Z 2134

one of the zombies pulling at a leg or perhaps the head, trying to either drag the whole corpse away or tear off a piece for itself, plunging the rest of them into a battle. At least that’s what happened the many times Jonah had seen the zombies fighting over humans, both on the show and, more horrifyingly, in person.
    He carefully stepped past the zombies. He had just 10 yards to go until he finally reached daylight, where he could start running, laying space between himself and the undead.
    Jonah inched forward, not daring to turn back, using his ears as his only warning, accepting on faith they couldn’t see him at all.
    Just keep walking.
    Jonah was just 10 yards from the exit. Ten yards from safety. Just 10 yards.
    “Looks like he made it, folks,” Kirkman’s voice suddenly crackled behind him.
    Jonah’s heart fell to his feet and he froze in his tracks, forcing himself to look behind him. Several of the zombies looked up from their waning feast, then started screaming in unison, leaping from the deer’s torn carcass and charging toward him.
    “Fuck!” Jonah screamed, raising his rifle and firing, hitting one of the four zombies in the chest and sending it to the ground. The zombie cried out, writhing and slapping his arms against the ground, but even a bullet in the heart was only temporary. Anything less than a head shot only slowed the fuckers down.
    Jonah was down to just his machete.
    A machete against three zombies racing toward him — one a female, and one male looking like a small version of Bear. Fortunately, the largest of the zombies was moving slower than the others.
    Jonah turned and ran to the exit, reaching daylight, then scanning for anything he could use to set distance between himself and the pack — a waterfall he could leap from, a tree he could get to and climb, a hole where he could bury himself and hide. Anything.
    But he saw nothing but snowy flatlands all around him, and the monsters were far too fast to elude in the snow.
    Fuck!
    Jonah spun around, grabbing his machete from the scabbard on his back. He gripped it tightly, dug his heels in the ground, and positioned himself to take on the first zombie, which was now just inches away.
    If Jonah had pulled that same machete on a gang of living people, they would slow down, assess the situation, then determine the best means of attack. But the zombies were corpses, with minimal brain function, and knew no fear. Two of the running dead ran straight for him, ignorant of the danger of his blade.
    Jonah yelled, as if his sudden scream might scare them, then swung at the closest, sending a fat chunk from his rotting face sailing from his head with a wide arc of thick blackish blood in the wake of the machete’s swing.
    The zombie staggered back, howling as it stumbled. Jonah wanted to finish it off while it was still swaying and unsteady, but the female was still racing toward him, hands outstretched.
    Jonah leaped out of the way just in time as the zombie ran by and then fell to the ground. He spun around, raised the machete high, and swung down just as the creature was about to stand, bashing in the back of its skull with a sickening crunch.
    As the zombie fell forward, Jonah’s machete went with it, lodging inside its skull. The handle of the machete slipped from Jonah’s grip just as a fat fuck of walking death came running at him faster than he thought possible. Jonah looked up just in time to see the ruined man racing toward him like a train off its track.
    Jonah ditched the machete to dodge the attack, but…
    didn’t quite make it.
    The fat zombie’s fist caught Jonah on the side of the head, sending him to the ground in an explosion of pain.
    Shit!
    So far he had managed to wound two and kill just one of the four zombies. As the largest of them was attacking, Jonah’s machete was still jutting from the collapsed body of the only zombie he’d managed to kill.
    “Uh-oh, looks like Jonah might be making his last stand,” Kirkman’s voice said through the orb, sprinkling salt into the survivor’s festering wound.
    Fucking fucker!
    Jonah stood, his head pounding where the fat bastard zombie had hit him, and looked around. He failed to see the zombie coming at him until it was too late.
    The zombie grabbed him from behind. If the fat fuck pulled him into a hug, Jonah knew it would be seconds before its teeth were in his neck.
    Jonah kicked his foot back hard into the fat fuck’s left knee, hard enough to make the