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

any of this.
    Though she twisted out of the way, her movement left her out of position and vulnerable. The monster took advantage, rushed forward, and bit down. Its rotted and deadly teeth tore through the sleeve of her armored jumpsuit like tissue paper and sank into her arm.
    Time slowed for Eden, and she could feel the monster’s teeth strike bone, feel the blood rushing out of her torn flesh. Feel the sure and certain knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again. She had the time, the luxury, such as it was, to feel everything. . . and to decide that she’d had enough.
    Even with a suppressor—or silencer, as civilians called it—her firearm was going to make some noise. In this slowed moment, she didn’t care about giving away her position as she shot it again and again. She didn’t care if she drew every regular walker in three states right to her. She didn’t care about anything other than ending this monster’s existence, and now.
    It doesn’t take much skill or finesse to hit a zombie in the head when its teeth are sunk into your arm.
    It was a messy kill, blood and brains everywhere. She scraped what was left of its face off her arm and scrabbled for her medpack, stored in the calf pocket of her pants. She pulled out the QuikClot pack but spilled it as she tore it open.
    She groaned and reached for the foam canister in the pack. It wouldn’t help against the infection, but the spray-on quick-coagulant foam would keep her alive long enough to get back to the base. It wasn’t as effective as the QuikClot, but it usually worked.
    What would happen after that, though, was a much tougher question.
    She stood on shaky legs, leaning against the remaining wall of the store for support. She looked around but couldn’t spot half her equipment, including her bow and pack. She limped and held her arm against her side. As quiet as could be, she searched for her things and found them in the ruins. She stopped by the corpse and made sure to take several pictures with the camera that had somehow survived its one-story drop in her pack. It was getting dark now, so she attached the night-vision device to her mask and began the long trek back to the base.
    Eden Blake sighed as she shrugged the pack onto her shoulders. Her parents were going to be pissed.

     
    Expeditionary Force Command
Joint Base Lewis-McChord
Tacoma, Washington
     
    Eden broke radio silence as she approached the well-lit gates of ExForce Command. She wasn’t looking forward to the dressing-down she was sure to get from her CO. She got bit. Failed her test, certainly. She was a liability. She could already hear everything Gaines would say to her, already see the disappointment in his face and those of her parents.
    It didn’t help that most of the guards on the gate tonight were her own people, fellow Hunters who hated her for the special treatment they thought she received as daughter of the bunker’s military commander. People who also hated her for being immune when they’d lost so many loved ones over the years.
    Some days, she wished she could just run away and never see any of them again. She groaned as the pain in her arm and side reminded her that she needed to get her ass in gear. She sighed and spoke into her throat mic. “Hunter Alpha Four approaching base. Day Code: Zulu Three Charlie Baker. Over.”
    Her earpiece beeped once, and there was a faint reply as she trudged out of the clearance zone around the base. “Alpha Four, you are cleared for approach.”
    As she got within two hundred yards of the main gate, she came to a red painted line on the pavement and put down her pack and weapons. She pulled off her hood and mask and bent to put them in her pack along with her sidearm. Her bow she let lie on the broken and weathered asphalt. “Halt,” said the amplified voice of one of the guards atop the wall. “Identify and present for inspection.”
    She sighed, annoyed at the protocol that made her repeat herself, and called out