Empire's End Read Free Page B

into
their midst, cutting a crimson swath through the center of the mob,
ripping it apart at the seams and scattering the shell-shocked
remnants across the plaza; he then flew at those stumbling about
the edge of the plaza and slew them with surgical precision. A pair
of rotters attacked from behind. He turned on his heels and
skewered them both. Their guts churned as they struggled, fluids
spilling down their threadbare jeans, and then both fell still.
Adam yanked the blade free and watched them drop. They were the
last. It was done.
    His own clothes were soaked through with
gore. He’d taken this nondescript suit off of a corpse after
shedding his reaper’s robes. A spongy mold was beginning to grow
inside the jacket, feeding on the blood that suffused it. He
figured it was time to trade up. Maybe this time he could find a
pair of pants that felt less awkward, since he didn’t have a—
    Movement to the left. He spun and saw a
shadow disappeared into the old town hall.
    Uncommon for a rotter to run; then again,
this one had just seen dozens of its contemporaries mowed down by a
single man. Maybe they were getting a little smarter. Adam wasn’t
really interested in the reason for it, though. It only made his
mission more complicated.
    Stealthily he crept up the steps of the town
hall building and peered through the open doors. He saw a lobby,
littered with debris and dimly lit by the sunlight spilling through
a fractured ceiling high overhead. As he entered, the floor creaked
loudly beneath his bare feet. It felt like the whole thing might
come down on his head at any moment.
    Somewhere in the building, footsteps creaked
in response to his. From upstairs. Up the grand staircase, past the
soiled American flag and the faded photos of city councilmen. Adam
padded across the floor like a tiger after its next meal. Another
creak led him down a narrow hallway lined with empty offices. The
windows were all shuttered, allowing only a few slits of light into
the corridor. Any moment now he’d find his prey cornered in one of
these rooms, and he’d pounce.
    He passed a doorway, just barely registered a
silhouette standing in the room, and stopped short.
    It might’ve had its back to the doorway.
Maybe not. He had to strike.
    Adam leapt into the room, and the rotter
swung something at the shutters and they came crashing down,
flooding the room with light, temporarily blinding him—
    But he saw enough.
    It was a thin-haired, stocky rotter in
coveralls. He was holding a shovel. He was the one from Jefferson
Harbor, Lily’s town. The one with the shovel who had separated him
from the girl—and who was supposed to be dead—but now he was here
and he was bearing down on Adam with the shovel pointed at him like
a spear.
    No time to think. Adam deflected the shovel
with the scythe and threw an elbow into the side of the rotter’s
head. It stumbled right into a wall—through it—and into the next
room. Adam followed through a shower of sawdust.
    The floor groaned as the rotter rose to face
him. Shovel met blade again, and this time it was Adam who was
knocked off balance. He fell on his back and rolled aside just in
time to avoid being impaled. The rotter caught his ankle and hurled
him across the room with inhuman strength.
    This was much more than just a zombie.
Something had changed, and Adam knew why. When the bastard had
ambushed him in Jefferson Harbor, he’d done something that defied
all undead instinct: he’d tasted of the Reaper’s flesh, swallowing a pound of Adam’s otherworldly constitution before
collapsing on the ground. Adam had revived to find the rotter lying
inert and assumed he was finished. Wrong.
    What had his false flesh done to the rotter?
And had he actually followed Adam all the way here from
Louisiana?
    Again, no time to think, and Adam paid the
price for his hesitation. The shovel bit into his side and he felt
himself propelled through the air like a rag doll, crashing through
a paper-thin wall and