When they got there, several zombies were clustered out front, slapping and clawing at the door. Calvin aimed, but Zion honked the horn to get him to stop. The two men jumped out of the cab, Zion turned to the sniper.
“Cover our six, we got this,” he barked, and Calvin nodded, turning to survey the area, waiting for zombies to emerge from any direction.
The honking had alerted the four ghouls from the porch, and they turned, shambling down the stairs.
Zion’s brow furrowed. “They’re not runners,” he said.
“Which means there’s another breach somewhere,” Mateo added, eyes wide.
Zion clutched his weapon tightly, readying himself to strike. “One problem at a time.” He rushed forward, swinging his blunt weapon over his head, crumpling a teenage zombie into a heap.
Mateo stepped past him with his dual blades, delivering a series of precise strikes that incapacitated two creatures. Zion gave another vicious swing, sending the final ghoul to the ground.
Mateo rushed the door, banging on it and yelling in Spanish. After several tense moments, the deadbolt clicked open and a middle-aged heavyset woman appeared. They embraced tightly, exchanging rapid dialogue in Spanish.
“Ask her where Monique and Wendy are,” Zion demanded.
After a quick exchange, Mateo turned to him. “She says they ran off to the main gate.”
“Come on, we gotta get over there,” Zion replied.
Mateo tried to break away from his mother’s grip, but she held on tight. He leaned back in, saying something urgently, and she began to cry, but let go of him. She disappeared back inside and bolted the door shut.
“We have to hurry,” Mateo gushed as they trotted down the steps.
Zion threw himself back into the truck. “What did you say to her?” he asked.
“That I’m not her little boy anymore and I’ll be okay,” his passenger replied as he slammed the door. “People need my help.”
“Hate to break it to you,” Zion said, “but no matter how old or big you get, you’ll always be some lady’s little boy or brother.”
Mateo smiled thinly, and Calvin squeezed off another round before ducking and looking in the back window.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Main gate,” Zion replied as the gunfire continued to increase in the distance.
Calvin went pale and took a knee. “Shit, that can’t be good.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Zion made the turn onto the outer road of the camp, speeding towards the main gate. As they approached, they witnessed a frantic scene.
Eight guards perched up on makeshift platforms made of cars and dumpsters, frantically shooting, aiming at targets perilously close to the gate. Several people on the ground stood directly in front of the gate, swaying under the pressure from the zombies on the other side of it.
Others used whatever they could to reinforce the fence, some holding tree branches, one holding a twisted car bumper. A few others used knives and machetes to strike the creatures reaching through.
Dozens of arms stretched out, grasping at the people who darted forward to deliver strikes before jumping back to relative safety. As Zion pulled the truck up just short of the gate, one of the stabbers, a young woman in her twenties, managed to take out a ghoul, but another grasped her wrist in a death grip.
She screamed for help, but it was drowned out in the noises of the fray. Mateo spotted her and lunged forward, bringing his cleaver down hard on the ghoul’s forearm, severing it completely.
The woman staggered backwards, shaking the severed limb from her wrist and falling to the ground. Mateo quickly helped her up, and she stared at him with wide, panicked eyes.
“You’re okay now, you’re okay,” he assured her, and she finally took a deep breath, nodding jerkily.
“Thank you,” she replied, and then headed off to find another weapon.
The top right hinge on the gate cracked open, breaking away from the frame.
“Right side, sight side!” Wendy barked from her position at the fence.
The top began to lean and buckle, and the man holding the car bumper shifted to the side, trying to hold it up. As he struggled with it, Zion darted up, taking the makeshift support and jamming it up into position, putting his weight into it to briefly stabilize the barrier.
As he held it in place, he stared through the fence, swallowing hard at the couple hundred ghouls pressed up against it.
“Zion, thank god you’re here,” Wendy gushed as she joined him.
“Where’s Monique?” he demanded.
The redhead jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “She’s with a couple others checking the perimeter,” she said.
Calvin approached, his face white as a sheet as he surveyed the sea of zombies on the other side of the gate. “Where the hell did they come from?” he breathed.
“When that bomb went off next door,” Wendy explained, “it alerted every fucking thing in a ten mile radius.”
“Are they from the bridge?” Zion asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she replied, and took a deep breath. “We gotta send somebody down there. We have to know what we’re up against.”
Zion and Calvin shared a look, and the former said, “There’s hundreds more coming up from the south, too.”
Wendy’s expression changed from determined to defeated, and she stared at the sky for a moment before clenching her jaw and snapping back into alpha mode. “Jackie, Stevie,” she barked at a few of the shooters on the wall, “get to the south wall and start patching it up. Grab whoever and whatever you need to make it happen. And hurry up, because we’re on the clock!”
The men leapt down and hurried off, and the redhead turned to Zion and Calvin.
“We still need to know what’s coming on the bridge,” she said.
The sniper glanced over at Mateo, stabbing wildly through the gate. “Mateo, you’re with me!” he called.
The butcher downed one more creature before stepping away from the line and heading over.
“Go out, see what you can see and report back,” Wendy said.
“No,” Zion said firmly.
She jutted out
