“Sure thing,” Gita volunteered. “You ready to go? Hill’s back to smashing in heads already.”
Did she just call me a lazy fuck? Laughing softly to myself, I made sure that nothing was sneaking up on us and Parker and Russell were still doing okay where they were slashing and bashing away a few feet to our left, then joined Cole once more. I’d show her.
It made the most sense to draw closer together as we were trying to push harder, so I ended up next to Russell, with Cole and Parker covering us. For every zombie that we did away with, two more came at us, and now only half of them fell on the corpses to eat, forcing us to confront fighting targets rather than ignorant ones. I really could have done with some extra strength and stamina, but my arms were getting heavier by the minute.
Then the inevitable happened—I slipped on something hidden on the ground just as a somewhat more substantial zombie made a lunge for me. It missed me, but I went down just the same, narrowly avoiding losing one or both of my tomahawks. Deeming me an easy target gave the shambler some extra incentive to come for me, broken, rotting teeth snapping for my face. I managed to get one arm up in time to keep it off me, but it took me two tries to aim a good kick to send it back far enough that I could scramble to my feet. Just as I was doing that, a strong arm came up underneath my left, Cole dragging me the rest of the way to my feet. He didn’t waste a second on gloating, just shouted, “You okay?” As soon as I nodded, he was back to bashing the nearest zombie’s face in. I finished off the one that had come for me, but my breath was ragged as I straightened again.
“How’s your side doing?” Cole hollered after killing his next target. He caught my bland stare with a grin. “Parker’s a terrible snitch when you corner him. As you very well know yourself. He told us the details of how that started, too.”
Another shambler getting between us gave me some valuable seconds to consider my response. “If you mean, am I too weak to fight? No.”
“Not what I was asking,” Cole said. “The last thirty minutes proved the contrary, anyway. How much does it distract you? Because you’re slowing down, and you really shouldn’t be at the end of your strength yet.”
“It hurts like hell, but I can manage. Haven’t figured out how to mobilize said strength that you think I shouldn’t be running out of yet.”
That got me a brief bark of laughter, but a couple of shamblers kept Cole from answering for a while. We were a few yards further into the thickening mass of bodies when he drew close enough to respond. “You need to focus. You need to make yourself be able to dip into that well of stamina and strength. Eventually, it’ll happen automatically, and very likely instantly when you absolutely need it, but looks like you’re not quite scared out of your mind yet.”
I didn’t try to tone down the laugh that drew from me. “Not quite, yeah.” My next slice was powerful enough to sever the trachea of the shambler I was coming after, only a bash with the back of the other tomahawk needed to fully decapitate it. “Make myself stronger, eh? Easy, peasy.”
“Brace yourself. I’m coming up behind you. Don’t hit me, okay?”
I really didn’t like the sound of that, but the onslaught of undead kept me from formulating a reply, and then, it was too late. Cole grabbed my left shoulder with one hand—to steady me, I realized—before he punched my right lower torso hard enough that without his support, I would have likely ended up on my knees. Pain exploded from my side even though he hadn’t perfectly hit the scar, just the still healing tissue next to the wound. My senses snapped into clear focus, the stench making me retch instantly, even overpowering the agony radiating through my body for a moment.
“Fight through it,” Cole shouted behind me as he let me go. “Push the pain away. Make yourself ignore it. But at the same time, hold on to the sense of hyperawareness. That’s what you’re going for. Focus on your body. Your muscles. Your arms when you swing that ax, your legs when you kick, pivot. Push everything else away except for the motions. And that’s how you do it.”
