LAST IMMUNE: THE APOCALYPSE KING

Chapter Seven: Basin Street

The market district seemed unusually clear from the entrance. There were blocks of shuttered shopfronts, overturned market stalls, and fruits rotting in the gutters.

Cole scanned the street for a minute before moving in, but halfway through, a Grey came around the corner of a butcher shop and stopped.

It looked at Cole and Dana and they stared back at it, wondering why it hadn’t attacked them yet, but in a second, it snarled hungrily and called out a pack of thirty.

Cole's heart dropped to his stomach as he saw more sprinting around the corner, the sound of their feet multiplying from one alleyway to another.

"Run," Cole said to Dana, pushing her into the opposite direction.

"But Basin's Street is that way—" She said, pointing at the alleyway where the Greys ran out in numbers, snarling and coming toward them.

"Now, Dana!" Cole barked an order and they both ran for their lives.

The Greys were fast but Dana was faster than Cole expected. She ran like she had wheels on her feet, arms secured around Biscuit as her bag bounced behind her back.

Cole stayed behind her, putting himself between Dana and the Greys.

"Left!" He called out and she cut left without asking why. He followed her around the pharmacy, buying them more time.

"How many are there?!" She asked breathlessly.

Cole glanced back and tossed a wooden bench in their path to slow the Greys down. "A lot!"

"Yeah, how many is a lot?!"

"More than fifteen, less than fifty." Cole replied as they hurdled over a beam fence, cutting into the route that led back to Basin Street. "We would've avoided them if we didn't take the market district."

"Oh, is that it?!" Dana vaulted over an abandoned market cart without breaking stride. "So all of this is my fault?!"

"I didn't say it was your fault."

"Well, you did say the market district would have Greys."

"It does have Greys." Cole overtook Dana and branched right, then left to lose a few of them.

"You said we couldn't risk it!" She said, following his direction.

"We couldn't."

"And yet here we are, Cole, risking it."

A Grey jumped at them from a broken market stall and Cole swung his steel pipe at its jaw, glimpsing back to see a few Greys still tailing behind them.

"Next time," Cole said, "we go around."

"Next time, you make your decisions faster." Dana retorted as they bursted out of the market district, onto a wider service road.

Cole saw a police car parked against a kerb beside a post office, the driver's door was hung open, and the police officer who had been driving it was dead and slumped over the steering wheel.

"Keep running," Cole said to Dana whilst heading to the police car.

"What?" She stopped running as Cole reached for the vehicle.

"Don't stop, okay. Basin Road is two blocks ahead, keep moving and don't look back." He went straight for the driver's seat and pulled out the dead officer.

"Cole—"

"Go!"

"Fuck!" Dana swore at him and ran away.

Cole checked the officer's belt but found the holster empty. He rummaged through the glovebox and centre console and finally saw some loose rounds rolling in the cupholder.

The counted his rounds—seven, eight, nine bullets, scattered all over like the officer had left the station in a hurry.

The gun itself was on the floor of the passenger side, slid under the seat, and Cole pulled it out, checking it in four quick seconds.

The Greys gained in on him, less than thirty meters away and Cole set the magazine, dropped the slide, and chambered a round.

Twenty meters close, the Greys snarled and pushed on themselves to grab him as black blood oozed out their blackened mouth.

Cole pressed the bullets into the magazine one by one, the way he'd done a thousand times in conditions worse than this, his muscle memory clean, absolute and indifferent to this urgency.

Nine rounds loaded and he raised the weapon to find his sight picture in the same time it took the first Grey to cover the distance as he pulled the trigger.

The Grey dropped to the ground but caught Cole’s cheek as it went past him, dragging its nails across Cole’s face and injuring him.

The rest came in a fast cluster and Cole shot through them with ease, believing that panic was just wasted movement.

When the last Grey died, the service road was quiet again and Cole lowered the gun, feeling the heat of the infected scratch on his face.