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Alice gaped at her, the pipe forgotten in her hands. “Gutsy,” she gasped, “you?
?re amazing.”
Despite everything and all the violent madness around her, Gutsy felt her cheeks begin to burn.
92
THEY WERE OLD AND THEY felt their years, but Mr. Urrea and Mr. Ford stepped up to face the oncoming storm of the dead.
The Chess Players were dressed in makeshift armor—Dallas Cowboys football helmets, hockey pads, SWAT team vests, and antique weapons looted from a museum. Ford carried a medieval horseman’s ax, and Urrea had a Swiss longsword from the early sixteenth century. The weapons were pitted with rust, but they had been sharpened and had already proven their effectiveness. Bodies lay all around them.
They stood in the street in front of the general store. Behind them, crouching in the shelter of barrels of grain and kegs of beer, were dozens of children, pregnant women, the disabled, and people too old to fight. Fights raged up and down the street, and so far every one of the ravagers, shamblers, and fast-infected who had come hunting for the innocent had died there on the street.
“Eleven,” said Ford, panting for breath during a lull.
“What?” asked Urrea.
“I got eleven. You got nine.”
“What are you talking about? I killed the two crawlers,” he said, pointing to infected who had been crippled in some other part of the fight but who’d clawed their way across the street to join this battle.
“You can’t count them,” insisted Ford.
“The heck I can’t.”
“Okay, so maybe those two count as one. That still leaves you with ten. I’m winning. I’m Legolas.”
“What?”
“Legolas,” said Ford, “Lord of the Rings. Remember the Battle of Helm’s Deep? He and Gimli kept a tally? Legolas killed the most orcs.”
“You’re delusional,” said Urrea. “Besides, I’m Legolas.”
“How do you figure that?”
He tapped Ford’s weapon with his bloody sword. “Gimli was the one with the ax.”
“No way, José, I’m—oh crap.” Ford and Urrea set themselves as a fresh wave of shamblers lumbered toward them. They both smiled like heroes from some ancient tale. If either saw the fear in the other’s eyes, neither mentioned it. After all, heroes were allowed to be afraid.
93
THE TUNNEL MIGHT AS WELL have been the entrance to the underworld from an ancient myth.
The two quads filled the corridor with thunder that drowned out the moans of the dead and the sound of slaughter.
It was quickly apparent that there were three kinds of monsters down here. Most of them were R1 slow zoms, and half of these were recently murdered soldiers. There were a few R3’s—fast and devious, but no match for the four of them in their riot gear and weapons. But then there were the ravagers. They were the most dangerous and armed, but luckily, there weren’t many of them; and they were all the way at the far end of the throng of living dead. Their own mindless followers kept them from using their guns effectively.
The quads were sturdy, with roll bars and crash grilles, and steel impact plates welded in place by the mechanics in town. Built for fighting the dead. Built for brutal work. Benny led the way and smashed into the shamblers, knocking them back against their fellows while Nix kept up a continuous fire. Chong was behind him, his body shifted to the right to allow Lilah to shoot past him. Even with the shotguns taken from the prison, the four of them earned every yard they gained. Nix and Lilah fired their guns dry, reloaded, kept firing.
Together they stormed the gates of hell.
94
THEY WERE LOSING AND ALETHEA knew it.
Not just them, but the whole town. There were still hundreds of los muertos out there and dozens of ravagers. There were too many. They never got tired, they never lost heart, they did not understand the concept of despair, or compromise, or surrender.
It was like fighting a hurricane. There was simply no way to turn your back on it, no way to reason with it. It was a force of nature, and—even perverted as they were by science—so were the armies of the dead.
