“How much do we have here?” Kyle said and opened one of the boxes. Only a few dozen rounds were inside.
“About 200 cartridges,” Hughes said, “plus a dozen or so for the shotgun. Take two boxes for yourself and Parker and give the shells to Frank. Do what you can.”
Where was Frank? Annie had taken Kyle’s place on the magazine rack and was firing her weapon, but he didn’t see Frank.
Hughes seemed to sense his confusion. “Frank’s in back,” he said. “Doing what I’m doing. Guarding the other door in case they get in.”
Those things were not going to come in the back, not with the Dumpster blocking the way. Unless they thought to move it. Could they do that?
Kyle ran to the back and handed the box of shotgun shells to Frank.
Frank wasn’t crouched in a fighting position the way Hughes was. He just nervously stood there with Hughes’ Mossberg in his hands. It was quieter back there. Those things hadn’t seemed to notice the back door, but of course that could change at any moment.
“Thanks, man,” Frank said. “Y’all better hope I won’t need ’em.”
Kyle ran back to the front of the store. God, the noise was horrendous. Monsters were battering down their defenses. Monsters. Kyle didn’t care anymore that technically they were sick people. Those things were without language, without remorse, without reason. They even appeared to move without thought, as if they were drawn to murder and biting and cannibalism the way falling rocks are drawn downward by gravity. They formed a relentless force that functioned as a single organism with multiple parts, like a giant bacteria colony made of human bodies gone savage, an army of malevolent meat driven by a higher—or lower—dark power. Lane and his boys were Buddhists compared with those things.
Kyle handed a box of ammunition to Parker, who reloaded and started firing again.
He climbed onto the magazine rack next to Annie and looked down. There was less movement below than before. Some of those things outside were dead. Others were dying. But the rest—the majority—kept surging forward.
“We don’t have enough bullets,” Kyle said.
“Shut up and shoot,” Parker said.
Kyle ejected the magazine, opened a box of cartridges, palmed several rounds, and loaded his pistol. He took no pleasure from killing, not even from killing those things. He was defending himself and his friends. He was keeping Annie alive. But what if Annie got bitten and turned? Would he shoot her? He’d rather shoot himself than shoot Annie.
But if Parker got bitten …
“Kyle!” Parker said. “Shoot them! Shoot them now or we’re going to die.”
Kyle shot them. He emptied his pistol.
But the live ones kept pushing. The live ones kept kicking. The live ones kept pounding. The live ones kept screaming.
And the plywood sheet in front of the ladder snapped in half down the middle.
* * *
Annie screamed as the wood burst inward. Bloody hands reached through a ripped seam and grasped Parker’s ankles. He tried to kick the hands loose and back away at the same time, but he had nowhere to go. He fell backward and pinwheeled off the ladder and onto the floor. Kyle hopped off the magazine rack to help him up.
Annie was alone up there now.
“Bring me a crowbar!” she shouted.
Kyle helped Parker up, then grabbed two crowbars, one for himself and one for her.
She and Kyle swung at the hands reaching through the seam while Parker pulled himself together. Annie swung in wide arcs, shattering wrists and forearms and even severing a couple of fingers. She heard howls of pain every time iron struck meat. The mass of the infected pushing inward from outside was relentless. The ripped seam wasn’t large enough for them to get through just yet, but it would be soon enough.
Parker pushed her aside and fired through the gap, trying to aim for the head.
Some of them died.
Most of them screamed.
The live ones behind the dead ones kept pushing. They were pushing the corpses of the dead ones through the gap.
“Hughes!” Parker shouted over the din. “We need you over here!”
Hughes left his post near the front door and brought his rifle.
“Shoot the ones in the back,” Parker said. “They’re pushing the dead ones through the hole.”
“We may have to join Carol in the cooler,” Kyle said.
“We’re dead if we go in there,” Parker said. “We’d never get out. Not with this many out here. We stand here and beat them or die.”
Another sheet of plywood cracked down the middle. Annie panicked and stepped back.
But then something strange happened. It was like a switch got flipped in her head. Another hole was about to get punched in their fortress, and it was her job to guard it while the others protected the first one. She felt determination wash over her, but her determination wasn’t quiet or steady or calm. It was ferocious.
She would happily beat every single one of those things to death with her crowbar.
Fingers appeared in the ripped seam and pushed outward. She smashed them. No harder than stepping on bugs.
The seam opened wider. An infected woman’s face appeared. Her hair must have been blond before it became matted with gore, her nose a little bit pointed, her ears slightly elfin. Her cheeks were covered with months of grime and filth. Her blue eyes were so full of primitive hatred, they could have been red.
Annie drove the sharp end of her crowbar straight that face as if she were driving a stake into the ground. She broke through the skull and killed the diseased woman instantly, and it felt exhilarating.
What was this? She was in the fight of her life, but she still had enough flickering self-awareness that she was appalled by her reaction. She had just killed a woman—granted, a disease-ridden hyper-violent juggernaut woman—and she felt exhilarated?
She destroyed another human being’s face with a crowbar, and she felt exhilarated?
