Grace took a deep breath and folded up the paper, shoving it into the pocket of her jeans. She grabbed a crowbar from the bin and gripped it tightly. “Okay, let’s go.”
CHAPTER THREE
Grace reached the service entrance and motioned for Troy to come forward as she stepped to the side with her crowbar raised. “Open it just a little and then be ready in case there’s pushback.”
He nodded, and Hawk sidled up next to him to help brace the door. Troy took a deep breath, and then turned the handle, pressing his shoulder against the door and inching it open. He grunted as a body slammed into the door, a bloody arm flailing out of the gap.
Grace took her time lining up her jab, as Troy and Hawk had a fairly good brace on the door. When she managed to get a good look at a snarling face, she lunged forward, avoiding the arm to stab the creature in the head.
The corpse fell, the rotted limb still hanging out of the bottom of the door, and Troy waited a moment before pulling it a little further.
Footfalls echoed in the hallway, and Hawk dropped his stance, really digging in his feet as the door shuddered from the force of bodies slamming into it.
“Jesus Jesus Jesus,” Joseph moaned, clutching his tire iron to his heart with white knuckles, and backing up a few steps.
Eddie threw himself between Hawk and Troy, the latter ducking down as a flailing arm whizzed past his face. Grace brought the crowbar down on the limb, snapping it at the elbow so that it dangled harmlessly. The upper arm continued to bob about, the corpse unperturbed that it had lost functionality of its claws.
She managed to stab the zombie in the face, right through the eye socket, and it slid down a little, revealing two more scrambling to get past it. “You need to open the door a bit,” she said, widening her stance.
“What?” Troy huffed as he struggled.
“I can’t reach the heads,” she explained impatiently. “I need them to be able to get partway out the door.”
He grunted and turned to Eddie. “Let’s slide back a bit, so I’m out of the swipe zone.”
Eddie and Hawk nodded, then moved back towards the hinges to give him room to slide. As the trio eased towards the wall, the door opened another inch, and three ghouls wormed their way into the opening, snarling and snapping at Grace.
She timed a jab, going high and stabbing into the forehead of the top zombie. It flopped back as the other two writhed around, one of them snatching her arm in its dead hand. She wrenched her arm away, but the death grip on those things was intense, and she couldn’t shake it.
Troy stared at her, wide-eyed, and she put a foot against the brick wall to hold her flesh away from the snapping jaws.
She noticed with a sour taste on her tongue than none of their other four teammates were coming to her aid. The door men wouldn’t be able to leave their posts, otherwise they’d have all the maintenance hallway monsters pouring out and overrunning them.
She wrestled her crowbar into her free hand, smashing it down on the hard-gripping arm as hard as she could. There was a sickening crack, but the fingers didn’t let up. These things had no chill—all they wanted was to feed, and nothing but a direct blow to the brain would stop them.
Aly screamed from behind her and lunged forward, swinging her tire iron hard into the gap in the door. Something crunched, and then the arm holding Grace dropped, taking her wrist with it. She pried the fingers off as Aly continued to flail away, smashing the tire iron with abandon.
Grace ducked to avoid one of the back swings, and then another head shimmied through the corpses on the bottom, managing to wriggle its torso out through the widening gap. She stabbed it in the top of the head, and soon the pile of corpses was still.
Aly continued to smash the zombies, despite them not moving, and Troy stepped away from the door, pushing her arm down. It was gentle but firm at the same time, as if he were trying to avoid getting smashed himself.
“Thank you,” Grace said, chest heaving, as Aly backed up, eyes wide.
The woman swallowed hard and nodded jerkily, quivering.
Grace glanced over her shoulder at the other three men, still rooted to the spot. She was starting to feel like Hawk was right, and this team wasn’t going to be good for them. But it wasn’t like they could change it, or do anything about it. She just had to hope to hell that having someone she trusted on each team would be enough to get them through this.
“Ease up on the door,” she said, and Eddie and Hawk leaned forward, letting it open another few inches.
Grace poked her head in and strained her ears, listening for any more movement down the maintenance tunnel. She spotted the door at the end, blessedly closed, with no more bodies moving about. She grabbed the brown collar of one of the corpses and hauled it out of the way of the door.
“Help me,” she said, inclining her head to Troy. “I don’t want to leave any doors open if I don’t have to.”
He nodded and reached down, and between the two of them, they dragged all the fallen zombies from the doorway, leaving them on the asphalt.
Once clear, Grace led the way into the tunnel. There was only one other door on the way to the mall proper, but it was locked tight with a warning sticker on it, likely electronics or water heaters or the like.
When she reached the door leading to the mall, she and Troy sidled up next to each other, peering out into the open area.
“What a shitshow,” Troy muttered, and her stomach sank.
She agreed with him. They were looking at an open area, the broken down escalators
