I'm The Only Psychic In The Zombie Apocalypse

Catching her mid-leap had taken nothing at all.

One half-formed thought, thrown out on reflex the instant she left the ground, and her whole lunging weight simply stopped in the air two meters short of my face.

That’s where she still was.

That’s where I still was too, down on both knees in the wet loam in front of her, hands hanging limp off the ends of my arms, her rifle sagging on its sling against my chest, doing nothing at all with any of it.

She thrashed above me.

Boots kicking air, back arching, her ruined face snapping side to side while the snarls poured out of her without pause, without breath, without one single human thing left anywhere in the sound.

My face wasn’t doing anything.

I could feel it from the inside, the whole thing sitting slack, empty, nothing moving on it except my lips, which would not stop trembling no matter what I told them.

Then I broke.

I folded down over my own knees, arms crossing in over my chest, fists closing in the front of my jacket right above my heart, teeth grinding, eyes clenching shut, curling into a ball on the floor of a black forest like a man trying to fold himself out of existence.

And then-

-AAAAAHHHHHHHAAAAA-!

Everything came out at once.

The sadness, the self-loathing, the anger, everything in between, all of it I screamed straight down into the dirt until my lungs ran empty, dragged back in wet through my ruined nose, then screamed out again.

I lost her.

Again...

Last time she died protecting me, hunted across three hundred kilometers because of a vote I cast, standing between me and the things that came for us right up until she couldn’t anymore.

Back then I was nobody.

Just another guy with a rifle he wasn’t even good with, and I always told myself that if I’d had anything at all, one edge, one power, one miracle, she’d have lived.

Well...

This time around I had a system in my skull, telekinesis, a thirty-meter sense that can read anything through anything, more guns than a squad, more ammo than I could ever spend, foreknowledge, enhancers, every goddamn miracle on the menu.

She still died protecting me.

I don’t know how long I stayed down there.

Minutes, wailing into the loam with snot running from my packed nose, my whole body shaking through every sob, while above me the snarling never stopped, never tired, never once needed to breathe.

Then it was time.

I made myself look up, because I had done this, so the very least I owed her was to look at it.

[Look...]

There she was.

Both eyes swollen nearly shut by my fists, straining wide inside all that bruising until white of her eyes showed clean around the green.

Her nose packed with my gauze, gone black hours ago.

The dressing my own shaking hands had wound over her shoulder soaked through, dark, blood still crawling down the arm that hung limp.

Her collar still pulled aside where she’d shown me the bite, the whole jaw-wide ring of it open to the night air.

Drool swinging off her split lip in a long bright string.

And her eyes.

Bright emerald eyes that used to shine with more mischief than any one face should hold, that flashed like jade at every stupid thing I ever said, looking at me now the way a starving animal looks at meat.

My palms found the ground, fingers digging in, closing around fistfuls of cold dirt while my breathing went hard through my teeth.

”Can’t let her suffer...” It left me as a wheeze, squeezed out between clenched teeth, barely words at all. ”No more...”

The TK settled around her head. Gently. Softer than I have ever held anything in either of my lives, cradling her skull, and then I began to turn it, slow, left, while her whole body bucked against the grip.

I couldn’t watch.

My eyes clenched shut on their own, my whole face screwing down as I fed the rotation its first degree...

[Still running away, huh?]

The thought floated up from somewhere and hung there.

And my eyes snapped open.

[No... I caused this... I have to see this...]

So I looked at her.

I held those feral emerald eyes with mine and began again, turning her head to the left one slow degree at a time, watching her the entire way, because she deserved at least one person in this forest who wasn’t a coward.

But it got harder.

Every degree cost more than the one before it, her neck fighting the rotation with a strength that kept climbing, climbing past anything I’d ever felt out of any sprinter I’d ever put down, my grip straining against resistance that had no business existing.

[Why is she...]

I told myself it was me.

My own head sabotaging the one mercy I had left to give her, my own soul refusing the work, that’s all it was, that’s all it could be...

But that thought won’t go away.

It felt like I’d been walking through a desert for hours, and one clear, cold drop of water had just landed on the back of my neck, sending shivers straight down my spine.

And the very next second-

-Ghrrraaa-!

The roar came from my right, close, far too close, and I turned just in time to catch a shape already airborne with both hands reaching for my jacket.

[What the-!]

It slammed into me shoulder-first.

And we went down together, my back hammering into the loam with its full weight landing on top, and then there were teeth, snapping, and snapping, and snapping two inches from my face, rotten breath blasting against my respirator while my left hand found its throat and locked.

[HOW?!]

My Awareness was wide.

It had been wide all night, sweeping every direction exactly the way I’d promised myself, and it had handed me nothing, not a whisper, not a shape, nothing at all until the thing was already in the air...

But that shock and confusion cost me.

Somewhere inside it, the grip holding her broke, the whole cradle collapsing at once, and my heart dropped straight through me because I knew exactly what came next... her weight landing, her legs loading, her coming for the back of my skull while I lay pinned under this thing... But-

-Thump-!-Thump-!-Thump-!-Thump-!-Thump-!-Thump-!...

Heavy footsteps hammered away from me through the trees, fading fast.

[Wait... what?! Why is she running?!]

Nothing about that was right.

