Bite

Skin Memory

I was screaming, falling backwards onto the ground where Pedro caught me in one arm and wrenched the gun out of my hands. He let me fall the rest of the way to the ground and went up to the creature, then shot the thing one more time in the head, and then using the heel of his boot, stomped on it's face—disintegrating it into nothing.

I could hear Rayford shouting for Wayne, Davey, and Helen to get into the vehicle and lock the doors.

Hailey chose that moment to open the door, found Pedro with the gun, the zombie looking like a crumpled cadaver, and me on the ground in a pile.

"So—NOW it's dead?" Hailey asked, a quiver of disbelief in her tone. "Took you long enough." She bolted past me, alone, and ran back to the front of the small building. "They're fine," she announced loudly to Rayford. "Can you let me in the car now?"

"So much for protecting her," I snapped. "Should have just let her deal with this herself." The words were harsh, and I didn't mean them. I felt like stress was slowly squeezing empathy out of my heart.

"Sure," Pedro returns to smiling, albeit more strained that it was before. He pulled me to my feet, and refused to return the gun to me. "Next time," he said, almost cheerfully, "Double-tap. Head. Immediately. We won't sit there and debate about what it can and can't do with its butcher-shop acrobatics. It didn't—bite you, did it?"

"No," I said, relieved, rubbing my bare wrist where the zombie had gripped it, and dug its fingernails in painfully. "I'm lucky. It was close."

Pedro kept one arm around me—not in a protective nor brotherly way, but merely to keep me from falling over—and walked me back towards the front, where Rayford was waiting tentatively.

"Told you they'd kill the thing," he attempted to sound cheerful, delivering this news to the back seat. He approached Pedro and I.

"The third shot?" he asked quickly.

"Just to be sure," Pedro passed me along to Rayford. Rayford grasped my shoulders.

"You screamed. Did it bite you? Or just scare you?" he demanded sternly.

"Scared me," I said hoarsely, finally feeling my heart calm itself. My nerves probably couldn't take much of this lifestyle.

"Okay, good," Rayford let me slide in the middle of the front seat, and hopped in, shutting the door. Pedro slipped in the other side and slammed the door, and none too quickly, Rayford was pulling out of the gas station and returning to the highway that would lead us to downtown—hopefully, our safe haven. My arm ached with the clenching fingerprints of the mutant thing, and I rubbed my wrist, trying to rid my skin of the memory.