pausing to aim between targets. My aim might still be good enough for the exams, but it was getting rusty in field situations; seventeen bullets, and only twelve zombies went down. Becks and Alaric looked up at the sound of gunshots, Alaric’s eyes widening before he started to do a fascinating variant on the victory shuffle.
Becks was more subdued in her delight over my brainless cavalry charge. She just looked relieved.
There was no time to pay attention to my team members. My shots had alerted the zombies to the presence of fresh, less-elevated meat, and several outlying members of the mob were turning in my direction, starting to lurch, shuffle, or run toward me, depending on how long they’d been in the grips of full infection. Snapping another cartridge into the .40, I holstered it and raised the shotgun, aiming for the point of greatest density.
Fact about zombies that everyone knows: You have to aim for the head, since the virus that drives their bodies can repair or route around almost every other form of damage. This is very true.
Fact about zombies that almost no one knows, because you’d have to be a damn fool to take advantage of it: An injured zombie
Bracing the shotgun against my shoulder, I emptied all three shots into the points of deepest concentration. A standard shotgun shell can blow a zombie’s head clean off, if that’s what you’re going for. I wasn’t firing standard shells.
Using live grenades when you have people on the ground is antisocial at best and grounds for a murder charge at worst. Shotgun grenade rounds, on the other hand, can be calibrated to have a much more focused charge, one that doesn’t throw the resulting spray as high into the air. The wind still has to be with you, but as long as your people are more than eight feet away, you should be fine.
The shotgun went off with the usual sharp report, followed by several loud, wet bangs as the projectiles found their targets, fragmented into multiple slammer pieces, and exploded. Several zombies went down as shrapnel caught them in the head or spinal column. Others fell as their legs were blown out from under them. Those last didn’t stay down; they started dragging themselves forward, the entire mob now moaning in earnest.
I reddened. I never used to need coaching from my sister on what it took to do my job. I dropped the now- useless shotgun and hit the general channel key on my watch, asking, “You guys mind if I join your party?”
Becks responded immediately, relief more evident in her voice than it had been in her face. Maybe she just wasn’t as good at hiding it there. “What took you so long?”
“Oh, traffic. You know how it goes.” The entire mob was moving toward me now, apparently deciding that meat on the hoof was more interesting than meat that wouldn’t come out of its tree. I snapped the electric baton into its extended position, redrawing George’s .40, and offered the oncoming infected a merry smile. “Hi. You want to party?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I muttered, adding more loudly, “You guys get down from there and try to circle to the Jeep. Hit the horn once you’re in. There’s more ammo under the passenger seat.”
“And you’re going to do what, exactly?” asked Becks. She sounded sensibly wary. At least one of us was being sensible for a change.
“I’m going to earn my ratings,” I said. Then the zombies were on top of me, and there was no more time for discussion. Quietly, I was glad.
There’s a sort of art to fighting the infected. It was almost a good thing that this mob had started off so large; we were cutting down the numbers rapidly, since we had the ability to think tactically, but the survivors were still behaving like members of a pack. They wanted to eat, not infect. “They wanted to kill me” may not sound like much of an advantage—just trust me on this one. A zombie that’s out to infect will spit at you if it can. It’ll try to smear you with fluids. That gives it a lot more weapons. A zombie that wants to eat you is just going to come at you with its mouth, and that means it only has one viable avenue of attack. That evens the odds, just a little.
Just a little can be more than enough.
Using my baton, I swept a constant perimeter around myself, shocking any zombie that came into range and trusting the Kevlar in my jacket to keep my arm from getting tagged before I could pull it back. The electricity slowed them down enough for me to keep firing, and more important, it kept them from getting positions established behind me. I could track Becks and Alaric by the sound of gunshots, which came almost as regularly as my own. I was taking out two zombies for every three shots. Not the best odds in the world. Not the worst odds, either.
I was grinning as I backed toward the Jeep, letting the zombies think that they were herding me while I kept thinning out their ranks. I couldn’t help it. Maybe facing possible death isn’t supposed to make me happy, but years of training can’t be shrugged off overnight, and I was an Irwin for a long time before I retired.
Aim, fire. Swing, zap. Aim, fire. It was almost like dancing, a series of utterly soothing, utterly predictable movements. I couldn’t hear gunshots anymore; either Becks and Alaric had made it to the Jeep, or my brain had started filtering out the sounds of their combat as inconsequential. I had my own zombies to play with. They could deal with their own. Even George had fallen quiet for once, leaving me to move in a small bubble of almost perfect contentment. It didn’t matter that my sister was dead, or that the assholes who’d ordered her killed were still out there somewhere, doing God knows what to God knows whom. I had zombies. I had bullets. Everything else was essentially just details.
“Shaun!”
The shout came from behind me, rather than from inside my head or over the intercom. I barely squashed the urge to turn toward it, which could have been fatal in the field. I put two bullets into the zombie that was lunging at me, and shouted back, “What?”
“We’ve made the Jeep! Can you retreat?”
Could I retreat? “Well, that’s an interesting question, Becks!” I shouted. Aim, fire. Aim again. “Is there anything behind me?”
“Don’t move!”
“I can do that!” I fired again. Another zombie went down. And hell opened up behind me. Not literally, but the sound of a belt-fed automatic shotgun can be very similar. Becks, it seemed, had found more than just ammo under the seat. Dave and I were going to need to have a long talk about making sure I knew what my assets were before we let me head into the field.
“Clear!”
“Great!” My throat was starting to ache from all the shouting. I surveyed the zombies remaining in front of me. None of them looked fresh enough to put up a real chase, and so I did exactly what you’re not supposed to do in a field situation if you have any choice in the matter:
I took a chance.
Turning my back on the mob, I ran for the Jeep, whacking anything that looked likely to move with my electric baton. Becks was in the back, covering the area, while Alaric sat in the passenger seat, looking shell- shocked. Nothing grabbed me, and in just a few seconds, I was using the stripped-down frame to swing myself into the driver’s seat.
Not bothering with the seat belt, I hit the gas, and we went roaring out of there, leaving the moaning remains of the Birds Landing zombie mob behind.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Seanan McGuire
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