Sprinters don’t run away, sprinters have never once in the entire history of this shit show turned their back on prey...

[And those footsteps!]

That was the slap of naked heels on loam, no tread, no sole, and Nia was wearing tactical boots; I had bought them myself, I watched her lace them on...

And then my brain replayed the sound of that fall. It was heavy... way too heavy.

Twice what a woman her size should sound like.

-Ghrrraaa-!

The teeth above my face snapped again, spit hitting my NVGs.

[Not the time!]

My right hand moved on its own, finding the Glock 20 on my chest plate by feel, ripping it off the holster, jamming the compensator into the thing’s ribs before-

-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!...

Twenty rounds, full auto, point blank, the entire mag went into its torso in under two seconds, muzzle flash strobing the forest white, brass spraying off into the dark, the recoil walking the muzzle up its chest.

But it didn’t die.

The armor under that skin ate the penetration the way it always does, but twenty 10mm stacked into the same handspan of body wrecks whatever sits underneath, and I felt the strength drain out of its arms all at once.

-AAAAHHHA-!

The roar tore out of me from somewhere low as I threw it, both arms plus a shove of pure fury flinging it sideways into the loam, where it landed in a heap, twitching.

The pistol fell from my hand, and my fist was already behind my waist, closing on the hatchet, ripping it free of its sheath, and within a second I was on top of the thing with the blade high over my head and-

-Thudsh-!

The edge shoved into its skull.

But it kept snarling.

And I wrenched the blade loose, tearing the wound wide, and there under the split skin it sat, that white glistening layer wrapped over the bloated skull, a second muscle, having already sealed shut where my hatchet had landed.

-Thudsh-!

Again.

-Thudsh-!

Again.

-Thudsh-!

Somewhere around the fourth one I had stopped aiming.

I was just hacking at its face as blood, bone chips, and white jelly sprayed up my forearms with every wrench of the blade, hacking at the head of a thing that would not stop snarling in a world that would not stop taking, my own throat letting out its own snarl on every single swing.

-Thudsh-!

-Thudsh-!

-Thudsh-!

But the seventh, it was still snarling.

Its head was a mangled red ruin, and it was still snarling, and my very soul went cold, done wasting time.

The TK closed around it like a fist before dragging through the loam away from me, tearing a furrow through roots and litter, then straight up, ten meters, twelve, hanging there against the black canopy for half a heartbeat and then-

-CRUNCH-!

I bashed it into the ground head first, with every ounce of lift I could put behind a falling body, its neck folding sideways past every angle a neck owns, its skull half flattening into the earth.

And the snarling finally stopped.

I stood over it, chest heaving, a growl still leaking out of me between breaths, blood and white jelly dripping off the hatchet head.

Then-

”Nia!” I spun around, Awareness already sweeping the ground where she’d fallen, and it found footprints instantly.

A line of them punched deep into the soft loam, running away from that spot in a dead straight line out of the forest.

I holstered the hatchet on the move, scooped the empty Glock up without breaking stride, and walked the line of prints while my hands fed the pistol a fresh mag on pure muscle memory.

Then I stopped over the clearest one and looked.

And the very next second, my eyes went wide, pupils blowing out behind the tubes.

Because I found no boot tread, no heel edge, no sole pattern, nothing, just a naked footprint stamped into the loam, long, spread wide, the front of it tipped with deep punched holes where claws had hooked the earth for grip.

The prints were sunk into that soil three times deeper than any woman her size could press, deeper than I would press.

My hand came up to my face on its own, fingers finding the respirator right where it belonged, seated, sealed, straps tight.

[Yeah... I remember adjusting it before coming into the forest...No. No, wait.]

Why did it need adjusting?

I run my gear checks the same way every time, same order, same motions, three years of habit from a life where sloppy meant dead.

My hands had found the respirator, seating it properly without one single part of my brain registering whether it was properly seated before or not.

But then again, a sealed mask doesn’t slip on its own.

There was exactly one thing between the last moment I knew this seal was good and that gear check on the road.

[The crash...]

The lightbulb came on like the punchline of a very cruel joke.

[The airbags... they hit me in the face... they could’ve slipped it right off...]

I’d been lying unconscious in that cab, possibly with the mask down, breathing whatever was in the air, including their psychedelic, and then I’d woken up, run my checks, sealed myself back in out of pure habit, and walked into this forest with a head that was already gone.

Everything since the crash started replaying at once.

The empty seat. The open door. Tikki refusing to leave it. Tikki looking at me, then the seat, then me, then the seat again.

A woman at a tree whose neck fought my TK with a strength no sprinter has ever had.

Bare, clawed, impossibly heavy footprints running out of this forest in a dead straight line toward the highway... toward where the Ascender was.

My hands curled into fists at my sides, slow, tightening until every bite Tikki had put through the right one screamed, until the claw stripes down my forearm split their scabs open, and I let them.

[Oh, motherfu-!]

I ran.

Flat out, everything my legs had left, feet crashing through the ground with the prints tearing past under my boots, every last one of them pointing dead straight at a wrecked truck sitting alone on an empty highway, at a passenger seat I’d seen empty through eyes I now knew were lying, at the small guard I’d screamed at before leaving him behind in the dark with her.

[Hold on!... hold on, hold on, hold on-]