“A truck punched a hole in the side of the building,” Private Stenson said dryly. “We were overrun.”
“How did you clear the building?” Miguel asked, examining the stairwell door. The look on his face read that he was amazed that it was still hanging on the frame.
A metallic crash of pans came from somewhere downstairs and everyone looked around confused. Kelly went wide-eyed and pale at the sound.
“We didn’t clear the building…” Private Stenson sighed, set his box of supplies down, and picked up his rifle. “We thought with all that gunfire that you had cleared it.”
“Where are the dead now?” Pam asked. Her heart thumped in her chest, and Pam realized that in the group’s haste to get into the clinic and back out, they had made some assumptions about the security of the DDC.
“Oh my God! Didn’t you clear the ground floor? What the hell was all that gunfire?” Kelly rushed the children over to an adjoining office that overlooked the front lot. “In here!” She yelled, as she upended a cot, stripped the bed sheet, and began tying them together.
Private Stenson followed, but he stopped to take up position just inside the office door, fix a bayonet to his rifle, and wait.
“That gunfire was us just getting here, lady!” Miguel growled. He dropped the box he had picked up, drew his rifle, and knelt down at the top of the stairwell.
A chorus of gut-wrenching moans from the foot of the stairs echoed up to the second level, and someone screamed. Miguel took aim, and he began pouring shots from his M-16 down the staircase.
“SHIT!” another soldier yelled, dropped the box he was carrying, and joined Miguel.
“Jesus Christ!” another soldier shouted, and all nine crewmen who had entered the building rushed to defend the second floor. Pam took her place next to her comrades, and she swallowed hard when she saw the solidly packed crowd of undead crawling up the stairs. Their hungry eyes were fixed on prey.
It became instantly apparent that the rate at which the soldiers could deliver headshots was far slower than the rate at which the undead wall advanced. For each shot that felled a bloodthirsty ghoul, two more writhed and wriggled over its corpse to take its place. Bullets cut through grasping claws that felt no pain and thudded into torsos that had no beating heart. The headshots needed to bring down the undead were never easy, even for a trained professional. The undulating mass of cold flesh and broken teeth that crawled over itself up the stairwell to devour the living was unstoppable.
Pam emptied her clip, threw her rifle over her shoulder, and rushed into the office that overlooked the front lot. “In here!” she shouted. “We can’t get out that way!”
Kelly secured her bed sheet rope to a desk and flung it out the window. It was only a one story drop — doable in a pinch, but it would hurt, possibly injur, and there were children who could not be left behind. “Go!” She yelled.
A father hoisted his young daughter onto the ad hoc rope and began to lower her to the ground. Kelly grabbed more linen and began crafting a second rope.
In one synchronous motion, Carl, Miguel, and the other soldiers broke away from their position in the hallway and rushed into the office. One soldier grabbed the stairwell door and slammed it shut, but a split-second later, the crash of weight against the other side sent it exploding into slivers. Two snarling ghouls burst into the hallway and dove after the soldier. He tripped, rolled onto his back, and roared in anger as he emptied his rifle into the relentless horde. In the blink of an eye, he was swept beneath the voracious onslaught.
Carl whirled. Every muscle in his body wanted to send him charging headlong into the fray to pull out his man, but he stopped himself. “Damn it!” He growled, slamming the office door and leaning against it to keep it closed. “God damn it!”
“Gunners four and five!” Miguel shouted through the communications network to the crews outside. “I need you to pull the Hummers away from the building, get on the heavy guns, and pour everything you have into the ground floor. We will be exiting from the window on the second floor directly above your target, so watch your fire.”
“Brace the door!” Carl shouted. Thud after thud slammed against the only thing that separated everyone from a gruesome death: the door to the office. The soldiers and DDC survivors struggled to hold the door from swinging open as wailing and moans from the other side incited the swarm into frenzy.
Private Stenson looked out the broken office window. He scanned the area with his rifle and watched the first two DDC refugees, the father and daughter, proceed cautiously through the parking lot toward the Humvees. The middle-aged man held the petite girl’s hand tightly, but also gently. A flailing ghoul burst through the front door of the DDC with a screech, and it ran at full speed after them. Calmly, Private Stenson took aim, exhaled, and fired. The monster fell, and red-black gore pooled on the ground. A second monster came charging out of the DDC, and Private Stenson fired. It also fell, and Stenson took position to cover the civilian escape.
A loud splintering sound filled the room, and several gray arms stretched through a crack in the door to thrash wildly at whatever was within reach. “Keep it closed!” Carl ordered. The soldiers redoubled their efforts, and the heavy door shut with a snap and a sickening splatter of dark and half-congealed blood. Rotting, severed limbs thudded to the floor.
Just then, the sound of heavy machine gun fire from the Humvees added itself to the moans, snarls, cries, and screams. The force shook the entire building, and the noise was deafening.
“I need you to hold on to this rope very tightly, okay?” Kelly addressed a teary- eyed child, who nodded in understanding. Nearly paralyzed by fear, the young boy gripped the bed sheet. Kelly hoisted him out the window and began to lower him. “When you get to the ground, run! Run to the soldiers in the trucks, okay! Don’t stop for anything! Just run!”
The five-vehicle convoy was pouring everything it had into the first floor. Tracers zipped past the escaping civilians and into the monsters that pursued them. Beyond the fenced in area, a sea of shambling dead—drawn by the commotion—was approaching. Some followed their brethren into the DDC via the hole in the music store, while others gathered at the worn and tortured fence. Minute by minute, their numbers were growing.
Miguel braced his back against the splintering door. He glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes caught the motion of the office drywall giving way to the hammering fists of the voracious dead. He slowly slid one hand down to his sidearm and shouted: “We’re losing it!”
Carl grunted and tried to keep himself pressed against the door while simultaneously reloading his rifle. “We aren’t gonna hold much longer!”
Kelly glanced up from lowering children to the ground and looked at the survivors. Some comforted the children, while others struggled against the door with the soldiers. “Everyone! You gotta climb down with a kid on your back or jump! Go! Go now!”
Private Stenson watched a mother descend to the lot with a child on her back. Suddenly, two clumsy zombies staggered from the front doors of the DDC and snarled. The woman took one look and hit the ground running, keeping the child on her back. Stenson quickly dispatched the pursuing ghouls. More and more zombies were wandering into the parking lot from the DDC. Most were mowed down by heavy machine gun fire from the convoy, but a few survived. Walking or crawling, many pulverized and bullet-ridden bodies continued their pursuit of the living. So long as their brains were intact, they would not relent.