Evan hurried. Ran as fast as he could in the direction of the cry and turned around another corner into a dismal alley. Unfortunately, as many times as he had seen a waker, he never got used to it. Especially not when the waker was… a child. A teenager, but a child nonetheless, because there was no way that this particular person had been older than eighteen.
Evan's heart always went out to people who barely got to live at all before this started happening.
However, this was no time to be soft-hearted, especially when the waker was lunging… running top speed at a woman on the other end of the alley. A woman carrying a child, who started to run far too late. Evan barely had time to think before he acted, digging his survival knife from his belt and throwing it as hard as he could at the waker's back to attract its attention.
When the knife made contact (with a sickening slice-and-squish sound that Evan never, ever got used to), sure enough the waker turned and looked at him, glazed eyes intently staring.
He had to be precise, or neither he, or the woman and child, would make it out of this alleyway alive.
The waker shrieked again, then started toward Evan instead, just as expected, and he raised his kukri, waiting for the right moment to strike. When the waker was a couple of feet in front of him, he struck out, and felt the strong resistance of the knife cutting through infected flesh.
It had only been an arm, but it was enough to stun the thing, make it stop for a second and it gave Evan a chance to pull his shotgun from his belt and take a little more care to finish the job.
He sincerely hoped that the child the woman had been carrying hadn't seen any of this…