I didn’t see the shambler rear up—one moment Rodriguez was striding forward, setting one foot in front of the other, and the next she let out a muffled cry and simply disappeared. Two more tried the same move on Munez, but alerted by her shout, he reacted quickly enough and managed to keep his footing, with the undead suddenly clinging to him, trying to bring him down.
And then they were on us, strong hands reaching, finding ample purchase on limbs, packs, and gear.
Instinct took over, my body kicking into overdrive before fear could fully clog my thoughts. Anywhere I felt pressure, I blindly hacked at, twisting my body in a different direction. I didn’t give a shit about how ridiculous I probably looked, happy to quickly dislodge the zombie suddenly clinging to my left thigh, strong fingers digging into my mostly numb flesh. The wet sound of the tomahawk embedding itself in a shoulder that got the arm to drop away was most satisfying—not that my mind had the time to process that. A kick, and the zombie tumbled back into the cover of the thick grass it had been hiding in, making it hard to track as one of its brethren came for me from the left.
“Vanguard, disengage and head for the river!” I heard Bucky’s order. Part of me wanted to bark that I was a little busy here, but when I managed to twist around and look back, I saw that the ones behind us had even more shamblers crawling all over them. Carter and Hill were down as well if still putting up a fight. I barely had time to check that Burns, Nate, and Tanner were all holding their own before a cry from Gita got me casting around for her. She’d managed to somehow disentangle herself from the shambler trying to come for her, but that left her barely able to fend off the reaching arms now.
Taking two steps in her direction, I went down when another, yet-hidden shambler went for my knee, pretty much yanking my leg out from under me. I kicked and hacked as soon as I got my bearings, landing twisted sideways, partly supported by my pack. I managed to dislocate its lower jaw, making it hang by a few tendons on one side only. The shambler screamed at me, but no sound came out beyond a guttural exhale. It was only then that I realized that all the evident shouting and grunting from around me came from those still alive. What the fuck? But no time to dwell on that now.
The shambler reared up the same moment I managed to roll over onto my knees, sparing me having to come for it as it met my ax in mid-swing. The sharp blade sheared off its nose and flesh from the side of its cheek, adding more disfigurement to its face but not doing much damage. The other tomahawk embedded itself deep into the scrawny neck, getting stuck for a second before I managed to tear it free once more. Gooey blood and bits of flesh came along but I ignored the gore. The next swing went right through its spine, severing the head for good.
Staggering to regain my balance, I looked around, finding Gita and Munez busy helping Rodriguez to her feet. What was visible of her face was covered in blood, but she was able to stand unsupported so it couldn’t all be her own.
“We need to head forward!” I called at them, making sure that no new attacker was about to come for us. Another shambler reared up to my right but I kicked it in the face before it got close enough to tackle me. “Run!” And because it was sound advice, I followed it myself.
It worked for exactly ten seconds. When they realized that their prey was about to escape, the shamblers hidden in the grass came for us in earnest. I figured that was a blessing in disguise as we could at least see them coming for us—or I could, the last rays of the sun finally gone to make my low-light vision work as it should. For the others, not so much.
Gita tried to support Rodriguez while Munez surged ahead of them, but a few staggered steps and they were swarmed again. I was closer than Munez so I took over shoving the undead away where possible, but they came right back at us as soon as they regained their bearings. I wasn’t strong enough to try to punch them out for good, and with nobody around who carried a sledgehammer, the tactic didn’t work as it had in the ravine days ago. But that wasn’t the only problem—the undead we’d encountered there had been sluggish and on the stupider side. Those here were crafty, sneaky, but also strong fuckers. This wasn’t looking good.
“Vanguard, what’s the holdup?” I heard Bucky grate over the open frequency. Looking back, I saw that the rest of our people were doing only marginally better.
“Rodriguez is injured,” I offered. “And we’re just as overrun as you are. We could use someone who can smash in heads.”
