Then they stopped.
Nat looked in the direction Bill and his team had gone. She thought she heard noises, possibly gunshots, but they were so muffled they were hard to make out. She wondered how Bill was doing. He wasn’t a bad guy. Funny accent, and a bit too shy.
She hoped he was OK.
Then there were those other two, BB and Breanne. BB seemed all right too, although he looked rather foul. All skin and bones, with sunken cheeks.
An old rock song came, unbidden, to Nat’s mind and she found herself thinking of the tune.
How did it go, again? She wondered, before chastising herself for her absent-mindedness.
Her thoughts returned to Bill’s companions. There was a third person out there.
Breanne. Hard to miss, that woman. Nat had not met a more outspoken individual since the world had gone to shit. That was saying something, with Rachel and Joe around...
Nevertheless, she sent a silent prayer to all three of them.
“Do you think it’s over?” she heard Christine ask in the background.
Nat expected that it wasn’t over. She figured it was just beginning.
“Not bloody likely,” was Emily’s dry answer.
As if on cue, a blast in the distance shattered the momentary peace.
“What the fuck was that?” Christine stepped over to the edge of the roof, curious to see what was going on.
“Get back, girl.” Ern herded her back towards Shelley and the other women, on the far side of the roof. “That was one of our mines.”
They’re coming.
Nat, Ern and Emily huddled up. Nat could see the shocked expression on Ern and Emily’s faces, and figured that her own mirrored the same sentiment. Emily took charge. The short British woman looked up at Nat. “Can you see what’s happening?” she asked, indicating the scope on Nat’s rifle.
Nat raised her rifle and looked through the scope. She lowered the rifle and the look on her face confirmed their worst fears. “Yeah,” was all she had to say.
Emily decided that she needed to see for herself. She walked to the corner of the school and looked through her binoculars.
“Oh, bloody hell...” She looked for a long moment, then turned and jogged back to Ern and Nat. “The street up ahead is chock-a-block with zombies. That was the first claymore we just heard, yeah.”
Nat nodded. “I’ve got good range on this baby. Going to get a better look. Maybe get some shots in.” When Ern seemed about to argue, she cut him off. “They know we’re here, Ern.” And left him standing with his mouth open.
Nat got to the corner of the school and set up her rifle. She checked the distance. Six hundred feet was a long way for the gun she had, and she was no pro. So, she waited for her targets to get a little closer. She studied the approaching horde.
Fuck me, the way those things move ... was her first thought.
Fuck me twice. There are hundreds of them, was her second thought.
She sat back against the parapet.
“What do you see, Nat?” Ern called.
“We’re fucked!” she wanted to say. Instead, she took a breath to calm herself. “It looks like there are several hundred of them.” She tried to keep the panic out of her voice, and desperately hoped that John’s plan would work.
Speaking of John’s plan, they should be hitting the second claymore any moment now.
As if in answer to that thought, another explosion went off in the distance. She checked the damage through her scope. Very few kills, but lots of maiming...
John had sure arranged an impressive approach. He’d spent most of the precious minutes he had left placing one claymore after another, about seventy-five feet apart. He’d set up the directional explosives and even placed a couple of small boxes of nails in front of the devices.
“Maximizing damage capacity,” he’d called it. He’d placed five in total, and then set up the last one in front of the school doors. Those claymores were a brutal weapon, but then again these were brutal circumstances.
She checked the range. Closing in on four hundred and seventy-five feet. OK. She’d taken shots at four hundred feet. This was worth a try.
Disappointingly, her first shot was a miss.
“Fuck.”
JOE FLINCHED AT THE sound of the sniper rifle upstairs and looked nervously at the door, as if expecting the undead to break through it at any moment.
That guy is going to be a loose cannon.
Ben glanced over at Keith next. The man hid his nervousness well. He seemed frozen in place, standing perfectly still and balanced. It was not hard to imagine Keith in some kung-fu movie. The way he clutched his rifle belied that calmness, though.
The last person on the landing was Romy. She looked resolute. The athletic woman had a rifle, but her hand kept darting to that mini Eagle on her belt. The small pistol seemed to comfort her whenever she touched it. Still, Ben could tell that she was scared.
So are you.
The worst part was being stuck inside and not knowing what was out there.
The access to the landing they were standing on was their first line of defense inside the school. It was a makeshift but decent obstacle, what with those wrestling mats secured on the stairs. Behind them lay four M870 shotguns, already loaded with 12-gauge ammunition, and several boxes of spare ammo. They would be used if the zombies got close.
Nobody was looking forward to that.
If only they had given him one of the sniper rifles! Not just because he a good shot, but also because then he wouldn’t be standing on this landing, waiting for the zombies to breach.
They all jumped as a second rifle shot sounded.
“I guess John’s distraction didn’t work ...” Joe’s voice cracked slightly with fear. Ben watched as Romy and Joe exchanged a glance. The fear became palpable.
Ben grimaced in frustration. He had no idea of how many zombies were headed their way, and
