"Burn it before they come back out," I ordered, my eyes flashing as I continued to stare at the zombie on the ground.
Lingyun moved immediately. Fire rolled across the road and covered the zombie from head to foot before the loose skin could split open. The body twisted inside the flames as the parasites tried to escape, but Zhenlan tightened the air around it and forced everything back toward the center of the body bag.
The smell reached us anyway.
I covered my nose and stepped farther from the road while Yuche pulled every loose piece of metal into a wide circle around the burning corpse. Chenghai kept the shovel ready, watching the cracks beneath it for any sign of movement.
The zombie collapsed quickly. There wasn't enough left inside it to burn for long, but Lingyun continued feeding heat into the body until the bones blackened and the road beneath it began to soften.
"Keep going," I told him. "I don't want anything crawling out after we turn our backs."
