Discovery

they hadn't, well Katie didn't like to think of the world of hurt she would be in right now, fighting off zombies behind her and trying to get a bead on the worst bad guy of all. There hadn't been that many zombies in the building as they climbed to the roof, the pounding had started minutes after Randy took a header over the edge. Looking down Katie saw his body was still there, he had not turned. 'Probably he kept his presence of mind until the last and landed head first.' Katie thought.

“Status.” the voice cut jarringly into her thoughts from the radio. 'What the fuck? They were not supposed to call me.'

“Uh, still operational.” she said tentatively, not knowing exactly how to respond. Randy had handled the communication end of things for the team.

“Affirmative. We are standing by for fire orders.”

“Good. I think I will send them in shortly.” The pounding on the door stopped, “Can I get the missions to land in a specific order? So I say 'go' and you drop the missions one after another?”

There was not reply for a moment, then the radio crackled and a voice said, “Affirmative. What order and how long of an interval between missions?”

“Order is one, three, two. No delay between one and three, a three minute delay between three and two.”

“Affirmative. You say 'go' and we will drop in that order.” the man's voice on the other end hesitated, “Three is still your position?”

“Affirmative.”

“Confirm.”

“I confirm.”

“Are you sure?”

“Confirm God damn it! What are we playing a game here? Do your goddamned job and let me do mine!”

“Confirmed. Sorry.”

“Don't get all emotional on me now.”

“Say 'go' and we will started the drop, eta after 'go' is thirty seconds.”

“That's better. And buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“You better make those big drops. If I don't get them, you guys need to.”

“Understood.”

“Too bad we don't have access to nukes.” Katie muttered, then stopped, realizing she had switched the mic on.

Quiet laughter flowed into her ear, “Yeah too bad. Good luck…and, well…good luck.”

Katie thought the man might have been going say to get out of the way of the artillery, but then he maybe thought better of it, they both knew she wasn't going to get out of this one.

Behind her a single loud thump rattled the door, the bar they had put up bend in the middle and the door opened about a foot. Twirling Katie braced her gun on her knee and targeted the door. An arm reached through, feeling around for the brace, she aimed and took one shot, the bullet hit the elbow and a cry of pain screamed from inside the stairwell as the arm was quickly retracted. Down on the street an explosion rattled the windows. Spinning again, Katie leaned over to get a better look at what was happening. A couple of zombies had been blown out of the window; a man and a woman. Both looked like the type she classified as 'super' and she took aim in their general direction as another loud bang sounded behind her.

'Ah well it is go time isn't it, hope my suit is up to snuff.' She took a bead on the zombie man's head as he leaped to his feet and faced the inside of the Art building.

Into her mic Katie whispered softly, “Go.”

Chapter 48

“Jesus fucking Christ Harry!” Max heard the woman's voice call out from the street. He could barely hear anything above the ringing in his ears so the woman must have been shouting in order for him to make it out. 'Great they are affected by the hearing loss too.' Looking around Max watched as Bill and another soldier fired on the last zombie in the room. The thing made the bad decision to stick its head over the heavy counter it was hiding behind and the two soldiers blew it off.

Ruben checked Kirk's body quickly and pulled the gun out from where it was still clenched in the old man's hand, he then headed over to Max.

“Go get them, keep them running. I'll take care of her now.” He said, tucking the pistol in his belt while he reached around and pulled some bandages from a pocket in his combat webbing.

Max looked to Stewart, then to Ruben and then to where Bill and Javier were getting up.

“What would she do? Just go Max, I can manage her.”

Finally Max relented and moved to the front of the building, pausing only to retrieve his shotgun. Bill and Javier were reloading as they paced Max from the other side of the room.

“I am retreating out the way we came, meet me at the door to the courtyard.” Ruben called after them.

“Reload Max.” Bill said. Max felt around for some shotgun shells and was surprised to find he still had a pocketful. The three of them approached the windows in a line and looked out to see zombies pouring into the area in front of the building.

“Good God.” Javier muttered, then pointed, “There!”

Bill and Max followed his finger and saw that Aubrey and Harry were standing by a large ornamental sculpture at the base of the long wide stair case, where they were taking cover from Bill and Max.

“Where is our sniper?” Max wondered.

“They are around, I hope they are anyway. We better fire at them and keep their attention on us, to give the sniper a chance to shoot.” said Bill as he readied a hand grenade.

Up above on the roof of the building across the street from them Katie took aim on the two zombies that had come out of the Art Institute. The two had been moving around since they were blown out of the building, finally they had stopped behind a huge piece of what passed for 'art' at the base of the stair. Perfect cover from the Art Institute, but no cover at all from her. Katie took a bead on the woman this time, trying not to count the number of seconds she had before the artillery landed. She saw the hand grenade fly as she squeezed off a bullet, she saw the woman zombie jump up a microsecond before Katie's bullet hit her in the head, the zombie woman went down.

“Fuck.” Katie whispered, the shot had looked clean, but the last minute jump had resulted in a neck shot instead of a head shot. 'Well I can pick it up in a minute after I tag Barbie's Ken.'

The hand grenade went off and the male zombie threw himself flat at the bottom of the stairs. The zombies rushing into the street were still too far away to provide the man or woman down there with any cover. Katie lined up her shot, wondering how long it would be until the first of the artillery hit, by her count it was already overdue.

Max led the charge out of the building as soon as the hand grenade went off, his fast moves caught Bill and Javier by surprise and he was halfway down the steps before they started moving.

“Did you know he was going to do that?” Javier asked panting.

“No.”

Max saw Harry laying on the sidewalk next to the bottom step, behind the sculpture Aubrey was twitching, injured, but not out of it. 'I knew the grenade wouldn't work.' Max thought, lining up his first shot on Harry. The zombie twisted sideways and raised his arm in front of his head, the shotgun shell passed through the thing's forearm severing its hand. Some of the shot peppered Harry's face as well and sent the zombie