They ran.
Joe's lungs burned as his feet pounded against the cracked pavement. Behind them, the scouts' footsteps echoed like drumbeats, getting closer with every second.
"This way!" Maya shouted, turning left into an alley.
The group followed her, Kyle was limping badly between Derek and Sarah. The alley was narrow, barely wide enough for two people side by side. Trash bags and broken furniture lined the walls.
A scout dropped from the fire escape above.
It landed directly in front of Lena. She screamed and stumbled backward.
The creature's black eyes locked onto her. Its jaw was impossibly wide.
Joe didn't hesitate. He grabbed a metal trash can lid and swung it like a bat.
The impact sent the scout sprawling. It screeched—a sound that made Joe's teeth ache—and scrambled back to its feet.
"Keep moving!" Goldy yelled from behind them.
They burst out of the alley onto a main street. The Industrial District was ahead—massive buildings with broken windows and rusted metal frames. Smokestacks rose into the red sky like broken teeth.
And everywhere, shapes were moving.
Zombies.
They shambled out of doorways and crawled out of sewers. Some were fresh, looking almost human except for their dead eyes and jerky movements. Others were rotting, their flesh hanging off in strips.
But they all moved toward the group with the same hungry purpose.
"How many?" Leo gasped, his voice high with panic.
"Too many," Maya said. "We need to reach the steel mill. Now!"
A zombie lurched into their path. It wore the tattered remains of a business suit. Half its face was missing, but its remaining eye fixed on them with terrible focus.
Derek grabbed a piece of broken pipe from the ground and swung. The zombie's head snapped to the side, but it didn't fall. It just turned back toward them and kept coming.
"Head shots don't work?" Derek shouted.
"They're already dead!" Maya yelled back. "You have to destroy the body completely!"
More zombies emerged from between buildings. They were surrounded on three sides.
"There!" Lena pointed to a gap between two warehouses. "We can cut through!"
They ran toward it, but Kyle collapsed.
Sarah screamed. "Kyle!"
The shadow creature was back, seeping out of Kyle's body like black blood. It wrapped around his legs, his arms, his throat.
"No, no, no!" Kyle clawed at the darkness. "Get it off me!"
Derek tried to pull him up, but the shadow was too strong. It dragged Kyle backward toward the approaching zombies.
Joe ran back. "Give me the stone!"
Maya threw it. Joe caught it and pressed it against the shadow creature.
Light flared. The shadow recoiled and screamed.
But this time it didn't disappear. It just pulled back a few feet, circling Kyle again like a predator.
"It's learning," Maya said, her voice filled with dread. "It knows the stone can hurt it, so it's staying just out of range."
"Then what do we do?" Sarah sobbed.
A zombie grabbed her from behind.
Derek swung his pipe, smashing through the zombie's ribcage. The creature fell apart, but two more took its place.
"We can't stay here!" Goldy stabbed her knife through a zombie's eye socket. The blade came out the back of its skull, but the thing kept reaching for her. "We're sitting ducks!"
Joe looked at Kyle. The boy was crying, the shadow creature coiling around him like a snake.
Then he looked at the zombies closing in from all sides.
They had maybe thirty seconds before they were completely surrounded.
"Kyle," Joe said quietly. "Can you run?"
Kyle shook his head. "It won't let me. Every time I try to move, it pulls me back."
"Then we carry you."
"Joe, we can't—" Maya started.
"We're not leaving him!" Joe grabbed Kyle under one arm. Leo took the other.
They ran.
The shadow creature screamed and tightened around Kyle, but the glowing stone in Joe's pocket seemed to keep it from fully manifesting. It could slow them down, but it couldn't stop them.
Not yet.
They reached the gap between warehouses just as the zombies closed the circle. Hands grabbed at them—cold and dead fingers catching on clothes and hair.
Lena yelped as a zombie caught her backpack. She shrugged it off and kept running, leaving the zombie clutching empty fabric.
The gap opened into a loading yard filled with old shipping containers and rusted metal boxes stacked three high created a maze.
"Split up!" Maya ordered. "They can't track all of us at once!"
"No!" Joe shouted back. "That's what they want! We stay together!"
"Joe's right!" Lena panted. "Splitting up gets us picked off one by one!"
Maya cursed but didn't argue.
They weaved between the containers. Behind them, zombies poured into the yard. Their moans echoed off the metal, making it impossible to tell how many there were.
Dozens or maybe hundreds.
"The steel mill!" Derek pointed. Through the gaps in the containers, they could see it—a massive building with a tall central tower. "We're almost there!"
They burst out of the container yard onto a wide street. The steel mill entrance was just ahead.
But between them and safety stood something that made Joe's blood freeze.
It was seven feet tall, its body twisted and wrong. It looked like three zombies had been melted together into one nightmare creature. Six arms. Three heads, all moving differently. Eyes like black holes.
A Hunter.
Not just a zombie. Not just a scout. This was what Maya had warned them about.
The thing that would chase them for ten hours without stopping. Without tiring. Without mercy.
And they had just found one.
Or it had found them.
The Hunter's three mouths opened in unison. The sound that came out was like nothing Joe had ever heard—a mix of screaming and laughing and the wet sound of tearing flesh.
"Run," Maya whispered.
The Hunter charged.
It moved impossibly fast for something so big. Its six arms propelled it forward like a spider, closing the distance in seconds.
"MOVE!" Goldy shoved everyone toward the mill entrance.
They scattered just as the Hunter crashed through where they had been standing. Its fist—the size of a basketball—left a crater in the pavement.
Joe pulled Kyle toward the mill. The shadow creature was fighting him now, actively trying to drag the boy back toward the Hunter.
"Let me go!" Kyle screamed. "It wants me! If you leave me, it might stop chasing you!"
"Shut up and run!" Joe yelled back.
They reached the mill entrance—a massive door hanging off its hinges. Inside was darkness and the smell of rust and oil.
They plunged into the shadows.
Behind them, the Hunter's footsteps shook the ground.
And somewhere in the darkness ahead, something else was waiting.
Joe could feel it. The mill wasn't empty.
They had traded one nightmare for another.
Maya's voice came out of the darkness. "Keep moving. The stairs to the upper levels are in the back."
They stumbled forward, hands outstretched, bumping into old machinery and support beams.
A light turned on. Lena had found a flashlight on the ground—probably left by previous passengers who hadn't made it.
The beam swept across the mill floor.
And bright fifty pairs of black eyes staring back at them.
Zombies they were waiting in the dark like they knew the group would come here.
Like they had been planning.
"It's a trap," Sarah breathed.
The zombies began to move.
And behind them, the Hunter smashed through the mill entrance.
They were surrounded.
The timer in the sky—visible through holes in the roof—showed their nightmare was just beginning.
09:47:33
Nine hours and forty-seven minutes to survive.
They had been running for less than fifteen minutes.
And Joe knew, with terrible certainty, that not all of them would see the end.
The question was—who would he have to leave behind to save the others?