John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Go.”

“I’m running out of forty-five mags. I’ve got ammo but I don’t exactly want to reammo in here.”

“I’ve got mags,” Fontana said.

“Like I’m gonna use a Colt if I don’t gotta,” Faith said. “I could also use a break.”

“Roger. Pull back to the entrance.”

“This does get the adrenal gland, don’t it?” Fontana said, firing twice in rapid succession. “They just seem to come out of nowhere.”

They’d learned when they cleared the theatre to shut the door behind them. It meant they didn’t have a way out. It also meant they didn’t have leakers that suddenly appeared when they thought they were at a “secure” point.

“And I think if we’re going to keep clearing this thing we might as well all go to carbines,” Faith said, starting. She fired two rounds into a body on the floor. “It moved. I swear it did.”

* * *

“How long can I stand under here?” Faith shouted as the water from the fire hose poured over her.

“As long as you want!” the guy manning the system wasn’t Coast Guard. She didn’t even recognize him. “It recycles!”

“Cool,” Faith muttered, giving him a thumbs up. She was just going to stand there for a while then.

* * *

“Be careful not to fire in the direction of the other team,” Fontana said nervously. “And watch the bouncers.”

“No worries,” Faith said, hefting the AK variant. The Arsenal SLR-107 would only have been vaguely recognizable to Mikhail Kalashnikov. It had an improved safety, AR buttstock, rail with lights and Trijicon TA11F. But the guts were still the reliable system Kalashnikov had stolen from various WWII assault rifles, then refined. “I have fired this thing before…”

A zombie charged out of the shadows to her right and she turned and double tapped it in the chest. The rounds continued through the body and bounced off a bar on the other side, and pinged off into the darkness.

“Oops,” she said as the infected collapsed on the floor.

“You hit?” Fontana asked.

“No. You?”

“I’m good.”

“I hate full metal jacket…”

* * *

“Okay, okay, okay,” Faith said. “I just… Seriously ? An indoor pool ? Seriously?”

The cavernous room was marked “spa.” Faith had always wanted to go to a spa. She’d sort of envisioned small rooms with hot tubs and massage tables or something. She’d always wondered what a “walnut scrub” was.

There were hot tubs scattered around in various styles. There were Roman baths, Japanese baths, stone flagging and walls… The ceiling, far, far overhead, was a massive skylight, which gave them an unfortunately clear view of the interior.

Zombies would eat each other for food. All they really needed to survive was something resembling water. And the “spa” had had lots of water.

So there were lots of zombies. And although they’d been awakened by Steve’s whistle, it had echoed in the cavernous interior and they weren’t sure where to go. The room was lit well enough they’d turned off their taclights. Not to mention, there were pools of water all over the place so even the zombies that noticed them were having a hard time getting to them.

Except for the close ones.

“I’m really glad we went to rifles,” she said, targeting one of the nearer zombies. It was having to go around a counter to get to them and she got it with a deflection head shot on the run and it dropped out of sight.

“Nice,” Fontana said, taking two more down.

“Is it just me, or was that exactly like shooting a duck in an arcade?” Faith said. She fired at another one but missed. “We going to move forward?”

“Yes,” Steve said, firing. “But one team. Head for that high ground over there.”

The “high ground” was what had probably been an indoor waterfall.

“Hug the wall,” Steve said. “Take them down as they come to us. Don’t engage over twenty five meters unless I say so.”

“What’s the fun of that?” Faith asked.

“I’d like as many of the rounds to go into the zombies as possible,” Steve said.

“Don’t shoot til you see the reds of their eyes,” Fontana said. “Gotcha.”

* * *

The one problem with the “high ground” was that once they’d gotten up there, all the zombies could see them and closed in. And they couldn’t exactly retreat.

“This is getting sort of hot,” Fontana said, doing a fast reload. He had to pat for magazines until he found one.

“Hot, yeah,” Faith said, firing steadily at the mass of infecteds clawing their way up the former waterfall. “But it’s not in the dunny, yet.”

“Dunny?” Hooch asked.

“Aussie for a latrine,” Steve said.

“What is, in your opinion, in the dunny?” Fontana said. “Cause I could sure use some time to reload mags.”

“Being in the dunny isn’t no time to reload magazines,” Faith said, reloading. “Being in the dunny is all your knives are stuck in bodies, you’re tripping over your mags and brass and your Halligan tool is bent.”

“I can’t wait for you to get legal so I can propose….”

* * *

“We in the dunny, yet?” Fontana asked as he stuck the pry base of his Halligan into a zombie’s eye.

“Nope,” Faith said, pounding one on the head with her AK. “I haven’t had to shoot one off me and I’ve yet to pull a knife…”

* * *

“….dunny yet?” Hooch yelled, sticking his bowie knife into a zombie’s stomach and ripping up.

“Halligan tool bent?” Faith asked, firing into a zombie’s head. Another one grabbed her legs and her feet slipped out from under her. The zombie dragged her down the rocks of the waterfall as she kicked at it. Others piled on, trying to bite through her armor.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Fontana said.

“Okay,” she yelled. “ Now we’re getting there!”

“We’re going to have to melee down to her,” Steve said, smashing his Halligan into a zombie’s head.

“We’re barely holding here,” Fontana said.

“When we’ve winnowed them down…”

* * *

“Nice thing about being in a scrum,” Faith said as Fontana dragged her out from under the bodies. Steve was doing the same thing for Hooch. “You don’t have to worry which direction you’re aiming and there’s no real way to miss. That was in the dunny.” She looked around, sitting up, her legs still covered by zombie bodies.

“Hey, look, the waterfall is working again. Sort of…”

* * *

Day Four

Faith stood under the decontamination shower and made a motion with one hand for “more…”

* * *

Day Six

“Okay, seriously, like, how many of these damned things are there…?”

* * *

Day Nine

“ This is why I hate five five six.” Faith fired three more times. “Oh, just die already!”

As the supply of rounds for the Smiths’ AK variants dwindled, they had switched to the Coast Guard M4s, which used the much smaller 5.56mm round. The arguments for or against 5.56 were complex but the fact that it generally took multiple rounds to stop one of the infected was notable.

“You need to shoot them in the head,” Fontana said, double tapping a zombie.

On the other hand, a team had finally found the key for the Campbell’s ammunition magazine, which had a plentiful supply of 5.56.

“The United States started to go downhill when it changed from a round designed to kill the enemies of our glorious republic to one designed to piss them off,” Faith said, shooting a zombie five times, then walking up and shooting the still-thrashing infected in the head. “Seriously, just die, okay?”