She tried to imagine how much a steel bar smashing her lips, teeth, and nose would hurt. She couldn’t. It was beyond comprehension.
But did she just kill a human? Really? She knew what those things were thinking. Everything that once made them human had been stripped away, leaving only muscle and bone and distorted primitive brain function. They hated her and thought she was food.
More faces and arms appeared. Annie smashed every single one of them, and she felt delirious.
Only then did she notice the stench. They reeked of body odor, rotten meat, and shit. She swung again and caved in another one’s skull.
Her killing bar glistened with blood, black fluid, and pieces of bone.
Killing Lane was hard, but this was easy. It was easy and it was satisfying.
She hated the infected. Hated them with a passion she hadn’t felt since … hungry hungry predator … since she was one of them.
* * *
Hughes pushed the dead things back through the hole with all his strength while Frank dragged up a spare sheet of plywood from the back of the store. This one was uncut, bigger than those they had already used. It would easily overlap with the adjacent boards so they could hammer it in.
“Nails!” Hughes shouted. “And a hammer!”
Frank retrieved a box of nails and a hammer. Hughes used his massive bulk to hold the new sheet of plywood in place while Parker drove in the nails.
Twelve or so feet to his left, Annie swung her crowbar like a maniac as a second wave of those things tried to push their way in. There were nothing but dead ones at the other, smaller opening, but he knew if the live ones pushed hard enough they could knock that entire sheet of split wood out of the window, and there’d be no way Annie could stop them.
“More wood!” Hughes yelled at Frank. “We have to patch up the other one!”
The new sheet was in place and he felt no resistance now, so Hughes could help Annie. But how much more wood did they have in the back? One sheet? Two? And did they have enough nails?
&nb
sp; Hughes picked up his rifle and joined Annie. Mutilated heads and arms protruded through the seam.
“Jesus, girl,” Hughes said.
He stuck the barrel of his rifle through the slit between an arm and a bashed-in head and pulled the trigger repeatedly.
Screams from outside. More of those things were going down. Soon there’d be nothing but dead ones outside if they had enough ammunition, but they didn’t. The best he could do was thin their numbers for now.
Another sheet of plywood on the north side of the store split down the middle.
“Shit,” Frank said.
They weren’t going to make it.
“Where’s Carol?” Kyle said.
“Hiding in the cooler and useless,” Parker said as he ran, hammer in hand, to the north side of the store.
“She might have the right idea, guys,” Frank said.
“Get another sheet of wood over here!” Hughes said. He and Annie wouldn’t be able to hold the gap very much longer.
“How much ammo do we have left?” Kyle said.
Hughes paused and took stock.
“We’ve gone through most of it,” he said. “We’re running out and we haven’t even killed half of them.”
He exchanged glances with Annie. The look on her face. Jesus. She was ready to eat those things alive if she had to. That girl was a killer. But there were just too damned many of them.
Frank returned from the back with another sheet of plywood.
“Put it down,” Hughes said.
“Put it down?” Frank said.
“Put it down,” Hughes said. “And go get the gas cans.”
They had three large cans left over from torching the car lot down the street. Hughes had saved them for the Chevy’s tank. He never expected to use them for more arson. He certainly didn’t expect to use them to burn down the store, but what else could they do? Their fortress was falling.
He climbed onto the magazine rack and emptied one of the cans over the lip of the plywood barriers. Annie took another, unscrewed the cap, and started flinging the stuff through the second seam, the one crammed with dead things. Parker took the third can and splashed a little gasoline through the seam on the north side of the store, but the seam was so small, he couldn’t get much through it, and he dribbled fuel onto the floor and onto his shoes.
The others weren’t getting much gasoline on the horde outside, but Hughes was. He poured it right over the top and doused dozens of them, but some of it spilled on the inside. Some of it got on the plywood. Some of it got on the floor.
Some of it ran down his arms.
He rushed to the sink to wash it off, but the water pressure had finally given out. The tap was dry.
He reeked of fuel. He’d get torched if he didn’t wash himself off, so he ran to the now-warm refrigerator and dumped several bottles of Evian on himself.
Kyle and Frank dragged the magazine rack to the north side of the store near the third seam. No gas at all had gotten outside the store over there. The horde was still active, still banging on and surging against the boards. They’d break through any minute.
Kyle and Hughes climbed onto the magazine rack and poured gasoline over the lip while the things outside screamed in unspeakable fury. They were stupid and murderous and relentlessly single-minded, but Hughes wondered if on some level they knew what was going to happen. They still knew what gas smelled like, didn’t they?
Hughes’ shirt was so drenched with the stuff, he didn’t dare fire a weapon. He’d ignite himself instantly. So he pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it on the floor. Then he thought for a second and picked it back up again.
He could light the shirt on fire and throw it onto the horde. Much more effective than using matches. He stood there, now shirtless and ready for war, and said, “Get Carol. We leave in two minutes.”
* * *
Parker banged on the cooler door. “Carol!” He banged again, a little harder this time. “We’re leaving!”
“I’m not going out there!” Carol said, her voice muffled.
The store reeked of gasoline. The horde outside screamed. Another sheet of plywood ripped and started to split.
