Palmeri nodded. “Okay. We go slow. I don’t need to stress this, but we look in every direction all at once. Got it?”
We agreed.
Dave stood at the door with one hand on the knob. Saylor was by the window, silhouetted against the flames of the fire just beyond. He craned his head left and right.
“How do we look?” Palmeri said.
“Seven? Eight? I can’t see everything, but they’re out there.”
As if to illustrate the point, something knocked against the door. Dave jumped back.
“They’re milling around. They don’t look like they’re trying to get inside. Not really. They just look, I don’t know, kinda lost,” he said.
“Lost is good,” Palmeri said. “We can surprise them, hopefully.”
I took in a deep breath. Eyes closed. I saw the camp in my head, best I could remember it. The fence outlined everything. The apartments were in rows. We never made it past the center. Way it sounded, we never would. “I think we get Marf, and then we keep going west, toward the fence. Follow it around to the gate,” I said.
“We should stay between apartments,” Saylor said. Again, he spoke loudly, forgetting that his booming voice could attract unwanted attention. “We need to hide, get away from them, and the fence isn’t going to help.”
He might be right. “Okay,” I said. “I agree.”
“How lucky for me,” Saylor said.
“Cool it,” Palmeri said. She knew how to yell without raising her voice. “We’re behind you, Dave. As soon as you’re ready.”
I exhaled.
“As ready as I can be,” he said. He looked at me. I nodded. “Here we go.”
I took a knee, raised my rifle and aimed.
Dave pushed open the door.
The door knocked two zombies over, sending them to the ground. Their arms and legs flailed; looked like they were making mud angels. I almost fired at nothing. Didn’t have to wait long. Another creature stuck his head in the doorway. It was a woman who had long curly hair. Most of it was matted against her face, and neck. Her arms reached for us and we could see that her flesh was clearly bitten. Mouth-size chunks were missing up her forearm and the bone was exposed under what was left of her decaying meat and tendons.
I fired.
The bullet went through the bridge of her nose. Her eyes crossed as she fell forward. Dave kicked her body out of the doorway. He sent a few rounds into the mud angels. Their bodies danced as the bullets slammed into them, then nothing. They lay flat and still.
Three down, five to go, if Saylor had been correct. Five, if our gunshots didn’t attract more.
“Move,” Palmeri said.
Dave stepped out of the apartment. I was right behind him. I held my gun up, swiveled left and right. To the right were three more. I fired, missed, cursed, and fired again. Chunked out a slab of shoulder. The zombie jumped back, off balance, but didn’t go down and didn’t stop advancing. It slowed him, but nothing more.
I closed one eye and lined up the cross hair, ignored the sound of firing weapons, yelling and screaming around me. I fired again. Hit the eye. It popped in a spray of the black goo that once had been blood. Dropped it.
We were going to the left. The zombies were behind us, moving slowly. Steady, but slow.
I didn’t want to take my eyes off them. I kept the rifle raised, but I didn’t shoot. We were putting some distance between them. I kept an eye on Palmeri and Saylor.
I chanced a look around.
Dave was low, checking the corner before rounding it. He fired his rifle.
“Got a few over here,” he said. “Shit. More than a few.”
“Shoot ‘em,” I said. “Shoot them all!”
I hoped Saylor and Palmeri had our backs. I stood above Dave. We aimed at the zombies coming up the alley between apartment buildings and fired.
Two ran at us fast. They were decked out in military camo.
“Hit ‘em, hit ‘em,” I said.
I was shooting. Headshots were tough, especially with them running. Heads bobbed. In shows and movies, the good guys hit everything. Destroyed brains like there was no way to miss. Crossbows sent arrows true. In real life, the here and now, it was different. So fucking different. The more apprehensive the situation made me, the harder it was to aim, but I kept firing.
And firing.
There was no other choice. None.
We nailed the fast ones. Might have been Dave or it could have been me. Like to think, it had been me. I gave up on keeping score. My ratio sucked anyway.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter, anymore. I was out. No more clips on me. No ammo left. “I’m out, got nothing left!”
I held onto the rifle. It was my bat, my sledgehammer. It, and my knife, they were all I had to keep me alive.
“Get up!” It was Palmeri. I looked back and saw that Saylor had fallen and was face down in the mud.
I stopped.
Dave grabbed me by the shoulder. “Keep moving,” he said.
I heard gunshots. Lots of gunshots. It wasn’t us and didn’t seem to be coming from the camp, so it had to be from the boat. I needed to get back to the boat. Dave was absolutely right; we needed to keep moving.
“Can you help me,” Palmeri said. It was like she was crying out in desperation. I heard it in her voice. I shouldn’t have done it, but I looked back a second time.
Palmeri kneeled next to Saylor. She had her handgun out. She used her free arm and snaked it under Saylor. He was not helpless, so he struggled to help her lift him.
“Dave,” I said.
He fired at a zombie. “We keep moving.”
I went back. Could not ignore the smell of the apartments burning. The raging fire kept getting closer. There was no worrying about the moon hiding behind clouds now. Flames lit the night sky better than the sun during most days. I dropped on the opposite side of Palmeri.
Dave ran at us. A spattering of flame burst from the front of the rifle barrel. I threw up an arm to shield my head. If Dave was shooting at me, my arm wasn’t going to stop shit. It was just a reflex. Dave wasn’t shooting at me. He was hitting, with pretty dead-on accuracy, the zombies coming at us from behind.
He reached us and dropped his rifle by my side. “I’m out, too!”
In a single, fluid motion, he had his knife out and was in the air. He slammed the heel of his shoes into a zombie’s chest. The thing would have gotten me, no doubt. I hadn’t seen it, or heard it, but it had been right behind me.
With a scream, Dave scrambled, spun around in the mud and threw his body across the creature. I stood up as Dave drove his blade into the zombie’s throat. He tugged his knife across the flesh, sawing at the spine. He grabbed a fist of its hair and pulled on it as he snapped the head one way, the other, and back again until he was able to pull it free. He removed the whole head from the body and cast it aside.
Palmeri was up, too. She fired at the zombies coming from where we had been heading. She aimed and fired. Good shots. Dropped zombies like a pro.
However, we were stuck. With Saylor struggling to stand, we were trapped between two apartments with nowhere to escape to. We needed an out, and right now, I didn’t see one.
I gripped the barrel of my rifle and swung at the head of a fast zombie. I knocked it off balance. It fell against the siding, clawing at the apartment to keep from hitting the ground. It knew it wanted to stay on its feet.
I raised the butt of the rifle and drove into the thing’s face. Its head smashed. It looked like an overripe melon of some sort. The thing’s nose was lost inside the skull and thick black blood oozed from where cheeks and teeth had been. It slumped to the mud, and then just sat there. Battered brains spilled from the huge orifice that was now the center of its face.
“We’re surrounded,” Dave said.
I looked left. Right. Wasn’t quite surrounded. Sandwiched, yes. Sandwiched between the two buildings, and both possible ways out were filled with zombies. They were either slow or cautious. I preferred to think slow. Slow meant they weren’t learning, weren’t getting smarter, and were not afraid of us bashing in their brains.
Slow, or smart, didn’t matter. We had nowhere to turn. Nowhere to go. “Dave,” I said, holding up my knife.