“You sure could,” came Hamilton’s response—yet despite his jeer, it only took a few moments for Hill to break away and try to close up to us. Apparently, he wasn’t one to stay down, which I found myself oddly happy about. Munez and I managed to hold the shamblers back until Hill arrived, and a few tiring moments later, we could finally break away forward. Munez and Gita took the lead while Hill grabbed Rodriguez under one arm to support her, leaving me to fend for myself.
I ran, or tried to, as much as my exhausted muscles would let me. My legs felt like lead, and it wasn’t just obstacles hidden in the grass that made me stagger. Damnit!
“Switch?” I asked Hill when dispatching another shambler forced me to fall back to them. He gave me a weird look that I was sure he thought I wouldn’t catch, but then let me take over supporting Rodriguez so he could clear the way ahead for us. Rodriguez wasn’t much taller than me but her sluggish body seemed to weigh a ton. Up close, the scent of blood tickled my nose, making my stomach roil. Glancing back, I saw Cole maybe twenty yards behind us, the others another hundred behind him. The sea of grass was moving all around us but the shamblers seemed to hold back now that we’d broken free of their first wave of attack. It was easy to believe they’d lost interest but I didn’t buy it.
“We need to move faster,” I told my semi-responsive burden. “Once they realize what’s slowing us down, they’ll try to overwhelm us again, and this time it will work.”
She didn’t answer but the tension in her body increased, the load she had to put on me lessening somewhat. We continued to hobble forward, right behind Hill’s swinging sledgehammer, until I almost went down once more when a shambler grabbed my ankle. Rodriguez let go so I didn’t drag her down with me, and Hill managed to dispatch the shambler before it became an issue for me. I grabbed Rodriguez again, but this time she sagged against me, no longer able to carry her own weight.
“It burns,” she pressed out between gritted teeth, her eyes impossibly wide with what I realized must be pain. “Why does it burn? Why is there fire in my veins?”
I wasn’t sure if she was actively asking me for my opinion, but I chose to refrain. My own body hurt enough as it was, but I could feel the serum doing its thing, the increasing concentration of adrenaline in my veins making it all easier to ignore, my body singing with the need to burn any residual energy off rather than slow down with exhaustion.
“Just ignore it,” I pressed out as I pushed myself forward, looking toward the river as if seeing it would bring me closer to my destination. The buildings of the club would have been easier to reach but I doubted that we would find a warm welcome there.
As if he’d read my mind, Munez drew up short after veering slightly toward the houses. “Can’t be sure but looks like they are overrun,” he reported, glancing back toward me for a second. I couldn’t help but smirk, although Rodriguez’s increasing weight on me quickly wiped it off my face once more.
“Head for the river,” I repeated Hamilton’s previous order. “At least they won’t be able to follow us into the water.”
The sounds of our voices were enough to bring another wave of agitated undead down on us, making me shut up for good. I had to let my burden slide off my shoulder so I could use both arms—and effectively—to fend off the shamblers, doing my best to kick them away from me so I wouldn’t fall over the dead ones. None of them even glanced at, let alone fell on, their dead, obviously preferring us for a food source.
Cole finally caught up to us, grabbing Rodriguez while I was still hacking away at my latest undead victim.
�
�Go!” he hissed at me when I still hesitated. “The others won’t get rid of them, but if you ready the boats, we can flee into the river. But for that to work you need to create more of a distraction.”
I was about to follow his advice when the deafening roar of an assault rifle going off right next to me made me jump. Shamblers all over came surging out of the grass.
“How’s that for a distraction?” Rodriguez panted, giving me a bloody grin. “Stealth doesn’t work with those sneaky assholes. We need to waste some ammo to get through them.”
