A wet growl sounded as the reanimated body of Jewels staggered at Spencer from behind. Emily looked on in horror as the woman she had just begun to consider her second mother grabbed a handful of her brother’s hair.

Spencer let out a yell as she pulled him and he fell over onto his back. He struggled against the undead, but she had twice the ten-year-old’s mass. She let out a hiss and dragged him closer to her snapping jaws.

Emily clutched her rifle in a white knuckled grip, but knew she hadn’t had the time to reload any of her spent magazines. Acting on instinct, she ran up and hit what had once been Jewels in the face. It sickened her to know she had just broken the woman she had grown to love’s nose, but she had to save her brother.

She hit Jewels in the face again, but her blows had little effect. They only stunned the fresh zombie for a few seconds and each time it would go in at Spencer again. If this wasn’t torture enough, Emily heard the sounds of the larger group of undead they had fled from drawing closer.

Emily’s terror was reaching a new level, when Spencer drew a big knife off his belt. But instead of stabbing at Jewels, he used the blade to saw through the hair that held him restrained. With a yell, he cut through enough to allow himself to pull away and Emily saw that several of Jewel’s’ fingers hung by torn muscles and little else.

Emily backpedaled a few feet and yelled, “Eyes on me, Jewels.” Her hand fumbled in her pocket until she found a bullet. “Spence, I have to put her down. We can’t leave her like this.”

“Okay, Em, but hurry. I can see at least twenty more behind you now!”

Her single bullet went into the rifle. She passed only long enough to wipe her building tears away, choke back her crying, and then she sent the shot through Jewels’ head.

After shooting the closest thing she had to a mother for the last year, Emily broke down in tears. Her knees gave out and she fell to the ground. Spencer screamed at her, but she failed to make out the words. Her reality swam in milky circles and she couldn’t bring herself to move, to care, to want to live.

There was only one thing Spencer could have said to get her onto her feet. “Come on, Emily, what about dad?”

Finding her motivation, if not he resolve, Emily struggled to her feet mere moments before the growing group of undead reached them.

It was now Spencer who took the lead. After grabbed up Jewel’s weapons, her little brother grabbed her hand and yanked her along. “Come on, Em. Dad’s still out there and all alone. He’s counting on us. We need to find him.”

Return next Saturday as a new chapter begins and we see the world through Spencer’s point of view as the siblings race to rescue their father!

You can discover where Spencer and Emily enter the Eternal Aftermath Here!