Tenner sighted the zombie. The wind was blowing past him so it shouldn’t affect the shot. His finger left the guard and touched the trigger.
Squeezed.
The creature’s face blossomed violently, and the thing dropped to the pavement. Grinning, Tenner swerved the rifle back on old Lou and saw that the man wasn’t in the best of shape––even though he’d just been saved. That struck Tenner as odd. He then saw the cause for old Lou’s distress. Zombies. Perhaps a hundred, maybe even two, moving out from houses and from the forest, coming down the road.
“Shit,” Tenner swore with irritation. He had about two hundred rounds with him, but he wondered if that would be enough. “Gonna be close, Lou, old buddy. Gonna be close.”
Tenner was more than happy to give it a go. He loved old video games. Loved old shooters where the player stared down the barrel of a rifle to blast away at whole armies of animated fiends. His scenario was just a tad more realistic, a drop more visceral, and far too much fun. He had to shoot straight and accurately, else he’d lose old Lou to the advancing mob. That wouldn’t be kosher. Lou was important in Tenner’s new world. He possessed a valuable skill set. Losing him wouldn’t be a good thing, which gave even more excitement to the upcoming game. Tenner set the stock of the Bushmaster rifle to his shoulder, telling himself he’d have to be perfect.
The writhing, moaning wall approached old Lou’s position, or at least Tenner expected they would be moaning. Stinking, as well, but he had no worries of that where he was situated. He eyed the mass as they closed the distance, the scope powerful enough to spot bodies and individuals, but not quite features. There was always the option of allowing them closer, but Tenner thought not, and drew a bead on the first corpse.
*
Drumming his legs and cursing the day he had met that conniving bastard, Lou sat with his legs immobilized to the cinderblocks and his hands nailed to the drum behind him. His hands ached dearly, and he knew the chances were exceptionally high that if he got out his predicament, he’d probably have to hack both of them off to save himself from infection. He listened to the wind blowing and felt its cutting breath on his cheeks, freezing him. He’d never been colder. He couldn’t see what was behind him, but he slowly became aware of a creeping tide rising above the horizon of asphalt. He knew what they were, and he struggled again against his bonds. He pulled hard enough on his hands that he passed out from the pain.
The sounds of gunshots revived him. The mob of lurching dead people marched on. Lou’s senses cleared, and he shook his head. Focusing on the approaching wall of corpses, he estimated they were about a hundred and twenty meters out, a little more than a football field, and still much too close for Lou. Fear dried out his mouth and throat, and his legs kicked weakly.
At that moment, a zombie’s head exploded, and he heard the distant crack of the rifle. The dead collapsed and disappeared in the creeping tide.
Another zombie stumbled and fell, and Lou heard another far off report. He looked left and right, spotting only an empty field of tall yellow grass and a curtain of stark trees. The shots came from over the field, from the direction of the service station.
What the hell was happening?
Lou thought as he watched the steady march of the dead eating up the distance with every step.
*
With the wind blowing past his hood, Tenner quickly emptied the first twenty-round magazine into the ranks of the unliving. Some he missed. Some he nailed dead on, exploding their skulls with a soundless poof. Others he missed, but hit something else instead as they were packed so tightly together––a shoulder here, a neck there. It didn’t really matter to Tenner. When the first mag finished, he ejected it and quickly inserted the next full one. He primed the weapon, took sight, and noted that the mass was about ninety meters away. He shot the head of a fellow in blue coveralls, and perfectly exploded the brainpan of what looked to be a priest. He fired and hit what could’ve been a pro basketball player, blowing the head clean from its neck.
Grinning, he took five to ten seconds in between shots to line up the next one. He focused on the dead leading the pack, closest to old Lou, who was either praising him or cursing him to low Hell. The second mag went dry, and Tenner reached for the third. The zombies kept pressing ahead, despite the thirty or so he’d put down. Gritting his teeth, Tenner made seventeen more kills, his rate of fire unconsciously speeding up, chipping away at the lead dead people like a hammer against rotten marble. He burned through the fourth and fifth clips, dropping another thirty or so at the eighty-meter mark. The pack seemed to be thinning out. He sniffed as he loaded up the sixth mag and noted old Lou hollering something lost in the wind. Whatever. Tenner couldn’t be distracted, and he ignored the growing ache in his shoulder from the Bushmaster’s repeated kicking. He wondered if he would have a misfire or experience some other malfunction as he took another head from the shoulders of a Mountie, the head spraying apart in spectacular fashion.
