Ramirez could hear the sound of a resonating crunch over the din of the children’s screams. The zombie went limp but Drifts continued kicking it. “Sam!” Ramirez called out. “It’s down! Get over here!” Drifts nodded and spat on the thing before running after them.
“Zombie!” A little girl pointed just off the path ahead of them. A gang member with several bullets in its chest began to rise by the car. It darted directly towards their group.
“I’ve got him!” shouted Drifts.
The boy with the arm injury shouted, “Two, no, three more are coming!”
He was looking at three dead as they tumbled down off of the decimated porch. Smoke continued to plume above them as they got to their feet and chased after the children. Chaos took hold as the threats came at them from two separate angles. The children ran in every direction screaming. Strapped to the board, Marjorie began to cry.
“Stay together!” Ramirez called out, but the children didn’t heed his call this time. “Sam!” His partner was already fending off another.
Isaiah said in a surprisingly calm voice, “We’ve got Marjorie, sir. We’ll get her to safety! Go!” He released his side of the board and took over for Ramirez.
“Thank you, young man young men. Get her inside, now!”
The preteens rushed towards Tanya’s house with six more kids. Four were in pairs of older and younger kids holding hands. The remaining two were older boys by themselves.
A tiny girl collapsed to the sidewalk crying with her hands over her face. Two other younger kids were running back to the bus. Another little girl dashed across the street to the corner of the house beside the one on fire. She reached the privacy fence and tried the gate, it was locked. She tried to jump up to climb over, but she couldn’t reach a handhold. She couldn’t escape any further. Overwhelmed the girl huddled into the corner of the fence and house and began to cry.
Ramirez nudged the girl on the sidewalk, “Young lady, you need to run! That house- over there!”
She didn’t look at him as she shook her head. “Uh-uh!”
“You need to go now!”
“Uh-uh!”
Ramirez looked up. The zombies were gathering speed. Could he make a stand here?
“I’ve got her, sir.”
Ramirez looked up to see the boy with the bullet wound to his arm. The young man continued without further prompting. “Cindy? It’s me Marcus. You remember, you sit by me and my brother Terrell on the bus.” He patted the eight-year-old by his side, “We share my Momma’s cookies with you.” Cindy looked up. He smiled and she took his hand. That movement unlocked her immobility and she stood up.
Zombie were closing in fast. “Run!” shouted Ramirez. The veteran medic ran straight for the trio of oncoming zombies. Two of them focused on him, but the third locked onto Marcus, Cindy, and Terrell and sprinted after them.
“No! Get back here!” Ramirez shouted, but there was nothing he could do. He was already between two snapping runners.
In a motion that would have made any sensei proud, Ramirez unsheathed his flashlight and knife and batted away the ravenous beasts.
Beyond him, Drifts tackled a zombie from the side. They collapsed together on the ground with the EMT on top. Drifts pinned the writhing monster down on its stomach and bashed the back of its skull with his flashlight again and again.
The zombie chasing Marcus and his charges was quickly gaining ground. With his good hand, Marcus pushed them both ahead of him. They clambered up Tanya’s porch with the zombie right behind them. Tanya appeared in the doorway with her pistol in hand. “Get down!” she shouted. The trio ducked below her arm as she fired. The back of the zombie’s head exploded as its neck snapped back. It collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
Ramirez gained some distance from the monstrosities and waited for them to come to him. When they were less than a foot away, he stepped to the side and pushed one into the other. The two of them fell writhing against each other as they still tried to reach for him. Ramirez pushed the first on its stomach with the butt of his flashlight. He slipped his knife into the base of hits skull and twisted. It quit struggling the instant he felt a click in its neck.
The second one reached for him, but his flashlight was at the ready. He struck the zombie hard enough to spin it around. It tried to right itself around, but Ramirez was already on him. Holding his flashlight in both hands Ramirez jabbed the back of its skull with the butt of his flashlight. He could hear the first and second vertebrae beneath the base of its skull crunch on impact. The zombie fell forward.
“Holy shit!” Drifts exclaimed as he approached. “Leo, I didn’t know you were a motherfucking samurai!”
Ramirez waved the comment away. He pointed at the little girl huddling by the fence then toward the bus. “A couple of the kids panicked and scattered. We need to get to them before more of those things rise.”
“All right. I’ll-”
“You want to hit me, motherfucker!” a voice shouted.
Ramirez caught the movement behind the EMT right as automatic fire erupted and chunks of asphalt exploded around them. Ramirez bull-rushed his partner behind the other gang’s car. Tracers followed them and Drifts screamed out as bullet tore through his calf just before they dove behind the vehicle. Bullets pelted the car’s frame.
Drifts grimaced. “Fucker shot me in the leg!”
Ramirez took out his handkerchief and deftly bandaged his partner’s wound. “That’s okay. Do you know how much street cred you earned just now?”
Drifts looked up at him sharply and grinned. “You know what, you are one sick bastard.”
Ramirez responded, “You’re just figuring this out now?”
“Nah! I’m just recognizing a kindred spirit.” Drifts’s expression sobered. “It’s that fucking waste-of-space Johnny that’s shooting at us, right?”
“Yep.”
“Come on out you mother fucking cowards!” Johnny shouted. He fired another volley at the car. The two of them ducked closer in as more pops erupted around them.
