almost automatically a hail of bullets from the pickup trailing the bus slammed into the thing, a few even hit Tiller, although they did not put the zombie down. The zombie in the doorway was winged in the head, probably not a killing blow, but it was enough to stun him and make him lose his grip. The stunned zombie slowly toppled out of the bus onto the hard pavement below where Steve swerved to run it over. The last Paige saw of the thing was one of his pale white hands reaching skyward as the truck drove over him.
Tiller, meanwhile, had disappeared. Paige guessed that he opted to burrow into the pile of bags like the little girl had done to avoid more gunfire. The kids were still screaming and being slaughtered in front of her as the zombie girl kept pulling them down under the seats.
'Fuck this!' Paige thrust herself up onto the top of the back of the seat, the swaying bus made moving difficult as she crouched down and stepped from seat back to seat back. Beneath her all of the children seemed to calm down now that she was taking action, their cries were muted to a dull roar in her ears.
Paige stepped over to where the boy had disappeared, aiming the shotgun down. Nothing, just blood. She glanced back at the luggage to make sure Tiller had stayed in place and that was when the girl struck. Suddenly, forcefully the boy's body was thrust up at her from the seat behind where she was crouched, Paige was not caught completely off guard and had started to react as soon as her eyes noticed the movement. As a result the boy glanced off of her right arm, it was enough to twist the shotgun around and point it towards the front of the bus, the gun discharged in the process.
Paige struggled to remember how many times she had fired it; the gun held five shots and she was down to four. The flung body was followed up by the wonder twin herself, the girl leaped up to the seat and seeing Paige's gun twisted around behind her, the zombie wasted no time jumping onto her opponent.
Paige still had one hand braced against the roof of the bus, the wondertwin was in mid leap at her and she knew she could not bring the shotgun around fast enough to fire, so she let go of the gun and reached for the revolver tucked into her belt. Even that was too slow, she managed to fire off one shot that looked like it missed the zombie completely, and then she suffered repeated blows from the little girl. Taking one of the girls fists to her stomach just about made Paige throw up and as the girl slowly pulled her hand back for another blow Paige realized she could not afford to be a punching bag. She also knew that the odds of anyone coming to her aid from the terrorized group of teens was unlikely, it was as if she and the zombie girl were fighting alone.
Paige was falling backwards onto the seat behind her, to one side she noticed the shotgun spinning onto the seat beside her, oh so slowly the zombie girl's hand descended to pound her again. Lifting her gun hand from where instinct placed it to brace for the impact as she fell, Paige struck the zombie girl's hand deflecting it into the metal of the bus seat. They both still hit the bench and tumbled down between the seats to the floor. Cramped was not the word for it. The zombie girl could barely maneuver in the tight space, for Paige the best she could do was to keep deflecting the blows raining down on her.
The next punch landed on the floor, going through it, the girl didn't stop and Paige kept deflecting the blows as they were about to land. She took a couple of shots with her pistol, both flew wide and then Paige took a hit to her left breast.
'Oh you fucking little cow! That hurt!' Paige felt even more adrenaline dump into her bloodstream, and wondered why her breast didn't sport a giant hole like the seat did. She blocked the next punch and when the girl's hand was still in the hole Paige threw a punch of her own, sideways into the zombie's arm, it snapped like so much balsa wood. The minor victory cost Paige a ringing blow to the head and then the zombie girl flipped over backwards clutching her arm. Shaking her head, Paige managed to pull herself to her feet just in time for the girl to try and tackle her in the narrow aisle between the seats. However the zombie lacked the mass to knock Paige over, looking down at the little rodent whose shoulder was pressed tightly against her waist Paige laughed. 'You don't weigh enough short stuff.'
Then Paige pistol whipped the girl on the top of the head, the zombie was dazed by the blow, which had been heavy enough to crack in her skull and caused a stream of black half-clotted blood to course down her face in an inky black river. Staggering back gave Paige the clearance to bring her pistol up and fire at the girl, however the movement of the bus interfered her accuracy. The little beast still went down with a shot to her neck, but was not out.
