Gary took Father Chuck’s arm. Linda followed them down the ladder.
Max was seized by an impulse to join them, to run and catch up. But that would sign their death warrants- they’d all be slaughtered when the dead crossed the bridge. They might all be slaughtered anyway, he knew. But he was going to give them the best chance he could.
That was his first thought. Only afterward, once he’d turned to face the dead, unslinging his H and K, did it occur to him that he was also grasping at
They were coming now, coming in their hundreds, the army of the Apocalypse, the host of Hell. It was hard to see God’s grace in that onrushing storm of hate; impossible to see it anywhere else.
“Through a glass darkly, huh Max?” he said.
A medieval legend leaped to mind, steeling him to his task: a lone Norwegian warrior holding a crossing against an English multitude.
“That’s it, you sons of bitches!” he bellowed, pulling out the rifle’s retractable stock, clicking the gun to semiauto. “
After leaving Max, Gary’s group had almost gotten to the northern end of the bridge when Father Chuck slipped from Gary’s shoulder and fell.
“Going to stay behind, Father?” Steve asked. “Give the rest of us a better shot?”
The priest shook his head. “I’m not… ready yet.”
Max’s gun rattled in the distance.
“Max is laying it on the line,” Steve said. “If he can do it, you can too, Father.”
Father Chuck closed his eyes, ignoring him.
“We’re not leaving him, and that’s final,” Gary said, helping the priest up against the railing. “We can’t stay here much longer though, Father. Do you understand? Max isn’t going to sacrifice himself for nothing.”
The priest nodded.
Moments passed. Father Chuck stood gasping.
Max’s bomb roared. They all turned. Seconds later came the next explosion, a huge fireball billowing into the sky as the truck went.
“Screw this,” Steve said, cocking his.45.
“Steve, you can’t-”Gary said.
“No?” Steve asked, and leveled his gun at the priest. “Remember Ginger?”
Gary brought his.45 up too.
“You’re going to shoot
“Everything you taught me was shit. Try me.”
“You don’t have the guts,” Steve said, and aimed the gun toward Father Chuck’s pale sweat-beaded forehead.
Gary gave him one in the stomach, knocking him over. The pistol bounced from Steve’s hand. Gary kicked it farther away.
“Well what do you know?” Steve gasped up at him, grinning with pain.
Gary put his shoulder under Father Chuck again. Followed by Linda, they made for the end of the bridge.
“You’re not getting rid of me!” Steve cried after them. “
Gary looked round briefly, past his wife. Steve was crawling for his gun, but had a good twenty feet to go.
They reached the end, somehow getting Father Chuck down the ladder. Max’s gun echoed once more. For the first time Gary was truly struck by the knowledge that he’d probably never see his brother again.
At least not alive.
Max squeezed off shot after shot. Every slug sent a corpse to the asphalt, crippled.
But he couldn’t slow the torrent speeding toward the ladder. On the dead came, trampling the fallen, shrieking, clawing for the rungs. And almost before he realized it, the clip was spent.
He hit the release, pocketed the empty clip. Shoving a new one in, he raked the bolt back and started blasting before the first corpse got halfway up. Two bullets sent dark spurts of vaporized bone and brains spurting from its scrofulous crown, smashed the cadaver from the rungs.
Another sprang out of the mob. Max shot that one and the next. Spent shells flying from the rifle’s breech, he kept them at bay for a furious half-minute, swearing and laughing as his bullets hammered home.
The second clip went dry: two left.
A corpse almost got to the top before Max reloaded. He put a shot into either eye. Exiting through the back of its head, the bullets cracked the skull like an eggshell, the top flipping up and forward, almost swinging over the corpse’s face before dropping back.
The cadaver only scrambled up further, hands clawing at the catwalk and rails.
Max kicked it under the chin, felt its jaws crack together. The skull top jounced, matter like dried dirt flying out from under it. A second kick sent the corpse sailing down onto the horde below.
A spear hurtled toward Max. He knocked it aside with his gun. He’d been waiting for them to start that. Dozens of the sharpened poles waved above the throng. Throwing them was surely the best way to take him out. Much better than climbing up and closing with him one at a time.
But the gaunt old matron even now on the rungs seemed unaware of that. Up she came, straight toward the muzzle of the H and K, her wild shock of pure white hair flying in the wind, strings of huge yellowed pearls gleaming on her bosom.
Flames stabbed from the rifle’s barrel, one shot, two, three, transforming her face into a shredded jumble. Shattered teeth and pearls flying, she loosed her hold and fell wailing, talons stretched out over her head.
After her he blasted three more off the ladder. Once the last fell, there was a brief lull, and it occurred to him that no more spears had been hurled.
Why aren’t they-
Music blared into his mind, as though he were wearing a headset and someone had whipped the volume from zero to ten. At first the song was too deafening for him to realize what it was.
Obligingly, the volume fell sharply.
“
Another corpse clambered up toward him. Max’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he paused at the last instant, recognizing the dead face. One eye socket gaped, the skin was green and spotted with mold, and the mouth was a fanged slash, grinning ear to ear with filed teeth. Still, there was no mistaking it-
The corpse was Jeff Purzycki.
Trembling, Max watched him come. Up until now, they’d all been strangers, monsters pure and simple. But he’d gone to school with Jeff, gotten looped with him, dragged him out of the surf when he was drowning, and now-
Jeff was reaching for Max’s ankle, snatching at his flesh with a hand like a garden rake, the flesh of its fingertips pared away, the bones beneath sharpened to wicked curving points…
Max shrieked and fired. Jeff fell, taking the corpses beneath with him.
And that was the end of the third clip.
Max went to reload, found the last magazine caught in the lining of his coat pocket. Dropping the gun, he pulled the machete free as the next corpse clambered up.
Badly in need of a good undertaker, it was Mr. Van Nuys, head cocked crazily to one side, a metal probe buried deep in one ear, mouth sewn shut like a shrunken head’s, the words
A slash and a snap kick knocked him from the ladder.
Next it was Aunt Lucy, face purple and contorted. She blocked a kick with her forearm, grabbed at Max’s retreating leg; his backward dodge gave her time to bound up onto the catwalk, but he hacked her head off as she
