Jason Campagna - White Ash on Bone - A Zombie Novel

Burgess brought his sedan in behind the cruisers and scrambled out with his AR-15.

"What the hell is-" Burgess’ question died mid-sentence while he watched two rounds blow through the heart of a man in a yellow polo shirt. The man kept coming forward as if nothing had happened. A round hit him square in the head; polo shirt went down for good.

One of the other officers, a fellow state Trooper, screamed at Burgess, "If they aren’t running and screaming shoot them in the head."

In the distance, Burgess saw a man running from two women. The man tripped. The women fell on him and appeared to be biting and clawing at him. The man punched and kicked at the women knocking them back, but they kept at him. Another man fell on the victim, pressing down on his legs. The guy screamed desperately for help but only more attackers came.

Dozens of people managed to escape the edge of the melee to head to the mall. In their wake came dozens of ambling forms.

At thirty yards away, one cop opened fire with his service pistol.

"Hold your fire till they’re closer,” the other State Trooper screamed. “You’re just wasting ammo if they’re that far away."

"What's happened to these people?" Burgess shouted to the other cops.

"Fuck if I know, but if you don’t shoot them in the head, they keep coming like the mother fucking terminator," shouted one of the officers.

Burgess brought up his AR-15 and scoped in on a target, a woman. He couldn't shoot a woman, so he picked another target. He found a man with a shaved head and mustache. Perfect, Burgess thought. The skinhead had his throat torn out, and Burgess could see the man's spinal cord. The wound was an impossible injury for anyone to incur and stay mobile.

"I got range with the AR," Burgess told the others.

Burgess green dotted the man's shoulder and pulled the trigger. The round plugged the skinhead true to the mark. He kept coming like nothing had touched him. Burgess was sold, he moved the dot to the man's forehead and squeezed. The skinhead dropped, the other zombies kept coming.

Burgess lined up another headshot on a man wearing a blood-caked button up shirt. The man's head jerked back as the bullet caught him dead center in his forehead.

Several more zombies dropped as Burgess lined up shot after shot, only seconds had passed.

One of the officers reached into his car to switch on the headlights, so they could see down the darkening road south of them. The headlights revealed hundreds of bodies moving north through abandoned cars.

Closer to the squad cars, there were at least a dozen undead mere feet away from the police.

"Hit‘em now," Burgess shouted.

The police opened fire in mass. The bullets found their marks. The gunfire created a shower of organic mass as bodies dropped over.

The thunder of the blasts ended with the sounds of spent shell casings cascading down on the pavement. A few casings prolonged their chorus a moment longer by rolling off the cruisers hoods.

The horde of hundreds continued their advance into the headlights.

"We’re going to have to pull back to the mall,” Burgess said. “We can’t take that many." Three gunshots from the direction of the mall punctuated Burgess' statement.

"Oh shit, they are behind us," shouted the other State Trooper.

Burgess ordered them into their cars and up to the mall. The radio in his cruiser with crackled a plea for help from mall security.

The police cruisers sped up the mall entrance ramp and entered the parking lot. Hundreds of zombies already were scattered around the south half of the lot and several had reached the ambulance station.

If Burgess hadn’t ordered them to abandon the roadblock they would have been completely flanked by the horde.

The lot, like the road, was a complete free for all as living struggled to flee the dead.

The ambulance crews struggled to free themselves from the dead. A police officer stationed to assist the EMTs fired shot after shot into one of the attackers. Catching the zombie in the mid-section did nothing to stop it. The bullets, however, did quite a job on the glass doors into the mall, shattering them.

Emergency personnel fell back into the perceived safety of the mall. The zombies followed them through the shattered glass.

Burgess drove his car right up on the sidewalk behind the ambulances and knocked over several blood-stained stretchers. His car plowed into the rear-most zombie headed into the mall and crushed it under his car.

He threw his door open and popped out of the car with his AR. Burgess used the roof of his cruiser to steady his aim and he lined up his rifle with the zombies in the mall. Panicked screams emanated from within the building.

Burgess fired round after round at the dead while the other police cars took up position behind him.

To his right Burgess heard the shot of an officer dispatching a zombie thrashing on the ground. Other officers took up positions on either side of the mall entrance preparing to make a tactical advance into the building. Burgess slapped another magazine into his gun and then continued to rain fire on his targets.

Behind him, other officers facing the lot began to lay down fire as other zombies closed in.

"Go, move," Burgess ordered.

The police advanced into the mall dispatching zombies in front of them as they fell back from the zombies in the lot. They took up position in the food court as the dead funneled into the mall.

Burgess let loose with a round from his AR; he could hear people scream at the crack of his rifle throughout the mall. Three zombies replaced the one Burgess had just downed. He fired several more rounds and dropped more of the undead.

Passing through the zombies, the bullets shattered yet more glass doors. The horde poured in through the openings.

Burgess and the other officers let loose with a hail of gunfire culling dozens of the undead.

He sighted in on another target when his gun was jerked to the left.

A zombie that survived the initial assault into the mall grasped at Burgess.

Burgess raised his hand to push the ghoul away only to find his fingers in its mouth. He felt searing pain and a bone-crunching snap as finger after finger came lose in the zombie's mouth. He fell over, and the zombie dropped on top of him.

With his other hand, Burgess tried to free his service pistol while the zombie continued to eat at his hand. More fingers came off. Burgess screamed, and his eyes watered in pain.

His gun came loose, but he lacked the fingers on his other hand required to chamber the first round. He pounded the gun into the side of the zombie’s head and knocked it off of him.

He twisted to his side and tried to get up when he felt teeth bite into the back of his neck.

Another officer shot the zombie biting into Burgess' back.

Blood poured out of Burgess's wounds. He could feel himself weakening.

All around them, the zombies were overrunning the police in the food court.

"Shoot me," Burgess told the officer.

The man aimed the gun at Burgess’ head and pulled the trigger; the revolver was empty. The dead fell on both of them in the next heartbeat.

Burgess joined the horde. After getting up, he moved without direction down the mall. At first he had no will. He moved or stood still for no reason. Burgess had no memory or rational thought or feeling. He existed and nothing more. Then he noticed something about the electronics store. Inside the store was something he desperately wanted.

Burgess, covered in blood and his shirt half torn off, tried to force his way through the store security gate. When he pounded on the gate, blood spattered from his left palm; it lacked fingers. Each thrust brought additional red spackle until his entire wrist got caught between the bars.