Letting out an involuntary sigh of relief, lowering her pistol, Lilly realizes that the walkers are currently mesmerized by the sights and sounds of the crash.
Martinez pauses to glance over his shoulder at the others. “Everybody good?” he says in a low voice, almost a stage whisper.
Nods from everyone. And then they’re moving again, slowly but steadily forward, into the denser trees and fog-bound shadows. Martinez motions for them to hurry up. The ground is spongy and soggy beneath their feet, slowing them down. The shadows close in, the odors of scorched metal and burning fuel engulfing them, the crackling noises rising.
Lilly feels nauseous, her skin prickling with nerves. She senses Austin’s eyes on her. “Do you think maybe you could stop staring at me?”
“It’s not my fault you’re so hot,” he says with that same nervous smirk.
She shakes her head in dismay. “Can you just try and focus?”
“I am totally focused, believe me,” he says, still gripping his gun with that fake cop-show grip as they continue on.
*
Less than a hundred yards from the crash site, they come to a washout—a bug-infested, swampy clearing blocking their path—the bog crisscrossed by enormous deadfall logs. With silent hand motions, Martinez directs them to use the logs as bridges. Gus goes first, crabbing across the largest deadfall. Martinez follows. Lilly goes next, and Austin brings up the rear. As he reaches the other side, Austin feels a tugging sensation on his jeans. The others have already crossed, and are now trudging toward the clearing. Austin pauses. At first he thinks he’s caught on a piece of bark, but then he looks down.
Decomposing hands rise out of the marsh, clawing at his pants leg.
He lets out a cry and fumbles with his gun as dead fingers clutch at him, pulling him downward. Rising out of the mire, the slimy top half of a moldering creature goes for his legs. Filmed in black gunk, its hairless skull unidentifiable as man or woman, its eyes as white and opaque as light bulbs, it snaps its black turtlelike mouth on the creaky hinges of a ruined jaw.
Austin gets off a single muffled gunshot—the silencer spitting sparks—but the bullet misses its mark. The blast grazes the top of the swamp biter’s head, and then plunks harmlessly into the swamp.
Fifty feet away, Lilly hears the blast. She spins around, reaching for her guns. But her legs tangle and she slips on the mud. She sprawls to the weeds, the guns flying out of her hands.
Austin tries to get a second shot off but the swamp biter is going for his leg. It rises out of the mire like a slimy black whale, its jaws unhinging and emitting a noxious growl. Austin jerks back involuntarily—a high-pitched cry blurting out of him—and the gun slips out of his hand. He kicks at the creature’s mouth, the toe of his boot getting caught in the mouthful of rotting black teeth and putrid drool. The swamp biter clamps down.
Lilly crawls toward her guns. Martinez and Gus, by this point, have both whirled toward the commotion, but it’s too late to intercede. The giant dripping biter is about to chew through Austin’s Timberland hiking boot, and Austin is fumbling madly for something in his pocket. Finally Austin gets his hand around the road flare.
At the last possible instant—before the swamp biter is able to break the skin of Austin’s foot—the young man sparks the flare and rams it into the biter’s left eye. The creature rears back suddenly, releasing its hold and tossing its ragged head back in a fountain of sparks.
Austin stares for a moment, mesmerized by the sight of flames inside the rotten cavity of the biter’s skull. The left eye glows for one horrible instant, shining with the intensity of a caution light. The biter stiffens in the muck. The back of its head suddenly bursts, spewing flames like the nozzle of a welding torch.
The left eye pops like a bulb overloading, spitting hot tissue on Austin … and then the creature sinks into the black void.
Austin shudders, wiping his face and watching for a moment, hypnotized by the spectacle of the biter sinking back into oblivion … until the only things that remain are bubbles floating on the surface of the swamp and a dull flickering glow under the muck. Eventually Austin manages to tear his gaze away. He finds his gun and catches his breath.
“Nicely done,” Lilly says with a grudging softness in her voice as she makes her way across the log bridge. “Here … gimme your hand.”
She helps Austin to his feet, holding him steady on the slime-slick log. He gets his breath back, swallows the shock, and shoves his gun back in his belt. He looks into her eyes. “That was close.” He manages a shaky grin. “That thing could have easily gotten you.”
“Yeah … thank God you were around,” she says, a smile on her lips now despite the beating of her heart.
“LILLY!”
The booming voice of Martinez intrudes on the moment, drawing Lilly’s attention back over her shoulder.
Thirty yards away, through a break in the trees, in a pall of acrid, black smoke, Martinez and Gus have found the crash site.
“Come on, pretty boy,” Lilly says, gritting her teeth with nervous tension. “We got work to do.”
*
The chopper lies on its side in a dry creek bed, spewing smoke from its breached fuel tank. No victims in sight. Lilly approaches cautiously, coughing, waving the fumes from her face. She sees Martinez approaching the cockpit, crouching down low, holding his hand over his mouth. “Be careful!” Lilly pulls her guns as she hollers at Martinez. “You don’t know what’s in there!”
Martinez touches the hatch release and burns himself, jerking his hand back. “Son of a BITCH!”