Seventy meters. Tenner took a breath and loaded the eighth magazine much slower. He pinched the ridge of bone between his eyes and snorted. Taking sight on the crowd, about three dozen unliving walkers left, he squeezed off a round and missed entirely. His second shot spun his target about like a ballerina before it fell. His shoulder ached like hell, and he massaged it, allowing the remaining bunch to close within fifty meters.
Tenner took aim and put down ten more dead before the spent mag popped out. He loaded in the ninth with a curse, realizing the game wasn’t so much fun anymore. He would carry on, however; he owed that much to old Lou.
Crack.
An undead little girl flopped over.
Crack
. A man with a jean jacket hanging off his left arm staggered back. Tenner sighted again and blew out the back of his head.
Crack
. A woman wearing no pants dropped to her knees and fell over.
And on and on. Until he emptied the ninth. Tenner ejected the mag and simply dropped his head to his arms. The wind blew over him, but his coat kept him warm. There were seven or eight of the undead left. Closing in on old Lou. Tenner believed they were about thirty meters out. Lou’s screams sounded very far away. He had to give it to the zombies. They were relentless. Fearless. Even as others were dropping dead around them, they marched on without any concern for their personal safety. Of course, Tenner knew they would. Over time, he had made a gruesome study of the things. He was fairly certain they went by smell, perhaps sound if they had ears or their hearing canals were unblocked. And even sight. He sort of doubted the last one, as he’d seen too many of them with a milky film glazing their pupils. The thing that amazed him the most was their single-minded focus on feeding, and utter fearlessness of finally dying. He wondered if they were really dead at times, wondered if they were somehow distantly aware of their condition and welcomed final death. He didn’t know. Maybe he would one day.
Sighing, Tenner loaded his rifle again, wondering how hot the barrel was. He charged his weapon and fixed his eye to the scope.
Eight zombies left.
He sighted a woman wearing a uniform. Tenner shot her though the temple, shearing off the entire frontal part of her cranium and hooking her off her feet.
He heard the tinkle of the spent shell being ejected and looked to see a pile of brass next to him.
Jesus
.
Twenty meters. Tenner shot a man in a dress suit, ripping his head clean off his shoulders. He shifted quickly and popped the top off of a skull with a reflexive jerk of his trigger. Tenner shook his arm to loosen it up, wondering what had happened there. Old Lou, he figured, was probably scared shitless. Tenner knew he would be if their positions were reversed.
Crack
. A bearded man spun around and almost gracefully dropped to the pavement.
Ten meters.
Crack, crack
. Two more put down, their heads exploding like tough fruit gone bad.
Five meters. Two left.
Tenner sighted on the shambling form of a little old lady in a flowery dress. A larger male hung at her heels. The scope shifted, and he saw old Lou, white-faced and howling like a broken fire alarm. For an older guy, he shook and screamed and shuddered against the drum, primal instinct taking over now, and Tenner remembered a time when he was a boy and found a rabbit with two broken legs on the side of the highway. A car had smashed it while it was crossing and left it to die. That rabbit, however, had life enough in it to bawl like a child, terrified so much it actually tried to escape on its broken legs when it saw Tenner approaching.
Tenner had never heard anything so pure, and yet so heartbreaking, since.
He imagined Lou sounded something like that rabbit.
Through the scope, Tenner watched. His finger tensed on the trigger for a second, as the granny zombie closed the last few feet and gripped Lou’s face with its decayed hands. Old Lou’s eyes looked ready to just about pop out of his skull. The granny bent over, just as the second zombie stepped up behind her. She bared her barren gums, worn down to raw bone, and started to gnaw through old Lou’s scalp.
