Miraculously, somehow the door stays shut, but just as Dan starts to thank his maker for watching over them, the second lightning bolt blazes from the sky and almost simultaneously an explosion of thunder cracks over him.
The wooden doorframe splits in two down the middle, releasing the solid door to fly outwards, virtually straight. The door slaps onto the sodden rooftop, sending cascades of water flying into the air all around it. Rabids spray out from the door like a fizzy drink from a shaken bottle, many falling to the ground, unable to control the pressure from behind. The ones that fall are trampled on by the rampage that follows as a stream of Rabids surge onto the roof.
Dan’s quivering finger fails him, shock and fear taking over his body as he goes into a near stupor, his body inexplicably fighting his brain which is telling him to pull the trigger and fire. He hears “BREACH” shouted into his headset and gunfire erupt from the rest of his team as they go to battle. Finally, after an age, which is, in fact, a second or two, his brain wins its fight and his finger squeezes the Browning’s trigger.
Dan’s hesitation has given the impossibly quick creatures a foothold onto the roof, as they fly out of the stairwell. The rifles the other men fire at the Rabids are largely ineffective, their bullets missing their targets and not powerful enough to do real damage when they do hit—and their magazines don’t hold enough bullets. That doesn’t deter these Special Forces professionals; they don’t hesitate when the enemy presents itself, as Dan did, and even as they struggle to overpower the enemy, they still move forward, stalking towards the enemy, trying to push them back and stem the tide.
Although Dan’s hesitation hands the Rabids a window of opportunity, the Browning’s awesome firepower and ferocity quickly shuts that window. The 50 calibre bullets churn out at an unimaginable rate, rip through any flesh and bone they meet and then continue through to their next victims, the bullets not stopping until they hit something solid. The bullets’ victims today are infected rabid people, but people nevertheless, young, old, male, female and different races. The bullets don’t discriminate; they rip through them all. Dan almost feels sick as he sees dozens of his unfortunate fellow Londoners slain by his hand. He doesn’t relent though; his hesitation takes them too close to catastrophe and he knows that any one of these victims would sink their foul teeth into him, given the chance.
Rabids suddenly stop attacking from the stairwell and a wave of relief flows over Dan. Not only because he can release his finger from the Browning’s trigger and stop its slaughter, but since he is also running low on this linked belt of ammo for the gun. If it runs out while they are still streaming from the door….
Dan isn’t naïve enough to think for one second that the Rabid attack has been thwarted and they have all been killed. He hasn’t forgotten the amount of Rabids there were in the grounds of Orion yesterday; that attack was the tip of the iceberg, he is sure of it, and that it is only a matter of time before another starts. Reluctantly, Dan decides he has got to change the Browning’s ammo belt now, while there is a lull in the Rabids’ attack.
“Reloading, cover me!” he shouts to the rest of the men and he races to do just that.
Dan trusts they are ready to cover him as he goes about reloading the Browning and fights the urge to keep looking over his shoulder to the open door, even though every fibre in his body is telling him to. He has to change out the Browning’s ammo as quickly as possible, to get another three hundred rounds into the gun because the forty or fifty rounds remaining on the current belt won’t hold off another sustained attack.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees fleeting movement through the rain but still, he resists turning to confront it, his body racked with fear as he pulls a new belt into the loading mechanism. Gunfire breaks out from either side of him as his team tries to defend. Dan is nearly done, the new belt is in and he grabs the gun’s left grip while at the same time reaching up with his right hand to pull the open-top cover down, locking it into place. And then the same hand finally whips back the side-slide to load the gun.
Dan focuses ready to fire, just as a Rabid launches into the air at him, bullets hitting the Rabid’s body from the right as his team tries to take it down—but they have no effect.
The Rabid is almost on top of Dan, its black pupils fixed on him as its mouth opens and its arms spread ready to envelop him. This time, Dan doesn’t hesitate. He yanks down on the grip, lifting the muzzle of the gun, and pulls the trigger. The Browning bursts into life, sending dozens of 50-cal rounds ripping into the Rabid in mid-flight, stopping it in its tracks. They tear the Rabid
