Chapter Three
Barrel
“Stay on me!” Cahz hollered.
Elspeth and the baby were being ushered forward by Ryan. Flanking them was Cannon. The further they ran the denser the crowds of undead became. They were less spaced out and now impossible to simply run past.
A dead man stepped into Cahz’s path. Using his momentum he swung the butt of his rifle and floored the creature. Its face split open. The dead skin sloughed off, revealing the vomit-yellow bone beneath.
A waft of tart putridity found Cahz’s nostrils. He stifled a gag and barged on.
The zombie fell to the ground, but even with the massive head trauma it still flailed. Cahz didn’t bother dispatching the creature; he pushed forward through the throng of walking dead, carving a path.
The crack of a pistol made Cahz whip round.
“Don’t shoot unless you have to!” he called back at Ryan.
“Have a word with them, pal!” Ryan shot back.
Cahz turned back to the wall of rotten flesh ahead of him. In cold measured swipes he battered the cadavers from his path.
The sound of helicopter blades travelled up a pitch but Cahz was too busy to look behind. The noise rose and the downdraft washed across his shoulders and head.
He battered another zombie across the face. Chunks of rotten flesh broke loose and flew free.
His heart raced. It wasn’t the exertion of close quarter fighting, it wasn’t the fear of being surrounded by the undead. He felt his stomach sink and his heart pounded as the sound of the rotors changed. He knew the only way out was leaving him behind. He couldn’t turn around-couldn’t bear to watch the chopper ascend into the morning sky.
But the noise of the chopper stayed, echoing around the square, a constant reminder of his decision sounding in his ear. The noise of the rotors beating their retreat lingered for far longer than he thought possible.
Cahz cast off the thoughts of escape and lunged at the gnarled face of a resurrected police officer. The butt of his carbine impacted with a sharp crack and the skull gave way. Before Cahz could shift his weight, a second cadaver lurched at him. Its withered and necrosis blackened hands latched onto his body armour, clawing to get a firm grip. Unable to bring his weapon up, Cahz pressed his shoulder into the zombie’s chest and pushed. The zombie had no strength and no purchase against the shove, but instead of falling back it snagged on Cahz’s webbing.
A new zombie stepped up to the entangled soldier. With his rifle caught up in the first zombie’s arms, Cahz had lost the use of his primary weapon. He let go with his right hand and grabbed for his pistol. The decayed, bony fingers of the undead scratched at Cahz’s body armour as the two creatures ganged up on their prey, eager to deliver a bite.
Cahz flipped the safety off his pistol and jammed it into the fleshy underside of the nearest zombie’s jaw. Screwing his eyes tight and clamping his mouth shut, Cahz pulled the trigger.
The zombie’s jaw liquefied with the deafening crack of the round discharging. The noise of the blast hammered into Cahz’s eardrums. Crushed by the strike on his ear drums, the sounds around became muffled. The only clear sounds where the rasp of his own breath and the galloping thump of his heart. Blown apart by the shot, the zombies head vaporised. A tirade of congealed blood and shredded flesh slapped across Cahz’s face.
His eyes still shut tight, Cahz turned his gun to the second cadaver mauling him. The muzzle halted against something firm and Cahz fired. The blast wasn’t as loud. His ears were still reeling from the proximity of the last shot.
His target’s weight shifted as it keeled over, but it continued to thrash, caught on Cahz’s webbing. Cahz drew his sleeve across his face, scraping the worst of the putrefied debris away. He blinked his eyes open and gasped back the foul pus-laden odour. Drips of fetid gunk clung to his lips. Cahz screwed up his face and spat.
Before he could wipe his face for a second time, something tugged at his webbing. Hanging off his body armour by its bony arm, the zombie was struggling back to its feet. Its left arm rendered inoperative by the bullet through its shoulder, it hauled itself up by the arm tangled in Cahz’s armour. The pathetic grey husk stared up at Cahz while it tried to find purchase.
Before it could, Cahz levelled his pistol and fired. The headless zombie hung there, dangling from the straps on his webbing.
The bitter taste of rancid flesh crept up Cahz’s tongue. He felt the saliva ooze in his mouth and the bile rise in his throat. He tried to spit, but the thick mucus wouldn’t leave his lips. Instead it dribbled down his chin and onto the headless cadaver swinging from his chest.
Around him a dozen raw and weeping outstretched arms grabbed for him. Too close and too numerous for him to club, Cahz raised his pistol. He leaned into his firing stance and shot the remainder of his magazine into the crowd. A score of zombies fell inert around him.
“Don’t fire unless you have to, eh?” Ryan said from behind him. “That didn’t last long.”
Cahz unhooked the corpse from his gear. “Change of plan,” he said as he refreshed his pistol. “We’ve got to get in cover. Head for the that building.”
“You’ll never land a chopper on that roof,” Ryan said.
“Then we’ll need to be winched off,” Cahz replied.
“He’s right,” Cannon said. “But we’ll never get far in these crowds.”
Cahz wiped his cheek, smearing some of the pulverised zombie onto his glove. “What’s that building there?”
Ryan hesitated. “Offices of some sort?”
“Okay, that’s our destination. Cannon, thin it out.”
Cannon hugged the heavy machinegun against his side and fired. The buzzsaw noise ripped through the air, obliterating both the sound of the chopper and the moans of the undead. Bullets punched into the zombies ahead, knocking them down like pins.
“Go, go, go!” Cahz bellowed, slapping Ryan on the shoulder.
As Cahz ran off into the machinegun-hewn swathe, Ryan looked back.
The old woman was stumbling through the freshly mown corpses, the baby clutched tight in her arms. Her eyes were red with tears, her footsteps uneasy and faltering.
“Here, Elspeth,” Ryan said softly as he put a steadying arm around her.
Some of the zombies stopped by Cannon’s burst were starting to get up. Even with chunks torn out of their decaying bodies, unless the bullets had pulped their brains or shattered their spines, they would keep coming.
Cannon let out another burst, knocking over a handful more. He knew that without a head shot they wouldn’t stay down, but there were too many to take time picking shots. For now all he could do was waste ammo trying to knock them down and hope it would buy enough space to get through to safety.
Cahz charged forward, his pistol barking as he dispatched the most immediate threats. His lips felt cracked and sore from where he’d wiped the atomised zombie with the back of his glove. His cheeks still felt wet, plastered as they were with infected brain matter. He spat out the saliva building up in his mouth and tried not to swallow the bitter infected tissue that was forming a scum over his tongue. Trying to ignore the fetid taste, he pushed on.
More and more of the undead fell as the party fought their way through. Bludgeoned with rifle butt or shot at point blank range, dozens of walking dead were destroyed or pushed from their path.
With a point-blank coup de grace, Cahz dispatched the final zombie between him and the office block. It had been a new building before the Rising, a towering icon to corporate power, but like a million other homogenised offices the world over it now lay abandoned. The standardized architect of glass and steel and sandstone now wore a coat of grime. A shabby veneer smoke stained grey with green trails of moss marking the tributaries from burst pipes and leaky gutters. Here and there in the thin troughs between steel and stone a resilient plant clung, its leaves turned skyward in triumph.
The expansive vista-exposing front window was a broken mosaic of splintered glass. A burnt out car sat rusting in the foyer where it had smashed to a stop.
