Page 166 of Romancing in Rot

I’m going to do more than get them back.

I’m going to make every one of the fuckers who touched them pay.

I nod once.

Then I climb into the truck.

Hold on, girls.

I’m coming.

THIRTY-TWO

MAKE THEM PAY

CLAIR

I wake up to the taste of blood and metal.

For one horrifying second, I don’t know where I am. Cold tile bites into my hip, stale air coats my tongue, fluorescent lights buzz somewhere overhead, and a dull, mean throb pulses through the back of my skull like my brain is trying to claw its way out.

Then I hear Poppy.

“Mom?”

Her voice cracks on the word, and everything inside me snaps awake.

I force my eyes open. Poppy is on her knees beside me, both hands wrapped around my arm like she can hold me together through sheer will. Her face is blotchy, her eyes red, loose strands broken out from her braid and sticking to her cheeks. There’s dirt on her chin and blood on one sleeve. I don’t know whose.

Panic rips through me so fast I almost choke on it. “Are you hurt?”

Poppy shakes her head hard, but tears spill over anyway. “Not bad. I’m okay. I’m okay. You wouldn’t wake up.”

I push myself upright too fast, and pain detonates through my skull. The hallway tilts, floor sliding sideways beneath me, and Poppy grabs my shoulders.

“Mom.”

“I’m okay.” Lie. Big one. Shiny bow on top. “I’m okay.”

I blink until the world steadies.

We’re in some kind of cage.

Because apparently being kidnapped once during the apocalypse wasn’t enough character development for one lifetime.

Chain-link fencing and metal panels are bolted together in a wide rectangle across the middle of a mall hallway. For one sick second, my mind flashes back to the prison. Concrete walls. Locked doors. The stale stink of fear.

My stomach twists.

As always, the undead are crawling around outside, eating faces, and somehow the living still keep finding new and creative ways to be worse.

Storefronts line both sides of us, dark and gutted. A shoe store with shattered glass and empty display shelves. A candle shop with black scorch marks licking up the sign. A kid’s clothing store with little mannequins tipped over inside, their plastic faces staring blankly at the ceiling.

Above us, a faded banner hangs crooked from the second-floor railing.

SUMMER SAVINGS START NOW!

The air smells sour and greasy, like old food, dirty bodies, and smoke trapped too long under a roof. Somewhere deeper in the mall, metal clanks against metal. A low laugh echoes, then cuts off. The sound rolls through the hallway and disappears into the dark mouths of abandoned stores.