My heart lurched. The familiar saunter was unmistakable. Jase. I watched as he fought alongside Eddy, each teenager firing his own AR-15, and Mutt tucked into a pocket, seemingly fearless. “Be safe,” I whispered before being forced to deal with my own issues.
I fired my last two bullets into a zed that made it onto the Humvee and resumed kicking the monsters back. My muscles burned and shook from exhaustion, but I kept pushing.
Finally, somehow, the tides began to shift. With the zeds centralized around the third barrack, Tyler shouted commands into his radio, and the troops formed a front against the mass. Soldiers with grenade launchers unleashed a fury of explosions onto the undead invaders.
Tyler’s .30 cal clicked on empty. The sudden lack of vibration and noise washed despair over me. Tyler and I shared a knowing glance.
The soldier I’d shoved off the back had turned and now jumped at the truck. Freshly turned zeds were nearly as fast and agile as humans, and it worked its way through the lumbering rotted lot to climb onto the Humvee. It lunged at Tyler first, who was already pulling out his knife. I grabbed the zed’s shirt to slow it down. It twisted around and lashed out at me. I jumped back, nearly tumbling off the edge and into the sea of waiting arms. As the zed came at me, Tyler shoved a blade through the skull of what used to be one of Camp Fox’s loyal soldiers.
The zed collapsed, and Tyler fell to his knees, his shoulders slumped. “Jonesie was a good man.”
I rested a hand on his back.
Tyler’s head sagged. “He was the last of my original squad.”
I stood there, staring out over the clawed hands reaching for us. Every now and then one fell. Confused, I scanned to find several troops shooting their way toward us. The heaviness from my chest lifted, and I was able to suck in a breath. “Look.” I pulled Tyler up. “See? It’s going to be okay.”
By the time the soldiers reached us, no zeds were left standing. Single shots were fired sporadically as soldiers put down zeds still moving.
I jumped down, stumbling over bodies. The Camp was utter carnage. Blood mixed with brown goo. I searched for signs of Jase, and found him with Eddy, finishing off wounded zeds. I smiled. You’re going to be all right.
My smile faded when I caught a glimpse of camouflage propped against the side of the barrack, and I burst toward him. But I wasn’t fast enough. “Nick!” I cried out right as the badly injured soldier shoved his pistol in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.
I collapsed to my knees.
I never saw the zed until it fell upon me.
Chapter XIV
I rolled over, kicking away from the zed, and stabbed it through its eye before I realized that someone had already shot it from behind. Brown sludge seeped from the eye like half-set pudding, and I fell onto my butt, gagging at the stench.
“You okay?”
I looked up to see Griz standing before me.
“I am now,” I said.
He held out a hand and pulled me up. “Hoorah,” he grunted before heading after another zed that needed put down.
I stood near the third barrack—what remained of it, anyway—which was now a giant campfire, with flickers of embers and glints of soot showering us. Corpses covered the ground around me. Most lay unmoving. One zed had a blade through its mouth, pinning it to the ground. It chewed at the handle even while it convulsed and spasmed.
Someone had turned the sirens off, but the remaining sounds—cries of the dying—were heart-wrenching. A woman’s weeping drew me to the shadows to my left. I edged closer, keeping the knife ready. She lay amid the corpses, her shoulder and leg badly chewed. She didn’t have long before she turned, not with injuries that bad. She was clawing at the dirt with wretched, bloody hands, trying to pull herself toward something. “My baby,” she cried over and over.