Free Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation by Adrienne Lecter Page A

even before we reached the first houses. Doors and windows had been busted, furniture and the dead dragged out. Of them only rags and surprisingly few bones remained. I crouched down at the third such heap that we found, a little grossed out by just how clean the remains were. We’d seen enough that had been gnawed on by coyotes and other critters, but as far as I could tell, those were all human tooth marks. It was as if after the initial kill and feasting on the body, there’d been several more rounds of predation, to the point where less than twenty percent of the skeleton was anywhere to be found, and that not left whole. They’d probably even sucked out the marrow where they could get to it.  
    The houses weren’t the only thing that looked basically trashed. Car windows had been smashed as well, doors torn off, hoods and hatches damaged to the point of leaving just a rusting heap of metal behind. So much for plan C to leave the city with cars that we got going along the way. In most of the cars we didn’t even see remains or old bloodstains. Someone—or rather, something—had simply destroyed them, venting anger and rage beyond what we’d encountered so far. The shamblers we’d seen around had been strong and healthy, but not aggressive enough to account for that.
    The closer to the evenly populated areas we got, the worse the destruction was. Fences had been knocked down, mailboxes torn off, and the ground was unevenly littered with anything from pillows and clothes to bent tools and wooden slats.  
    “I’m having a really bad feeling about this,” Bates murmured after we crossed the second intersection, ducking behind what used to be a small garden shed.
    “Shall we check one of the houses?” I suggested. When three pairs of eyes just looked at me, I shrugged. “To see if they’re squatting inside? Because I don’t want to get caught deeper in town, finding out that there’s a hidden sea of zombies between me and the exit.”
    Andrej shrugged. “Pick one. We can still escape through the river. Haven’t seen any of them swim yet.” That ice-cold water, swelled by the melting snow, sounded like a good alternative was not something that alleviated my fears.  
    Nodding at the house on the same property as we were on already, I took point, running across the open lawn to flatten myself against the wood, waiting for the others to follow. As soon as Burns was there, I inched toward the next window, getting onto my tiptoes to peek inside. The destruction was even worse there, but, alas, no squatters. Sneaking forward, I kept checking windows until I reached the corner at the back of the house. There, we found what used to be garden furniture completely wrecked and partly deposited in the now dirty, greenish water of the pool, with a lump of something drifting in the middle. It took me a moment to realize that it must be the remains of a zombie that had fallen in and drowned. Or died of a more violent death. There was no way of telling now—months later—as it had been reduced to so much foul-smelling refuse.
    The steps of the back porch stairs were splintered and partly destroyed, so I heaved myself up over the low railing instead, touching down as softly as possible on the other side. Only Bates followed me, with Burns and Andrej taking on defensive positions on the lawn. The kitchen door was down in the pool so our entry wasn’t hindered by anything major.
    Stepping inside, I immediately held my breath when a wave of decay washed over me. There were two bodies on the floor, both dead—permanently—and torn apart, but their bones not yet picked as clean as those from outside. Black smears of congealed blood were all across the hardwood floors, leaving a macabre tableau of a Rorschach test behind. I couldn’t say for sure how long they’d been rotting away there, but it was a lot less than ten months. I wasn’t sure how much snow there’d been around here, but the fact that there was blood