A fetid hand burst through the drywall next to the door, reached up, and gripped Miguel by the arm. Miguel screamed and fought against its grip. Pam pushed herself up from holding the door, pinned the arm against the wall with her boot, and fired her rifle into the elbow until the limb was severed and useless.
“We got trouble.” A voice came over the communications system. Pam looked out into the lot, and she noted that one of the Humvees was no longer firing into the ground floor. Instead, it unleashed devastation on the huge mob of dead gathered at the perimeter fence and threatening to bring it down. The fence already shook violently as sheer body weight began to accumulate against it. The crews on the ground were picking off as many as they could… but the hordes were growing. Escape routes were rapidly disappearing behind walls of mindless flesh-eaters. If the fence were to fail, the convoy, the DDC, and everyone inside would vanish in a violent frenzy of bloody death.
Miguel struggled to stand while keeping his weight against the door. He drew his pistol, and he fired into undead limbs that broke through the drywall. He was hoping to shatter bone and sever tendons. “They’re breaking through!”
Kelly fought against the terror screaming at her to run, and she helped a woman out the window. Almost all the children were on the ground now and a handful of civilian adults remained.
A hissing corpse pushed through a weak spot in the wall. It slithered onto the pile of struggling soldiers, gripped someone by the arm, and bit down. A spray of blood erupted from the screaming man. Another soldier lunged to help his comrade. In one fleeting instant, chaos exploded.
The door splintered open, and soldiers fell to the ground. Howling undead clawed after anyone within reach, trampling and tripping over bodies in an all-consuming madness. An endless wall of death vomited into the office, and everyone—soldier and civilian—was in the fight of their life. Snarling hungry ghouls were met with combat boots, knives, and fists.
“JUMP!” Pam screamed at the remaining civilians. She pried a ghoul off Carl, threw it out the window, and pulled him out of the dog pile. Carl got to his feet, and joined Pam in helping whomever they could.
“GO! GO! GO!” Miguel yelled. He thrust his combat knife through the jaw and into the skull of a zombie before rolling out of the melee. As the room filled with ravenous dead, anyone who was not trapped swallowed their fear and leapt from the second story window to the blacktop below.
Private Stenson turned from covering the civilians on the ground, and plunged his bayonet into the head of a ghoul that was feasting upon a civilian woman. He turned to Kelly Damico and nodded toward the Humvees. “Go” he urged as he drove the butt of his rifle into the skull of a zombie crawling towards her.
Kelly nodded, accepting the fact that there was nothing more she could do here. She climbed out the window, lowered herself to the ground, and dashed toward an open Humvee door.
Miguel joined Pam and Carl in trying to pull civilians and fellow soldiers from the fray. “It’s time to go!” he yelled, but the notion seemed as futile as it was obvious. Those that could escape were already hurling themselves toward the vehicles. Those who could not, lay dead and dying.
Carl seemed oblivious to Miguel. “Go! Get up! Get to the convoy!” he screamed at a soldier lying on the ground. The dead soldier stared up at Carl with lifeless eyes; its torso a mangled wet mess from the chest down. “Go! Jump! Run!” Carl fired into a ghoul feasting on another soldier pinned in a corner. The man was already dead, and the first twitches of reanimation were overtaking him.
Miguel and Pam grabbed Carl by the arm and pulled him back. “Sergeant Carl Harvey! We have to go now!” Pam shouted.
Carl staggered backward in their grip. His legs looked wobbly and for a second, Pam thought Carl was going to pass out. There was something strange in Carl. He was exhausted from the struggle, but more than that, he was losing his resolve. Not his resolve to fight the undead, but his resolve to retreat in the face of insurmountable odds, and count himself among those that could escape.
“They’re dead!” Pam screamed. “We need you! Come on! We have to jump!”
Carl paused, considering his options.
“Now!” Miguel bellowed.
“Okay… okay…” Carl nodded reluctantly.
Pam, Miguel, and Carl, turned to face the mayhem outside and took a deep breath as they summoned the courage to drop to the parking lot. With outstretched claws at their backs, the three soldiers hurled themselves to the ground.
Pam landed hard with the sound of cracking bone. Her mind raced in terror as she waited for the pain to hit her — what had snapped? Where was she hurt? Could she still run?
“FUCK!” Miguel screamed as he rolled onto his back gripping his lower leg. His face grimaced in a mask of agony.
Pam and Carl looked at each other with the realization that the sound they heard hadn’t come from either of them. As undead began to rain down from the second story window, Carl and Pam hoisted Miguel to his feet between them. Each held a pistol in their free hand, and they fired while back-pedaling with their comrade in tow.
Chapter 24
“Shit!” Carl lost his grip on Miguel’s collar and fell backward.
Ghouls poured from the shattered window onto the pavement below. In their mindless pursuit of the living, they followed their prey to the ground — their clumsy bodies hitting the blacktop awkwardly. They fell to the earth with sickening splats or crunches, ignored their injuries, and crawled toward their nearest victim. The zombies were relentless despite floppy broken limbs and twisted torsos. Soldiers, civilians, and dead tumbled together in a pile of chaos consisting of guns, knives, teeth, and claws.
Pam—fueled by adrenaline—continued pulling Miguel with one arm, while firing her sidearm wildly with the other. Miguel kicked a pursuing ghoul away with his good leg. He reloaded his rifle and sighting an approaching zombie, grit his teeth through the pain and fired. The back of the monster’s head erupted in a gout of black gore, and it tumbled to its knees.
“HELP ME! PLEASE! PLEAAAAAASE!” A civilian lay on the ground screaming. Pinned beneath a rotting and writhing corpse, she was unable to free herself before two—then three—then five—ghouls joined in tearing bloody chunks from her body.
A soldier who had just jumped to the ground barely regained his footing before two ghouls tumbled on top of him, knocking him back down. He twisted around and attempted to scramble away, but a rotten hand caught his leg.
Carl rolled to his feet and gripped his fellow soldier by the shoulder, pulling with all his might. “I’ve got you!”
The soldier screamed in agony as the zombie pulled itself up his leg to sink its teeth into his thigh. He screamed in a mix of rage and pain, fumbled for his sidearm, and emptied his entire clip into the thrashing mass of undead. He popped in a new clip and placed the barrel in his mouth.
“No!” Carl ordered.
It was too late. With a pull of the trigger, the soldier collapsed. Carl let the man slip from his grip, and he backed away. A handful of undead began chewing on the man’s legs.
“God dammit!” Carl turned toward his convoy to come face to face with a half-dozen snarling undead.
“Carl!” Pam screamed as she continued pulling Miguel along the ground.
Miguel and Pam unloaded their weapons at the growing swarm that surrounded Carl. Heads exploded and bodies thudded to the ground, but there were too many.
As zombies were closing in all around him, Carl held his rifle like a club. He was trapped, and taking some monsters with him before he went down was all he could ask for. “Come on!” he taunted. “Come get me!”