She was right, even if I didn’t like the fact that she’d rung the dinner bell before alerting us to the fact. I didn’t waste another moment on yelling at her and instead switched weapons, the weight of the M16 alluringly comfortable in my hands. While unable to hack at anything while being carried before, Rodriguez could very well still shoot, and we actually made better progress now. I hated how fast I chewed through my magazines, even using single fire only—but it worked when Gita and Munez joined in, leaving only Hill to continue bashing in heads. We finally broke through the wave, and then it was down the last sloping mile toward the river, gravel paths intersecting the long, brown grass until it ended in a haphazard belt of reeds. Tightening the grip on my rifle, I ran as fast as I could, hoping that I wouldn’t kill myself by breaking my neck this way.
Eight hundred yards.
Five hundred.
Three hundred, and I could make out the shed that Ines had told us to find so many times that I was disappointed that the glorified lean-to didn’t look quite like the mental image her words had conjured up.
Two hundred, and a look back over my shoulder verified that the others weren’t all dead yet, as if the constant cursing on the coms hadn’t alerted us to that yet. My lungs burned, as did the muscles in my legs and back, but with our goal so close, it was easy for hope to rise inside of me—
Until another wave of shamblers came out of the reeds, heading straight for us.
“Veer to the left!” I called out to Munez and Gita—more to her than the soldier running by her side—while I kept on going straight, getting ready to fire into the undead horde. Hill cursed and finally switched weapons so he didn’t have to wait for close-quarter engagement. Turning to Cole, I jerked my head toward where Munez was following my order. “After them! Hill and I will join you in a few secs.”
Lo and behold, Cole didn’t protest but instead lumbered after the others with his burden, leaving Hill and me to make our stand. No coordination required—as soon as we were close enough, we both came to a halt and opened fire, strafing the entire line coming toward us. Zombie after zombie fell yet I knew that it wasn’t enough. At fifty yards distance, their lines finally broke but that still meant over a hundred of them, and only two of us.
“Fire in the hole!” someone—I thought it was Davis but couldn’t be sure—hollered over the com, and a moment later, a grenade went off roughly where the first gravel path had crossed the grass farther up the slope behind us. Two more explosions followed, close enough that I could feel them but they didn’t force me to take a balancing step forward. The zombies in front of us staggered, if not to a halt then with confusion. That was all the distraction I needed. Making a quick motion down when Hill glanced my way, I let myself fall to the frozen ground, using the same technique the undead had used on us before—and prayed like hell that it would work. And because I had no intention of getting trampled by zombies, I started dragging myself in the direction the other three members of our vanguard had run into, trying to make as few sounds as possible.
Our plan didn’t work well, but it was enough. Only a handful of shamblers noticed us as they passed, and they found their timely end in a much quieter way than what the others were heading toward as Hamilton’s group opened fire on them. As soon as I was sure that we were in the clear, I pushed myself up into a crouch, then ran as quietly as I could for the shack.
I found the others huddled on the ground a good hundred feet away from the shed. A quick look around confirmed that Gita looked spooked but okay; the same couldn’t be said for Rodriguez. Cole had let her slide off his shoulder and onto the ground where she writhed, her eyes open impossibly wide from what looked like pain and panic, blood frothing at her nose and mouth. Over the noise the others were making, her moans were low enough not to draw any attention. I tried to check her body for injuries, but except for the blood smeared all over her cheek—and now pretty much the rest of her face except for her forehead—I couldn’t find anything. Most of that seemed to come from what must have been a bite mark below her chin, where sharp teeth had torn a chunk of flesh out but it wasn’t enough to hint at a severed carotid.
I was just about to ask Cole for his opinion when she let out one last gasp before she sagged in on herself, her stare turning vacant.
I didn’t think as much as react, plunking down next to her so I could start CPR. New bubbles appeared at her nose but I knew that was just the air being forced out of her lungs. I should have stopped right there but my brain wasn’t up to rationality right then, the thought stuck that it wasn’t possible for her to just die with no real injuries other than a flesh wound. None of the others stopped me, which was enough for me to continue. My mind was racing too fast for me to count—and I absolutely didn’t remember how many compresses were required—but when I felt too frustrated at her lack of a reaction, I stopped, hesitating only for a second before pinching her nose closed so I could breathe air into her lungs—
And that’s when she lunged at me.
