* * *
Zombies didn’t understand surrender, retreat, or disablement. One, its legs gone, dragged itself toward the ten civilians in their little fort by the arms. Even as Truman watched, a civilian was bitten, dropped his hoe, and launched himself at the man next to him. Screams cut through the roars of hunger.
“You know the drill,” Mitchell said. The Team spread out, picked targets, and ended them. Truman felt sorry for the blood-soaked zombies: they really didn’t stand a chance. The Team had automatic rifles that fired at six hundred and fifty rounds a minute; the zombies had teeth. Even if a zombie got within biting range – which was unlikely – the Team were strong, fast, and well-trained. And their rifles had bayonets on the end.
Truman spotted a small girl in a yellow floral dress lumbering among the horde, lower than the others, unnoticed, weaving and bumping her way through their legs toward the survivors, her head half caved in. Truman squeezed the trigger and moved on to the next target as quickly as he could.
He took down two men in stained suits, a produce seller, and a woman holding an umbrella, and tried to ignore how their blood formed new constellations in the air before splatting on the cobbles.
“Hey!” Normson shouted. “That one was mine—”
“Behind!” Truman called. Two feet behind Normson, a fresh female zombie – barely decayed – reached out with a broken arm. Her clothes and face were, of course, wet with blood.
“She likes you,” Clarkson said.
Normson spun, rifle ready to fire, then paused. Was he frightened? Truman started strafing around for a clear shot, but knew he wouldn’t make it in time. What was Normson doing?
Then he realised: Normson was holding his gun out, waiting for the zombie to impale herself on his bayonet. She wouldn’t stop or dodge; she’d plough into it, her dead eyes locked on him. She’d kill herself. All Normson had to do was wait.
It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t kindness. It wasn’t respectful. It was sick, and lazy, and disgusting.
Truman turned away, but he still heard the ktck of bone from her forced suicide, the jangle as Normson shook her off his blade, and the hollow rattle as the zombie’s corpse hit the cobblestones.
“Not my type,” Normson said.
“Too fresh?” Clarkson asked.
“Too forward. There’s no challenge.”
Skylar shoved Normson. “How can you be such an arse?”
No one replied, but Truman knew that right now they needed any levity they could get, no matter how tasteless. Anything so you didn’t think about what you’d just done to a little girl in a yellow dress.
His gaze fell back to the fifty bullet-ridden corpses that, minutes ago, had been alive – according to the Doctor McGregor. Could they have been contained? Quarantined? Saved? Certainly not with Mitchell in charge.
“Aim for the head,” Mitchell shouted as he passed the two survivors.
Truman fell into step beside him. “Why don’t you ever tell them the zombies aren’t dead?”
“How would that help?”
Mitchell lengthened his stride. Truman let him go. The situation was grim enough without Mitchell’s dead-blank stare.
Around the next corner, at the far end of the street, was the Bleeding Heck: a tall, one-storey building of oak and stone. A horde of at least fifty crowded around the front door. From the roof, something thin and lithe swung down, kicked in the door, and then disappeared upward and let the zombies rush in. Truman’s guess was vampire. It explained why the duke hadn’t attacked them yet tonight: he was too busy readying his prophecy for fulfilment.
White light inside the pub – muzzle flashes – illuminated shapes against the drawn curtains, accompanied a second later by their booms.
And between the Team and the Heck, a hundred decaying Archians stood in lines. In formation. Waiting for them.
A zombie in the front row spotted them, yelled, and lumbered forward. The horde limped and staggered after him, mouths open and fingers reaching in anticipation. Then the ground beneath the horde exploded with a sharp bang and lingering smoke. There was no elegant plume of fire, only dirt and bits of zombie spraying in every direction.
The grenade’s pin tinkled serenely on the cobbles and Mitchell regarded his Team with cold black eyes. “Unleash hell.”
Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown Page 47
