Mark Clodi - About a Woman, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

"Fuck. We are out of trucks. You killed three of them!" Chris said with awe in his voice, "I haven't even hit one!"

Two shots, thought Paige, I only fired twice, the other zombie near the trailer was not dead, hopefully neither was Steve, but he was on his own now. "Here they come." she said, bringing up her shotgun.

"The trucks are gone Dora!" yelled Chris just before one of the two vehicles touched bumpers with the bus. The bus slowed drastically as Dora slammed on the brakes, this caused the zombie filled car to hit them harder than they had intended, smashing in the front and splattering the back of the bus with radiator fluid. Paige had dropped her shotgun at the last possible second and grasped the window sill at the back of the bus, she was braced for the rapid slowing and impact, Chris was not so lucky, he flew forward when Dora braked, hitting his head hard on one of the large bolts on the floor from where the seats had been taken out.

Chris was then thrown into the back wall of the bus when the zombie car slammed into it, his face slammed nose first into the metal side then he spun into the corner and lay moving feebly. He was bleeding from both the front and back of his head, Paige could tell he was alive, but he seemed unable to focus or move coherently. Paige's shotgun slid forward, then back with the impacts and the young woman picked it up casually as if she had expected it to be where she put her hand when she reached down.

"Didn't see that one coming did you fucking flesh eaters, did you?" yelled Dora, followed by, "Take it Jamie, I am going back."

Paige looked out in time to see the air distortions converge on the bus, the little blond girl and the bald zombie in business clothing from the back seat scrambled onto the hood of the car and then leaped through the shattered windows of the bus. The girl bounced off of the ceiling and dove at Paige, but Paige had moved and the girl slammed into the wall. The bus swerved from side to side and one of the boys from the back of the bus screamed as he charged the six year old wonder twin. He had a sharpened metal stake in one hand and a pistol in the other. Paige saw the streams of distortion coming from the barrel of his gun moments before he fired and made sure she was not in position to intersect any of his shots.

The zombie girl just stood up and took three shots to the chest as the boy charged her trying to impale her with his pig sticker. The girl moved sideways with contemptuous ease and the boy's stake pierced the side of the bus and stuck there about waist height at a slightly upwards angle. Then the boy was shoved backwards as the other zombie came through the window and forced him back a step, this was the bald zombie, he twisted the gun out of the boy's hand and then shoved the boy onto his own stake, driving it through his body until it came out just below his ribs.

While he was doing this Paige jumped forward and hit him with the butt of her shotgun, not quite understanding the lines she was seeing around him. She learned soon enough when the blow didn't land, instead the zombie girl had stepped between them and deflected her attack with uncanny speed, leaving Paige to wonder why she hadn't seen the lines from the zombie girl. She realized, with a second glance, that she could see the lines, but they were moving very, very fast. Throwing her head to one side quickly Paige avoided the first fist of the wonder twin.

"You get them Mo! You kill them all!" yelled the bald zombie as it ripped out the side of the boy's neck with his teeth.

For a moment Paige was caught up in the lines around her, she knew where Mo's hands were going to be and didn't want her body to be in the way of those blows. However being able to see slightly ahead of time where the little wonder twin named 'Mo' was going to be didn't mean that Paige could avoid her entirely and she was grazed with a heavy blow against her ribs that sent her spinning into Dora's arms. The two looked at each other for a moment, eye to eye, practically lip to lip, Dora gave Paige a quick kiss on the lips and shoved her sideways to avoid a rabbit punch by the zombie girl.

"Jim Tiller says eat later. So does Mo. You stop eating Randall Craw and kill them first." said the little girl to the other zombie in the back.

Turning, the other zombie glared at the girls back, his chin and teeth were a wet red mess as blood poured from his mouth. Behind him the impaled boy squirmed and moaned in pain as his blood drained out of the ragged tear in his neck. Dora, moving faster than Paige had ever seen pulled her revolver up and shot the zombie girl in the back of her head. Sliding sideways the girl avoided having a bullet enter her brain, she spun and kicked backwards with her little foot in a blow that would crush Dora's knee. Paige had seen it coming and knocked Dora out of the way into a pile of luggage on the side of the bus. Off balance and reeling from the head wound the girl spun and fell into Chris, who was struggling to get to his feet. He reached around the girl with his arms, trying to hold her there for a moment while Paige finished her off.

Randall Craw didn't hesitate, when he saw his mistress go down he leaped in front of her and tackled Paige back onto the floor. The front of the bus started thumping, a steady thump, thump, thump that went on and on as it plowed ahead. Dora saw Paige wrestling with Randall while Chris held Mo tightly. Her decision on who to go after was taken away from her as Jim Tiller vaulted off of his slow moving car into the back of the bus to confront her.

"Fuck, when it rains it pours." The bus was passing through a slow moving horde of zombies. It had slowed to around ten miles an hour, not quite slow enough for the zombies to get on board, but nowhere near fast enough for Dora's tastes. She aimed at Tiller and fired as he came towards her. One of his hands fumbled at his belt for a pistol and when he pulled it out he fired at the people in the back of the bus, which caused a general panic among the passengers.

"Fucking bastard!" yelled Dora flinging her empty revolver at the man, he deflected it using his own pistol, but something from the impact must have broken part of his gun, when he turned to fire at the youngsters it exploded in his hands, sending a piece of metal spinning into his face.

Chris couldn't hold onto the girl any longer, she twisted around in his arms like a python, kicking with her little feet into the man's groin. When he saw her head bend down to bite his arm he released her and pushed her forward into the back of Jim's legs, causing both of them to go down in a heap.

Wrestling with Randall was a one sided affair, he had strength on his side, plus he was on top of her. One of the seat supports was digging into Paige's back; it felt like it was slowly impaling her. With a frantic twist and heave she managed to get the man shoved to one side of her, but she could not make use of the momentary edge she had created to do more than back up a few inches.

As Randall came at her again she raised her knee up and kept him from getting a full grip on her. When he went to bite her arm she saw it coming and tore away from him, then she delivered a blow to the center of his face with as much strength as she could put into such a short punch. He howled and lowered his teeth towards her thigh and the offending knee that was preventing him from getting close. Just as his teeth were about to close on her leg Paige pulled it back away from him. Dora's hand reached down and plucked the man away from her. She tossed him into the emergency door at the back of the bus. Randall hit it hard and the door popped open, giving the passengers a better view of the last zombie car coming up on them. The car was smoking horribly as the engine overheated and the anti-freeze from the shattered radiator burned off. One of Randall's hands caught the side of the doorway and he swung himself around the outside of the bus onto the bumper.