I gritted my teeth and spoke to Charlie. “If you want to help them and be with Rebecca in case it all goes to shit, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
Charlie shook his head. “It’s a good day to die, brother.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “You’re a corny one, you know that?”
“Just move, I got your back.” Charlie said.
I wasn’t about to waste time with sentimentality. I ran to the right of the attacking zombies, my movement detected by some on the fringes and starting them towards us. I drew my SIG and shot the nearest one in the face. The sound carried over the crowd and dozens of dead faces turned my way. I shot another one, and lined up a third for another shot.
“Hey, you fuckers! You want it, come and get it!” I screamed as I fired, dropping a third one. In the abrupt silence, I shouted as loud as I could to the defenders. “You’re breached on the east! Go!” I could see Tommy spin around and grab Jason and head for the side of the building.
Roughly two thirds of the attacking horde started my way, me being the easier prey and the ones coming up the street turned my way as well. All I could think of was a line from a funny zombie movie. Oh, bullocks.
I slowly backed away from the advancing horde, taking the time to shoot as many as I could. I could hear Charlie’s sidearm barking next to me as he started dropping zombies as well. I knew we were still looking at well over three hundred zombies even after our ammo went dry, but a dead zombie was a good zombie. I wanted to draw away as many as I could, giving the defenders of the townsfolk time to deal with the internal threat and regroup. My goal was to reach the bandstand gazebo in the park. I had seen it the other night during our tour and it made the most sense as a position of defense. It was a large elevated platform, surrounded by a fence, accessible only through one stairway. If Charlie and I could make it there, we stood a good chance of being able to blunt the horde and make them attack us in fewer numbers.
I walked at a normal pace to the edge of the steps to the platform, making sure Charlie was with me and the horde had followed. Some of the back ones went after the town hall defenders again. Essentially, Charlie and I were in the fight of our lives.
I stopped about fifteen feet in front of the steps and waited. The crowd moved slowly, their shambling gait looking like a rippling body of grey water. The sun climbed higher in the sky, shortening the shadows on the lawn. None of these things was relevant, but for some reason I noticed them. A slow burning rage was building within me, causing me to grip my gun tighter and check the availability of my spare magazines. I would not go down without a fight and would take many enemies with me to pay my toll.
I looked over at Charlie, who seemed to be absorbed in the same thoughts I was, looking around, then settling into the inevitable with a cold look in his eyes and slight snarl on his lips.
“Make a barrier,” I said. “Make the fuckers work for it.” I was immensely glad the platform had only one set of stairs. If it had two, we’d never have a chance here.
I shot the first one to reach my killing zone and another, the sound of the shots bawoinging off the ceiling of the gazebo. That would have gotten old fast if it wasn’t so desperate. I killed as they reached my zone, the bodies falling on top of each other and forcing the ones behind to stumble a little. It was a little uncomfortable, waiting for some to get close for a shot, but we needed to make every shot count and kill as many as we could. If we could get a barrier of bodies up, then the rest would have to work to get to us and we could have the advantage.
I shot quickly, dropping a few more as they started to get closer and attack en masse. Sometimes I got lucky and one shot would nail two of them. Not often enough, sadly. The pile of grayish bodies grew and Charlie’s gun cracked as much as mine did. We piled up several bodies in succession. I didn’t see them as individuals, I just saw them as targets.
I backed up a few steps as the bodies collapsed slightly towards us from the push from behind by the rest of the mob, then changed magazines again. I had one more fifteen round magazine, then I was out. I called this out to Charlie and he replied he was done in seven rounds. We backed up to the foot of the stairs and fired still, the barrels of our guns hot to the touch and smoking. The bodies were piled about five feet high, which made a decent barrier to slow down the horde. We were still in for a bitch of a fight.
My gun clicked empty and I holstered it, pulling out my pickaxe with my other hand. Charlie was ready with his twin tomahawks and we faced the oncoming, crawling horde like a couple of warriors from ancient times. If we just had a couple of half-naked buxom beauties to protect on the platform I might have actually enjoyed myself.
