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Benny’s ears rang with the noise of gunfire and screams. His sword dripped with gore. Nix and Lilah had long since run out of pistol ammunition and switched to the clumsier but more effective shotguns. Chong eventually switched from bow to long gun too. The dead could not use their weight of numbers to advantage because the whole corridor was one long choke point. The four of them fought with brutal efficiency.
It was a rhythm of mayhem, a ritual of destruction.
Never before had the training they’d gotten—first from Tom and later from Captain Ledger—mattered as much. Never before had it sunk in that the four of them were this dangerous.
Never before had Benny felt more like a killer. He was no fan of guns, but after a while it became clear that the only way to reach the end of the tunnel was with the shotguns. He went half-deaf from the roar and hated having to use them. Somehow, to him, they were cruder and less civilized than his sword. He was aware that this was fractured logic, but it was how he felt. He used the shotgun with as much precision as he could, and as it became easier to use and as the efficiency of it became evident, he felt himself moving forward in a machinelike way. It did the job, but it did not feel right. He understood that he needed these skills and this weapon, but it also hurt him. Maybe because it detached him from the act of quieting far more so than the sword. Each of the infected still mattered to him on a deep level, on a human level. In other battles, Benny had felt himself losing pieces of his soul with every undead life he took. There was even one time when he simply wanted to stop doing harm, even harm to these unfeeling monsters, and just let them take him. That had been a black moment in his life, and he carried the memory of it with perfect clarity.
Even with that, he fought.
The dead fell and he moved on.
There were far fewer of them now, and beyond the last dozen or so, Benny could see a heavy metal door. The last ravagers were trying to force it open, but so far had not managed it.
They passed stacks of supplies. Cases of bottled water, tanks of propane and other fuels. Pallets of canned goods. Enough to feed thousands of people for years. Hidden away down here. Some of the ravagers tried to hide behind those supplies, but Lilah and Nix, Benny and Chong found them.
Hunted them.
And they killed them all.
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ALETHEA HAD TO TURN AWAY from the spectacle of the man with the sword and the armored dog doing insane amounts of damage down there, because things were not going as well up on the catwalk.
Mrs. Cuddly went down with a knife stuck in her thigh and lay there, gasping, trying to use her cleaver and meat tenderizer even while she was down. The guards on the wall were mostly dead, and some civilians had climbed up to help. Alethea saw many of them go down, some dragged to pain and horror by reanimating guards. Every now and then, though, one of the fast-infected or an armed ravager would spin away as another mystery bullet ended their lives. If it wasn’t for the shooter—whoever and wherever he was—the wall would have been lost.
Alethea pulled Spider back and they stood above Mrs. Cuddly, defending her as the dead closed in.
• • •
In the street below, Alice Chung stood behind the Chess Players, holding her piece of pipe. She had no body armor, and the old men had tried to tell her to hide. She did not. Alice’s mind was filled with the image of Gutsy Gomez and her dog attacking and killing five los muertos. Five, and Gutsy was two inches shorter than Alice.
She gripped her pipe, determined to fight. Determined to make Gutsy proud of her.
• • •
Karen Peak led a team of guards and townsfolk in a rally to try to reclaim the town square. Adolf Cuddly was with her, his guns belching fire and his face remaining completely impassive, no matter what happened around him.
Karen held a Beretta M9 and her hands ached from all th
e recoil. She’d lost count of how many rounds she’d fired. When all her magazines had been spent, she’d taken more from dead guards, and even from dead ravagers. Her hands were powder burned and her eyes stung from smoke and tears.
“Here they come,” she yelled as a new wave of fast-infected rushed toward them.
She raised her gun and fired.
• • •
The Chess Players were slowing down. They both knew it.
The street was heaped with the dead, but their weapons weighed ten thousand tons. Ford was wheezing and there were red blotches on his cheeks. His eyes looked fevered. Urrea had pains in his chest and down his left arm.
They tried to hold the line, but they were forced to give ground. Inch by bloody inch.
• • •
Captain Ledger loved a good fight.
This wasn’t a good fight.
