The zombie held his hand up, a signal to all those behind him to halt. She gazed at his back, stiff and straight as a ramrod, and rolled her eyes.
oh sure, now he notices.
The malodorous zombie smell had been growing stronger in her nostrils for the past hour, and a quick mental scan of the terrain ahead confirmed what her nose suggested: zombies. Nests and nests of zombies, all of whom could smell the little girl as clearly as the vampire could smell them.
oh well. serves him right. s' not like i didn't try to warn him.
He pulled his weapon out from the chain crossing his back, everything else about him deathly still, energy coiled in him, humming in his muscles like a million bees.
It was his own fault that he had gagged and muffled her. She had mumbled and gurgled all the warnings she could, but all the zombie had done was come dangerously close to thwacking her head with the blade of his shovel.
"We're being hunted," he said ominously. Creaking his skeleton head around, he stared over his shoulder at the three of them. "Cerberus, guard the girl. You, up front with me," he jabbed his shovel back at the vampire. "You'll be where I can see you."
She moved abreast of him obediently, wondering what he had in mind for her. Would he use her as a shield? Or a diversion? She was as dead as he was, so the other zombies would not be interested in her. She wished the zombie had not been so thorough in making sure her fangs stayed in her mouth.
The dog began to growl as the shadows on the periphery of her vision moved, slowly creeping toward them. She did not need to squint into the night to know what they were.
"H-how many are there?" The little girl squeaked, seeming to live her life behind either the zombie's or the dog's powerful bulk.
"Lots," the zombie replied, his voice dropping out of his mouth like a ten-ton weight.
try several dozen, the voice droned in her mind, never failing to bring the most hopeless nugget of pessimism to lurid light. She heaved a sigh and did the only thing she could do: closed her eyes and began funneling what was left of her ebbing strength down into her core, where it writhed and teemed in a tight ball, slowly growing and building.
She was only dimly aware of the fight that had erupted outside her body. The zombie had launched himself at the nearest pack of his fellows, flailing his shovel madly. Their bodies fell like wheat before a scythe, spewing rotted organs and foul fluids from severed arms, legs, heads and torsos. The dog had also galloped headlong into another knot of zombies, tearing flesh and rending limbs from bodies.
Carefully she opened her eyes and saw another large pack of walking dead, shuffling toward the girl, who remained motionless on the edge of the fight, frozen by terror.
The moment before her body exploded with the dark power inside it, she opened a sluice gate in her mind and let it blast out of every pore in her cold, dead skin. It hit the zombies like a tidal wave, hurling them back ten feet, killing them without a sound.
Through the gag, she smiled haughtily. Then darkness overwhelmed her.