BONE CRUSH

Part 1

Leigh's teeth ground with frustration as she ducked around an old garage and tried to shake the people after her by cutting straight through a tangle of brush. Branches slapped her arms and face but she barely felt the sting through her panic.

It was easier when it was just her in the world and the undead. People were dangerous.

Someone whistled and she ducked, sliding around a thick tree, struggling to catch her breath before the chase resumed. Rough bark bit into her fingers as she half bent, overwhelmed by the exertion and burden of sprinting with the weight of her bag, adrenaline slamming through her chest like a metal spike.

They had seen her from the road in their trucks. It was always risky following the paved stretches of roads but easier than marching through woods, unaware of what she was walking into blind. Weeks ago Leigh nearly tumbled down a sharp ravine with a dozen rotters ambling around the pit with three on her heels, desperately avoiding the sudden plumet. Woods also had a tendency to turn into marshland and it slowed her passage down, slapping away mosquitoes and stumbling through the glue like mud, wood damp enough that any camp fire was a pathetic struggle not worth fighting for.

Roads were just easier. But it made her just as obvious to anyone coming through. Their one truck nearly ran her straight off before she managed to slip through a guard rail and sprint along a field, trees spindly and not enough for decent cover, rushing blind through the landscape to lose whoever was chasing after her.

Nothing was safe.

A sharper whistle echoed twice and Leigh rushed deeper into the woods. Grass grew up past her knees and threatened to tangle her feet up and trip her but she managed with some illusion of grace, leaping over a fallen tree and shoving through another patch of bramble, diving into any tiny space that would let her in hopes of slowing down the bigger people trying to catch her.

In a past life she could've been playing soccer. Leigh still remembered the field freshly cut, kneeling to knot up her laces, ready for a practise.

But her current life wasn't like that anymore. It was nothing but trying to live in a place of death, desperate to outrun every single thing coming after her. No more school, no more friends. Just starvation, the undead, and people to avoid.

A few bullets peppered the ground harmlessly and she drove away from it, spinning around another tree, spotting an abandoned car parked to rust on miserable tires nearby, rushing to crouch around it.

She felt lost surveying her options. A few houses were scattered in the rural area and made shitty places to try and hide. Getting into one usually meant breaking a window and making a visible entry, and risked summoning something undead on the otherside of the door. Leigh didn't need to make a literal trail of breadcrumbs connecting her to wherever she went.

A whistled sounded again. Just a single pulse that was echoed after a beat from a different direction. Code, Leigh realized.

It was tempting fate but she managed her own replica of the whistle, shrill to her own ears. It was repeated by someone else, senseless chatter that would hopefully keep anyone from coming her way.

But a rotter suddenly tore through the grass. It's grey skin peeled down it's throat in a long strip, skin mottled with decay. Glazed eyes met her. Leigh inhaled sharply and saw two more coming along on it's heels, the trio coated in a tacky black blood, utterly fixated on the prey crouched down beside the car.

She only had her knife. Her thumbed rubbed the engraving on the knife, an awkward ritual for luck, and waited until the first was close enough before springing up to drive the blade through the skull. It took two clumsy attempts before the body went down, pinning her to the ground by the deadweight while she tried wriggling free.