Page 28 of Faith Among Monsters

Dax

I’m halfway to the building, my mind already on Faith, when I hear Wilkes shout.

“Dax!” There’s something strange in his tone. Not just urgency, he’s shaken.

I turn, already bracing for whatever fresh hell this place is throwing at me, and freeze.

One of the bodies is sitting up.

One of the fucking bodies we just made sure was dead.

I stop cold. My gun is up, aimed at the thing. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe.

Its throat is torn to shreds, the flesh hanging loose, and its guts are smeared across the dirt like someone spilled a bucket of slop.

I didn’t touch it, but Iknowwhat dead looks like. This? This isn’t supposed to happen.

“Dax!” Wilkes shouts again, his voice cracking.

Another body starts to shift, then sits up too, its jerky, unnatural movements setting my teeth on edge.

I swallow hard, my brain scrambling for something that makes sense.This can’t be real. It can’t.

But it is.

The sitting corpse, fuck it,zombie, turns its dead, cloudy eyes toward me. Its mouth opens, a low, guttural growl scraping from its throat like it’s chewing on gravel.

I don’t let myself think about who it was. Don’t let myself remember. I pull the trigger, and the shot cracks through the air, loud and final.

The bullet rips through its forehead, the back of its skull bursting open as it drops like a stone.

Wilkes fires a second later, taking out the other one.

“Shit,” I mutter, scanning the ground. My pulse pounds in my ears, but I force myself to focus. My mind runs the numbers, fast and sharp.How many of these corpses were DOA and didn’t take a headshot? How many bullets do I have left?

“You got rounds left?” I bark at Wilkes.

The corpse closest to me twitches, its fingers curling against the dirt as it struggles to push itself up.

Wilkes doesn’t answer right away, too busy putting another bullet into a twitching body.

“Wilkes!” I shout again, louder.

“Yeah!” he yells, his voice shaking.

I don’t wait. I race forward, taking no chances as I put bullets into the heads of the corpses still sprawled across the yard. One by one, I make sure they’re down for good.

Wilkes follows close behind, doing the same. The gunfire echoes off the walls, sharp and deafening in the night.

When it’s over, we’re standing amid the dead. For now, they’re still. Blood and bits of brain soak the dirt, and the metallic stench of it all sticks in my nose like it’s burned there.

I glare at Wilkes, my chest heaving. “How many of those things did Doc make?” My voice comes out harsh, rougher than I mean, but I don’t care.

Wilkes shakes his head, his rifle still clutched tight in his hands. “I don’t ask questions,” he says, his tone bitter. “You know that’d get you killed, no matter what side of this little experiment you’re on.”

My teeth grind. I don’t have time for this. My mind snaps to the only thing that matters right now.

Faith.

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