"What's the play, Lou?" Mort asked, his eyesall whites as the cascade of the dead continued.
He didn't have an answer. All he knew was that he wantedto get away. He wanted to run. "We take a right at the next street,"he said, going against his own instinct to flee. It was going to be a longjourney. They were still a mile from the outskirts of the city, and conservingenergy was the most important thing for them right now.
"That's fucking crazy," Clara said. "Thosethings are all around us."
"We turn the corner, they can't see us. Some willstill follow us, but we'll lose a bunch of them as well. You ok to run?"Lou asked.
"I'll do my best," Clara said.
They rounded the corner, their pace quickened to halfwaybetween a jog and a fast walk. Their heads turned left and right as theyscanned the street in front of them. There were more dead here. They would haveto fight their way through.
"Alright. Just put 'em down. We don't need to kill'em, just get through 'em." Lou didn't wait to see if they understood himor if they were going to follow him. They either listened or they didn't. Hewould find out on the other side. Above them, they heard more rattling ofwindows, as the dead trapped inside the buildings attempted to find their wayout to the food down below. The sound gave Lou a new appreciation of the termdeath rattle.
Lou swung the butt of his rifle and connected with thecranium of a dead woman. She fell to the ground, and Lou slipped through anopening, not stopping to see what was happening to the others. First rule ofsurvivoring, when the dead are around you, look out for yourself. Rule numbertwo? Keep moving forward until there are no more dead in front of you, andthat's exactly what Lou did.
He swung his machine gun left and right, connecting withthe skulls of the dead and sending them tumbling to the ground. He felt likethose third-world guides on the nature shows he used to watch on PBS when hisdad left him alone for long stretches of time at home. He remembered seeing thesmall men with the brown hands swinging machetes at the jungle and opening up apath for the white men talking to the camera. They were the real stars, thosemen with their machetes, shaping nature to their own desires.
Now Lou was the star, bashing his way through the dead,sending their bodies sprawling to the ground around him. Whether they werepermanently dead or not didn't matter to him. All that mattered was that theywere out of the way, and he was a couple steps closer to the clearing on theother side. Above them, the death rattle grew, and then came the shower ofglass, followed by the thumps of the dead landing on the asphalt.
"Stay in the middle if you can!" he yelled overthe groans of the dead. He knocked down a priest with a bloody stump for ahand, and then he saw open air. He sprinted forward, but his lower thigh bumpedinto something. He looked down and saw dark brown hair. It was a child, or atleast, it used to be one. He pushed the thing away from him, disgusted by it.It flew across the street, and Lou looked down at his pants to see if the thinghad managed to bite him through his jeans. There was nothing. The fabric wasstill intact. He looked over at the small creature and saw why. The creaturesnarled at him as it got to its feet, and he saw that it was missing its teeth.They must have fallen out recently, the adult teeth permanently locked in thechild's jaw.
The sight shouldn't have bothered him, but it did. Therewere so few children among the dead. The only reason he could think of toexplain the phenomenon was that the parents had killed most of them... or thealternative, that they had died and been devoured so badly that they couldn'tphysically rise to walk with their parents.
The speed of the virus meant that most of the adultvictims could escape their attackers, even after being bitten. But childrenwere smaller. The wounds and bites of the dead could do more damage to theirtiny frames. None of that mattered now. He leveled his gun at the kid,hesitated, and then let it drop to his side.
He turned and jogged up the street, pausing once he wassure none of the dead were around him to see how the others were doing. Thegirls broke free from the pack, their arms and faces covered in the blood ofthe dead. He watched as Joan held a heavy length of rebar sideways and shoved oneof the dead out of the way.
Behind them, Mort and Blake burst through the dead. Louturned and jogged up to the next side street. It was clear, or as clear as itcould be, so he turned left, breaking the line of sight between the trailingdead and themselves. His breathing was heavy in his ears, and the cool of themorning began to burn away, though the shadows of the buildings kept the sunoff them.
Lou jumped out of the way of a grasping dead thing buriedunderneath the wheel of a car. It's arms flailed after him, the skin of thefingers long gone from trying to claw its way out from underneath the tire thatwas pinning its lower half. "Watch out for that one," he called.
The others skirted their way around the pinnedmonstrosity, and above them, the death rattle began again. How many of the deadwere trapped in the buildings around them? He didn't know, but he was thankfulfor their incarceration, even if it as temporary. Many of the buildings in thedowntown area were older. Had they been newer, more modern buildings, it mighthave been impossible for the dead to even break through the glass holding them backfrom their mindless free falls to the
