Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
But instead, what came out was the old battlefield line.
“No one gets left behind.”
Sev’s gaze flicked to his and for a moment, all the anger and shame and broken things between them hung there in the air.
Then Sev nodded once.
“No one gets left behind.”
Cassie stepped up between them, charge baton crackling in her hand.
“Good,” she said, though her voice shook. “Because I am not being left on zombie planet with either one of you idiots.”
Ravik barked out a laugh.
Then the Infected came over the platform rail in a wave.
48
CASSIE
Cassie had always wondered what her last thought would be.
She had hoped it would be something meaningful, like how much she loved her family or how grateful she was for the good parts of her life. She had imagined, in a vague and distant way, that if death ever came for her, she would have some kind of peaceful moment of clarity…some noble final realization…some shining truth.
Instead, as the Infected came crawling over the platform rail with their milky white eyes and snapping black-red jaws, all she could think was,
Well, this is it. This is how I die—as a zombie snack.
Honestly, it figured. This was how her life was going lately—why should her death be any different?
Ravik and Severin closed ranks in front of her without a word. One second they had been standing on either side of her, all anger and bruised feelings and unresolved male bullshit, and the next they were shoulder to shoulder like they had been fighting together their entire lives.
Which, Cassie supposed, they had.
Ravik swung his shock blade in a wide, brutal arc, cutting down the first Infected that lunged at them. Severin fired his plasma pistol with cold precision, each blue-white bolt taking an Infected in the head or throat or chest. Cassie stood just behind them with the charge baton gripped in both hands, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
The creatures just kept coming.
They climbed over each other, clawing at the metal platform, their long Visskous fingers digging into the grating as though pain meant nothing to them.
Maybe it didn’t, she thought. Several of them were missing pieces—one had no lower jaw, another dragged a shattered leg, and another had a hole burned through its chest but still kept crawling. Their mouths clicked and snapped and hissed, and the smell of them was so awful that Cassie had to swallow hard to keep from gagging.
Ravik kicked one in the face and sent it flying backward into the mass below.
Severin shot another before it could sink its teeth into Ravik’s calf.
Cassie shocked a clawed hand that reached between the two males and grabbed for her ankle. The baton crackled, blue energy flashing, and the Infected shrieked as it lost its grip and fell away. For one wild second, she felt almost proud of herself.
Then three more came over the rail and her pride disappeared to be replaced by dread. There were just too many of them.
“Oh God,” she whispered, her voice small and squeezed.
Ravik heard her, though. Even with the shrieks and the metal groaning and the horrible wet clicking of the Infected, he heard her.
“Stay behind us!” he roared.
“I’m trying!” Cassie shouted back. “There are a lot of them!”
Too many, she almost added, but swallowed the words before they could come out.
Severin’s pistol made an ugly sputtering sound and Cassie saw his face change.
“That sounded bad,” she said.
“Power cell is nearly drained,” he said, firing again anyway. The bolt took an Infected through the eye, but the glow at the end of the pistol flickered weakly afterward.
“Please tell me you brought extras,” Cassie said, though she already knew the answer from the look on his face.
“I did.”
“Good.”
“They’re with the med-kit below us.”
Cassie stared at him.
“That is not where I wanted them to be.”
“No,” he agreed grimly. “It’s not where I wanted them to be either.”
Ravik snarled and drove his blade into the throat of an Infected that had gotten too close to Severin’s side. Even angry, even furious, even with all that raw pain between them, he still protected Severin without thinking. And Severin was doing the same for him. The two males might be hating each other at the moment, but they would still die for each other.
Cassie saw it and wondered if either of them did. Probably not—men were ridiculous, even Kindred sometimes and they were usually a hundred times more emotionally intelligent than human men. They—
Another wave of Infected hit the platform then, sending every other thought out of her head as fear took her by the throat and squeezed.
The tower shook under them, metal screaming as more Infected climbed up the ladder and struts. Cassie stumbled, and Severin caught her with one arm while still firing with the other. Ravik stepped in front of them both, his broad back blocking her view for one second before he slammed his blade through two Infected at once.