“Necessary losses, I’m afraid. You understand, don’t you?”
Harrison reached up and wiped away more blood. It flowed from his ears and nose in a set of steady streams. He blinked and his tears were stained pink. “That... with all due respect, sir, we can’t do that.”
“I understand,” said the agent with a sympathetic nod. He looked at the cloaked woman. “Moral conflict,” he said, shaking his head. “It starts to break down their brain. A vicious circle, really. The degradation of affected areas frees them from my control, which means I need to exert more influence, which leads to more degradation.”
The staff sergeant looked up from his bloody hands. “Sir?”
“It’s always good to know there are men like you in our armed forces,” said Smith. “Men who aren’t going to blindly follow orders without at least questioning the morality of them. Could I have your sidearm, sergeant?”
“Of course, sir.” Harrison pulled the weapon from its holster, checked the chamber and the safety, and handed it grip-first to the agent. “It’s all set to go, sir. You just need to flip the safety.”
“That’s this one here, right?” He pointed at the tiny lever over the red dot.
“Yes, sir.”
Smith flipped the lever with his thumb and fired four shots into Harrison’s chest. The sergeant fell back against the wall and dropped his Bravo. His vest had taken most of it, but he still wheezed out some air.
Smith peered down the sights and squeezed the trigger a few more times. One shot went into Harrison’s throat. The next one tore open his cheek along his jaw line. The last three turned his head into a red and ivory mess.
The soldiers had their weapons up. They’d thrown Stealth to the ground and had Smith in their sights. “Do not move, fucker,” roared Taylor.
The young agent blew smoke from the pistol’s barrel. “Staff Sergeant Harrison was collaborating with the enemy,” he said. “You all knew that, right?”
“Of course, sir,” said Polk, lowering his weapon.
“I’m only sorry I didn’t shoot the traitorous fuck myself,” muttered Taylor.
*
“We’re not going to make it until reinforcements get here,” the sergeant told Danielle. He had to raise his voice over the chattering teeth. “We’re going to have to fall back.”
She looked over her shoulder. “Fall back to where?”
The soldier looked at the hordes of undead pouring through the fence. “As far as we can,” he said. “Our ammo’s not going to last much longer. I think your robot’s running out of juice, too. Hopefully we’ll meet up with our reinforcements and we can form a new line.”
“So, you’re talking about a retreat,” she said.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “basically.”
His eyes shifted around for a minute and two or three expressions flicked across his face. Then he swung his rifle up and aimed it past her. She cringed as it went off. Something hit the ground behind her.
A group of ex-soldiers had come up behind them. Almost twenty of them. The sergeant had killed the one reaching for her. He yanked her out of the way and let off a dozen rounds. Three dead men and a woman dropped.
The soldiers shifted into a circle. Four in front, three in back. Danielle could see there weren’t enough of them. They were exposed.
She forced one of her Berettas away from her body and tried to remember every offhand comment Stealth had ever made about firing a gun. She squeezed the trigger. An ex-soldier a few yards away jerked up and its shoulder went limp. She fired off two more shots and the zombie dropped.
One of the soldiers facing the fence hollered. An ex had dropped on top of him. He was trying to kick it away and bring his rifle up, but the weapon was tangled in the dead woman’s limbs. Danielle shoved the pistol at the ex’s skull and blew it apart, but there was already another one clawing at the soldier’s feet. She flinched back against the solid safety of the wall.
The sound of teeth was drowning out everything. She barely heard the sergeant yell as his rifle ran dry and he clubbed an ex with it. One soldier wrapped his hands around a zombie’s neck and tried to twist its skull off. The circle was overwhelmed.
They were all around her.
She emptied the first pistol, pulled out the second, and looked for a target. There were too many, too close. There were at least a hundred coming through the fence. Still more than a dozen coming from the base. She fired until her fingers ached and the slide locked open. Half the soldiers were down, wrestling with zombies. She was pretty sure two of them were already dead.
One of the exes reached for her with withered fingers. Danielle threw her pistol and it bounced off the snapping jaws. She was exposed. Weak. Flesh. The ex’s hand slid up her arm, headed for the exposed flesh of her face.