Mark Clodi - Discovery

Ruben, seeing his opportunity thrust his bleeding hand over her mouth. In the flash of a second everything changed, Ella's laughter was cut off and her mouth sucked greedily at Ruben's hand. She tried to stop herself, tried to pull back, but she wanted it. She felt the old man beside her, but her focus had narrowed down to feeding. Ruben's good arm took the knife gently from Ella's unresisting fingers.

A series of shots rang out as the zombies watching the hallway fired at Bill, one bullet hit his Kevlar helmet and pushed him back around the corner, where he grinned sheepishly at Javier. Bart, crouched down by one side of the hallway, took a shot as one of the zombies moved over slightly to try and get a clear line of sight on the men.

“I'm okay, the zombies are where they were before, just toss it a little to the left, I will put mine on the two smart ones by front doors. Ready?” Bill asked.

Bart nodded and Javier said, “Let's do it.” while hefting his grenade.

Letting loose a burst of automatic fire to cover them, Bart stepped forward first, he had been hoping his lower position would give him the cover he needed, but that was a false hope as all three of the zombies shot him. He died giving Bill and Javier a chance to toss in two hand grenades, one landed spot on coming to rest near the foot of the trio of zombies just out of sight from the hallway. Bill's grenade was flung farther, but took a bad bounce and landed to the right of his intended target, coming to rest between Max and Harry, who was just starting forward to help Ella.

When he saw the grenade, Harry let out a yell and jumped backwards grabbing Aubrey and knocking them both to the ground in front of the plate glass window near the front of the building. The trio of zombies firing at Bart also scattered, jumping every which way, trying to get away from the explosive. Javier and Bill put their rifles up to their shoulders and took careful aim at the fleeing figures. Javier had agreed to shoot for the leftmost zombie, if they reacted as Bill hoped they would, Bill had a bead on the one on the right. Both of those zombies were taken out of action with controlled bursts of gunfire. The middle zombie was too busy fleeing to notice his companions being destroyed, but luck was with him and neither Bill, nor Javier's follow up shots hit him in the head.

Ruben saw the grenades land on the floor, but was not distracted from what he was doing, despite the urge to throw himself down. Ella followed his bleeding hand as he lowered it, soon enough she was on her knees in front of him. Her eyes had turned back in her head until only the white pupils were showing and she sucked the blood from his hand. Raising the knife he stabbed it straight through the top of her skull. The blade sank in to the hilt and he could not pull it free as Ella fell sideways.

“Goddamn it. Now I got no weapons.” Ruben said, looking around. He spotted the grenade still on the floor three steps away from him. It hadn't gone off. The pin was still in it. Grinning he moved forward and scooped it up, then immediately fell prone as the lone zombie with a gun fired towards him.

Max had made it to Stewart and was trying to stem the flow of blood from her head when the grenades came flying into the room. At first he didn't realize what that small black object sitting six feet away between him and Harry was. His brain prompted his sluggish body to move and he dropped himself between Stewart and the grenade, trying to shield her body from the explosion. Gunfire went off creating a deafening roar in the room that seemed to echo endlessly from the tile and marble finish. It took Max a moment to realize the grenade hadn't gone off. By the time he looked up he saw Ruben ducking down to avoid being shot by the only zombie with a gun left in the room. Glancing over he saw Bill and Javier taking cover behind the bodies laying on the floor, their opponent had better cover behind the heavy desk at the entrance. Harry and Aubrey were just getting up, when Max saw Ruben slide the hand grenade over towards them. The old fool grinned at Max, displaying a slender piece of metal wire in his hand. Max realized it was the pin from the grenade half a moment before the explosion tore through the building.

Something was going on down below, Katie heard small arms fire from the Art Institute and was sure at least one bullet had crashed through one of the windows of the place out into the street.

Behind her the pounding on the door started up again. Casting a quick glance over her shoulder Katie made sure the door was still holding. Randy and her had taken a long metal pole they found and wedged it under the door's handle when they came up the stairs. They were lucky to have found anything to brace the door with, if they hadn't, well Katie didn't like to think of the world of hurt she would be in right now, fighting off zombies behind her and trying to get a bead on the worst bad guy of all. There hadn't been that many zombies in the building as they climbed to the roof, the pounding had started minutes after Randy took a header over the edge. Looking down Katie saw his body was still there, he had not turned. ' Probably he kept his presence of mind until the last and landed head first.' Katie thought.

“Status.” the voice cut jarringly into her thoughts from the radio. ' What the fuck? They were not supposed to call me.'

“Uh, still operational.” she said tentatively, not knowing exactly how to respond. Randy had handled the communication end of things for the team.

“Affirmative. We are standing by for fire orders.”

“Good. I think I will send them in shortly.” The pounding on the door stopped, “Can I get the missions to land in a specific order? So I say 'go' and you drop the missions one after another?”

There was not reply for a moment, then the radio crackled and a voice said, “Affirmative. What order and how long of an interval between missions?”

“Order is one, three, two. No delay between one and three, a three minute delay between three and two.”

“Affirmative. You say 'go' and we will drop in that order.” the man's voice on the other end hesitated, “Three is still your position?”

“Affirmative.”

“Confirm.”

“I confirm.”

“Are you sure?”

“Confirm God damn it! What are we playing a game here? Do your goddamned job and let me do mine!”

“Confirmed. Sorry.”

“Don't get all emotional on me now.”

“Say 'go' and we will started the drop, eta after 'go' is thirty seconds.”

“That's better. And buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“You better make those big drops. If I don't get them, you guys need to.”

“Understood.”

“Too bad we don't have access to nukes.” Katie muttered, then stopped, realizing she had switched the mic on.

Quiet laughter flowed into her ear, “Yeah too bad. Good luck…and, well…good luck.”

Katie thought the man might have been going say to get out of the way of the artillery, but then he maybe thought better of it, they both knew she wasn't going to get out of this one.

Behind her a single loud thump rattled the door, the bar they had put up bend in the middle and the door opened about a foot. Twirling Katie braced her gun on her knee and targeted the door. An arm reached through, feeling around for the brace, she aimed and took one shot, the bullet hit the elbow and a cry of pain screamed from inside the stairwell as the arm was quickly retracted. Down on the street an explosion rattled the windows. Spinning again, Katie leaned over to get a better look at what was happening. A couple of zombies had been blown out of the window; a man and a woman. Both looked like the type she classified as 'super' and she took aim in their general direction as another loud bang sounded behind her.