Living Dead- Mama Shaw

  Despite the gunfire still cracking around her, Greer slid feetfirst into the dome and began stomping Mama Shaw in the face. The woman’s nose, ruptured from Sam Hell’s boot, tore off with a plop of cartilage, leaving behind an empty, scrotal bag of skin. Greer kept going, her flip-flops flying free, her bare heels pistoning until Mama Shaw’s face felt pulpy. She didn’t stop until Miss Jemisha was crouched beside her, finally free.

  Jemisha seemed to not hear the splattering of bullets into mud. She ran her hands through the leaves, found the sort of heavy, jagged rock that had no business at a playground, and hobbled so her knees pinned down both of Mama Shaw’s arms. The old woman, her face an unrecognizable red paste, still gnashed her mouth-shaped hole around a wad of hair. Jemisha raised the rock in both hands and drove it down.

  Greer pivoted her knees in the mud, lumbered to her feet, and ran. But she heard the thick impacts into Mama Shaw’s skull and brain, as well as Miss Jemisha’s rapid, riverside babble.

  “Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love.” Scrunch. “Because of your great mercy, wipe away my sins.” Scrunch. “Wash away my evil and make me clean from my sin.” Scrunch. “I recognize my faults, I am conscious of my sins.” Scrunch. “I have sinned against you—only against you.” Scrunch.

- The Living Dead, chapter: Altogether Different Beasts