'Jim Tiller!' screamed the girl, which caused Paige to switch her aim towards the back of the bus once again. The zombie girl was twitching around on the floor, possibly the neck shot had disabled her for a while. 'Jim Tiller!' the girl screamed again.
The zombie came charging out of the luggage where it had been sequestered, in one hand he held a red backpack, overstuffed with someone's belongings, he threw it at Paige, which distracted her enough to miss the pistol he held in his other hand. He fired even as the pack was in mid-flight.
The first shot hit Paige at an angle high on her forehead, the bullet deflected over her skull, ripping a furrow through her hair and exited with a stream of blood out of the back of her skull to strike a screaming teen behind her just under the shoulder blade. The second bullet went wide and hit one of the two nine year old's in the left hand before it ricocheted into the back of Ken's head, the driver slumped sideways and the bus started to drift towards the median.
The next few shots were fired into the crowd at random near the front of the bus as Tiller worked his way forward to his twitching mistress. Paige was on her back next to her shotgun, the revolver still clutched in one hand as she tried to figure out what had happened to her. Blood soaked into the back of her shirt and pants, like water into a sponge. Tiller gathered up the zombie girl and stood over Paige, he lowered his pistol at the young woman and fired.
To Paige it was as if the earth stood still. She saw Tiller standing there, on one hip was the zombie girl, still twitching frantically, calling his name, even though the man already had her. The pistol, when it fired consumed all of Paige's attention, focusing it to a white hot knife edge as the bullet came out, heading for her face. There was nowhere to run, no way to roll out of the way, nothing she could do, she was going to die.
Screaming as if to deny her fate Paige whipped her revolver around, it was empty, she knew that, but she wasn't going to fire it. The bullet slammed into her revolver shattering it and sending hot fragments into her face and hand. Paige flung some small part of it at Tiller, he flinched and backed away a step, then fired at her again, this time there was nothing left to block his shot with. The click as the firing pin fell on an empty chamber was the sweetest sound Paige thought she had ever heard.
With a roar of defiance she twisted around and scooped up the shotgun beside her. Jim Tiller was in full retreat by then and Paige fired a shell after him, then set off running as the zombie staggered under the blow. As they neared the emergency exit, Tiller jumped and wrapped his body around the girl, landing on the passenger's side of Steve's windshield and busting through it to crush the man riding shot gun there.
The impact as Tiller hit broke the bench seat off of its anchor and pushed it back into the passengers section of the full sized pickup cab, which pulled Steve away from the steering wheel and pedals used to drive the truck. As Paige neared the exit she did not pause to think, the bus was swerving sideways and she squatted down to get a good jump onto Steve's truck, the barrel of her gun tracking Tiller's back. Paige landed on the hood, denting it and bouncing into the hole left by the windshield. Behind her the bus rolled into a stalled car near the median and then slowly came to a stop. Steve's truck, continued to coast along straight on the highway, the vehicle was not moving that fast now, no more than thirty miles an hour, but it was uncontrolled and started to drift.
When Paige hit the open side where the windshield had been her shotgun caught the roof and was jerked around to face behind her, going with the momentum, she simply slammed the butt of the gun into Jim Tiller's back.
Tiller screamed and thrust the zombie girl through the back window of the truck, where she landed in the bed and started sliding towards the tail gate. Then Tiller brought his arm around and blocked Paige's second blow with the gun, he slapped her weakly across the face and twisted the gun out of her hands. The gun was too long to use in the cab, so he chucked it over his shoulder into the pickup bed. Paige reached automatically for her revolver, which was gone, her hands did fall upon the hunting knife she had clipped to her belt that morning. She remembered remarking to Dora that she was taking it in case she had to cut one of the shotguns off of a motorcycle. Dora had responded 'Good, because if you are taking it to fight with you'll know your shit has really hit the fan.'
Paige yelled and pulled the knife up in time to block a fist from Tiller. His hand was cut open to the bone, but he used his other one to rabbit punch her in the stomach.
Paige feinted with the knife, punched him with her off hand in the eye then sunk the knife into Tiller's gut.