“Where is he?” Drifts asked, unwilling to look around the car.
“I think he’s holed himself up in Triple-Three.”
“Aw, that’s not right! What are we going to do?”
“You fucking ambulance drivers think you’re all something special, don’t you? You think you’re all smart and shit! You dipshits might have taken my gun, but you forgot about grabbing all the rest that were just laying around! Whose smart now, motherfuckers?”
“Dammit,” cursed Drifts.
“Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Johnny snarled.
Drifts looked at his partner. “Leo, what are we going to do?”
Before Ramirez could answer, Johnny yelled, “You motherfuckers are in trouble now!”
“Is he coming out?” asked Drifts.
Ramirez shook his head. “No.” He pointed. Over a dozen zombies were rising out of the ruins of the porch.
Chapter Fifteen
What You Can Live With
“Oh shit,” Drifts groaned, “What are we going to- what the fuck!”
All thoughts of the zombies across the street vanished as one lunged out of the open car door. Drifts caught it by the shoulders and shoved the dead thing back before it could sink its teeth into him. The predator writhed violently as it tried to pull the EMT towards its mouth.
Ramirez hurled himself at the creature. Grabbing the thing by the side of its head, he heaved it off of his partner and threw it to the ground. Ramirez caught movement in his periphery and ducked behind the car just as another hail of bullets flew past overhead.
“I got you now, motherfucker!”
The zombie half-crawled and half-pushed itself up as it stumbled out of the way and closed the distance. Ramirez readied his flashlight, but Drifts spoke from behind him, “I’ve got him.”
The veteran medic turned just as the roar of gunfire exploded from behind him. Ramirez spun around and caught a wrist holding a pistol.
“Ow! What the fuck?” Ramirez was holding Drifts’s wrist.
Ramirez released him. “You startled me.”
Massaging his wrist, Drifts said, “I can see that.” He waved the gun. “This was just inside the car.”
“Are they coming?” Ramirez asked as he turned to get his own answers. Some of the zombies had locked onto them after all the noise they had just made, but not all. Four at the end of the porch had focused on something else. He followed their gaze. “Oh no!”
They locked in on the girl by the fence.
It wasn’t a decision. “Cover me!” he shouted, sprinting towards the vulnerable girl.
“Leo!” Drifts shouted in surprise, but he had already passed the point of no return. The clatter of gunfire erupted behind him and Ramirez could hear several pops as bullets chewed the ground in his path. More gunfire boomed as Drifts returned fire back.
“Shit!” Johnny screamed as he cut off his attack, presumably to duck behind cover of his own.
“How do you like that, asshole?” Drifts shouted.
Ramirez sudden proximity caused all the zombies in the yard to focus on him. The four closing in on the girl would have already been on her, but one with a wounded leg stumbled tripping the others. They were clawing their way to their feet when Ramirez caught up to them. He whipped his flashlight around and cracked the nearest one in the back of the skull as he dashed past. It collapsed to the ground.
He didn’t pause as scooped the girl. She clutched him with everything she had “Young lady we need get you out of here!”
He was about to hurl her over the fence when he registered the sound of several large dogs. A heavy thump hit the boards of the privacy fence. He glanced at the snarling beasts through the boards of the fence and knew that the morning’s commotion particularly the dead’s proximity must have drove them mad.
He spun around as the two lead zombies came hurtling towards them with the rest of the hoard closing as well.
Ramirez shuffled her to one arm to free up one arm to wield his flashlight. He side-stepped and hammered the outstretched elbow of the closest encroaching zombie. The blow knocked the creature off balance enough that it fell against its other counterpart. The two of them slammed into the fence in a tangle. The dogs’ snarling and barking increased dramatically as they tried to get at the zombies.
Ramirez pelted forward and veered around the house as death was literally on his heels. The two zombies at the fence refocused their attention on the dogs on the other side. All the rest still had eyes only for Ramirez and the girl sobbing in his arms.
His boots ate up ground as he fled. Close to a dozen zombies stood in the path to Tanya’s house. All the other houses along the street had barred windows, and experience had taught him that people didn’t open doors to save anyone if death was behind them. The bus was their only possible refuge. His arms and back burned under the weight of the girl in his arms. The footsteps of the encroaching zombies thundered in his ears.
Two children who huddled together in the middle of the bus screamed as he leapt up the stairs. Ramirez pulled the lever to close the door right before the first zombie slammed into it. The door buckled as three more dead followed. Ramirez dropped the girl off in a seat and rushed over to shove the door closed. He braced against the steps as more zombies added their weight and the door began to give.
Grunting under the exertion, he looked back at the kids. “Is there anything by the back door?”
A girl shook her head.
“Okay, this door isn’t going to . . . uh . . . keep them out for long. I want you three to get ready.”
The girl who had shaken her head asked, “Ready for what?”
Ramirez looked her in the eye. “I’m going to release this door. Then all of us are going to run to the back of the bus. While these things are trying to get on, we will hop out and run for the safe house.”
“Is that safe?” asked the little girl he had carried.
Ramirez looked at her and his heart broke a little as remembered his daughter at the same age. “No, sweetie, but it’s not safe in here either. It’s our only chance.”
A flicker of movement drew his eyes to the floor. April was beginning to stir. He wasn’t the only one to notice. The boy in the back of the bus jabbed a finger at her. “She’s moving! She’s moving!”