"Is she certain?"
The words left my mouth and sat in the dark between us.
The most useless question available and I asked it anyway.
"She's certain, Bram." Mercury's whisper came back down the alley, low and absolute. "Zombies are zombies. You don't misidentify them."
"What are they doing?"
That was the question that mattered. Standing, moving, feeding, hunting. Each of those is a different night, and the difference decides whether you walk out of an alley or get folded into it.
"I don't know," Linn said.
And that was the whole problem with a corridor this narrow. Whoever is at the front is everyone's eyes, and ours had stopped looking.
"Peep round and tell me."
"I can't." Flat. Final. The voice of someone who had already measured the cost and refused it. "I just can't do it."
"So what do we do?" Mercury asked.
"We go back." Linn was trying to turn. The motion was small and absolute in the confined space. "We take the long route. That's what we do."
