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moment, reaching up with both arms, leaving his face, neck, and
chest entirely exposed, but hoping, and maybe even praying, that he’d properly
gauged the orb’s distance.
    Jonah’s hands seized the cold, glassy
orb, bringing it down hard into the zombie’s skull.
    The creature screamed.
    Kirkman yelled, “What the hell?” as the
orb whirred, hummed, and beeped, trying to find its bearings and free itself
from Jonah’s grasp.
    He could feel the humming and a slight
burning in his arms, but Jonah held on. He stood, walked over to the zombie,
now struggling to stand, and brought the orb down hard on its head again.
    “Die!” he screamed, as the orb split the
zombie’s skull.
    “FUCKING!” he screamed with a second
blow.
    “DIE!” he screamed with the final bash,
throwing the orb at the zombie’s crumbling face.
    The orb’s screen was cracked and
flickering, the humming now only a sputter.
    Jonah could see Kirkman screaming, but
the speakers were silent, so Jonah could only guess what he was saying — probably
a warning about not destroying the camera orb.
    Jonah reached down, retrieved the orb, then
brought it to his face, swallowing the rising tide of venom.
    He looked into the camera and said,
“How’s that for WOW factor?”
    He threw the orb as hard and as far as he
could back into the cave, then headed for the woods.

CHAPTER 2 — Anastasia Lovecraft
    Inside The
Walls of City 6
    A nastasia stared at the largest of the
more than 20 TVs that lined The Social, watching her father, Jonah, square off
against the zombies.
    When Jonah went down and the zombie
swiped the machete away, Ana cringed. She thought that was it — her father was
dead. But suddenly, he looked up and into the orb’s camera, grabbed it, and
continued to bash it into the zombie’s skull until he finally stood,
victorious.
    The bar erupted into a nearly universal
applause, but Ana was silent, burying herself in her long brown hair, which hid
her emerald eyes.
    She glared at the TV.
    “I’m sorry,” said Michael, her best
friend.
    Michael half-smiled from across the
table, then set his warm hand on top of hers and gently squeezed. His smile was
sympathetic, sewn on his mouth with a compassion no one else in the bar
possessed.
    As if to punctuate her thought, a group
of guys at the bar traded a thundering round of high-fives.
    “Jo-nah! Jo-nah!” they chanted, their
cheers drifting through the smoky fog of the bar.
    “Why did I let you talk me into coming
here?” she whispered to Michael. “You know I hate this place.”
    “I’m sorry.” He looked down. “You said
you couldn’t bear to watch it at Chimney Rock. I thought this was better.”
    Chimney Rock was what they, and most of
the younger people, called the orphanage where Ana had been placed. It was one
of City 6’s three State-run orphanages, and while they knew it as Chimney Rock,
its official title was The Home for Wayward Youths and Miscreants.
    The Rock was a sprawling complex in the
beating heart of the City, its outside as sooty and black as the spirit inside.
The Rock was where they sent the children of State prisoners, and where Ana and
her 14-year-old brother, Adam, had been living for the past two months, ever
since her father had murdered their mother.
    Ana was assigned to stay at Chimney Rock
until she turned 18 — six long months away. Only then would she be allowed to
claim custody of Adam, provided she earned her keep at the textile, where it
was her job to sew buttons onto shirts, all day, six days a week, 12 hours a
day, until her fingers were numb or throbbing. Usually both. As awful as the
throbbing was, most times Ana preferred it since it was better than the numb
which tricked her into thinking her fingers had disappeared. Where she’d go
after Chimney Rock was anybody’s guess, though.
    Most likely, she’d have to move to the
Dark Quarter, the nearly lawless ghetto of City 6. In some ways, she wondered
if Adam would be better off staying on at