Free Bad Blood by Chuck Wendig Page B

another rising tide of razor maws and bone claws.
    “I’m going out there,” Gil said, standing up. “Gimme my arrows back.”
    Princess clung to his leg.
    “Hell I will,” Aiden said.
    “Kid, I will redden your backside with the back of my hand. You already deserve a good hide-tanning the way you talk to me and your so-called friends here. Now, like I said: arrows. Now.”
    “Fuck off.” The boy lifted his chin toward Pete. “Shoot this turd-farmer.”
    But Pete didn’t move. “I dunno, Aiden.”
    “Pete!” Aiden whined.
    “Just let him go.”
    Aiden crossed his arms over his chest. Stuck out a pouty chin. “Why you wanna go out there, anyway? Get yourself killed by a swarm of zombos? It’s raining like crazy. You won’t see ten feet in front of you. And if I guess it right, you’re not even from this city. So why go at all?”
    “Because I have a...”—he hesitated saying it, but it came out anyway—“ friend out there. I thought he would’ve found me by now, but he hasn’t. And hearing about your friend Ellie and that... strange woman gives me no comfort. Plus, my... friend is carrying something very important to me.”
    “ Fine ,” Aiden said, kicking over the belt with the crossbow bolts in the loops. “Take ’em and go, you shriveled old douche.”
    Gil snatched up the belt. Hooked it around his waist.
    “I wanna come,” Princess said, jumping up and down.
    “We could help,” Pete said, idly popping the pistol’s safety on, off, on, off. Which made Gil increasingly nervous. “We could take you down some of the side-streets where the zombos don’t usually hang. They like to gather in the big streets and intersections more than the alleys. For some reason.” He shrugged.
    “No,” Gil said. “ Hell, no. It’s hard enough out there without me having to keep an eye on a pack of little kids.”
    Princess kicked his shin. “We don’t need protecting. You do, mister.” Then she smiled sweetly once more and held up the blade fashioned from a sharpened license plate. She stared over its gleaming edge with mad eyes.
    “Nobody’s going anywhere but him,” Aiden said. “You’re all staying here.”
    “Nah. I think we’re going,” Pete said.
    Booboo nodded. The little boy with the bowl-cut hopped up and down, apparently giddy at the notion of wading out into a rain-slick zombie-infested city after nightfall. Which made Gil wonder just how broken these children were.
    “I said no,” Gil said.
    “And I said no,” Aiden added.
    But that didn’t seem to matter. The kids stood up and picked up their weapons—chair legs and bike chains and all—and seemed suddenly mobilized for war. All with faces that were either dead to fear or alive with excitement.
    Everyone but Aiden. Who sat there. Face reddening.
    “You follow me,” Gil said, sweeping his finger across the kids, “that’s on you. I’m not your father. I’m not your protector. I just want what I want.”
    The thought struck him, suddenly: You sound like Coburn.
    Old man .
     
     
    H EY !
    The voice inside his mind: Kayla.
    Everything around him seemed slow. Shark teeth crashing together above his head. Descending. Zombies crawling up from both sides. Reaching. Moaning. Gibbering in the tunnel—all sounding like a record played on the wrong speed.
    You’re not gonna punk out on me, JW.
    You got this far.
    I’m sorry you killed your daughter.
    I’m sorry you killed hundreds of people.
    I’m sorry that you’re just starting to realize what a terrible person you are.
    But you getting dead again isn’t going to fix any of that.
    All it does is take you out of the picture—and it’s a bad picture, JW, a real bad picture. Maybe you haven’t looked around, but this sewer may be the nicest place we’ve been in a while. Everything’s gone to hell. Maybe literally, for all I know—the Bible’s got some real bad juju in it that matches up pretty well with that happened. All I know is, the world fell down in its own