“We’re setting them on fire and running out to the truck. If you stay here, you’ll die.”
The door opened. Her tear-streaked face appeared.
“You’re setting them on fire?” she said and flinched from the sheer volume of sound in the main part of the store. Shrieks and banging and pounding and wet sounds of thwacking followed another awful crack of splitting wood.
“We’re going,” Parker said. He grabbed her hand and yanked her out. “Now.”
“Parker!” Hughes said and ripped his gasoline-soaked shirt in two. “Take this.” He handed Parker half the shirt and a book of matches. “You get the north side. I’ll get the west side.”
Annie—blood- and gore-soaked all over again—took Carol’s hand. “Come with me, honey,” she said.
Parker climbed onto the ladder on the north side of the store, gas rag in hand. Frank and Kyle, each with a pack of supplies strapped to their backs, stood ready at the door with guns in their hands.
Wait, Parker thought. What was the plan exactly?
“Hold on,” Parker said. “Are we running out the door right after we light them on fire?”
“We let them burn as long as we can,” Hughes said. “But we don’t have much time.”
Parker set his fuel-soaked rag on the ladder’s top step. He peeled a match out of the pack and swiped it, but it didn’t light. He swiped it again, and this time it sizzled and popped into flame. He touched it to his ripped half of the shirt, and with a whoosh it was ablaze.
He heard an even louder whooshing sound from Hughes’ direction, following by shrieks from the horde. They were burning.
Parker picked up the burning shirt and pitched it over the gap.
Flames erupted outside the store. Parker felt the heat on his face.
He also felt heat on his back.
The western side of the store was on fire. The inside of the store was on fire. The spilled gas had ignited and would burn right through the plywood. And when the fire spread to the ceiling, their sanctuary would turn into a death trap.
The air filled with smoke.
“Are they burning?” Frank shouted.
“They’re burning,” Hughes said. “We’re going to burn too if we don’t get out of here.”
“We’re going to have to run through them,” Parker said.
Carol looked like a cornered prey animal.
The flames licked the ceiling now, and the whole western side of the store was on fire. Those things would be able to bust through at any second.
“We open the door,” Hughes said, “and run for the truck. Jump in back. Don’t bother with the passenger door. That will just slow us down. I’ll drive.”
Parker gripped the crowbar like it was a handhold on the edge of a cliff.
“Okay,” Hughes said. “Let’s do it.”
Frank unlocked and opened the door.
They ran. Parker and Hughes took the lead.
At first Parker thought they might be okay. At least half of those things were on fire. Some were already dead, either from fire or gunshots. Most of those left alive were still heaving themselves onto the walls of the store even though the walls of the store were on fire.
Not one of them noticed that the people they wanted to kill had just run out the door and were on their way to the truck.
Not at first, anyway.
Some of the infected on the fringe seemed dazed and disoriented by the flames. They had lost focus and were shifting around aimlessly in random directions. A sickening stench of coppery blood, burnt hair, charred meat, and rot made Parker want to throw up, but he breathed through his mouth and ran for the truck.
But first one and then another spotted him. They screamed.
And they screamed in a certain way, different from those screaming from pain and from rage. This sound, a
more urgent one, was a sound Parker understood perfectly. It said, I see them.
Others turned.
“Go!” Hughes said. “Don’t stop!”
The Chevy was thirty feet ahead. A half-dozen of those things stood in their way.
Parker opened fire. He did his best to shoot at their center of mass, but he didn’t aim down the sights. No time. He just fired and hit maybe two of them, and then he was empty.
Hughes opened fire and took out some more.
But there were still at least two dozen left who hadn’t been burned, maimed, or shot. And they were charging from both sides and converged like a vise made of meat, hands, and teeth.
Parker’s gun was empty, so he jumped in the back of the truck. Kyle and Annie took up the rear. Each had a crowbar. They swung in wild arcs, breaking hands, arms, and skulls. Frank swung at one with his hammer, but he swung too early and missed.
Hughes was out front ahead of everyone, including the horde. He took cover behind the truck and—crack—dropped one and then another with the rifle.
And then Carol screamed. One of those things grabbed her.
Hughes pointed his rifle at it, but he didn’t have a clear shot. He might hit Carol.
Frank swung his hammer and hit the thing in its back and probably caved in its spine, but it was too late.
It had already sunk in its teeth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Annie spun around when she heard the scream. One of the infected had thrown itself onto Carol and she went down. The infected bit right into her shoulder.
Carol screamed again. For a brief and terrible second, she sounded like one of them.
Which was perhaps fitting because that’s exactly what Carol was about to turn into.
The one that bit Carol was a man. He had short brown hair and a long mustache. No beard. That meant he had turned recently, and he had kept up appearances by shaving before he was bitten.
And now he was biting Carol.
Frank broke his back with a hammer. He released Carol from his jaws and rolled onto his broken back, his face turned up at the sky and contorted in agony.
More were coming. Hughes shot one clean through the head with his rifle. Kyle swung his crowbar and broke one of their arms. Annie swung her crowbar and hit one in the ear. It went down instantly.
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