stepped in from behind him and he dropped her to the floor to attack them. It was Wilkinson. He fell back screaming to the floor with zombie-Rodriguez riding him all the way down. Rodriguez was moving faster than any of the zombies we’d seen so far. My only guess was that he was at least partly still alive, that the blood was still pumping warmly, but slowly, through his veins.
The crowd was now screaming behind me and bulging to get away from the slaughter. Brenda Barker rose slowly, steadily to her feet. Her face was pointed down at the floor and the mess of bloody hair covered it like some grotesque veil. Suddenly her hands shot out in front of her, fingers curling in a restless search for flesh.
I turned to Fannie Mae. “My shotgun? Where is it?”
She pointed wordlessly back to our little nest along the wall. Shit. I started hobbling back that direction, fighting the crowd and pushing people away with a snarl. They were sheep for the slaughter. Not more than 30 seconds had passed since Brenda’s first scream.
I heard Wash shouting behind me at the men with guns to gather round, to shoot, shoot, dammit. Finally gunshots began thundering through the air. I turned to look, hoping against hope that their shots were flying true. I saw Brenda Barker’s body shuddering and fluttering in the air with the shots pummeling her body. Not one hit her head. She took two shuffling steps forward against the tidal wave of shots and grabbed the nearest person, ripping their throat out with her teeth. She dropped the body and it quickly rose to its hands and knees. Someone thought they’d be smart and went forward to kick the new zombie back to the ground and found their foot being grabbed out of mid-air. I could see him wobbling for balance and that’s when Brenda reached out and touched him. He fell to the floor with a cry.
Both Brenda and the other zombie set-to with a will.
I muttered curses under my breath, feeling sweat break out on my skin and all the hairs on the back of my neck rising to attention. Between my throat and my sheer exhaustion I was hobbling like an old man for the corner and the safety of my shotgun. Fannie Mae ran ahead to grab it and turned around. I was maybe six feet away when she reached it and whirled to face me. Everything slowed down. With all the screams and the gunfire in this enclosed place my hearing was almost gone. What there was left could only hear the horror happening around me.
I saw the look of panic cross her face and the shotgun being raised to her shoulder. I couldn’t hear her, but I saw her lips move and did the only thing I could think of. I turned my pell-mell, headlong run into a headlong dive for the floor and flew the last several feet through the air. I felt a tug on my shoe but I was moving too fast for it to catch hold. I landed at Fannie Mae’s feet and I heard the familiar roar of my shotgun blasting above my head. One, two, three quick shots. Hot shells fell to the floor next to me, bouncing slowly through the air and giving off a small puff of smoke.
I rolled over to my back, out of breath and wondering what the hell good I was going to be at this angle. Rodriguez’s headless corpse was still falling through the air, dead arms splayed out in a T around it as it crashed to the floor. He’d come through the entire crowd of 60 or so people to launch himself directly at me.
Fannie Mae helped me to my feet, rubbing her shoulder where she’d braced the shotgun. She handed it to me quickly, wanting to rid herself of the infernal thing. I knew the feeling. After shooting the gun you felt like there was now a taint on your soul. Like you’d been doing something unclean. I was growing all too familiar with the feeling.
I couldn’t help myself. She looked like some kind of Amazon goddess standing there. Protecting me as best she could. I held the shotgun out to the side as I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. Her lips were the softest thing I’d ever felt, parted slightly and wet to the touch. Her tongue darted tentatively into my mouth and then more boldly. I inhaled her scent and breathed her in deeply, feeling like we were in our own little world.
We probably could have kissed until Judgment Day if it weren’t for Wash. He stormed out of nowhere and grabbed me by the shoulder. “What the hell you doing, Duke? What do we do?” His voice sounded panicky and like he was on that last precipice of sanity.
Looking at his eyes I could see that he was most definitely on the edge. They were as wide as he could possibly make them and his skin was as pale as could be. He seemed on the verge of a total meltdown.
I cleared my throat and glanced at Fannie Mae. A small smile escaped her lips as we locked eyes. Then I sighed and looked back at Wash, digging extra shells out of my pockets and reloading the shotgun. I put my hand on his arm and felt his pulse running rapidly and raggedly under my hand. “We have to kill them before they kill more people, Wash. If we don’t do it quick then they’ll outnumber us and we’ll all be dead. The only other option is to open the doors and run out of here. That’s really not an option at this point either.”
He nodded and drew his breath slowly, closing his eyes. For some reason I was the voice of calm for him. He nodded again and brandished his gun before him. “Let’s go.”
We skirted around the edge of the crowd. Most of them had gone directly for the front door, but Wash’s men were still watching it and they at least had the presence of mind not to let anyone out. Small pockets of people huddled throughout the room. Some had simply frozen where they’d been standing and were in the process of waiting to be eaten. There was at least a dozen zombies standing around the room and more being produced as we watched. You could almost feel the passing of the people into the land of the dead. Undead. Ever watch the shimmering of the sun across the desert? Seen how the heat just shines off the ground and makes the air look like water? That’s what I saw. Only it was the zombies munching on people and them turning around and doing the same.
I shook my head and blinked my eyes, clearing the vision from them. I didn’t have time for that kind of foolishness.
The zombies had spread out and there were no more than two or three in any given clump. They’d been too tantalized by the smorgasbord of food before them and spread out, running amok. It made it a little easier to try and pick them off, especially since Wash and I were the only ones who’d managed to hold on to our heads. I saw Felix in the corner holding off half a dozen zombies with his gun, but then the press of the people around us shifted him from view.
I turned to Fannie Mae to find that she was at my side. I wanted to tell her to hide, but knew there was nowhere she could go that she would be safe. The safest place for her was next to me. She had the sports bag over her shoulder and a box of open shells in her hand. We looked at each other stoically and nodded at each other.
Then Washington and I waded in.
I’d like to say that we were a well-oiled machine, watching each other’s backs and making only headshots, not wasting a single bullet, but I really can’t. We’d both been field-hardened tonight, but there’s something drastically different about fighting zombies and shooting guns in the middle of a building than there is when you’re outside and have a slight chance of escape. We both knew that this was our one chance at survival and that if we messed this up that every single person in this building would die.
