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But Rags could tell it was not going to be enough.
Things started to fall apart—a little at first, and then faster, that way things will when a system breaks down. Some of the zombies in the crowd were also dressed in costumes. The tatters of costumes. She saw Batman and the Joker. Cyclops. A couple of others that she almost recognized but couldn’t name.
None of those zombies looked to have died longer ago than a year. Most more recently.
The little girl began screaming, and Rags saw that more and more of the dead were circling the center of the fight, ignoring the combatants to pursue an easier target. They closed in, dr
awn by the shrill screams of the child.
“No,” murmured Rags. Ghoulie gave a sharp warning bark. This whole fight was about to collapse into a feeding frenzy if it kept going like this.
Rags broke into a run and closed on where the girl cowered. In the heat of the battle, the heroes had lost track of her. Or they thought their two lines formed enough protection. The woman in red turned to look, but her eyes went wide as she realized too late that the mindless dead had outflanked her.
“Charlotte!” screamed the woman, but two zombies closed on her and blocked her way.
Rags skidded to a stop beside the girl, spun, and crouched with her back to the child, arms out, fighting sticks ready. Ghoulie took position on the other side, forming two sides of a box. Rags hoped it would be enough.
There were so many of the dead. The girl—Charlotte—started to bolt, to run toward the woman in red, but Rags growled at her.
“No! Stay behind me.”
Charlotte dodged backward from the grasping hands of a man in a long black cape, like something a magician might have worn. Rags ended him with a one-two blow to the head.
As he fell, though, another staggered forward. And another.
Rags clanged her pipes together to give Ghoulie a combat command. This was what Ledger had taught her, and Rags had revised and developed the rhythm. First with Bones, and then with Ghoulie. Countless hours of training and practice, of refining their battle skills to suit her body type and his. To suit her fighting style and his. Now that shock and surprise were gone, they settled into the work that they had done in a hundred towns during their long journey.
Ghoulie bounded forward and smashed into the side of the pack of zombies. His sheer bulk knocked them back and down and sideways. As Ghoulie disrupted and destabilized them, Rags used her pipes to smash and destroy.
“Come on,” she called, both to the dog and to Charlotte, as she began moving away from the center of the street. Ghoulie backed up, forcing the girl to scuttle along behind Rags. All the time, though, the dead lunged in and were met by spiked armor and flailing metal rods. They fell.
And fell.
But still they came.
Rags could see the heroes, and she saw the exact moment when they realized their own danger, and the fact that they were in the presence of something tougher than them. Something more real and powerful.
“Get behind me!” yelled Rags to the heroes. “Spread out. Form a defensive circle. Everyone facing out. Protect the girl. Do it.”
The heroes stared at her for one moment, not quite grasping what she meant, but then the woman in red nodded. She—the obvious leader of the group—began yelling to the others, pulling them away from the battle, shoving them into position until the bunch of them formed a protective ring around the little girl. Ghoulie ran up and down the lines, throwing his bulk at the dead to drive them staggering toward the heroes.
“Let them come to us,” commanded Rags. “Don’t chase—you’ll just waste energy. They’ll come to us.”
They did.
Wave after wave of them.
“Work in teams,” snapped Rags. “Short ones go for legs, big ones go for heads.”
“Do it,” ordered the woman with the sword. “Work in pairs. Iron Fist and Luke. Wolverine and Hulk. Tabby,” she said to the black-haired fighter dressed as Wonder Woman, “you feed them to me.”
And that was the rhythm. Four pairs, each knocking down, smashing skulls, or chopping necks.
Over and over and over again.
It was clear to Rags that the woman in red was the most effective of the heroes. Even more so than the one she called Iron Fist. Even so, Rags could tell that the woman had no formal training—some of her cuts were too big and required too much muscle rather than letting gravity do more of the work—but she had speed and instinct. And she was aggressive. That was good.
The zombies came at them in a relentless tidal surge of hunger.
