“Templeton Street. This is it. Turn right, here.” Garcia broke the tension. Immediately, the look in Peters’ face changed and he was all business.
“On me!” He commanded, and the rest of the team made their way towards the front of the bus.
As the bus navigated the corner, the team could see that this area had more undead. They clustered in twos and threes on front lawns. Emily was forced to run one over, as there was no place to maneuver on the small street. She slowed down to five miles an hour, but the bang of the impact was still quite large and prompted several sounds of alarm from the passengers. Thankfully, none of the tires hit the corpse and they rolled right over the undead. Emily saw the undead get into a sitting position through her side mirror as they drove away. It was unsettling, and Emily could not help shuddering slightly.
“Next left. House is number 3410, fifth on the right side.” Garcia was all business. “Contacting the civilians now.”
As Emily turned the last corner, the folks in the back were told to ‘Stay down!’ and ‘Keep quiet!’. The team had discovered days ago that getting the civilians low in their seats would hide them from undead eyes and at the same time open their own lines of sight. This allowed the team of soldiers to scan for targets.
There were many targets.
“This is a major Charlie Foxtrot!” Collins was the first one to say anything. Charlie Foxtrot being army talk for ‘cluster fuck’. Nobody disagreed with his assessment.
The bus was heading directly towards a group of at least twenty undead. Here and there unmoving corpses were scattered around. Emily’s noted a couple of corpses in the middle of the street, at the feet of a group of zombies. They had gotten torn to pieces by this bunch.
Emily shuddered as she could see the terrible damage these zombies had inflicted. One body lay on its side, facing the bus. The head was practically detached from the body, the face was gone – its eyes, nose and mouth all ripped away. An arm lay several feet away.
The crowd of zombies started stepping over the corpse and towards the bus.
Emily could tell that there were at least a dozen zombies approaching from various other directions, including from between the houses. This was, by far, the most undead any of the team had seen in one place.
Garcia was on the phone with the civilians as the bus pulled up in front of their house. Emily saw that the garage door was wide open and devoid of vehicles. From earlier intel she knew that they were picking up two people. A mother and her son named Claire and Dale Moore. She wondered if Mister Moore and the rest of the family had made a run for it. Her pondering was interrupted by Garcia speaking forcefully into his phone.
“Ma’am please calm down and listen. We are pulling up to your house right now. ... You need to calm down. We need you to go to your front door and– “
He broke off and looked up suddenly, the rest of the team followed his gaze.
The door to the house had been opened. The young man: Dale, stepped out, swinging a baseball bat. He knocked down a zombie at their door and kicked a second one in the belly, causing that one to stumble and fall backwards. He took several steps and beckoned. Behind him, a middle-aged lady appeared in the doorway. She held her own bat clutched tightly to her chest; her mouth stretched in a grimace of fear.
They were making a run for it. The undead in the area started making their way towards the two immediately. Emily was shocked to see several zombies move faster. One practically came at a jog. They were not going to make it...
“Damn it! No time to call out targets.” Peters motioned for his team to huddle up.
“I will make a hole. Garcia, Collins next in the stack. Garcia go left, Collins right. Moyers form up on Garcia. Durant on Collins. Brown come out last – you’re on me. Hill, grab your rifle and hold the door. Take out the fast movers first.”
Emily felt the tight grip of fear as she fumbled for her rifle.
Peters pulled the handle, and without waiting for acknowledgement he burst out the door. His sidearm was up before he stepped on the sidewalk, and with two shots he dropped the undead directly in front of him as his team filed out behind him. They formed up as ordered. Emily stepped out last to the loud sound of semi automatic bursts of gunfire and the pop-pop sound of a single handgun.
Emily placed herself on the first step leading into the bus. She watched the soldiers do what they were trained to do. About ten of the undead had been dropped already.
Just about every zombie that was shot went down by the sheer force of the bullets. But if it were anything other than a brain-destroying head shot, the zombie would scramble back to its feet. She saw one of the monsters get shot center-mass with a burst of three shots and, continue to come at the soldiers as its guts spilled out.
The team was fully surrounded on three sides, with the bus to their backs. Undead had started pounding on the opposite side of the bus and several panicked voices could be heard behind Emily.
Peters was over half-way to the civilians when his pistol clicked empty. He did not have time to reload, so holstered the handgun and swung his M4 off his back. Brown was a few steps behind him.
At that moment, Claire Moore screamed. A group of undead had bowled over Dale, and he was caught under a mass of flailing limbs and snapping teeth. Claire was standing a few feet away from the attack, still clutching her bat, her