The larger zombie started in on Lou’s shoulder, biting into the meat with enough gusto to remind Tenner of eating a jelly donut. The male still had some teeth. He sighed and watched for a bit more, listening to Lou’s screams peter out. Tenner lost the game in the end. He figured old Lou had defecated himself right in the last few seconds.
And Tenner hated the smell of shit more than he needed a mechanic.
Scott wanted to shoot the dead thing reaching for Gus, but he didn’t. Instead, he rushed into the room and kicked the thing square in the bare back. His boot crunched through the gray-black flesh, and for a single insane moment, he stood there with a zombie on the end of his leg. The gruesome thing reared up and tried to turn. Unable to free himself, Scott stumbled backward, and the deadhead fell with him. Panting, Scott scrambled to his feet as the Dee seemed to understand that it was facing the floor. It looked up, and Scott blasted the skull, dropping the corpse in the kitchen.
“Gus!” He stepped over the carcasses to get to his companion, who was shrivelled up in the doorway with his hands to his face. “Gus!”
Scott pulled the hands down, and Gus stared at him blankly. Black and gray matter speckled Gus’s face as if he had stood behind a screen door when the shithouse exploded.
“Swallowed some,” Gus whispered, his eyes frightened. “I… swallowed some.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Scott heard moaning from above. “Oh, Jesus,” he repeated. He had killed two of the things on the staircase on the way in, but the house was turning out to be a goddamn nest. He pulled Gus to his feet and leaned him against the doorframe. Scott searched the area, yanking open two drawers in the kitchen before finding a red-and-white checked table cloth. He grabbed it and went back to Gus.
“Close your eyes and mouth!”
Gus blinked at him.
“CLOSE YOUR FUCKIN’ EYES AND MOUTH!”
Gus obeyed, and Scott tried to spit onto the end of the table cloth, but no spit would come. Muttering, he frantically dry-wiped Gus’s face, cleaning it as best as he could while the moaning grew louder. He looked over his shoulder. The daylight spilling into the room from the hallway darkened.
Snarling, Scott left the cloth in Gus’s hands and reloaded his shotgun, shoving four shells into the breach. He brought the weapon to his shoulder and waited. Three Dees wandered into the doorway. Scott shot them all and reloaded. He heard a single voice of one corpse closing the distance to the doorway, rustling as it dragged itself forward. Its shadow grew against the wall. Just before entering, it paused, creeping Scott out. Could the thing be thinking?
“Hey!” Scott yelled, and the dead thing, its head a hideous flesh-patched skull with its eyes eaten out, practically wrapped its huge bulbous form around the corner. A walking blob of a corpse, perhaps three hundred kilograms of reeking, rotting flesh, rubbed its rolls of fat against the narrow entryway as it came in. The sight and smell made Scott gag. The thing paused then, seemingly hearing him, then shuffled forward, its mouth hanging open.
Scott blew off its head. The headless corpse crumpled in the doorway, and he realized with dawning horror that the immense bulk of the thing blocked their escape.
“Well, Jesus Christ.” He rushed to the fat man’s form and leaned over to see how much room remained to crawl over the dead. The idea suddenly revolted him as he looked at the black sores covering the gruesome flesh. “Fuck that.” Scott backed up.
More hissing and moaning came from outside.
“Oh, Jesus,” Scott swore again, and went to a boarded window in the kitchen. He peeked out through the cracks and spied figures lurching past the van toward the open door of the house. “Oh, Jesus.” He looked back at Gus and then rushed into the living room. There was a picture window boarded up on the outside. The glass on the inside could potentially be dangerous enough. Then, Scott saw the old rocking chair. His features twisting into a scowl, he took two steps, uprooted it from the carpeted floor, and flung it into the glass. The picture window shattered with a clap and large shards tinkled to the floor. Scott stomped on the rocking chair, snapping off an armrest. He raked the length of wood around the edges of the frame, clearing it as best as he could in the time he thought he had. Realizing he was moaning, he fought down his fear and sized up the wood. Narrow planks stretched over a large window.