“Hawk. Djinn.”
Masters keyed his radio on the move. “Go for Hawk.”
“They’re coming out of the woodwork, boss. There’s a grouping ahead of you at the next intersection.”
“Shit,” Masters hissed, fist coming up to halt the group.
“What is it, boss?” Rankin asked from behind him.
“Detour! North, now!”
They hung right into somebody’s front yard, throwing their plan out the window.
The door of the house swung open as they came close, but Masters couldn’t see what was behind it, so he didn’t bring his AA-12 up to engage. Instead he threw his full weight into the door, slamming it hard, which catapulted the body behind it back into the house.
It slowed him down marginally, so he pumped his legs harder to catch up.
“Have fun, boss?” Rankin asked, sounding like the strain was starting to filter through on him.
“A blast,” Masters said, eyeing the street ahead. “Hang left on the street.”
“Right.”
“Got it.”
They burst out of the yard and into the street, hanging left as they continued to run east so that they could get onto the street that led them to the generators.
“Hawk, group converging, next street north.”
Shit! Masters was not a happy camper. They needed to cut up that street for the fastest approach, otherwise they’d have to muck through someone’s sodden yard.
“Numbers?” he demanded.
“Thin,” Djinn answered. “Count five hostiles.”
“Roger,” he said, glancing at the others by his side. “Small group ahead to the north. We’re going to blow through.”
“Got it,” Rankin answered instantly, and he heard assent from the others as well.
They cut the corner at the intersection, blasting through someone’s yard and coming into the street at an angle. Masters brought his AA-12 to his shoulder as the figures appeared out of the night.
The group slowed to a fast walk, their weapons all coming to the ready as they assessed the figures. Given what they’d seen, it was pretty unlikely that there would be any civilians wandering around, but there was very little chance of the enemy opening up on them with automatic fire, so Masters felt they could spare a couple of seconds to identify the enemy.
“Hostiles confirmed!” he called when he saw the dead look in their eyes, and a hint of decomposition filtered through to his nose. “Engage!”
The AA-12 was joined by two other twelve-gauge shotguns and Eddie’s M4 in an engagement that lasted about three seconds.
They group sped up again, running past the fallen as they swung north and headed for the power generators.
Nathan “The Djinn” Hale adjusted his sighting slightly for the wind shift, though it was almost pointless in many ways. For his Sassy, any engagement within the ranges he was looking at was basically point blank. He could have corrected automatically for wind, but habit and detail were the bread and butter of his world.
He kept moving between his rifle and his spotter scope, wishing that they’d had time to recruit a good spotter before being deployed. A sniper without a spotter was like a fighter pilot without his wingman; he was maybe a third as effective on a good day.
Reliable spotters had been hard to come by since he first crossed over, however. His life had become hard on him, but even harder on those around him.
Honestly, he’d been planning on taking his discharge papers the next time they tried to get him to re-up.
When the call came in from Rankin, he’d expected this to be his last hurrah with the Teams. That could still turn out to be the case, of course, but Nathan was beginning to feel that same sense of belonging he’d originally found in the Teams.
It was like coming home again.
Speaking of which…
He narrowed his gaze as he glanced through the spotter scope, then casually keyed open his radio.
“Converging from the west and east, dead ahead.”
“Roger,” Masters responded. “Request cover.”
“Wish granted,” The Djinn said, tilting his head away from the spotter scope and leaning into the rifle.
He focused onto the group to the west of the team’s approach. Like those who had shown themselves earlier, they were moving more or less as a group, but there was a degree of milling and staggering that gave them away. Nathan had never encountered vampires before, but he had seen more than one form of the dead that refused to stay in the ground.
Every culture on the planet had what the modern world would term “the undead,” creatures that wore the skin and bones of recently deceased humans. In all but a few very rare cases, that was exactly what they were, creatures stealing bodies that weren’t theirs and using them to wreak havoc.
The most common forms of the walking dead shared certain features. They were generally a little clumsy and usually a little slower than their living counterparts, but they almost always outclassed the living in terms of sheer strength. They felt no pain, so they could work their bodies beyond the limits that plagued a human.
You didn’t want to let them get within arm’s reach, but compared to some of the things he had seen, the walking dead were the lowest form of supernatural scum on the planet.
Dead meat walking. Literally. Nathan smiled as he put his crosshairs on one of the shambling figures, choosing one at the back of the group. He aimed high, picking a point at the very crown of his target’s head, and slowly brought the pressure up on the trigger until it was riding the edge as he waited for his moment. It came when the group started to turn to go after the team, several of them bunched together, and Nathan relaxed as he gently pressured the trigger over the edge.
The M82 SASR roared.
There was no other word to describe the sound of a light fifty in action. It just roared. The heavy bullet briefly drew a line that connected Nathan to his target, popping the crown of the first vampire’s head off in a brutal spray of blood and ichor. The fifty was a penetrator, however, and it barely slowed as it blew through the next figure at neck level, then into the chest of a third, finally blowing the leg off a fourth before it plowed into the ground beyond.
Four with one shot, he mused idly as he re-centered the rifle on the next target. I do believe that’s a personal record.
The team had a goal, a place they had to be, so unlike with Masters’s earlier stand, there was no attempt to draw the enemy in and create a distraction. They slowed only enough to steady their aim, and marched right into the teeth of the beasts, guns blazing.
“That’s the power station, up ahead!” Eddie called over the roar of the twelve-gauges and the bark of his M4. “It’s a clear run beyond these guys!”
The distant roar of Hale’s light fifty was a comfort — they knew that someone had their backs as they ran — but each roar of that big rifle was a reminder that hostiles were riding their heels. They blew through the few of the shambling figures that were in their way, and then the race was on.
“Haul ass!” Masters called, waving them forward.
In a dead sprint they broke for the big buildings that held the town’s power generators. With nothing but clear roads ahead, there was no holding back. The group of six raced down the street, ignoring the sporadic shots of Hale’s light fifty roaring in the night behind them.
They skidded to a stop as they arrived at the building’s front doors, and Masters surged up the stairs and grabbed the handle, pulling it hard. The door opened, and he ushered the others through with a wave of his AA-12.