I grabbed the nearest pistol that looked like it might be loaded—bad gun safety, good zombie safety, it balances—and whirled, taking aim right at the place I estimated my dead friend’s head would be. “Bang, ugly,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
Thank God for paranoia and overpreparedness. The gun barked and a large chunk of the zombie’s skull vanished, transformed into red mist and a hail of bone fragments. I shoved the pistol into my belt and tapped my ear cuff, heading for the back of the room.
“Shaun?”
“Mahir, listen. If you can get a connection to Becks, tell her she needs to back up. I’m coming in with grenades.” I grabbed guns as I walked, dropping anything too light to be loaded and cramming the rest into my belt. If I was making a last stand, I was doing it so ridiculously overprepared that I’d rattle when I walked.
Mahir sighed deeply. “Of course you are. Couldn’t you try something a little less, I don’t know, insanely idiotic?”
“I could, but they don’t have a flamethrower here. Now let her know.”
“I’m on it.” The connection died.
Grabbing the top box of grenades, I paused only long enough to check that its contents were both intact and well secured. Then I ran.
Becks met me halfway down the hall, somehow managing to run silently in her combat boots. There was one more skill I’d never mastered. “What are you doing?” she demanded, tone barely above a whisper. “Mahir called me! He said you told him to do it! I could’ve been killed! Are you really planning to use grenades?”
“You got a better idea?”
“No, but the risk of structural damage—”
“Is minimal. Are the zombies where you left them?”
“What? Yes.”
“Then you would have been killed if you’d still been in that hallway.” I kept moving, holding the box up just enough for her to see the shape of it. “I’m going to aerosolize me some dead guys.”
“You’re insane.”
“Yeah, probably.” I pulled the first pistol I’d snagged out of my waistband, passing it to her. “Stay out here and guard my back. Oh, and if you could call Dr. Abbey and tell her to turn off the lab ventilation system until the spray settles, that would probably be good. I don’t want to zombie-out the whole room trying to save them.”
“You’re dangerously insane,” Becks amended—but she took the pistol, and added a quick, “Good luck,” before retreating farther down the hall.
I felt better knowing she was out there. One close call per day is pretty much my limit. I walked until I reached the end of the short hall leading to Dr. Abbey’s lab. The zombies were still trying to claw their way inside, their moaning echoing through the confined space until it seemed loud enough to drive a man insane. They were still focused on the prey in front of them, and not on things moving around behind them. That was good. I’d be changing that in a moment, but for now, distracted zombies were in my best interests.
Putting the box of concussion grenades on the floor, I opened the lid and pulled out the top two. They were designed for use in situations like this one, and would do maximal damage to soft tissue—such as zombies—while doing minimal structural damage to the building surrounding the zombies. They were usually used for large government extermination runs. A series of helpful cartoon thumbnails on the inside lid of the box used stick figures and the universal sign for NO to remind me that I shouldn’t use concussion grenades without putting on a gas mask first, since aerosolized zombie isn’t good for anybody.
“Too bad I have no respect for safety precautions,” I muttered, and pulled the pin on the first grenade.
I might be willing to stand in the open air while I created a fine red mist of viral particulates, but that didn’t make me stupid. I chucked the first grenade into the middle of the mob, causing about half of them to turn in my direction. I threw the second grenade about three feet in front of the mob. Then I ran, pausing only to grab two more grenades out of the top of the box. I pulled the pins and threw them behind me, into the path of the onrushing mob.
One, said George. Two, three…
“Four, five,” I added, and kept running.
The first grenade went off with a low crumping sound, muffled enough to tell me that it had been buried by a substantial number of bodies when it exploded. The other three went off in rapid succession, each of them a little louder and less cushioned by the weight of the bodies on top of it. I kept running. When Becks came into sight ahead of me, I stepped to the side, giving her a clear line of fire, and pulled two of the guns from my waistband.