appears to my left, and I twist on the spot. My gun sinks into the gaping flesh wound on her forehead and splatters warm blood across my chest as I fire. Light pink chunks of unknown origin fly through the air as her skull splits down the middle. Her body stumbles backwards and falls into another infected. I shoot him, too, and they roll away together, a tangled mess of maggots.

Flies skim in the air between us and land on my skin to nibble at the droplets of blood and beads of sweat.

"Thirty," Jay whispers. "Sakir, I'll be out soon."

I nod and step in front of her.

"Fall back, then," I say as another one of my gunshot echo through the woods.

"I'm not leaving you alone out here," she snaps.

"We need to save some bullets in case Ashford's henchmen come after us. Considering the noise we're making, they know where we are."

"Maybe, but you can't-" She fires again as an infected lunges at her, dripping yellow saliva out of lips riddled with boils. "-fight this on your own. You'll run out, too!"

"What do you suggest then?" I ask, twisting my gun around to knock out the infected that's crawling towards me on two mutilated legs.

"That right there is a good idea!"

She turns her own gun around and swings it like a club at an infect to her right. Its head lolls backwards, splitting its neck in the middle.

"You know this won't kill them," I point out as I kick the legs out from another one. It falls forward onto me, and I use my free arm to shove it away from me and back into the crowd.

"No, but the light will."

"Light? Are you going to pull the sun up early?"

"I won't have to, smart aleck. Look."

I turn my head towards her as a sickening crunch fills the air. She has the barrel of her gun lodged between the eyes of an infected and is jerking it back and forth like a disgusting plunger. The creature on the other end rocks back and forth.