Ingrid opened the padlock and I stepped out.
My hands were free. My legs were free. Nobody put a rope on me, nobody assigned a body to walk behind me. The metal floor of the cage gave way to ordinary asphalt.
I looked at her.
She was already turning away, completely unbothered by the fact that I could run.
She isn't careless. She's counted.
We walked forward together.
Fire went up in front of us in long arcs, and the explosions rolled back down the street and came through the ground into my boots. The selected infected kept throwing without pause, without rhythm, without anything that looked like effort.
The rest of them stood where they'd been put. Fixed positions. The held silence of the majority while the minority did the work.
Max sat on the black horse ahead, watching a building that hadn't given him anything yet. The radio unit under his arm. The blonde hair catching the reflected light of the fires.
I looked at it properly.
