Twenty-Two
The freaks’ snarls grew louder, more frenzied, when the light from the headlamps reached them. But they didn’t stop coming. Eyes slitted to protect them from the punishing glare, they bounded forward, hands forming claws as they reached for the wardens.
The first row went down, hammered by lethal fire from the wardens’ guns. Those behind ploughed over the fallen, trampling them into the tunnel floor. Rage drove them forward, the need to inflict pain on those able to walk in the light a relentless ache.
Jackson remembered what that felt like, how hard it had been to not give in to the darkness inside him when the virus let it loose. He fought down the surge of empathy for the creatures currently bent on killing him, aiming at the biggest freak. The shot took him in the chest,