I was so tempted to yell in his face not to be such an asshole, but the lizard part of my brain chose to follow his instructions instead. It wasn’t hard, really—I had to try to dull my sense of smell or else I’d start to puke, and that would likely get me killed within moments. Concentrating on the pain and how my body was singing with the need for even more violence was easy. There were more zombies coming at me so I had to first defend myself, then push forward to finish them—and those that came after them—back. The physical motion of my muscles tensing and keeping my body moving forward was easier to concentrate on than the pain still locking up my side, so that’s what I did—step by step by step. The next swing didn’t go easier or hit harder than the one before, but I felt just a little less winded, and it was just a little easier to react to the next snapping jaws coming for me, just a little faster. Honestly, I’d expected more—particularly after I’d kicked Nate easily across our hangar gym when I had managed to dip deep into my reserves—but this was different. This wasn’t about a single punch that could likely send my bare fist through an enemy’s skull. This was about keeping going when fatigue was threatening to drop me to the ground—but didn’t. It was then that I realized that—at least for me, if not for most others—this was more a matter of tenacity than overwhelming brute force. And if I could claim one thing, it was that being a tenacious bitch who never let go was actually my MO.
“Lewis, you’re starting to lag,” came Nate’s reminder over the com, sounding far away, like a disembodied voice in a dream. I couldn’t pay much attention to that, between fighting the pain, fighting the zombies, and doing my very best to keep my position between Russell and Cole as we continued pushing deeper into the crowd. My world narrowed down to just two things—attack and survive. The pain and exhaustion were still there but I could almost ignore it if I tried just hard enough. If I just kept hacking and slashing, I’d get through this in one piece, and everything would be all right.
It didn’t really help that it was pretty much my fault that I was in this situation.
Over the com, I heard as one of the other teams got into serious trouble, needing to fall back to where Munez, Davis, and Burns were keeping the tide at bay below our snipers. It didn’t matter. We only needed to cut that swath to the group, and then—
Then something happened. We were close enough to the wall of dead bodies—that Nate still kept adding to—that I could catch a glimpse of it whenever a still-moving corpse fell under my axes. It felt like a massive release of adrenaline at first, like startling awake from a dream, only without the feeling of disorientation. There was definitely some dopamine and serotonin in the mix that made me feel light, bordering on high—something I didn’t exactly associate with fighting zombies. A more meaty shambler pushed through the others toward me, moving incredibly slow. I raised my left arm—feeling like it was moving through water rather than air—meeting it head-on as soon as it broke free, the blade of my ax cleaving right through the center of its forehead, barely covered with mottled skin as it was. I felt the ax part the air first, then embed itself in the skull, the impact jarring up from my wrist through my elbow to my shoulder. Muscles in my back and arm tensed so I could wrench it free, watching as bone shrapnel and congealed blood sprayed everywhere. It happened so slowly that it was easy to duck. I used the motion to step to the side, bringing my other arm up to go for the shambler’s neck even as my torso twisted. The hit struck perfectly, slicing through tendons until the edge of the ax blade grated across and into the spine, severing nerves and blood vessels. The body was folding in on itself as soon as my ax was done slicing through it.
I caught motion from the very corner of my right eye, where my secondary attack had left my back unguarded. My right arm was still moving on the trajectory of the slice, my head turning to follow the arc of gore it left in its wake. Another shambler was about to launch itself at me, using the momentary distraction its peer had provided. Even seeing the danger, I knew I would be too slow to m
eet it head-on. I had about a second to decide what to do—try to body-slam it with my unprotected shoulder, or let myself drop out of reach. I knew Cole was close enough that if I went down, he’d notice and come after the shambler, but I hated having to rely on that. So I braced myself, tightened my grip on my axes, and hoped for the best.
The zombie smacked right into me, its teeth and claws going for my face. Everything inside of me screamed to turn my head away, but I needed to see to know where to hit—if I could get enough distance to be effective. The stench coming off that thing was unbelievable, so much worse than what I was already covered in. I tried to get an arm between us but ended up poking my glove into something squishy that I was certain shouldn’t have given in so easily—and then my hand was stuck.
“Drop!” a deep male voice shouted, coming from somewhere to my left. Not Cole, but he definitely was shouting at me. Without second thought, I let myself fall to the ground, doing my very best not to end up with the shambler on top of me.
