Unchosen by Michele Vail

to the pathway that led to the school.
    He shook his head slowly.
                  Okay. So he didn’t want me to go that way.
                  Up ahead, zombies shuffled out from the clusters of trees. There had to be a dozen of them, maybe more. Their clothes hung off their emancipated bodies in stained scraps. Dirt smeared their hair, their faces. They were in varying states of decay. Most had greenish purple skin and filmy, vacant gazes.
                  I’d seen enough zombies to know these were fresh from their graves.
    Someone had raised them.
    My stomach pitched. Holy Anubis! It took powerful necro magic to animate corpses still six feet under—especially so many. These walking dead would not have their kas intact. Only their master’s necromancy would keep them upright and moving.
    T hey formed a two-by-two column, blocking the path. The zombies began to move forward as one unit; unearthly moans mingled with the shuffle of bare feet against packed dirt.
    Okay. Okay. Take out the puppeteer, and the puppets would fall.
    Except I didn’t see a puppeteer.
    I backed up a couple of steps, and Jon did the same, staying even with me. The zombies picked up their pace, and they were coming … coming right for me.
    They sniffed, and low, creepy moans rippled through the undead crowd. I heard jaws cracking, mouths opening impossibly wide.
    Shit. Oh, shit.
    The Hunger. They all had the Hunger.
    Fear chilled me to the bone. I gripped my scythe, holding it at the ready. I didn’t have my cell phone to call anyone. I was reluctant to summon Henry and ask him to risk his unlife for me again. Yelling at the top of my lungs might bring innocent students and teachers into the maws of starving zombies.
    Damn it. I couldn’t leave a pack of wild brain-munching zombies running around outside the school.
    “Hey, uh, Anubis? Anput? Got a minute to help me?” I prayed out loud. “Hello! Kebechet in danger of becoming zombie chow!”
    The zombies marched closer, and desperation soared through me.
    “Go find help,” I told Jon. “I’ll hold them off.”
    Jon didn’t move. Instead, he stood by my side, seemingly willing to face the zombie horde with me.
    “Jon,” I said, this time adding a little ka heka command to my words. “Go to Nekyia. Get help.”
    “Noooooo. Pro -tect. Ke-be-chet.”
    For a moment, I was stunned by his refusal, especially since I’d never heard a zombie speak—much less show a force of will.
    The two zombies leapt into the air, issuing howls that drove fear like a spike into my stomach.
    Then they were on us.
    Jon grabbed the woman who tried to claw out my eyes and twisted off her neck with a sickly crack. He threw her head into the forest, and then proceeded to rip off the limbs of her still fighting body.
    The other zombie, this one a man, grabbed the sides of my head. His mouth, filled with decayed teeth and blackened tongue, aimed for my face. His breath smelled like a sewer, and made me gag and cough.
    I head -butted him. The impact to my skull hurt and made my ears ring, but the move popped his hands free of my face.
                  He snarled, his glassy gray eyes narrowing as he tried to grab me again.
                  I brought my scythe up. The metal glowed silver as it sliced the zombie from hip to shoulder.
                  He flopped to the ground in two pieces and lay still.
                  Jon Lemons had wadded into the zombies who’d now lost their military precision. They attacked Jon, but he fought with animal ferocity, punching, kicking, and yanking.
                  Zombies fell upon the decimated corpses, gnawing and mewling as they chomped on the dead, ripping off skin, chewing through organs, feasting on faces.
                  Not all were distracted by the carcasses.
                  Three zombies managed to escape the carnage wrought by Jon, and surrounded me in a