“Plan A was to lead them all away, but we can’t do that,” he said. “I guess we’ll go with Plan B.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” Griz deadpanned, as he peered out of the window, doing the same thing Gunny was doing. Looking for positions with good fields of fire.
They were in the section of town that had housed the wealthier members of the community. The bankers, the business owners, and the lawyers. The houses were old and stately, many of them with a Victorian flavor. They picked out four that either had third story windows overlooking the street, or a widow’s walk on the roof.
“You guestimate how many there are? We bring enough bullets?” Gunny asked, when Bridget finally nodded after her intense scrutiny of the crowd.
“There’s about fifteen hundred of them, maybe two thousand,” she said.
Gunny checked his loadout. He had six magazines for his M-4 in his Molle vest, the extra mags for his Glock, and the ammo can he was carrying. There were 420 rounds in it, already on stripper clips ready for speed loading. The rest of the crew had about the same, with Griz the only exception. He was lugging his M60 and a whole backpack of ammo. They had plenty of rounds. More than plenty. They had enough to kill a thousand zombies twice over.
“Griz, this house has the best line of sight down the street, you set up here with the pig. We’ll get over to the other houses and make sure they’re good to go.”
Griz followed them down, dragged the couch over to the door, and jammed it in place against the foot of the stairs. He used the kitchen table and the refrigerator tilted on its side to block the back door, forcing them snugly against the cabinets. Nothing would be coming through them without power tools or a bulldozer. The windows were high. Hopefully, the zeds would be so spread out between the four of them, they wouldn’t break through.
They made similar fortifications with the other houses, barricaded every door and figured out their escape routes if all went wrong. Gunny was the last to appear on the widow’s walk of the house he’d chosen and laid out his ammo, all the magazines facing the way he liked them for a quick reload. He looked around at the others in their positions, curtains removed, magazines laid out, and looks of resigned determination on their faces. They knew their fields of fire, they could cover each other, and were ready to commence the killing. From their height advantage, they could shoot down on the mob and not have to worry about stray bullets hitting anyone inside the building. It wasn’t a pleasant job, mowing down the undead, it was shooting fish in a barrel. It had to be done, though, and the best way to take care of unpleasant business was to just get started.
Gunny daubed a little Burt’s Bees ointment under his nose, then keyed his handheld. “One up,” he said, and waited for the others to check in. Griz was the last and when he clicked off, Gunny squeezed the trigger. The rest of them opened up, popping heads one at a time, taking aimed shots. There was confusion, at first, among the undead packed around the Kingdom Hall. It took them a minute to figure out where the new noises were coming from and that they meant fresh meat. Maybe easier to reach meat. While the crowd was still muddling around in confusion, the team was dropping them fast, moving from one closely packed and barely moving target to the next. They were jammed in so thick, many of the freshly-dead undead remained on their feet, held up by the horde.
A graying man in shredded pajamas, with an eye plucked out by a crow, finally spotted one of them and let out a keening scream. He started running toward them the best he could with his worn-down feet and six-month dead muscles. The others joined the chase, many of them stumbling over the bodies that were slumping to the ground. The Lakota Crew had already dropped thirty or forty in the opening volley of the battle and they kept firing, snap-shooting and moving from one target to the next. It was easy pickings now, even if they missed a shot, the mob was so tightly packed the bullet would plow into the next head. Griz was leaning against the window sill to steady his aim, trying to kill as many as possible before they spread out. Once a few hundred started running for the houses, he set aside his M-4 and put the 60 to his shoulder. He had his belts strung together, a round chambered, and a tin can wired just below the feed tray so the shells wouldn’t bind and pop the links. He aimed for the mob and let them feel the full force of the heavy machine gun. It chewed them up, each round ripping through a half dozen bodies before it buried itself in the ground. Heads exploded, collar bones splintered, rotting intestines were blown out of fist-sized holes, hip bones were disintegrated, and if he was lucky, a leg was shattered before the bullet finished its job. The noise was terrible, deafening, in the still-early evening. The circling crows and vultures flapped frantically away from the roar of the guns and fire of the tracers as they laid waste to the unnatural bodies. Griz fired in short bursts, trying to make every round count as the streets filled with more and more zeds pouring around the other sides of the church, joining the attack. The fastest of the runners were at their doors within minutes and started their incessant pounding, bodies piling up, adding tons of pressure against the wood. Gunny dropped his second magazine, slapped in a fresh one, and continued to pick targets. Hundreds were on the ground, heads shattered or bodies broken so
