Free DEAD (Book 12): End by TW Brown Page A

to her.
    Catie kept her expression stoic. She made it a point to not look over her shoulder. She did not want Dean to spend too much time examining her reinforcements.
    “I don’t know how you have done this, and I am curious as to who you may have brought in. I don’t believe another immune community exists near here.” Catie let her eyes scan the people that Dean had brought in support. They all appeared a bit wide-eyed and more than a little nervous. Her gambit was paying off.
    “I do hope that we can come to some sort of an accord,” Catie said, stepping back and joining her group.
    “I am not certain that you understand what you have walked into, Missus Dreon,” Dean said.
    “Just as I am not certain that you realize who you are dealing with.”
    Catie turned. Had she waited just a second longer, perhaps held eye contact for just one more heartbeat, she might have been able to stop what happened next. At least, that is what she would tell herself over and over again for the next several days.
    “You son of a bitch!” a voice snarled.
    The meeting had been calm. Perhaps that is why everybody, including the team sent to escort Dean Stockton and see to his safety, did not see it coming.
    Denise sprinted the very short distance and launched herself at Montague Village’s administrator. She apparently had a spring-loaded blade strapped to her wrist. It was that weapon that plunged into the man’s back.
    The few seconds that it took for everybody to react proved to be enough. The woman was able to pull her blade out and then jam it home once more, this time plunging it into the side of Dean Stockton’s neck. There was a spray of crimson and the man made a gurgling noise.
    The armed escort had snapped out of their frozen stance of shock and surprise, but Marty was already acting. He grabbed the woman by the hair and yanked her from the back of her victim.
    There were shouts of alarm and anger. From up on the wall, somebody shouted the command “FIRE!”
    Catie knew better than to stand still. She also knew that there was no way she could say anything that would help the situation at that very moment. The people on the wall had just seen their leader attacked and most likely killed.
    “Fall back!” she shouted as she turned and ran for the cover that currently seemed a million miles away.
    There was a good section of ground that had been cleared long ago to prevent anybody from sneaking up on the village’s gates undetected. That would also allow the people on the wall to pick off her detail as they ran for their lives. Fortunately, most of her army had been ordered to hold their position on the outskirts of the dead zone. (That was what she had always called any clearing on the outskirts of a settlement.) That meant the most they would lose would be her and her ten escorts.
    She reached a ramshackle building and scooted around the corner. She was panting and gasping as she tried to catch her breath; also, there was a throbbing pain in her left calf that was now overpowering the run-induced stitch in her side. Looking down, she was not exactly surprised to see the shaft of an arrow jutting from the back of her left leg just a few inches below the knee. Reaching down, she grabbed it with the idea of yanking it out. As soon as she touched it, her body dropped any and all chemical reactions that had so far been isolating her from the worst of the pain.
    Catie had to clamp her teeth together to keep from screaming. She slid down to a seated position and pulled her knife, setting it beside her just in case something or some one came upon her. She was deciding on how best to handle the injury when the sounds of running feet snapped her head up. She had her knife in her hand in the blink of an eye and waited to see who owned the shadow that was closing fast. If it went past her and was the enemy, she would keep her mouth shut and hope she wasn’t noticed seeing as how she was not really in the best condition for a