The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 45

Sam screamed.

Max looked up. He saw a Infected... and screamed. The RK's and Sam head into a trap of a herd that heard the sound of the gunfire and cornered everyone. Vix and Lugh fend off while Sam and the kids run past the herd, but more appeared out of the forest.

The Infected lay in the tall weeds inches from them. It did not scream. It snarled.

Then it lurched forward and tried to bite Sam's face.

Rin grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back, and the creature's teeth but only empty air where Sam's cheek had been. Sam flung himself backward, pushing Rin and himself away from the rotting teeth of the Infected and the reaching white hands, but he wasn't fast enough. One hand closed around his left sneaker, and the teeth chomped down on the runner toe. Sam howled in agony as his toe was crunched between the Infected's jagged teeth.

God! Am I bit? Am I bit? An I bit? The litany of dread played over and over in his head.

Max swung his foot and kicked the Infected in the face. Old bone cracked and rotted teeth snapped and then Sam was free as Max stab his knife into the base of the skull.

Sam scrabbled backward and turned to see a sight that threatened to tear his souls out of him. A second Infected had crawled out of the weeds and attacked Rin. It had once been a huge woman, and it wore the black-and-white tags of a nun's habit. There were two bullet holes in its cheek, but they were ancient and the bullets had missed the spine or brain. The Infected had pinned Rin to the ground by the shoulders and was bending to take a bite that would destroy everything good and wonderful in the RK's, the kids, and Sam's world.

Rin's face was covered in bright red blood. A black snake of terror reared inside Sam's chest, the kids gasped in horror. But Sam's rage was bigger than his fear.

"RIN!"

Johan bellowed, and Killeen screamed a great unintelligibly shriek of denial as Sam launched himself at the Infected. His bokken lay forgotten in the weeds. He did not even think of pulling his knife. He crossed his arms over his face and slammed into the Infected, hitting it like a thunderbolt.

"Get away from her!"

The impact knocked the Infected backward, as it fell in a hissing, snarling tangle, rolling over and over as Rin's scream filled the air. Killeen brought his spear and swung.

CRACK!

The top half of the Infected's head seemed to disintegrate and the creature immediately went limp. With a snarl of disgust.

"Oh my God!"

Sam scramble to his feet and looked around, and he feel the blood drain from his face as he beheld a scene out of his darkest nightmares.

The whole field of tall grass in which they stood was filled with Infected. Dozens of them. They lay between the weeds and snarls of wisteria, empty eyes fixed on them, hands reaching, mouth working. Their moans filled the air.

But they were all broken. Shattered legs and hips. Shattered spines. Missing limbs. Huge holes torn through their chests and stomachs. Sam and the kids were surrounded by a legion of crippled Infected's. They wriggled forward on broken limbs or grabbed tufts of grass to haul their twisted wrecks of bodies toward the fresh meat.

"What is this?" Max breathed, horrified.

Sam drew his bokken, and they stood back to back with no clear way out. There had to be two dozen of the monsters. No... more than that. Much more. Others were climbing like grey slugs over fallen logs or out of depressions in the ground. Fifty of them. Sixty. More. All those dusty eyes and black mouths and rotted teeth. The dead cried out in rusted voices as they pulled themselves toward the smell of fresh meat and flowing blood. The terrible need, the awful hunger in that moan made Sam's blood turn to ice water in his veins. It was such an ancient sound, old as all the pain and misery in the world.