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“God, how can you even joke about that?” cried Gutsy, appalled.
Another massive strike made the wood around one of the hinges crack loud as a gunshot.
“Who’s joking?”
Before she could answer, both dogs began barking. They turned toward the long corridor and—to Gutsy’s enormous relief—began wagging their tails.
In the distance, way down the hall, Gutsy could see people running. A lot of them.
“Ah,” said Ledger without much excitement, “the cavalry.”
39
“HURRY,” SCREAMED GUTSY. “THEY’RE BREAKING through!”
As if to punctuate her fears, three of the wedges popped out from between one of the doors and the jamb as the next barrage struck. The top crates were vibrating, jerking inch by inch away from the assault.
The distant figures in the corridor resolved into shapes. Benny was out front, running like crazy, his sword in one hand; half a step behind him was Spider. Other people were coming, too: Karen and some of the reliable men and women from town. Coming fast, but still a long way down the tunnel.
“Gutsy,” warned Ledger, “get back. It’s giving way.”
She spun and slapped her hands onto the crates, trying to hold back what she could. The doors, battered and weary, finally split apart, breaking inward with such force that the shards punched the whole top row of crates off. Gutsy dove for Ledger, knocking the old soldier backward as the crates smashed down on where he’d been standing.
Then the mass of killers slammed forward so hard that half a dozen crates seemed to dance away from the impact. They toppled down, exploding, sending cans of peas and corn and Spam flying everywhere. The dogs were barking louder, but now they were challenging the monsters who were reaching through the gaps with furious hands. Gutsy scooped up several cans and hurled them like baseballs, hitting faces, breaking fingers, but not stopping the attack. Pain meant nothing to these things. She kept up the barrage, though. When she risked a glance over her shoulder, Benny and the others were still a hundred yards away.
The hinges burst from the wall in showers of flying screws and concrete dust. The wall of boxes was halfway down now, and the doors were crumbling into useless splinters. One of the maniacs thrust his head and shoulders through a gap, biting at the air in Gutsy’s direction. She snatched up a big can of pork and beans and slammed it down on the thing’s head, once, twice. The creature sagged down, plugging the biggest hole. But it thrashed and twitched—not from its own power, but because the others were tearing at it, ripping at one of their own, destroying what was between them and living flesh.
The creature abruptly vanished, sucked back out of the hole and instantly replaced by the head, shoulders, and reaching arm of a female soldier whose face was a mass of recent burns. She saw Gutsy and her face, already crazy, went madder still. There was something in her eyes. It was a light that seemed to glow with an insanity that ran miles deep. Gutsy had never seen anything like this. This wasn’t merely hunger but a bottomless need to hurt.
The woman hissed like a snake and then began pulling herself through the hole before Gutsy could shake off her shock.
“Gutsy, get back,” Ledger bellowed as he swung his sword at the woman. The reaching hands grabbed nothing and fell like dead birds to the floor. The woman kept thrusting forward with her stumps, though—a sight straight out of a nightmare. Her face showed no flicker of awareness of her own mutilation.
Ledger grabbed the corner of one of the remaining crates and tried to shove it against the opening, but his leg suddenly buckled. He cried out and fell. The handless woman squirmed the rest of the way through the hole as hands behind her shoved the way clear for more of the killers.
Gutsy grabbed Ledger and pulled him back. The old soldier groaned as fresh blood poured from his injured thigh. Grimm and Sombra kept lunging forward, biting the wriggling infected, tearing at them.
“Down,” bellowed a voice, and suddenly Benny was there, pushing past Gutsy and stabbing with his sword. Spider was right beside him, thrusting the end of his bo. Karen and Sunny-Day Ray crowded past, and soon there was a small army of people battling the killers.
Spider flinched at the sound of the maniacs’ bizarre howling. “What are they?”
“They’re infected,” was all Ledger could manage.
There was a huge crack, and the doors gave way completely as a dozen of the monsters poured in. They beat at one another, scrambled past the splintered wreckage of the double doors, climbed over the broken crates, and hurled themselves at the defenders in the hallway.
Ten seconds ago, that would have been a slaughter.
Now the creatures were met with swords and staves, shovels and pickaxes. And then there was another crack. Louder and crisper than when the doors fell, and the closest infected to Gutsy pitched backward, his head seeming to disintegrate in a dreadful cloud of red.
“Down!” roared a voice, and everyone dropped or huddled to the sides of the corridor as Sam came walking slowly up the hallway. He had a heavy assault rifle in his hands, the stock against his hip, and although he did not appear to pause or aim, every shot killed one of the infected. He fired, fired, fired.
Gutsy did not know how long the fight lasted. Half a minute? A hundred years? All she knew was that the tide turned against the mad killers, and one by one, they fell. The gunshots and the screams faded until there was no sound at all except the echoes that fled away down the corridor or escaped into the morning sunlight beyond the shattered doors.
“God…,” breathed Gutsy.
“About damn time,” said Ledger. Then he slid down the wall of crates and sat in a pool of his own blood. His smile never quite left his face, even when his eyes rolled up white and he fell over sideways.
Interlude Five Brother Mercy and Sister Sorrow
