Gods of Anthem by Logan Keys Page A

teeth onto Cory’s sleeve, and I slam the butt of my gun into its face several times to dislodge it.
    More come from every direction. As trained, the team fans out in a stagger, firing in short bursts. No wasting bullets on wild aims. Two of the zombies are men, one’s a teenage girl, and three more women stumble behind these, bluish from lack of oxygen. I’m thinking zombies don’t breathe as much, which makes sense, ‘cause they gasp and moan as if their involuntary muscles need constant reminding.
    “We’ve got an eater!” someone shouts.
    One of the stiffs has a nice bloody mouth from getting a dine in before seeing us. He’s the quickest, leaping forward like a grasshopper to land on Beemoushe. Bee screams and panics, flinging all over. It takes some doing to kick the fast one off of his throat in time.
    Then, we all fight back-to-back in teams, cutting them down. One by one, they each take the final dirt dive. The M-4 is a handy little zombie killer.
    “Ah hell, man, damn.”
    I spin around to see Bee squared off with a mini-zombie in a nightgown. My stomach clenches. All this time and I can still hardly look at the little ones. She’s barely three feet tall.
    “Damn,” Bee says again. “She can’t be more than, what, five? I got sisters, man! Or did. I can’t—”
    Cory plugs up the last one on his side with shots to the head before walking over and, without hesitation, puts a few bullets into the tot. We all cringe as she jerks and falls backwards. Some of the team close their eyes, or glance away. But I force myself to watch.
    After she’s still, Cory turns on us with a sneer. “You pussies better get over it, and quick. You think America isn’t going to be half full of these little freaks? You piss yourselves over kids, but she’ll eat your face off, same as the rest.”
    He spits toward the tiny body, and Bee steps forward. I stop him with a hand on his chest. Cory’s looking down at the mini-zombie, and his face is stretched thin over the bones. Technically, he’s right about them being the same as the others. But he’s not … right.
    I shake my head at Defoe, who looks like he’s about to say what we all want to, and I signal for us to move on.
    “Sick,” Defoe mutters so only I can hear.
    But I’m focused on my breathing. My heart rate’s too high. Any minute I could—
    The village appears; out of the green, it reveals itself. We’ve reached the edge of the jungle, and the scene before us is like something out of Vietnam, only … we’re in the middle of Sweden. Our group had watched tons of footage of the old wars, but the Third World War was the toughest to see, because small nukes were used to destroy entire cities, leaving nothing but craters where metropolises had once thrived.
    It’s almost evening now, and a purple sky hangs heavy over the abandoned village. I can sense everyone behind me is reluctant to enter, too. The wind picks up, rustling the grass roofs, like fingers that beckon us to our doom. I’m not the only one who shudders from the eerie hissing sound.
    The village is a ghost town. Had the stiffs eaten the other teams? If so, where’d they all go?
    Cory, I notice, isn’t so eager to lead anymore. With a sigh, I straighten and say, “Reload.” Clicks and taps ensue as we knock off our empty mags and let the next round of bullets hitch a ride under the M-4s. “Check your belts. Flash grenades only,” I say, reminding them of close quarters and all. “We don’t need to blow ourselves up.”
    The resounding “Roger!” from the ten guys behind me is rather subdued.
    I lift my hand, and they fan back out into a wedge.
    We begin to move forward slowly as one.
    We have been trained.
    We have been trialed.
    And I get the feeling we’re about to find out just how little that really means.



Thirty-one
    Manda stands in my apartment, arms crossed. “Come on, Mo. It’s time to do something besides work and sit around.”
    “Mm-hmm.”
    I’m engrossed in