Brown sludge seeped from the eye like half-set pudding, and I fell onto my butt, gagging at the stench. “You okay?” I looked up to see Griz standing before me. “I am now,” I said. He held out a hand and pulled me up. “Hoorah,” he grunted before heading after another zed that needed put down. I stood near the third barrack—what remained of it, anyway—which was now a giant campfire, with flickers of embers and glints of soot showering us. Corpses covered the ground around me. Most lay unmoving. One zed had a blade through its mouth, pinning it to the ground. It chewed at the handle even while it convulsed and spasmed. Someone had turned the sirens off, but the remaining sounds—cries of the dying—were heart-wrenching. A woman’s weeping drew me to the shadows to my left. I edged closer, keeping the knife ready. She lay amid the corpses, her shoulder and leg badly chewed.
