The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning by Jason Kristopher Page A

her with some cover. She shifted, easing out of the half-squatting, half-seated position. The movement relieved the pain in her thigh… but it also knocked loose a piece of rubble she hadn’t seen.
    It wasn’t a big piece of crumbling concrete that went scraping and sliding down the tilted slab of the second floor. It was just over an inch long. But in the silent stillness of the early spring evening, the clatter was as loud as the base alarm. She closed her eyes and swore silently, hoping when she opened them that she’d have slipped back in time and not made such a rookie mistake.
    A sibilant hiss from a few feet away told her otherwise. It was closer now.
    But walkers don’t hiss…
    A primal scream split the dusk, a torn throat producing one of the most awful noises she’d ever heard. It spurred her to run before her brain had even informed her it was planning to move. She would have moved with grace and ease as she darted for the next building’s single-story roof if her leg hadn’t betrayed her after all. It cramped just as she put weight on it, and she stumbled and crashed through the rotted flooring into the remains of the store below.
    The second floor collapsed around her as she fell. Desiccated wood and ancient concrete crashed down amongst the display cases and long-shattered glass shards. She hit hard, landing on her left side and rolling to one side as the collapse continued. She avoided a falling beam, only to come face-to-horror with the prey she’d been searching for all day.
    The snapping jaws of the dead thing in front of her just missed her masked nose. Its clawed hand grasped and tore at her cloak as she rolled away again. She sprang to her feet and pounded her thigh with her fist, bending and stretching the leg as she kept one eye on the zombie trapped in the collapsed flooring. The blood began to flow back into her leg just as the corpse dragged itself free of the wreckage and stood.
    She raised her knife and fell back into a fighting stance, favoring her injured left side. She watched as the walker took one hesitant step, then another, its gait growing faster as it moved across the room toward her.
    But that wasn’t possible. Walkers walked, they didn’t get faster. That was kind of the whole point of the name. “Oh, shit,” she whispered.
    She turned and ran for the door, ignoring the pain in her leg as she darted down the alleyway.
    “Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit.”
    She glanced back over her shoulder just once and saw the zombie stop at the door, sniff the air, and turn her way when it caught her scent.
    “That’s… not possible,” she repeated, crying out as she tripped over more rubble, not watching where she was going, and fell to the ground. The snarl from behind her told her everything she needed to know. She rolled as she hit the ground, crying out again as her injured left side took another blow. In shock, she glimpsed what shouldn’t be, what couldn’t be possible: a zombie leaping through the air toward her.
    She rolled yet again and launched the combat knife toward the zombie as it landed not two feet away. Her aim was true, and the six-inch knife sank into the zombie’s skull as it penetrated the mouth. Coughing and gushing black ooze, the zombie landed on all fours, shaking its head as though to dislodge the knife.
    That knife should’ve killed it. Should’ve skewered its brain and left it quiet and still. But it didn’t. She drew her pistol, a weapon of last resort for a Hunter. She nearly dropped the gun when the monster reached up, wrapped a clawed hand around the knife’s hilt, and jerked it free.
    She could swear that it laughed as it turned toward her once more. Its eyes were dark and cold, filled with madness and an impossible intelligence. Even with her training, even with what she’d seen of this monster so far, she still wasn’t expecting it when the zombie threw her own knife back at her. Just what the fuck kind of zombie was this? Walkers didn’t do