Speed's fingers brushed the decaying flesh of her chest. A slow testing touch, the specific stupidity of someone who had grown up behind walls and had never learned what touching things on the plain actually meant.
A touch wakes it up. My mother's voice, arriving from somewhere I hadn't accessed in years. A touch always wakes it up.
"That thing is going to kill—"
The zombie's hand shot up and grabbed his wrist before I finished the sentence. Speed reacted fast, I'll give him that. He lifted it and drove it hard into the ground.
"Wow," Mercury said, watching through the windshield.
For a moment Speed stood over it like he had handled the situation. Like that was the end of it. Then I watched the zombie's chest rise from the ground. Its mouth opened.
Even through the thick armored glass, my body heard the sound. That wet, rattling shriek that had been burned into my nervous system for twenty years. The sound that meant the plain had stopped pretending to be quiet.
Shit.