Just in time, I saw the sledgehammer come down. Squeezing my eyes and mouth shut, I turned my head so my face was pointing toward the ground. Something cool and viscous splattered my cheek where it wasn’t covered by wool or sturdy fabric. The zombie stopped moving, the hands clawing at my shoulder and torso dropping away for good. With my eyes still closed, I kicked as hard as I could, feeling the corpse lifting off me. Just as I was trying to wipe my face clean—with the back of a gore-splattered glove, which wasn’t that effective—someone grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Once I managed to open my eyes, I found Hill grinning down at me, his sledgehammer dripping red.
“My, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he joked.
Something behind his hip moved. I abandoned my quest for cleanliness and moved as well. My tomahawk buried itself deep in the shambler’s chest, enough so that when I pulled, I yanked the thing toward me rather than managed to free my weapon. The angle got awkward, so rather than use the ax, I slammed my closed fist I was holding it with into the zombie’s face. Hard. Bone and cartilage gave, and I ended up with yet more gunk covering my hand up to my wrist. Booyah.
Hill grabbed the zombie’s head and wrenched it to the side, the spine snapping with an audible crack. I pulled back, finally managing to free my weapon. The thing tumbled to the blood-soaked ground between us. Hill flashed me a quick grin before he went after something to my side. I did the same, coming after an enterprising shambler that tried to jump Cole’s back.
We hacked, and slashed, and smashed, and punched some more, until finally, we reached the wall of bodies. It was almost up to my shoulder in some places, and teeming with yet more undead falling on those that weren’t moving anymore. Hill came after those with his sledgehammer, leaving it to us to cover him in the meantime. Once Cole and I had secured part of the wall, Parker scrambled over it, presumably to help the wounded. He yelled something at the people in English; they yelled something back in French; it only took them about five seconds to sort out their differences. They all looked scared as hell and very happy to see us, even though they couldn’t know who we were. From up closer, I saw that they had three people on the ground, some with open, bleeding wounds. They might have sustained the injuries from falling, but I didn’t allow myself to keep my hopes up. The few fit and unblemished guys were eyeing those on the ground with as much caution as us, so I presumed they knew that they wouldn’t see two more sunsets. Nobody could be that oblivious and still be alive.
Turning back to the undead horde, I tried to reorient myself and get a better picture of what was going on. There were still plenty of zombies about, but we’d visibly decimated their numbers to something more manageable. Because we were at the wall now, Nate and Gita had stopped shooting, and it didn’t take long before Bucky—still somewhere out there—barked for a status report. I missed what Tanner called in as another wave of the undead surged forward, giving us a hard time until we managed to chop them up for good. Hill had come with backup, but even Aimes, Williams, and McClintock in addition to the three of us weren’t really enough to hold them at bay for long.
“Can you move the injured?” I called back to Parker, although what I really wanted to ask was whether we could just shoot them and withdraw with those that would still be breathing a week from now. It was then that I realized that this was not how I should have been thinking, but I didn’t really care. In fact, I didn’t care much about anything except to chase that high—
“Still got some work to do,” Parker grumbled back, or at least that was what I thought I heard over the din the not-yet dead made.
Looking around, I tried to gauge how the others were holding up. Not quite a surprise, I seemed to be the most exhausted, but with every second that I got to catch my breath and rest a little, I felt more and more like hurling myself back into the fray. I must have looked the part, too, as when I caught Cole’s gaze, he grinned back at me.
“You’re one fucking moron, you know that?” I told him succinctly. “Or what else would you call someone who deliberately inflicts pain on the one who should have his back?”
