I sighed. “Everybody smile for the cameras. Move around so they can see us.” The rest of my team did so, everyone picking out one of the silver balls in the ceiling and waving at it. Edward waved at a slot machine that had a clown on it.

“We can’t see you. There’s nobody on camera. You guys aren’t there.”

Oh, that can’t be good.

“What’s going on?” Trip asked.

“Technical glitch with the cameras?” I asked hopefully.

“Impossible,” Mitch said. “I’m going to call your boss and warn him something’s up.”

“Do that—” The air temperature was dropping rapidly. My breath came out as steam. “Mitch, we’ve got company. I’ll have to call you back.”

“There’s something wrong…” Trip said as he lifted the KRISS to his shoulder. “Feel that?” Edward drew his short swords. Tanya pulled an arrow from the protective foam quiver and tried to nock it with suddenly cold fingers. Every shadow in the dimly lit gambling area was suddenly threatening. “Where’s the fastest way out?”

“Back the way we came.” I flicked Abomination’s safety off with my trigger finger. “Walk fast.” There was an awful moan. It was impossible to tell where it came from. “Real fast.”

“You smell that?” Tanya asked nervously.

“Dead things,” Ed answered.

“Movement on the left,” Trip said. I turned, ready to shoot. “It’s gone now.”

“Aw, hell.” I caught something in the corner of my vision and turned. Something had moved between two slot machines. “Contact right.” Shadows were dancing along the wall, but there were so many different oddly placed light sources that I couldn’t tell where they originated from.

“They’re behind us too!” Tanya exclaimed. She was gesturing wildly at the sports bar we had just left. I turned just as several dark shapes were shuffling out the front door of the restaurant. Covering them with Abomination, I lit them up with the mounted flashlight. The shapes were illuminated in a brilliant white beam. At first I thought they were people, a crowd of at least eight, but then I noticed the blood and the torn clothing, then the exposed bones and missing chunks of flesh, and then their dead, blank eyes turned toward the light and they stumbled forward.

“Zombies!” Trip and I shouted at the same time, but no one could hear us because we started shooting at almost the exact same moment. Heads ruptured as I worked Abomination across their line, one, two, three, four, five, dispatched in just over a second. Trip had started with the other side, and the zombie in the middle got a neat .45-caliber hole in the forehead a fraction of a second before a 12-gauge slug removed three quarters of its skull.