Plague

kicking a tail of sand behind her as she ran.
    Where would he go? What would he do?
    It dawned on her then: Brittney. What was Drake going to do about Brittney?
    As far as Brianna knew, Drake had no power to stop Brittney from emerging.
    Where would Brittney go if she were free?
    Brianna turned her gaze to the ruined church. And just then, she heard the sound of voices from within.
    She zoomed up the stairs and into the church as . . .
    BLAM!
    The explosion, a stab of yellow, blinded her. She stopped as fast as she could, but not fast enough. She slammed into a pew and flew headfirst through the air, unable to see.
    Anyone else would have smashed face-first into the marble altar, but Brianna was not anyone else. As she was flying she tucked, spun, and landed on her feet on the altar. Like a cat.
    The wave of pain from the impact with the pew made her gasp. But she fought down the urge to scream.
    Then she saw.
    And then she did scream.
    The rifle blast had hit Brittney in the face and neck. The entire left side of her face was gone. Her neck was torn open. She should be spouting blood. But although the shattered flesh was red and raw as uncooked hamburger, no arteries sprayed.
    And Brittney was still standing.
    Jamal made a sound like a tortured animal, a howl of fear. He leveled the gun at Brittney’s chest but in the half second it took him to find the trigger with his finger Brianna was on him.
    She hit the barrel and knocked it away just as BLAM!
    She grabbed Jamal by the neck, yanked him forward so fast his head snapped back. She punched him six times in less than a second and Jamal crumpled, blood gushing from his nose and lips.
    “Don’t hurt me, it’s not my fault!” Jamal wailed as he dropped and curled into a ball protecting both the gun and his face.
    Brianna did not want to look at Brittney, really really didn’t.
    “Are you okay?” she asked over her shoulder. No answer from Brittney. Not surprising since her mouth was smeared all around the back of her head.
    Brianna steeled herself and shot a glance at Brittney, but the whip hand was already reaching, yanking Jamal’s rifle away.
    Brianna pulled her knife free and leaped at Drake.
    She buried the knife in Drake’s chest. It was a huge blade, a bowie knife, as big as a chef’s knife and a lot thicker. The blade was in all the way, up to the hilt.
    Drake grinned. “This should be fun.”
    Brianna expected him to try to turn the gun toward her but instead he tossed it aside. Then, with his real hand, he drew the knife out of his chest, slowly, as if relishing every inch of steel.
    Brianna stared, mesmerized. And almost missed the sudden flick of Drake’s tentacle arm as it swept behind her.
    Almost missed.
    Not quite.
    Brianna dropped and the whip went over her head. Drake threw Brianna’s own knife at her, but it wasn’t even close. The knife stuck into the back of a pew.
    Brianna pulled her sawed-off shotgun from her runner’s pack, leveled, aimed, and fired.
    The blast caught Drake in the mouth. It turned his thin-lipped smirk into a gaping hole, like a sinkhole.
    Drake reached with his tentacle to feel the hole. He stuck the end of his whip hand into his own destroyed mouth. The pink-red tip came out through the back of his head and waved at Brianna.
    Drake made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh if he’d had tongue and teeth and lips.
    Brianna dropped back a few feet.
    Drake’s face seemed to melt and re-form. She could see individual teeth, white pearls in the starlight, moving like insects, crawling out of the shredded flesh to find places in newly reshaped gums.
    Brianna felt for the wire she hung from her belt. It was an E string from a cello she’d found. She’d wrapped the ends around short pieces of wood to form a four-foot-long garrote.
    “This is what you were going to do to me at the power plant, remember, Drake?” Brianna winced as Drake’s tongue grew inside the still-gaping hole of his mouth.
    “Oh, sorry, you can’t really chitchat, can you?” Brianna taunted. “Well, the thing is, whether it’s me running into a wire at two hundred miles an hour, or the wire running into you at two hundred miles an hour, it works just the same.”
    She grabbed the garrote and was behind Drake before he could blink. The wire went around Drake’s neck as she was still running. The wire bit and sliced, and she felt a powerful jerk in her hands that tore one handle from her grip as the wire sliced through neck