“You should know,” he shot back. “You married one.” One bashed-in head later, he explained. “They sent me out on my first mission after the inoculation before I’d managed to get a grip on it all. I ended up with several bullets in my leg and arm, in a ditch, unable to attack or retreat. When Miller dropped in next to me, I thought he’d drag me out. Guess what that bastard did? He dug two of the slugs out of my leg so I could keep moving after he patched me up, and with his fingers digging into the bandage, he told me pretty much what I told you. And then he vaulted out of the ditch and went for the bastards that had shot me up, leaving it to me to come after him to help gun the rest of them down. Without my help, they would have killed him; but without moving on, I would have died in that ditch. Never been that glad about anyone putting me through what felt like literal hell that day, but you need to learn that lesson, or you’re dead. You can tell that asshole that I consider his favor repaid.”
“Go tell him yourself,” I shot back.
Cole snorted, but he was still grinning as he glanced back in my direction. “Ready to kick some undead ass? You look like you’ve got some extra energy to burn off.”
Oh, did I ever. Switching the com to send, I asked our lookout, “What direction do you want us to go?”
“Stay,” Nate grumbled, but after a few moments offered, “The worst is to your ten. Looks like some of the more crafty ones have been hiding in the thick of the fray and they’re making a break for the wall. If you can meet them head-on, you have a better chance of keeping them from breaking through.”
“Consider it done.” I gave Cole a nod to let him know I was with him, then whistled loudly at where Hill was still doing undead maintenance sweeps. “You game?”
“Always!” he hollered back with way more enthusiasm than any of us should have felt.
“We’ll hold the line,” Aimes assured me, for once not adding anything with a sneer. And off we went, heading in the vague direction Nate had pointed out. With luck, our advance would leave those at the wall with fewer shamblers pushing on to be easily held at bay.
Everything became a blur. I was out of breath, but I forced myself to keep going. My arms seemed to weigh a ton, but rather than fall back, I pushed ahead. I staggered, stumbled, misstepped, landed on my ass, even lost one of my axes for a short time, but forced myself to go on. There was no turning back now, and no reasoning with the undead. What scared me the most was that not only did I want to go on, but I actually enjoyed it.
We broke through the bulk in the middle eventually, and it seemed like a token of faith that just as I came staggering into the open on one side, Bucky broke free on the other. He noticed me moments after I saw him, both of us staring at the other. I knew this was my chance. Everyone else was too occupied with bashing in heads to notice, let alone aid him. I was shaking with exhaustion, half bent-over in my attempt to catch my breath, but my pulse was going stron
g, adrenaline making me stupid. I knew I could try to take him down. He’d see it coming, but he must have been just as tired as I was, and while he had height and bulk on me, I was quicker and more agile. I might not win, but with zombies all around us still putting up a fight, I only needed to incapacitate him enough to make him an easy victim—cut the hamstrings, hit him hard enough in the temple that he got too sluggish to defend himself well. What I might have lacked on the physical side, I could easily make up for in craziness. If I let myself—and I was very tempted—I could put all the blame in the world on his shoulders. I could ignore that, while in charge of the soldiers, he wasn’t the one who called the shots. He was following orders just like everyone else—and as he’d explained yesterday, there was so much going on that I didn’t know. Yet he had been the executing force, and while I might never get a chance at who was controlling him, I could very well try to take out Bucky Hamilton himself.
And he knew it. I saw it in his eyes. The wariness, the worry that peeked out under that mask of machismo swagger. Just like I’d known every single time that I’d crossed our camp, he or his people could have taken me down in an instant, I could turn into an avenging fury now. I could take out all my anger, my grief, my frustration on him, and I had a good chance of taking him down with me. No, I wasn’t delusional. I knew that I wouldn’t walk away if I did this—but it would be worth it.
“I ain’t got time for this shit,” I heard him grumble under his breath, then, louder, to me, “Are you going to do this, or not?”
Oh, I wanted to. I absolutely wanted to. Today, right now, the first time in history that I was strong, and capable, and had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to lose. Just me and him, and neither of us would be limping away from this.
Yet instead of coming for him, I let out a primal shout and hurled myself back into the thick of the fray.
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