"Do you think they're still alive?" Maribel asked beside me as we moved deeper into territory neither of us had covered before.
The streets out here had a different feel to them. Less managed. Less touched. The relative cleanliness of the area around the Boardwalk and the Whitesun had a way of making you forget, temporarily, what the rest of the city actually looked like, and this was the reminder. Infected wandering in loose clusters, drawn south through Atlantic City by whatever pull the lack of barriers created on this side. The barricades to the east funneled them away from us and toward here, which meant here was exactly where they ended up accumulating.
I had my hand axe out, turning it once in my grip out of habit. I'd been relying on it less lately, the cleaner zones around the Boardwalk didn't demand it as often, but the weight of it felt immediately right again, familiar in the way tools do when you've used them long enough.
