As the sound of the blade waned and Anne focussed her attention on the back room, she could hear a vile frothing as if of some beast coming from the depths of the storage.
"Step away from the storage room!" she shouted.
A half a heartbeat passed before a loud snapping came from the storage room, followed by stomping boots across wooden floorboards. Jules barreled into the main room of the store, knocking against the walls.
His eyes, both aware and not, both alive and not, trained on Anne in a strange half-focus as though he were only taking in the shape of her and the cutlass in her hand.
Anne tried to act first and stepped forward, planning to strike, but Jules moved more quickly than she did. He darted forward, moving like a trained fighter, and lashed out at her as he dodged her strike. Anne pulled back her shoulder and twisted away from the blazing-fast fist, avoiding the blow and repositioning.
Though his strength and speed were extraordinary, it was no replacement for proper training. He was a simple general store owner, not a fighter, and Anne had the training and the wherewithal to react to him.
Jules was wild, but hammered with a strength unparalleled. As each blow came Anne's way, and as she dodged just out of the way, she felt the force of each one. If any one of them made contact, bones would break.
William struck in the chaos, a fierce punch to the head knocking Jules back, but only slightly. Jules snarled, beast-like and feral, and turned his attention to William. Anne reared back and thrust her cutlass into Jules' stomach, gutting the portly man.
Were he a normal man, Jules would have doubled over in pain, but he kept fighting even as his intestines spilled out in front of him.
William faltered in the face of the walking dead man. Jules shot his fist forward. William pulled back, but too late. Jules' fist caught William in the left shoulder. A successive snap of several bones cracking broke through the tense air around them. William stifled a cry of shock and sliced his sword down and across Jules' head. The blade slammed halfway through Jules' skull and caught in the man's brain.
Finally, mercifully, Jules fell to the floor of the store. William held onto his blade as it fell with the dead man, stuck in the hard bone of the skull. He wiggled it free and backed away from the body, breathing hard. For a moment, William and Anne stared at the body together, along with several of the crewmates.
A noise outside drew their attention. The citizens of the hamlet were approaching the storefront en masse.
The din began as a small rap on the front doors but grew to a thunder of slamming bodies, breaking glass, and cracking wood. The six tall barrels at the front jolted forward with each second, teetering as though precariously perched on a precipice edge.
Instinctually, the crew rushed to reinforce the lifeless wooden barricade keeping them from the horde of hollow men and women on the other side. They pressed their large sailor's bodies against the curved planks, adding weight to them.
On the sides of the general store, the citizens attacked the glass windows and less secure wooden boxes covering them.
Anne, pushing with her might against the barrels in front of the door, could see through a small gap as they broke through the glass and grabbed at the boxes in their way.
Though the townsfolk had obviously lost their wits, there was some intelligence still working the gears in their minds. The men slamming against the doors were ramming in unison, and the others took down the ramshackle wall to access the interior. Blood stained the hands of those prying at the boxes through the broken glass, shards sticking out from long slashes running up their arms.
"Gunners forward!" she shouted through the synchronized slams. "Aim for the head or the heart!"
The brave souls who heard the call jumped up to the ledge holding the boxes and barrels against the windows. Victoria was one such soul, and she fired into the thick of the men and women coming at them. First, she aimed at those taking down their protection, and then she took aim at the men attacking the front doors.
With each shot, smoke filled the room and settled in the small space. It wasn't long before the air was thick with the remnants of the black powder. The smell was bad enough, but the worst of it was the choking and seizing it brought to the lungs, and the effect on one's vision.
Anne could manage her breathing better than some, but the thick grey mist overtook her eyes and made them water.
"Cease—" Anne coughed as the smoke entered her throat proper. It arrested her voice as her body forced it out. "Cease fire!" she managed after a laboured moment.
The gunfire stopped after a few more shots into the thick mass of bodies in front of the store, and though the crew stopped firing, it only stopped more smoke from accumulating. With no breeze, it lingered in the spaces between the crew's bodies, shifting and swirling with the small movements in a dance of air rarely seen.
A loud splintering noise split through the grunting on both sides of the store as one of the barrels burst open in the front. Its contents—potatoes buried in sand—spilled out in front of the double doors.
Suddenly, the synchronized slamming against the doors stopped, and there was a brief silence, a stillness of the air. At that moment, the silence closed in on Anne's heart and fixed it in place with an icy hand.
Just as suddenly as the silence came, it left again. The slamming didn't return, and instead, the wave of the hollow people outside the store rushed at the broken barrier. They punched and pulled at the weak spot, the chink in the armour, all hands and fingers prying and tearing at splinters and sand and
