“You ready?” Marcus asked Nick.
“Never been more ready,” Nick replied.
Two men who had been setting up long-range rifles positioned themselves on a high spot nearby. Shots rang out as they pulled their triggers, taking out as many guards as they could before their presence was well-known among their adversaries. Margot’s guards rushed into action, drawing their weapons and shouting orders to each other.
Along with his new companions, Nick rushed through a break in the fence. Marcus’s unit split up, covering more ground and taking shots at guards as they neared the establishment. Armed men under Margot’s orders seemed to pour from every orifice of the property. Nick ran through a hail of gunfire, stopping every few feet to raise his rifle to his eye and put a round in an oncoming guard.
The onslaught of Margot’s men seemed to thin, and a victorious feeling rose in Nick’s chest. They were succeeding. He would be reunited with Kate in no time. Except he noticed a group of guards hovering around a large building to the back of the property.
No, never mind what they were doing. He would keep running to the house to retrieve his woman. But what were they doing?
Shit.
Nick shifted direction and sprinted toward the building, which resembled a cross between a barn and a warehouse. The guards were unlocking a thick padlock holding two double doors closed. All Nick could see for sure were looming wooden walls and doors large enough to bring a semitruck through with room to spare.
A guard flanked Nick’s left side, slamming a dense metal object into his shoulder. The force knocked Nick off balance, and he shuffled along the ground until he regained his posture. The target was too close for gunfire, so Nick yanked the hunting knife from his belt and thrust it into the man’s chest. The guard slumped to the ground, gasping and clutching at the wound.
When Nick’s attention turned back toward the building surrounded by Margot’s guards, the double doors were opening. At first sight, the interior was a dark green mass through the night vision. But the mass was moving. Pulsing. It appeared amorphous.
With most of the guards surrounding the house dead, Nick’s allied soldiers fell in behind him, also peering into the abyss of the building, watching the dark legion move through the doors.
“Fuck me sideways,” Marcus commented beside Nick.
As the army of undead creatures stumbled from the building, their laughter reached Nick’s ears. Low chuckles crescendoed into shrieking fits of hysteria. Nick raised his rifle and took out a few of the nearby guards being stalked by the monsters. They were lucky to be ended by Nick’s bullets.
Fort Vanguard’s makeshift army moved in as one unit, pegging away at the Infected with their firepower. Still, as many creatures hit the ground, more were behind them. Some hobbled in their direction; others ran. The air was a drafty mix of gunfire, snarls, and grown men’s screams.
The number of soldiers’ weapons that began to click instead of shoot was unsettling as the soldiers’ ammo depleted. Nick’s comrades dropped their guns to the ground and resorted to hand-to-hand combat with the Infected. The horde swarmed around them like flies. Though they ignored Nick and targeted the others, he cut them down with his knife. If they made it to the house, the monsters would kill everyone inside.
Sweat dripped down the side of Nick’s face as he maneuvered from one Infected to the next, slicing and chopping and stabbing. The more he moved across the yard, the more bodies of his allies he discovered.
The battlefield became a symphony of laughter and gunfire. As Nick ran through the crowd of bodies, some upright, some bleeding out on the ground, a dizziness washed over him. For a moment, he swore he could smell the stagnant, polluted air of Afghanistan.
Nick’s body collided with an Infected, and he paused amid the chaos. He pressed his fingers to his eyelids, inhaling deeply in an attempt to steady himself. A scream rose up from somewhere behind Nick that turned his stomach.
Something slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground. Nick’s knees turned warm as something slick and viscous seeped through the fabric of his pants. The same thick substance coated his palms, and he tried to wipe it away, except it was not pure liquid. Something solid, like cartilage, rolled between his hands and his pants.
Nick’s head swiveled around with hesitancy. One of Marcus’s soldiers lay across the ground, one arm draped across Nick’sboots. The face of the lifeless man was twisted in horror, his last emotions carved into his features, the back of his head blown open by a gun shot. Remnants of wormy brain matter spilled from the opening. An Infected hobbled away, pink strands of cerebral matter hanging from its chin.
“Nick!” Ryan’s voice shot through the battle.
Nick’s head swiveled from figure to figure, trying to determine Ryan’s location. When he spotted Ryan grappling with one of the undead, Nick rushed through the crowd. A monster stepped in his way, and Nick collided with the side of its body.
The air was forced out of him from the impact, and Nick hit the ground. The creature paused for a mere moment as if he had only struck an inanimate obstacle, then moved on. He pushed himself to his feet and resumed his sprint. Ryan was right there behind two of the creatures. Nick could reach out and touch him if the monsters would cease their steady march toward the house.
Nick pushed the creatures aside, opening up the space where Ryan was fighting, slashing a knife around in the air. Ryan landed a strike at one creature, while another lunged at him from behind. Ryan pulled the knife out and elbowed the assailant behind him. Another Infected joined the swarm, and though Ryan was outnumbered, he continued fighting them off. Ryan attempted to stab a creature in the temple and missed, the blade hitting the skull and breaking off at the hilt. Ryan was left unarmed. When Nick finally reached him, the Infected were sinking their teeth into Ryan’s throat, ripping chunks of skin away.
Ryan’s wide, fearful eyes met Nick’s as he drove his knife into the side of the monster’s head, though it was too late. The creature fell to the ground, and Ryan fell along with it, landing on his knees.
Blood gurgled from Ryan’s mouth, spilling over his lips and into the grass.
“No!” Nick screamed. He knelt in front of Ryan, placing a hand on the back of Ryan’s head. The undying need to rescue everyone and fix everything billowed up in Nick’s chest until he felt suffocated. Nick held Ryan, searching his brain for ways to remedy this.
I can save him!
But it was Afghanistan all over again. Ryan, bleeding out. Nick, incapable and failing.
One of Margot’s men tripped over Nick’s heels fleeing from an Infected. The man’s eyes widened and fear was the last thing to touch his face before Nick plunged his hunting knife into the man’s heart. The Infected fumbled onward. Nick cast Ryan a desperate glance, wanting to hold him in his final moments. Yet the chaos around him raged on. Nick stood, breathed in through flared nostrils, and began an effusive reckoning until every Infected bastard lay lifeless on the ground.
