She reached for the knob again.
And then she turned it, opened the door, and stepped through.
The first thing she saw in the Hub was a half-dead staring at her, surprised to see anyone come through that door. It was dressed in a prisoner’s orange jumpsuit and it was clutching a long-bladed kitchen knife close to its chest. Its face hung in tatters from its cheeks and chin like a dry, papery beard. She brought her shotgun up fast and put a plastic bullet into its chest, high up near its throat.
It dropped its knife and sank to its knees, clutching at the wound. It shrieked, a horrible, high-pitched keening that hurt her ears.
The second thing she saw in the Hub was the group of six more half-deads standing in the center of the room, huddled around a metal trash can full of burning paper. They all looked up when they heard the scream, and turned to see what was happening.
They all had knives. These weren’t kitchen staff armed with ladles and rolling pins. These were soldiers in Malvern’s undead army. They were fresh, their bodies still mostly intact, and some of their faces were still partly attached to their skulls. One by one their knives came up, held high as if they were slashers in a horror movie. One by one they peeled off from the trash can and came running at her.
Caxton waded in, knowing that in a knife fight the only good defense was to get inside your opponent’s reach. She dropped the shotgun, empty now and useless, and drew her baton with one hand and Gert’s hunting knife with the other.
A heavy, serrated bread knife whistled through the air toward her face. Caxton stepped under it and sank the hunting knife into the first target she found—the arm that was swinging toward her. The half-dead it belonged to screamed and jumped back.
Another half-dead came at her from her right. Caxton flipped the baton in her hand until she was holding it hilt first. The baton was collapsible and hollow, meant for inflicting pain rather than breaking bones. Its rubberized grip was the only solid part of its construction. She caved in a half-dead’s torn face and then brought her knee up between its legs, knocking it backward.
A knife touched the back of her neck, sliding through her skin, and she gasped in pain. She was moving too fast for them to stab her effectively, but little wounds like that could add up in a hurry—if she started losing blood, if she started letting herself react to the little cuts, she would slow down and they would have her. She brought her head back fast and hard, pushing the knife there back, then whirled around and sank the hunting knife into the ear of the half-dead behind her.
They didn’t die like human beings. They were already dead. You couldn’t knock them down with electric shocks or stun them into submission by hitting them hard on the forehead. They didn’t need to breathe, so tear gas and pepper spray had minimal effect on them. Having already been drained by the vampire who killed them, there was no blood in their bodies to spill. But they were weak, and cowardly, and they felt pain. If you hurt them enough they fell down, or ran away to lick their wounds, or just collapsed in pieces. The pieces kept moving but could safely be ignored.
It was horrible work, it was butcher’s work. Their very existence was wrong, though, an abomination. You were doing them a favor, Caxton told herself, when you cut them to pieces. When you sent them back to dreamless sleep.
Another knife in front of her. Caxton brought the baton around fast and smacked the wrist, knocking the knife free. Then she spun and parried another blow, and cut a half-dead across the eyes, blinding it.