Frank arrived with the ladder. It was a six-foot stepladder, the fold-out kind with a warning on the third step that you’re not supposed to stand any higher. But Kyle had to climb up and stand on the top to see over the lip of the plywood. And what he saw out there was unspeakable.
Hundreds of them swarming outside. Everywhere they banged and kicked the plywood. Some closest to the store were being smashed against the boards by the others behind them. They hadn’t done much damage yet except to the glass, but the pressure of so many bodies surging forward would be enough to break through eventually.
Parker wanted to see, too, so Kyle stepped off and Parker climbed up.
“Sweet mother of Jesus,” Parker said.
Yeah, Kyle thought.
One of those things must have looked up and seen Parker. It screamed and alerted the others, so the sickening war cries resumed. They didn’t even sound human anymore. More like a pack of vicious animals. The roar had to be heard to be believed.
Parker used the barrel of his pistol to knock out the remaining pieces of glass at the top of the windows. Then he awkwardly aimed his gun downward—the angle was too high for him to look down the sights—and fired into the crowd. The mob outside shrieked—in anger, shock, hatred, alarm, or what, Kyle had no idea. Whatever those screams were about, the sound was extraordinary.
The store had only one ladder, but there was a magazine rack along one of the walls. Kyle dragged it screeching to the windows and knocked the magazines off the top row so he could stand up there without slipping. He climbed up and could just barely see over the top of the plywood.
He watched, transfixed, as Parker reloaded and fired into the horde. They screamed in pain when shot in the arms or the shoulder, gasped and went limp when shot in the torso, and switched off in an instant when shot in the head. Most of the wounded ones would bleed out eventually, but in the meantime they kept coming as if the pain didn’t make the least bit of difference.
It was a gruesome business. Kyle still hadn’t gotten used to killing those things or watching someone else kill them. They looked and acted like creatures out of a horror movie, but they
were
still technically human.
Parker’s gun was empty. He patted his pockets, but he had no more magazines.
“You want to
help
me here, Kyle?” he said.
“Shit,” Kyle said and snapped to it. “Sorry.”
“Give me that gun,” Parker said. “And go get some cartridges for this empty.”
They traded guns and Kyle hopped down onto the floor. He held Parker’s empty. Parker fired more shots and Kyle heard more screams.
“Shoot at the ones nearest the windows!” Kyle said, but he wasn’t sure Parker could hear him.
Hughes kept the boxes of ammo next to him at his feet. He was still crouched near the front door ready and willing to blast away if the horde came inside.
“Take half those boxes,” Hughes said. He didn’t turn to look at Kyle, but sensed Kyle’s presence and needs. “Shoot as many as you can from up there, but don’t use up all of our cartridges. We’ll need ’em if those things get inside.”
There were six boxes of ammunition. Four for the handguns, a box of shells for Hughes’ shotgun, and another box for the rifle. None of the boxes were full.
“How much do we have here?” Kyle said and opened one of the boxes. Only a few dozen rounds were inside.
“About 200 cartridges,” Hughes said, “plus a dozen or so for the shotgun. Take two boxes for yourself and Parker and give the shells to Frank. Do what you can.”
Where
was
Frank? Annie had taken Kyle’s place on the magazine rack and was firing her weapon, but he didn’t see Frank.
Hughes seemed to sense his confusion. “Frank’s in back,” he said. “Doing what I’m doing. Guarding the other door in case they get in.”
Those things were not going to come in the back, not with the Dumpster blocking the way. Unless they thought to move it. Could they do that?
Kyle ran to the back and handed the box of shotgun shells to Frank.
Frank wasn’t crouched in a fighting position the way Hughes was. He just nervously stood there with Hughes’ Mossberg in his hands. It was quieter back there. Those things hadn’t seemed to notice the back door, but of course that could change at any moment.
“Thanks, man,” Frank said. “Y’all better hope I won’t need ’em.”
Kyle ran back to the front of the store. God, the noise was horrendous. Monsters were battering down their defenses.
