Living Dead- Silvana

José Frito scrambled down the steps, returning fire in a way that looked cinematic but was wildly wayward. A bullet split one of the swing set’s dangling chains. Another shattered the railing of a trailer down the road. A third struck Silvana, luckless Silvana, in the back of the neck. Her throat exploded in blood so dark it looked like chocolate syrup as she was flung face-first to the ground.
...

  Could Greer feel bullets flutter past her skin? Or was it only the rain? She leaped past Sam Hell, her naked foot stamping his Kangol hat into the mud, heading for her trailer. Two arms whipped into her face, fingertips scrabbling. It was Silvana, still rudely alive and only inches away, the rent in her cheek revealing a long, waggling tongue, the hole through her neck so massive that what was left began to collapse beneath her head’s weight.

  Greer batted Silvana’s arms away and kept running.
...

  The girl showed no surprise or disorientation from her fall. She hinged open her jaws and flung her head down at Greer; Greer stopped her with a forearm to her hollowed neck. Silvana’s tongue, now dangling from the hole in her cheek, licked dryly across Greer’s mud-slathered chin. One hand sank into Greer’s hair.

  Jemisha’s peeled scalp flashed before Greer’s eyes, and she thrashed as if she were on fire. But Silvana was dug in like a tick, jaws snapping. The little girl didn’t blink, and somehow this was the most horrifying detail. She did not blink. Silvana’s cold upper lip grazed Greer’s nose. The pale, shambling blotches of the other four children appeared at the periphery of Greer’s vision. She was going to die. It was not the first time in Greer’s life she’d thought it, but it was with the most regret. She was fighting as hard as she could, and it wasn’t enough.

  An old-fashioned baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger stained cherry red, hit Silvana at home-run velocity. The thickest section of wood struck the girl’s neck, ripping through what was left of the bullet-torn muscle. Silvana was thrown to the ground, neck so destroyed that her head dangled by its spinal cord alone. And still her jaw gnashed, up and down on her tongue.
...

  Greer gripped him tightly, feeling the strain of his stomach as he pedaled faster. His rain-sodden scarf flapped like a pennant past Greer’s head, She ducked under it and saw, in the center of the asphalt road, the ravaged being once known as Silvana. She looked barely human. Her hand was gristle. Her torso was tunneled by rifle shots. Her head dangled by a cordon of vertebrae. Somehow her jaws continued to gnash and her blinkless white eyes still stared.

  Fadi swung wide, but not overly so; the bicycle didn’t dare take on the muddy shoulder. Greer felt her arm extend. She looked down its length and rediscovered the machete. The blade was sprinkled with the weeds Daddy had hacked with it. It had been a tool with a purpose. It still was. Greer drew the blade back slowly, so as not to unbalance the bike. Fadi glanced back, aware of what she was doing and prepared to counterweight.

  Silvana, her upside-down head sending inverted messages to her brain, reached for them—in the wrong direction. Greer did not swing the machete; instead, she held it straight and used its point, almost tenderly, to give the girl a push. It was enough to topple her. The weight of Silvana’s head finally tore it free. The head rolled into a ditch, litter no one would ever collect.

- The Living Dead, chapters: Altogether Different Beasts/Dream’s Over