Then the horde charged.
"Run!" Kínitos grabbed Sarah's wrist, and they bolted.
The zombies shambled after them, arms outstretched, jaws snapping. Sarah's boots pounded against cracked asphalt. Her breath came fast. Kínitos pulled her around a broken-down car and down a side street.
More zombies spilled from an alley to their left. There numbers multiplying and their movement quick.
"Left side!" Sarah shouted.
Kínitos veered right, dragging her with him. They leapt over a fallen lamppost. Both breath in the black smoke energy that came from there body. Their muscles recovered and grew. Running faster they tried to escape the dead.
Ahead, a two-story building with a shattered glass door. A gas station on the corner—more shapes staggering out from behind the pumps.
"Everywhere!" Sarah gasped. "Keep moving!"
They crashed through the doorway of the building. Inside, overturned chairs and dust. A narrow hallway. Kínitos let go of her hand long enough with one hand shove a tipped-over shelf behind them, buying seconds.
Through a broken window in the back, they saw another wave rounding the corner.
"This way!" Sarah pointed to a fire exit.
They burst out into a tight courtyard. Three zombies turned toward them. Kínitos swore. He shoved one back with his shoulder, grabbed Sarah's hand again, and they slipped through a gap in a chain-link fence.
The neighborhood swarmed.
For ten minutes, they ran. Every direction held new threats—zombies crawling out of doorways, climbing from storm drains, stumbling from behind dumpsters. The sun was still up, but the shadows between buildings felt endless.
Finally, they ducked into a half-collapsed laundromat. The laundromat was dark real dark with small holes that light peaked like a scared child behind their mother. Sarah pressed her back against a drywall, heaving for air. Kínitos doubled over, hands on his knees. "We can't just keep running," he said between breaths.
"I know." Sarah peered through a hole in the wall. The horde was spreading out, searching. "There's too many. We can't fight head on" said Sarah
Kínitos stood up straight. He cracked his knuckles again. This time, the blue energy around his hands held—flickering, but steady. "One at a time, then. Pick them off."
Sarah nodded in agreement.
They left the laundromat through a side door. A single zombie wandered toward them. Kínitos stepped forward, swung his coated fist, and its head snapped back. Bone poking out. It crumpled. The string on top become detached.
Two more came from behind a dumpster. Sarah grabbed a broken pipe from the ground. The pipe quickly got covered an energy Turing dark purple. She swung wild, catching one in the temple. It dropped. Kínitos dealt with the second with a quick jab. Face breaker upon impact.
She looked down there was no string on top the one she killed. Then looked at the unrecognizable zombie seeing his string begin faded away.
They moved block by block. An alley here. A parking lot there. Each time, only one or two zombies at a time. Kínitos's coating started to last longer. Sarah's aim improved. She stopped flinching.
After clearing a small courtyard, Sarah paused. She wiped sweat and something darker from her cheek. Then she looked up.
Strings.
Not the gray ones hanging off the zombies. Not the blue one on Kínitos. These were thinner, darker, trailing east—away from the scattered undead. They stretched like fishing line pulled taut, leading toward the center of the neighborhood. A building further down. Two stories. Boarded windows. A faded sign she couldn't read.
"Kínitos," she said quietly.
He turned, breathing hard. "What?"
She pointed. "The strings. They lead there. That building in the center."
Kínitos followed her gaze. He wiped his forehead. "Well here I thought it was an abandoned town."
"No," Sarah agreed. "It's not."
They went only slowly advancing one zombie here. Two there. Three here and one coming from the corner. This time there was a lot of body's everywhere.
After the third ambush, Sarah stopped.
They had just taken down two more zombies in a narrow alley. Kínitos was already stepping forward, looking for the next one. But Sarah didn't move.
The zombies laid on the grown lifeless funny enough in both of their head. Then from corner of Kínitos as a shawdowy figure stood behind Sarah. A zombie that was on the grown lifeless jumped at her.
"Sarah!" he said.
Raising her hand a shield appeared in front of her. As the zombies head smashed into. Quickly Kínitos threw a rock coated on it was blue energy lashed on like flames. The rock went through the zombies head, the through the car and then through the building and disappeared beyond.
She stared at the crumpled body at her feet. A gray string, rotting and frayed, still trailed from its chest. But it didn't just hang loose like the others. It stretched east. Toward the center of the neighborhood. Toward that building.
Her breath caught.
"Kínitos, thanks" she said slowly.
"Yeah no problem," he said looking at his hands
"They're dead. They shouldn't have strings at all."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Dead things don't have connections. No loyalty. No feelings. That's why Im not seeing see strings on some of the zombies." She looked up at him. "But these do."
Touching Kínitos face his eyes glows a mix of colors lit the room. He followed her gaze along the gray thread. It led past broken windows, past more shambling shapes, all the way to the two-story building with the boarded windows.
"That means someone's controlling them," Sarah whispered. "They're connected to something. To someone."
Another groan echoed from a side street. Then another. The shadows between buildings seemed to shift.
"We're not just being chased," she said. "They know where we are. They've been herding us this whole time."
Kínitos cracked his knuckles. The blue energy sparked. "We need to regroup, you got a plan"
Sarah nodded. Her eyes stayed on that building. "We go to the strings. We find whoever's pulling them."