Monsters
. Kyle didn’t care anymore that technically they were sick people. Those things were without language, without remorse, without reason. They even appeared to move without thought, as if they were drawn to murder and biting and cannibalism the way falling rocks are drawn downward by gravity. They formed a relentless force that functioned as a single organism with multiple parts, like a giant bacteria colony made of human bodies gone savage, an army of malevolent meat driven by a higher—or lower—dark power. Lane and his boys were Buddhists compared with those things.
Kyle handed a box of ammunition to Parker, who reloaded and started firing again.
He climbed onto the magazine rack next to Annie and looked down. There was less movement below than before. Some of those things outside were dead. Others were dying. But the rest—the majority—kept surging forward.
“We don’t have enough bullets,” Kyle said.
“Shut up and shoot,” Parker said.
Kyle ejected the magazine, opened a box of cartridges, palmed several rounds, and loaded his pistol. He took no pleasure from killing, not even from killing those things. He was defending himself and his friends. He was keeping Annie alive. But what if Annie got bitten and turned? Would he shoot her? He’d rather shoot himself than shoot Annie.
But if Parker got bitten …
“Kyle!” Parker said. “Shoot them! Shoot them
now
or we’re going to die.”
Kyle shot them. He emptied his pistol.
But the live ones kept pushing. The live ones kept kicking. The live ones kept pounding. The live ones kept screaming.
And the plywood sheet in front of the ladder snapped in half down the middle.
* * *
Annie screamed as the wood burst inward. Bloody hands reached through a ripped seam and grasped Parker’s ankles. He tried to kick the hands loose and back away at the same time, but he had nowhere to go. He fell backward and pinwheeled off the ladder and onto the floor. Kyle hopped off the magazine rack to help him up.
Annie was alone up there now.
“Bring me a crowbar!” she shouted.
Kyle helped Parker up, then grabbed two crowbars, one for himself and one for her.
She and Kyle swung at the hands reaching through the seam while Parker pulled himself together. Annie swung in wide arcs, shattering wrists and forearms and even severing a couple of fingers. She heard howls of pain every time iron struck meat. The mass of the infected pushing inward from outside was relentless. The ripped seam wasn’t large enough for them to get through just yet, but it would be soon enough.
Parker pushed her aside and fired through the gap, trying to aim for the head.
Some of them died.
Most of them screamed.
The live ones behind the dead ones kept pushing. They were pushing the corpses of the dead ones through the gap.
“Hughes!” Parker shouted over the din. “We need you over here!”
Hughes left his post near the front door and brought his rifle.
“Shoot the ones in the back,” Parker said. “They’re pushing the dead ones through the hole.”
“We may have to join Carol in the cooler,” Kyle said.
“We’re dead if we go in there,” Parker said. “We’d never get out. Not with this many out here. We stand here and beat them or die.”
Another sheet of plywood cracked down the middle. Annie panicked and stepped back.
But then something strange happened. It was like a switch got flipped in her head. Another hole was about to get punched in their fortress, and it was her job to guard it while the others protected the first one. She felt determination wash over her, but her determination wasn’t quiet or steady or calm. It was ferocious.
She would happily beat every single one of those things to death with her crowbar.
Fingers appeared in the ripped seam and pushed outward. She smashed them. No harder than stepping on bugs.
The seam opened wider. An infected woman’s face appeared. Her hair must have been blond before it became matted with gore, her nose a little bit pointed, her ears slightly elfin. Her cheeks were covered with months of grime and filth. Her blue eyes were so full of primitive hatred, they could have been red.
Annie drove the sharp end of her crowbar straight that face as if she were driving a stake into the ground. She broke through the skull and killed the diseased woman instantly, and it felt exhilarating.
What was this? She was in the fight of her life, but she still had enough flickering self-awareness that she was appalled by her reaction. She had just killed a woman—granted, a disease-ridden hyper-violent juggernaut woman—and she felt exhilarated?
She destroyed another human being’s face with a crowbar, and she felt exhilarated?
She tried to imagine how much a steel bar smashing her lips, teeth, and nose would hurt. She couldn’t. It was beyond comprehension.
