She overestimated her balance and had a moment of panic where she thought she might topple right into the mini-horde. She windmilled her arms and pressed up on the balls of her feet, and her heart hammered in her chest as she regained her balance, pressing her back against the wall and breathing heavy.
She steadied herself and watched Hawk, Troy, and Aaron lunge forward again, each taking down another ghoul. Once they leapt back into the clear, she popped off a few more shots, keeping her other hand firmly against the wall to keep herself grounded. Her aim was off a touch, and only two of the ghouls fell, but they were thinning the herd nicely.
When they were down to five, she holstered her gun, hoping that she hadn’t wasted too many bullets that they’d need later. Hawk stabbed a ghoul in the face and then used the corpse to bowl over two other zombies.
Grace shimmied until she was above him and then dropped down behind him, darting around to lunge at one of the ghouls trying to get the drop on Troy. Aaron swung wildly at his zombie, but his blow glanced off of its neck, and it latched onto his arm. He screamed as it bit into his tricep, and tried to wrench his arm out of its teeth, to no avail.
Grace moved towards him, but the zombies Hawk was wrestling with pulled away and tore for the easy meal. Between the three of them, they tackled Aaron to the floor, and his screams quickly turned to gurgles.
“While they’re distracted!” Grace hissed, though her blood ran cold at the thought of it. Hadn’t she thought about shooting Aaron? Hadn’t she thought he wouldn’t survive? And here he was, on the ground, being feasted on, the perfect distraction for destroying the threat. Her mouth tasted like bile.
They rushed over, each stabbing down at a ghoul, and the bodies fell limp on top of Aaron. He was barely alive, his eyes rolling as his head lolled back and forth, blood pouring from his mouth and throat.
Grace swallowed hard. “Sorry,” she whispered, and then stabbed him in the eye socket with her crowbar.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The trio stepped back, tentatively relieved they’d survived this leg of the battle. The moans and groans and snarls echoing up from the first floor didn’t do anything to comfort them, however, because the battle was far from over.
“We need to clear this floor,” Grace said, checking to make sure her gun and walkie-talkie were still there.
Hawk nodded. “I don’t think there’s anything else, considering all the noise we made,” he pointed out, “but a sweep would be best.”
They readied their weapons and headed past the escalator, glancing down to make sure that the pileup of clothing racks were still doing their job. A few had dislodged at the bottom, but the ghouls hadn’t made it even a quarter of the way up, so they were okay for now.
They wove their way through housewares and linens, making sure there were no more zombies hiding anywhere, which there didn’t seem to be. When they came out the other side, they looked down off of the mezzanine to the terror below.
There was a clatter as some of the rabid creatures pulled down a few more clothing racks, struggling beneath them but freeing up half of the escalators.
“How many bullets do you have left?” Troy asked, though his tone betrayed that he knew the answer already.
Grace shook her head. She didn’t even need to look. “Not enough,” she replied dryly.
Hawk chewed his lip for a moment. “That’s not going to hold forever,” he said. “What are we going to do, here?”
“No chance our buddies outside can come in and mop this up?” Troy asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Nope,” Grace replied, shaking her head. “We gotta clear in here and then draw the mall zombies to us. Somehow.” She sighed. “But that’s later. What are we going to do now?”
Hawk rubbed his forehead. “I have an idea…” he drawled, trailing off. “But I don’t really like it.”
“Spit it out,” Troy said, waving a hand at him.
Hawk motioned to the elevator. “We’ve still got power. We could take the elevator down.”
“They’d be on us as soon as the doors open,” Grace replied, brow furrowing. “We’d be stuck.”
“Not if we ride on the top of the car,” he replied, and then winced. “See? Don’t like it.”
But she had a thoughtful expression on her face. “It would work.”
“That’s not a very big elevator shaft,” Troy mused.
She nodded. “That’s why you’re going to stay up here,” she said. “You stay at the top of the escalator, make sure that the barricade holds, and Hawk and I will ride down and kill whatever ends up attracted by the doors opening. Once it’s clear, we’ll play cat and mouse like we did up here.”
He gaped at her. “Except with a lot more of those things,” he protested.
“And you’ll have to make noise without a gun,” she replied. “I think we might need it more downstairs, just in case.”
Troy shook his head. “Okay, girl, I don’t have any other ideas,” he admitted.
“I’ll get prying on the ceiling panel,” Hawk said, holding up his crowbar.
The trio headed for the elevator, and Grace clapped Troy on the back as they passed by it to the escalators. “Cause enough of a ruckus and we should be able to just take them all out from behind,” she said.
“I don’t know, that’s quite a group,” he replied, shaking his head. “What do I do if they start getting too far up?”
She glanced over her shoulder at a few shoe displays. “Toss whatever you can on top of them,” she instructed. “Just try not to hit us.” She cracked a small smile.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, putting a hand on his chest.
Grace jogged back over to Hawk, who was just pulling the ceiling door of the elevator open. The sliding doors began to
