She tore the knife free, grabbed him by the shirt with her other hand, swung him around into the sinks, forced him down and . . . stab. She put some real mass into it.

Joe died.

Dahlia staggered back and let him slide to the floor.

Outside she heard Dault screaming as he ran in and out of rooms, through openings in the accordion walls, trying to shake the pack of pursuers.

Dahlia caught a glimpse of her own face in the row of mirrors. Fat girl with crazy hair and bloodstains on her clothes. Fat girl with wild eyes.

Fat girl with a knife.

Despite everything—despite the insanity of it, the horror of it, the knowledge that things were all going to slide down the toilet in her world—Dahlia Allgood smiled at herself.

Then she lumbered over to the door, tore it open, and yelled to Dault.

“Over here!”

He saw her and almost stopped. She was bloody, she had that knife. “W-what—?”

“Get in here,” said Dahlia raising the blade. “I’ll protect you.”

Yeah.

She was smiling as she said that.

PART THREE

ORC NIGHT

RACHAEL LAVIN

SIX MONTHS AFTER FIRST NIGHT

— 1 —

“Left! Right! Strike! Strike! Watch your footing!” A young woman’s voice carried across a grassy field as she paced between the long lines of fighters, dark green eyes watching her students run through training exercises. Dozens of people, from mid-teens to late forties, lined up in front of her in slightly askew rows, wooden training swords or large sticks gripped firmly in their hands, moving in unison through careful forms. “Don’t stop. I don’t care if you’re tired. Remember, the orcs don’t get tired. Ever.”

Orcs. It was what she’d nicknamed the living dead. It was maybe a silly name, borrowed from The Lord of the Rings. The difference here was that these orcs were real monsters. And they were dead. All of the millions, or perhaps billions, of people who’d died when the plague swept across the world had risen to become monsters. To become orcs.

She was not exaggerating to the people she trained. The orcs never got tired, they never gave up, they were relentless and insatiably hungry for the flesh of the living. Half measures and half-assed training were not going to help anyone survive. Only real warriors would live long enough to maybe try and build something, to take back some land from the dead and claim it as theirs. And so Rachael Elle worked her people harder and harder every day.

The late spring day came with an unseasonably warm breeze, the sun rising in a clear sky. In a normal world this would be a beautiful day, the sort where you wanted to be outside, enjoying and relaxing.

But this was not that world. Rachael knew that better than anyone here. She had led a group of cosplayers and other survivors out of a hotel in New York, fighting floor by floor against thousands of the dead. It had taken weeks, during which Rachael had changed from a fangirl playing at being a super hero to an actual warrior. Maybe not a hero—at least not in her own eyes—but a practiced killer. She got her people—and by then they were her people—out of New York and down into rural Pennsylvania, then to Virginia. Fighting every step of the way. Refining her skills and becoming more of a warrior, and more of a killer, every day.