But
did
she just kill a human? Really? She knew what those things were thinking. Everything that once made them human had been stripped away, leaving only muscle and bone and distorted primitive brain function. They hated her and thought she was food.
More faces and arms appeared. Annie smashed every single one of them, and she felt delirious.
Only then did she notice the stench. They reeked of body odor, rotten meat, and shit. She swung again and caved in another one’s skull.
Her killing bar glistened with blood, black fluid, and pieces of bone.
Killing Lane was hard, but this was easy. It was easy and it was
satisfying
.
She hated the infected. Hated them with a passion she hadn’t felt since …
hungry hungry predator
… since she was one of them.
* * *
Hughes pushed the dead things back through the hole with all his strength while Frank dragged up a spare sheet of plywood from the back of the store. This one was uncut, bigger than those they had already used. It would easily overlap with the adjacent boards so they could hammer it in.
“Nails!” Hughes shouted. “And a hammer!”
Frank retrieved a box of nails and a hammer. Hughes used his massive bulk to hold the new sheet of plywood in place while Parker drove in the nails.
Twelve or so feet to his left, Annie swung her crowbar like a maniac as a second wave of those things tried to push their way in. There were nothing but dead ones at the other, smaller opening, but he knew if the live ones pushed hard enough they could knock that entire sheet of split wood out of the window, and there’d be no way Annie could stop them.
“More wood!” Hughes yelled at Frank. “We have to patch up the other one!”
The new sheet was in place and he felt no resistance now, so Hughes could help Annie. But how much more wood did they have in the back? One sheet? Two? And did they have enough nails?
Hughes picked up his rifle and joined Annie. Mutilated heads and arms protruded through the seam.
“Jesus, girl,” Hughes said.
He stuck the barrel of his rifle through the slit between an arm and a bashed-in head and pulled the trigger repeatedly.
Screams from outside. More of those things were going down. Soon there’d be nothing but dead ones outside if they had enough ammunition, but they didn’t. The best he could do was thin their numbers for now.
Another sheet of plywood on the north side of the store split down the middle.
“Shit,” Frank said.
They weren’t going to make it.
“Where’s Carol?” Kyle said.
“Hiding in the cooler and useless,” Parker said as he ran, hammer in hand, to the north side of the store.
“She might have the right idea, guys,” Frank said.
“Get another sheet of wood over here!” Hughes said. He and Annie wouldn’t be able to hold the gap very much longer.
“How much ammo do we have left?” Kyle said.
Hughes paused and took stock.
“We’ve gone through most of it,” he said. “We’re running out and we haven’t even killed half of them.”
He exchanged glances with Annie. The look on her face. Jesus. She was ready to eat those things alive if she had to. That girl was a killer. But there were just too damned many of them.
Frank returned from the back with another sheet of plywood.
“Put it down,” Hughes said.
“Put it down?” Frank said.
“Put it down,” Hughes said. “And go get the gas cans.”
They had three large cans left over from torching the car lot down the street. Hughes had saved them for the Chevy’s tank. He never expected to use them for more arson. He certainly didn’t expect to use them to burn down the store, but what else could they do? Their fortress was falling.
He climbed onto the magazine rack and emptied one of the cans over the lip of the plywood barriers. Annie took another, unscrewed the cap, and started flinging the stuff through the second seam, the one crammed with dead things. Parker took the third can and splashed a little gasoline through the seam on the north side of the store, but the seam was so small, he couldn’t get much through it, and he dribbled fuel onto the floor and onto his shoes.
The others weren’t getting much gasoline on the horde outside, but Hughes was. He poured it right over the top and doused dozens of them, but some of it spilled on the inside. Some of it got on the plywood. Some of it got on the floor.
Some of it ran down his arms.
He rushed to the sink to wash it off, but the water pressure had finally given out. The tap was dry.
He reeked of fuel. He’d get torched if he didn’t wash himself off, so he ran to the now-warm refrigerator and dumped several bottles of Evian on himself.
Kyle and Frank dragged the magazine rack to the north side of the store near the third seam. No gas at all had gotten outside the store over there. The horde was still active, still banging on and surging against the boards. They’d break through any minute.