Page 61 of Romancing in Rot

So does every kid with a gun.

“Class, eyes on me,” Clair says. “This is not a toy.”

Her voice is calm.

Teacher calm.

The kind of calm that makes smart people sit down and shut up.

The kid’s grin twitches. “What the hell is that?”

“Consequences.”

Lyla makes a tiny sound behind me.

He laughs, but it comes out thinner than before. “You expect me to believe you’re going to throw a bomb at kids?”

“No,” Clair says.

The honesty lands harder than a threat.

His grin sharpens again. “Then you’re bluffing.”

Clair’s thumb brushes near the taped cap.

Not activating it.

Not yet.

“I won’t throw it at you.” Her gaze cuts toward the alley behind us, where the dead are already dragging themselves closer. “I’ll throw it there.”

All the kids follow her gaze.

The first infected shambles into the mouth of the alley, jaw working, one arm hanging by a strip of blackened tendon. One crawls past an abandoned car with its lower body missing, dragging a rope of intestine behind it that catches under a tire and stretches before tearing loose with a wet snap.

The skinny kid with the rifle makes a gagging noise.

More shadows move behind it, slow and hungry, drawn by the gunshot.

Clair keeps her voice even. “It’ll be loud. Loud enough to pull every corpse nearby straight into this street.”

The kid’s jaw works. “You won’t do it.”

Clair’s mouth curves. “I have faith we’ll make it. Do you?”

The street goes quiet.

Even Lyla looks impressed.

The kid’s eyes cut to the rooftops, then the windows, then the alley. Calculating. Angry because Clair just made him do math in public and the numbers are ugly.

Finally he snorts. “Yeah, okay, mujer loca. We’ll just take your supplies then. You can keep the guns.”

Supplies, not guns.

They’re hungry, then.

Hungry enough to risk this.