WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH! The car’s alarm began blaring.
The heap of infected that had been chasing after Baker and the boys, headed for the woods, was distracted by the sound. Many of the infected, on pure instinct alone, broke off from the pack and made a b-line straight for the center of the parking lot, where Anderson was.
“Fuck!” Antonio shouted. “What the fuck!”
“They’re goin’ for the car alarm!” Baker stopped to fire into the crowd again.
“You’re out!” Miles called to the captain.
And just like the small boy said, Baker’s gun clicked, clicked, clicked, and he was out of bullets. Fear gripped the captain’s chest and he turned to run again. Even with many of the infected now going after the car alarm, there were still dozens of infected coming after Baker. He saw his men at the tree line and waved to them for backup. The two boys broke off from the captain and he cursed but kept running towards the trees.
Bates, by himself, had climbed on top of a car and was jumping from vehicle to vehicle to avoid the small group that was pursuing him. He called for help but no one would be able to get to him. He instead just unloaded his weapon into the empty faces of the infected reaching up at him where he stood atop an SUV.
Miles stopped in all the chaos and hid next to a car while he took the time to read the field. Antonio came over to hide with him and Miles clapped his hands for his brother to toss him the gun. Antonio peeked over the hood of the car and watched the hive chase Baker. The woods were thirty feet ahead of the captain and the car with the alarm was at seven o’clock. The old man had taught him how to read time on his watch and it was a good way for Antonio to keep awareness of the field. There was a skeletal body propped next to the car near him and he reached over to search the backpack the corpse was wearing. Nothing of use was in the bag, except two cans of vegetables. But the bony hand of the corpse held a steel baseball bat that Antonio gladly took up while slipping on the bookbag.
“What’s the plan Miles? What we gon do?” Antonio went to crack the heads of a few stumbling lurkers who tried going after his brother.
Miles peeked out and watched the parking lot, turning in a circle as he looked. He checked his bullet count by removing the clip and looking down the barrel, even though the old man hated when he would do that. It was the only way he remembered if he had one in the chamber, and he always took his hand off the trigger and put on the safety. It was easier than popping the bullet out and then trying to put it back in the clip. Miles hated doing that because it always hurt his fingers. Still, Miles could hear the old man’s words, now coming from Antonio, telling him to stop looking down the damn barrel.
“Two bullets left.” Miles slammed the clip with one bullet back into the Berretta. His eyes zipped over the crowd running after the captain and he did a quick head count. “Fifty plus strikers.” Not an exact count but it was close enough.
Baker and his men were firing on the strikers with poor accuracy. But they were doing well anyway; picking off the clumsy infected that would run around a car or jump over a shopping cart. But what helped Baker and the others the most was how dumb strikers were and how they only operated linear. Put a wall in front of a striker and it’ll just try running through the wall. That was something the old man said. The hive slammed into cars and piled onto each other, getting crushed and only rolling around vehicles when there were too many in one spot.
Baker and his men set up a gun line along a station wagon and opened fire on the rolling wave of infected. It was enough to slow the bulk of the freaks down. The big black man, Lincoln, was the jumpiest of the army men but still was able to fire his Barrett REC7 assault rifle and hit many infected in the chest and abdomen. They weren’t kill shots however, but Torrez cleaned them up with his Remington shotgun. He just pumped and fired. Pumped and fired. Castle fired his M4A1 assault rifle with an average skill, but still was able to take down a few strikers with well-placed headshots. He still missed his target multiple times either from shaking or not taking the proper time to aim. Captain Baker, however, was a precision gunman who had already reloaded and took out everything in front of him; even the infected strikers his soldiers missed. He barked out orders for them to tighten up the line and his men adjusted, hoping to meet his standards and handle the monsters who were screaming towards the vehicle the soldiers used as cover.
Miles went sprinting for the car alarm, “Captain Baker and his men can handle the hive! We gotta stop that alarm! We gotta stop it!”
Antonio put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud for the captain. It was a loud whistle that the old man would’ve been proud of. Antonio waved at the army men and pointed towards the car with the alarm then turned to follow his brother. Baker saw the boys and the few infected that went running
