Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

The woman was still screaming.

SWAT was with us now, and they had taken the time to get the big guns. ‘Blow it to pieces, and start first aid on the woman,’ I said.

‘I give the orders here, Blake,’ Badger said.

‘Fine, you decide what we’re going to do, Sergeant. We’re going back to the car for the rest of our weapons, then we’ll come back and help you with the woman and the zombie if it’s still intact.’

I turned and went back for the car and the rest of the arsenal. Nicky followed without hesitation. Dev hesitated while we walked a step or two, but it was Lisandro who almost didn’t come at all. We were almost to the car when he jogged up behind us.

‘I can’t believe you left that woman like that,’ he said, as he came to the back of the SUV while we started getting out the long guns.

‘SWAT knows basic first aid, and if we’re lucky maybe we got the paramedic.’ I slid the AR over me in the tactical sling and settled the shotgun into its sling and Velcro on the vest. I preferred the AR to the shotgun for the suburbs. I added extra ammo to match the guns, and I was ready.

We went back at a paced jog and heard more gunfire. Machete was firing into the zombie, keeping it off the woman. Badger was wrapping up the woman’s arm. Yancey and Willy were watching the perimeter for more undead. They looked very organized and official.

‘Nice of you to join the party, Blake,’ Badger said.

The woman seemed to be unconscious. I didn’t know if she’d fainted from fear or blood loss. ‘If we’d waited to gear up, the zombie could have killed her before we got to her,’ I said.

‘You stay with the group unless ordered otherwise, Blake, is that clear?’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ I said.

Machete had finally reduced the zombie to something that could barely crawl; without fire it was the best we could do. I had grenades in some of the pockets of the tactical pants, but if I set a zombie on fire here it could run into a house and set it on fire before it burned enough to be immobile. Suburbs were hard, so many soft targets.

‘We have to get her a hospital,’ Badger said.

‘Yeah, so much for hunting vampires,’ I said.

Badger looked up and gave me a very unfriendly look. ‘We can’t leave her like this.’

‘I know, and I’ll bet almost anything that this isn’t the only zombie attacking citizens right now.’

‘I thought zombies couldn’t come out during daylight,’ Machete said, coming back with his rifle loose in one hand.

‘They don’t like daylight, but they can walk around in it, or most of them can. They’ll be slower and a little more confused in daylight, so the flesh eaters will be faster and more deadly when we lose the sun.’

‘It looked pretty damn fast,’ Machete said.

‘It was,’ I said.

‘The vampire did this, didn’t he?’ Yancey asked.

‘Yeah, he did. We have to take her to the hospital. We’ll have to protect the citizens of Boulder from the walking dead, so we won’t get to the mountains before nightfall.’

‘You’re saying he did this as a diversion.’

‘Yep.’

‘How can he make them rise when he’s miles away?’ Willy asked.

‘Good question, but I don’t think he raised the zombies today fresh. I think he’s just letting us see some of the ones he raised earlier. He’s sacrificing them as a diversion from his real body. Destroying his original body is the only way to kill him and stop this from happening.’

‘You ran after her first, Blake. You weren’t willing to let her die so we could kill the vampire.’

I looked at Badger as he picked up the woman with her freshly bandaged arm and settled her like a child in his big arms. ‘No, I couldn’t just keep driving and let her die like this, and that is what he was counting on.’

‘If you could have kept driving and let her die, then you wouldn’t be human,’ he said.

‘By saving her and all the others who are being attacked right now, we’re giving him time to have one of his servants move his body and missing the chance to kill him once and for all. It’ll cost lives.’

Badger nodded. ‘You’re probably right, but I’m still glad we saved this woman.’

I sighed. ‘So am I; damn it to hell, but so am I.’

When we got back to the trucks, Little Henry wasn’t there. Badger said, ‘I told him to stay here, damn it.’

‘There he is,’ Yancey said.

At the same time Nicky said, ‘There,’ and pointed.

I followed where he pointed, and it was Little Henry running toward us, using all that long leg to run as fast as he could, carrying someone over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. There were two zombies chasing them.

‘Go save his ass, then we got a hospital run to make,’ Sergeant Badger said.

We had a second where SWAT looked at us and we looked at them. I said, ‘We’ll take the zombies, you secure the civilians.’

‘Roger that,’ Yancey said.

I wanted my shotgun when we got to the zombies, but once you had the AR on its tac swing for running, you had to hold it as you ran, or it tangled your legs. The shotgun in its cross-draw shoulder sleeve was fine for running; I’d just have to change guns when we got there. I started jogging toward the zombies and Little Henry. Dev, Lisandro, and Nicky did the same, all of us jogging with our ARs in our hands. The men fell in around me, jogging easily to keep up. SWAT was moving out to meet Little Henry and there was a moment when all eight of us were close. Then the zombies seemed to sense that their prey was getting away, because they suddenly picked up their own pace, and it was fast. Why was it that only the flesh-eating zombies ever moved like that? I started to run, using that otherworldly speed the way I had in the mountains, and my men paced me, easily. They could have outstripped my shorter stride, but they stayed with me, because I had a plan, I would tell them what to do; people with training like people with plans, and they’ll stay with you as long as you keep having a plan and making decisions.

We left SWAT behind, because humans couldn’t move like we could. We came even with Little Henry. He was running full out, long legs eating up the ground, the woman on his shoulder bouncing a little as he kept moving toward SWAT and we kept moving toward the zombies.

I let my AR slide to one side, keeping my left hand on it, and reached with my right hand to draw the shotgun out of its back sleeve. I had a few moments of running with a gun in each hand. Nicky was beside me with the same double-handed run. I stopped with a few yards between us and the running zombies. I let the AR fall from my left hand and put both hands on the shotgun, raised it to my shoulder, and snugged it into place as the zombies ate up the ground between us. Nicky mirrored me.

I called, ‘Right.’

He answered, ‘Left.’

I shot the knee of the zombie on the right. It stumbled, falling to the ground. The zombie on the left fell down as Nicky blew its leg out from under it, too. Lisandro and Dev moved up on both sides of us to flank the zombies. They got up off the ground on hands and the remaining leg, snarling, and launched themselves at us. Nicky and I shot them in the heads; at this distance most of the upper parts of the heads exploded. Their bodies recovered from the force of the shots and they got back up. Lisandro and Dev fired into their bodies. Again the zombies reacted to the physics, but they couldn’t feel pain, or fear, and they were already dead, so they got back up. Nicky and I shot them again, took the rest of their heads. Lisandro and Dev concentrated on the other intact leg. They used their hands to start to crawl toward us. Nicky and I used the shotgun to blow a hand into red mist on each of them. Lisandro moved up and shot the arm that Nicky had taken the hand off in a series of rapid gunshots until the arm was destroyed. Dev did the same on the arm of my zombie. Nicky and I took the other hand on our zombies, and Lisandro and Dev took out the arms. The zombies lay on the ground with legs and arms ruined, no heads, their bodies destroyed, and the remains of the bodies started trying to wiggle forward.