The woman clung to Jake Carter's arm, her voice breaking. "Please. Don't leave me here alone."She wanted sympathy. Jake wanted supplies."Five liters of gas. That's the price to ride with me to find the Caravan."Her face fell. "I... I don't have that right now.""Then let go of my arm.""I'll do anything. Just help me."Instead of releasing him, she tightened her grip, as if worried he hadn't understood what she meant.Truth be told, she wasn't hard to look at, pale skin, sharp features, a fitted blazer that hinted at a good figure underneath. Maybe a few years past thirty, but still striking.Before the collapse, Jake might have let a woman like that talk him into anything.Not anymore. The world had ended three months ago. Order was gone, the infected roamed everywhere, and storms tore through what was left of the cities. Every drop of fuel mattered too much to burn on a stranger's sob story.And Jake had a good guess who she was. One of the women riding with Old Man Reeves, the k

Jake had barely closed his eyes when gunfire ripped through the night and snapped him awake.He rolled, pistol already in hand, and pressed his back against the cold, cracked wall, eyes scanning toward the source of the shots.A sharp whistle cut through the dark.Someone had fired a flare.White light tore the sky open. The flare arced upward on a pale gold trail before detonating at its peak, blooming into a fireball that lit up everything within a hundred feet like daylight.The world flipped from pitch black to blinding white in an instant. Nothing in the shadows had anywhere left to hide.Rubble, dead grass, collapsed walls, distant shapes, all of it laid bare under the flare's glow.In that light, Jake finally saw what was attacking them."...Lickers."His stomach dropped.Lickers weren't on the Anomaly's level, but pound for pound, they were far worse than an ordinary infected to deal with.Every one of them moved with brutal speed and explosive power. Their muscles sat too tig

The Caravan rolled out a little after nine that morning. There was no fixed destination, there never was. That was just how survival worked now.Stay in one spot too long, and the scent of living people would eventually pull in every infected for miles, along with whatever mutated horrors happened to be roaming nearby.Between the constant extreme weather, sudden ground collapses, and land and water poisoned past saving, the amount of livable space left in the world had shrunk down to almost nothing.Moving, constantly moving, scraping by in the gaps between ruins and open wilderness, was the only thing keeping anyone's hope alive at this point.Route decisions belonged entirely to the leader and his inner circle. Regular members of the Caravan didn't get a vote. Follow along or strike out on your own, that was the extent of anyone's choice.Jake had no interest in challenging that setup. Not yet, anyway. As long as the Caravan wasn't obviously driving toward disaster, he was content

Jake had just swung a leg over his bike when a burst of gunfire erupted from the street ahead.A massive off-road truck came tearing around the corner, weaving hard.Even before any upgrades, it must have started life as a serious piece of machinery. After at least two rounds of fusion work, it looked like it could go toe-to-toe with a pre-collapse SWAT vehicle.What actually caught his eye, though, was who was driving it, two young women.One had both hands on the wheel. The other had half her body braced through the sunroof, gripping a mounted heavy machine gun like she'd been born holding one, spraying fire behind them without flinching."...It's them."Jake recognized the pair instantly.The one on the gun was Nikki Turner. The one driving was Sierra Lang.They'd joined the Caravan not long ago. Their story was that their old group had gotten wiped out in some disaster, and the two of them had barely made it out alive.Not many people in the Caravan actually bought that story.Bot

The Tyrant caught the smell of blood on the air. It paused, then abandoned the chase entirely, turning to walk toward the flipped car with slow, heavy steps.Da, da, da...Marcus, covered in blood and clearly carrying multiple fractures, could only manage to fire his gun one-handed at the thing bearing down on him.Between his shaking grip and the recoil, most of the shots went wide, doing nothing.The Tyrant bent down, closed a massive hand around his head, and lifted him out of the wrecked car like he weighed nothing at all.Crunch.A wet, sickening sound followed as the fingers tightened. Marcus's skull gave way like an overripe melon, splattering red and gray across the pavement."Help, stay back, don't"...Jake had left before the fighting broke out, but he hadn't gotten far. He'd caught glimpses of it all in his mirror, man against monster, and then woman against man.None of it was his business, and he had no interest in getting dragged into it. But once the two women finished