Teasing Book 4

 I've been talking about Book 4 long enough: How about a taste of Bone Appétit? Angélique has just battled her way through a room full of "afflicted" to find her husband Gryffin unconscious. As she tends to him, she hears moans from the zombis she thought she had slaughtered.

Two fallen afflicted grappled. Angélique noted with dread that the slighter one was using the larger to pull himself over to regain his feet. She needed to fell him again, or dispatch him. She rifled through the various items in Jacky’s coat pockets, but the only useful tool she found was a small file. It was light, but it did have a dull point. Angélique sidled into the room, keeping her back to the wall, until she was behind the two. She stepped over corpses and slid on splattered brains to get close enough to attack. In Jacky’s gogglers, the horror was magnified two-fold, but the modified spectacles also provided a clearer view of her target. The base of the skull on the slight one was fully exposed, and the creature was more intent on getting up than on Angélique’s movements. Two blows, she calculated; one to sever the spinal cord and one to pierce the brain. But the thing would not hold still, jerking about, fumbling to pull himself over and falling back when the bigger one batted him away. It would not be enough to wait for the right moment. She needed to stab cleanly and swiftly, and a moving body would not serve. Her plan would not work. She would have to create her own advantage. 

 Angélique moved around the two struggling bodies and kicked the slighter one in the face so he dropped to his back again. The larger one reached for her leg, but she stomped on his hand and kicked his head with the edge of her boot heel, cutting a deep gash. She then knelt on the lighter one’s arms and rammed the file into the corner of its eye. It bucked and writhed, but Angélique held fast and twisted the file, then punched it deeper into the thing’s brain.

The big zombi snatched her coat hem and dragged himself closer. Angélique ignored him for the moment and continued to drive the file into the smaller zombi until it stopped moving. The big one heaved himself at her, knocking her to the floor. She let it catch one boot, and she kicked her other boot into the gaping wound on its head. It held on, lowering his mouth toward her ankle, heedless of the leather that defended her flesh. Angélique kicked again, and again, over and over, anger overcoming any fear.

“Why—won’t—you—die?” 

It turned its fat head, just the right angle. Angélique drove her heel into its nose and it dropped her boot. She scrambled to her feet and stomped its face, roaring in fury, until she saw brain matter ooze from its skull. She stepped back, tripped on a corpse, and landed on her derrière. She sat panting in release. She surveyed the carnage around her, naked men, dead and more than dead, stinking, fetid flesh upon flesh. 

Angélique bellowed, “Who did this to you?”