As Ryan drew up Cahz could hear the baby zipped up inside the bag, her howls of displeasure marginally stifled by the fabric.
“What do we do?!” Ryan shouted above the child’s screams and the lashing rain.
A swathe of zombies where shambling towards them, converging on their position.
“Get closer to the breach,” Cahz said. “We’ve got to seal that back up before we run out of ammo.”
“What about the chopper?”
Cahz gave Ryan a solemn look. “If you can think of a way of signaling him, I’m all ears.”
“The school!” Ryan yelped. “Torch the school!”
Cahz slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s worth a try. Get to it. I’ll try to secure the area.”
Cahz edged forward, shooting as he did. Within seconds his carbine gave a dreaded click. He flicked the catch and let the empty fall to the ground. He pulled a fresh magazine from its pouch and slapped it home. There was no time to retrieve the empty and since there was no more ammunition, there was no point.
“This is India Tango One, situation is critical.” Cahz held firm as a fresh wave of zombies shuffled towards him, “I repeat, situation is critical. Request immediate evac. Please respond, over.”
The zombies were just seconds from grabbing him, but Cahz waited, desperately wanting to hear his radio crackle into life.
A dead hand pawed in front of his face. He batted the dead flesh away with his carbine and shot the zombie, muzzle pressed against its nose. The headless cadaver slumped to the ground, clearing Cahz’s aim for the next targets.
The first dozen rounds cleared the immediate ground around him, then he pushed on, closing on his enemy. Out here in the drizzle with the rising moans of a thousand undead, it was easy to get overwhelmed. The faint fire light behind was illuminating just enough to see by.
Squeezing the trigger, the hammer fall ended in silence. Another magazine depleted. Cahz let the empty slip free and grabbed the last of his rounds. Unceremoniously he loaded the weapon and aimed it at the horde.
“This is never going to work,” he said as he lowered the M4.
Between him and the breach there were still a good couple of dozen undead. Even if he took one with each round, by the time he’d done that another hundred would be through the gap.
Cahz lowered his gun and charged into the mob of decaying flesh.
He screamed a guttural, primordial cry that rivaled the moans of the amassed dead. He thumped into countless zombies, knocking the soggy lumps of dead flesh flying with his momentum. He was almost at the gap when his footing slipped on the muddy grass and he skidded head first towards the opening.
The thick wet mud sprayed his face and flooded into his mouth. He coughed out the choking slurry as he scrambled to catch his footing. Before he could get up, a lump weight fell across his shoulder. Cahz tried to push himself up, but more eager zombies were piling on top. His fingers dug into the earth, his teeth gritted. He forced his muscles to push. Summoning every ounce of strength in his flesh, he burst out of the scrum, throwing cadavers off in all directions.
Clambering on all fours, digging for traction in the chewed-up earth, Cahz threw himself at the upturned desk. Reaching what had now become a breakwater in the path of the undead, he slammed his back up hard against it. It was only a few feet from its original position blocking the hole, but Cahz knew this would be a Herculean task to get it back in place.
Stamping his heels into the quagmire, he pushed his weight into the desk. The abused piece of school furniture slid a few inches then came to a jarring halt.
Before Cahz could change his purchase a dead hand grabbed at him. At the end of the gnarled and decaying arm a petite little zombie hauled itself. Cahz stared into the vacant eyes of a dead child. No more than seven or eight when she’d turned, the little girl wore a shredded school uniform. Her black lips curled back, revealing missing teeth from her demonic grin.
Cahz whipped out his pistol and shoved it straight into the child’s open mouth.
“Chew on this,” Cahz heard himself quip as he pulled the trigger.
The zombie’s head exploded, throwing shrapnel-like chunks of skull into the darkness.
Pistol still in hand, Cahz braced his shoulders to the wooden surface and dug in. As he pushed again and again, the desk started to slide. It slithered a few inches in the mud before stopping firm. Another zombie came round the side and made a grab for him. Cahz kicked out at the undead’s kneecap. The bone snapped like rotten wood and the zombie fell to the ground. As it hit the mud Cahz dispatched it with a round to the head.
Cahz’s eye was drawn back to the school as a lick of flame shot up inside one of the classrooms. The yellow beam of light shone like a beacon from the window.
“Come on, Idris! You’ve got to see that!” Cahz barked, face upturned to the rain.
Round the edge of the desk a pair of cadavers came at him. The first one he floored in an instant, the second he had to grapple with before his shot found its brain.
“Come on, you dead fuck motherfuckers!” Cahz shouted as he threw his strength behind the desk again.
A wave of half a dozen cadavers lumbered into arm’s length of him. He repeatedly fired his pistol, trying to keep the zombies at bay. Through the mob of undead he could see a second then a third classroom in quick succession burst into flames.
A necrotic hand wrapped around his gun arm, pulling his aim off true. He wrestled the gun free and fired wildly at point-blank range.
“India Tango One, we are setting signal fires at our location,” Cahz radioed as the pack of cadavers fell upon him. He strained to get out the last of his message, “West of your position.”
The drone of the helicopter engine sounded closer now, even above the rain and moans.
With the hope of rescue masking his fear, Cahz ignored the dead hands grasping for him. He changed his angle of attack on the desk and pushed hard.
Over and over, he thrust his whole body at the desk, each time taking it a little further into the gap.
A fresh zombie grabbed his arm and pounced. Cahz pulled the trigger, but the gun was spent. He tossed the empty pistol aside and pulled himself back away from the zombie’s jaws. A second zombie seized him from behind, throwing him off kilter.
Cahz stumbled back, vigorously trying to shake off the ravenous dead. In only a few short steps he had a congregation of zombies all snatching at him.
Feeling for the M4 on its sling, Cahz twisted and turned, desperately to escape the attackers. His fingers found the handle of the weapon. He tried to level it, but the dead were pressed too tightly around him now. He could feel teeth gnawing into his armour and he knew it wouldn’t be long before they found his flesh.
Gasping against the choking stench of rot, Cahz tried unsuccessfully to break loose. Unable to get a clear shot, he started firing wildly, popping off shot after shot in a frantic attempt to loosen their hold. As the shots rang out, he bucked and twisted trying to break free, but for every zombie he dislodged another took its place.
Cahz tripped in the melee and fell to the mud, a dozen voracious cadavers falling with him. As he hit the ground and took a face full of putrid slurry there was an electrical hiss through his earpiece.
The school was ablaze, fingers of flame stretching long into the night sky.
And in the glow of the fires Ryan saw the knot of zombies on the ground a short distance from the defunct barricade. Although the gap in the fence was only wide enough to let one zombie in at a time, the mass of undead clambering to get in was terrifying. Every second, like some macabre spawning, a zombie would spew through the gap and stumble onto the playing field.
Ryan ran up to the seething heap of bodies. Under the pile Cahz was screaming.
“I’m coming!” Ryan hollered as he grabbed a cadaver.
The force of Ryan’s pull ripped the rotten shirt off the zombie’s back, exposing the putrid flesh underneath. Unperturbed, Ryan leveled his pistol and shot the assailant through the head. He snatched a zombie out, rammed his gun into its head, and pulled the trigger.
Ryan dug deeper into the pile of squirming, rotting meat, blasting away with his pistol as he did. Time and time he hauled out a zombie and blew its brains out, rummaging through the mess trying to find his partner.
A gloved hand punched out from the corpses. Ryan grabbed hold and pulled.
