Free Heartland Junk (Part II): Sanctuary by Eli Nixon Page A

unthinking animal. I'd been close enough to know. These things had purpose of some kind. Whatever the fuck they were, they were still alive. We were murderers.
                  I had to get back. I had to tell Jennie and Rivet what I'd seen here. We needed to go ahead with Rivet's plan. Find out if we could save them.
                  I turned to walk away when one of the corpses opened its eyes. I hadn't paid attention to this one, hadn't seen its closed lids. Now they blazed, pink and alive. Its head turned to me. I fell back and shit myself I was so scared. My hands scrabbled against the hard earth and flattened wheat stalks. I turned to to get onto my knees, to stand, to run, and I saw them coming over the little hill in the distance. Hundreds of shambling bodies crested the peak and surged down the hillside toward me.
     
     

Chapter 11
     
                  THE ZOMBIES were back. Wherever the fuckers had gone, they were back.
                  God damnit, how had I been so stupid? It wasn't a ritual or a sign post. It was a trap. And I'd taken the bait. They'd laid a fucking trap. They were waiting for me.
                  Footsteps shushed in the wheat directly behind me and I turned just as the zombie lurched out of the line of corpses and sank its teeth into my wrist. I shrieked and punched at the thing's head. Teeth ground deeper into my flesh, sending flurries of agony spiking up my arm. I whacked it again, hammering my knuckles into the soft spot of its temple.
                  I was some kind of fucking idiot, coming out here alone and unarmed.
                  It was now so dark that all I could see were the twin pink beacons of the thing's eyes. I jabbed at them with my free hand. My thumb plunged into one of the eye sockets and I felt a wet burst as something popped under my thumbnail. White fluids leaked down my wrist, streaming phosphorescence like some kind of bioluminescent algae. I wiggled my thumb deeper, along the concave bone of the eye socket, feeling a soft opening at the very back of the depression that was still spraying blood and eye juice in a skittering stream over my face.
                  The thing shook its head like a rottweiler with a scrap of steak, digging its teeth deeper into my arm. I slipped my thumb out of the eye cavity and stuck my index finger into the opening at the back of the socket, scooping past stringy tissue, trying to finger-fuck its brain into comatose senility before it could rip my entire hand off.
                  I couldn't look behind me, but I knew the other zombies were getting closer. I'd seen some runners. Christ, they could be on me at any minute. I was inside the thing's head up to the webbing between my fingers, and still it thrashed against my arm, spitting hot fire into my nerves. Something white and cold flashed across the sky. Lightning. Real or imagined? God fucking damnit! Not now, please, please God not now.
                  My fingers slipped out of the zombie's eye hole, slick with something that felt like porridge, and I punched the fucker in the cheek as hard as I could, simultaneously pulling back on my other arm. We traded teeth for flesh and my arm jerked free. I drove a knee into its stomach and shoved it away from me. Glanced back. Shit. They were close, and still coming over the rise. Hundreds of them, running, staggering, limping, crawling, sliding, pink orbs blazing, lighting their path.
                  I ran for the woods, just a dim suggestion at the edge of the field now, wheat whipping against my knees. The section of tall wheat sliced into my cheeks and I burst into darkness under the trees. I barely slowed, holding my hands out in front of me to protect against low limbs and trunks. A snarl of roots snagged my toe. I pitched forward, shoulder digging into soft earth and leaf detritus. Scrambled up, still moving