It. I really should have been long enough in this game to stop having issues with the pronouns.
There was no warning. No sound, no tensing, no nothing. A very small part of my brain reminded me that I’d made the very same mistake as Nate when Taggard’s people had blown up our guys and it had been too late to save Campbell. But at the same time, that wasn’t true. We might call it insta-conversion, but even when Bailey had sacrificed himself and had eaten that contaminated chocolate bar, it had taken over a minute for him to turn. Bates, hacked to pieces by the cannibals, had been dead several minutes. I should have had enough time for a TV-drama-worthy performance of cursing and going on until Rodriguez reanimated—which was underlined by the fact that everyone else was as ill-prepared as I was.
Tough luck that I was the closest.
And damn, for someone who weighed maybe ten pounds more than I did, she packed one hell of a punch.
Because she started out prone on her back, her momentum was off, and while her blind flailing hit me hard enough in the side of the head that I saw stars, she didn’t manage to break anything. Pain made me withdraw instantly, which likely saved my life. As she came off the ground, she managed to grab on to my shoulders but not enough to pull my face right into her snapping jaws. Unbalanced, I staggered, slipping on the frozen ground, dragging her right along with me so she ended up sprawled on top of me. A low, rumbling growl left her chest that made every single hair on my body stand on end, and I did the first thing I could think of—using the momentum of my fall, I managed to get my legs properly between us, and before she could go for my face or neck, I kicked her right off in an almost perfect maneuver, sending her body flying. It all happened in the span of seconds but was enough to kick my entire body into overdrive.
I came vaulting to my feet as soon as my body completed the roll, but she was still faster, mad eyes casting around for a victim. Her gaze landed on Gita but Cole was smart enough to step in front of the girl, drawing the former soldier’s attention to him. I had no intention of getting anywhere close to her again so rather than step into her reach, I hurled one of my tomahawks at her, hoping against hope that it would do some damage. In a one-in-a-million moment, the blade of the ax imbedded itself in her chest with a wet “thunk,” but all that did was make those mad eyes snap back to me.
Probably not the best idea I’d had all day.
The grass rustled behind Rodriguez, and for a second, I hoped that it was more shamblers, m
aking a run for the body that was still fresher and warmer than anything else they’d sank their teeth into for ages. Instead, the two figures materializing out of the foggy gloom turned into Carter and Davis. Rodriguez’s head snapped around, focusing on them, and in the blink of an eye she went for Carter. He had just a moment’s warning when Cole shouted, which was likely not enough time to make sense of the blood—and the ax embedded in her upper chest cavity. Carter didn’t even have time to cry out before they went down as she collided with him, once more going for the face.
More shouts, and as if through water I heard Hamilton demand a status report in my ear, but I ignored all that. Focusing on the fresh zombie—that was very successfully tearing Carter’s face off, his high-pitched screams going well with its wet sounds—I drew my Beretta and shot Rodriguez in the back of the head as soon as I was sure the angle was right that I’d miss Carter, whether he’d appreciate that or not. Three successive shots because double-tapping wasn’t cutting it with one of those. The back of her head turned into a spray of gore, the left temple pretty much exploding where the bullets exited the cranium once more. Almost as fast as it had started, it was over, leaving me panting raggedly, my gun wavering not an inch—now pointed at Carter.
“What the—” Davis pressed out, his face frozen with shock. I tried to silently check in with him by holding his gaze but his attention snapped right back to Carter, writhing on the ground, a bloody, torn mess where his face had been. Already, his groans and whimpers ebbed off, and I had a pretty good idea what would happen in, oh, thirty seconds from now—so I shot him, too. I waited for my soul to start wailing with guilt, but all I felt was panic receding as relief flooded through me. No, that one wouldn’t be the end of me, either.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 84
