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glanced fleetingly at the shotgun on the floor; it was empty, but it would make a fantastic melee weapon. Without taking her eyes off the infected, Remy hooked her heel over the weapon and dragged it back to her. She slowly knelt to pick it up and wielded it in her left hand, her right grasping the knife tightly.
    Remy barely made out a twitch of movement in the dim beam of her flashlight. One of the infected took a step forward. And then they were all moving, creeping toward Remy like cats stalking a mouse.
    Remy smirked around the flashlight. Then, with all the strength in her body, she slung the empty shotgun directly into the mass of infected. The shotgun slammed into them, and they scattered just enough for Remy to follow through, bolo knife raised. She ran directly into their midst, swinging the knife with all her might.
    Remy and the infected collided at the center of the kitchen. Their snarls filled her ears, their hands grasping at her clothes and hair, tugging and pulling her every way they could. But Remy was faster than their teeth and claws. Her blade flashed dully in the dim light, and hands and limbs met the floor. The linoleum quickly became slick with blood. A hand grasped the thick ponytail at the back of Remy’s head and pulled hard. Remy’s head jerked back, and she gasped; her heel slipped in a puddle of blood. The flashlight fell from her teeth, and the room went dark.
    The blood on the floor was her salvation. She went down hard, her hair slipping from the grasp of the infected man. She dropped to her knees, gritting her teeth and suppressing a cry at the sharp pain from the impact. She blessedly managed to keep a tight grip on her knife, and she crawled rapidly from underneath the still-standing infected. She scrambled to her feet under cover of darkness, feeling along the counter, lashing out with the knife. Her fingers bumped the edge of the stove, orienting her. The stench of gas choked her.
    Abandoning her spot by the stove, Remy stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled out the small box of matches. She moved to the back door, found the knob, and wrenched it open, even as she fumbled a match out of the box with the hand that still held her knife. Opening the door allowed dusk to flood into the room, and Remy took a step into the fresh air. Then she looked into the kitchen.
    The handful of infected that hadn’t been cut down by the hacking and slashing of the bolo knife rushed toward her, their hands outstretched. The smirk on Remy’s face turned into a wide grin. She struck the match and shoved it back into the box with the rest. The entire box went up in flames and nearly burned her. Without another thought, Remy tossed the burning mass into the kitchen and kicked the back door closed before she dove to one side.
    The rush and roar of gas igniting exploded the late evening. The screams of the trapped infected rose into a cacophony of noise and violence and sent Remy scrambling to her feet. She half-crawled for the seeming safety of the street, desperate to get out of the area and back to the safe house as fast as she could, before the noise of their deaths called more attention to her.

Chapter 4
     
     
    Gray fumed and pushed past Ethan, gritting his teeth and storming to the stairs. Ethan never failed to piss him off, regardless of the topic of conversation. They could have been discussing the weather or food rations or whether it was better to shoot the infected in the head or decapitate them. It almost always came to an argument, and more than once, it had degenerated to physical blows.
    Gray noticed Cade rifling through her bags, studying their contents as if deciding what to take with her, and he stopped short. She was focused, her lips moving silently as she recited a list of items to herself. Gray sighed and moved toward the Israeli woman. Even if he couldn’t go with his older brother and Cade to track Remy down, the least he could do was offer potentially useful information. Gray