The horde surrounded the gazebo, cutting off any retreat we might have had and the high walls prevented them from hitting us from behind. All we needed to do was wait for them to come to us.
And come they did. The first one to cross the barrier was a small female, probably a teenager, with ripped jeans and halter top. Her mottled grey skin glinted in the sun, and her dead blue eyes stared at me with unquenchable hunger. I split her skull and, picking up the dead body, threw it on the pile, knocking back two others who were clumsily making their way across the corpses.
Figuring I was going to need another weapon, I pulled my knife, waiting for the next ghoul to come near while I watched Charlie dispatch a man who was completely naked, his pallid skin streaked with claw marks and bites. The body was kicked into the barrier as it fell, the man’s big butt pointing towards us when it finished falling. I let out a grim chuckle to be joined by Charlie’s soft laugh. It’s not often the dead moon you, especially after you’ve killed them.
I kept the image of my baby boy in my mind and I fought for him. I would not allow the world to come to this, where the last few humans make a stand against the coming wave of death. My son would not inherit this world.
As I killed, once again I had to restrain myself from charging headlong into the fray and killing my enemies as they killed me. The ancient fire of battle burned in my veins and I welcomed it as I welcomed the horde with taunts and sneers. “Come on, you witless fucks. Come and die. I’ll set you free.” Beside me Charlie began to growl low in his chest. I recognized it as his battle cry. Let the harvest of the dead begin. “Come on!” I raged at the dead faces staring at me.
The dead began to advance and Charlie and I killed them. We killed those who came to the barrier and those who tried to climb over it. We piled the bodies up until we were crushing skulls that peered at us from behind other corpses. We fought until our arms were leaden. We fought until I broke the handle on my pickaxe and had to use a shortened grip on splintered wood. We fought until Charlie broke a tomahawk handle, leaving him to fight with a single ‘hawk and his nine-inch knife. We killed the owners of the grasping, clawed hands blackened with old blood. We killed former mothers, fathers, and their children. We killed white collar workers, blue collar workers, and everyone in between. We fought until the pile of the dead fell forward from the push behind, and we retreated to the middle of the stairs, killing those zombies who crawled towards us, single-minded of purpose.
Charlie and I were covered in zombie gore up to our necks and still we fought. As I killed, a line from an ancient legend came to mind, describing a battle between a hero and a horde of advancing enemies; a hero who died so his companions could live… “He held the bridge at Gallerbru.” I idly wondered if what we did here today would ever be remembered as I speared another zombie in the eye with my knife, killing him and slamming my pickaxe into the skull of another, who had grasped my shirt and was pulling me towards him for a bite.
Inevitably, we began to tire. What took only one hit before was now taking two, and the horde pressed forward, causing Charlie and I to retreat higher up the stairs. We pushed the bodies back as we killed them, trying to slow down the horde, but they pressed on. Charlie and I had to retreat to the top of the stairs and we left bodies three and four deep all the way up.
We were getting into a desperate situation. If the zombies pressed us any further, then they would be able to get around us and then it would be over. We could not retreat any farther.
We fought harder, trying to open a space where we could push back, but we had been fighting for so long that we could barely lift our arms. The only thing keeping us going was sheer willpower and the determination not to become one of the diseased husks that slobbered for our blood. I kicked at the ones coming up, tumbling them onto the zombies behind them, but they crawled back up as quickly as we kicked them away.
“We may need an exit!” Charlie yelled at me as he put down another ghoul.
“Nowhere to go!” I yelled back. “If they get farther up, they’re all around us!” I jammed my knife into a small girl that tried to sneak up under my defenses. I picked up her now completely lifeless body and hurled it the horde, knocking down several of them.
“What about the roof?” Charlie asked, his hand around the throat of a snapping zombie.
“Maybe we could make it, but we would need several seconds.” I said, punching a teenage zombie in the face, knocking him back slightly before I crushed his skull.
“Nothing left to lose. Get ready to push.” Charlie said, picking up his dead-again adversary. I grabbed my teenager and, using them as battering rams, Charlie and I slammed them into the press, knocking down several rows of undead and tumbling several more off the sides of the stairs. I nearly slipped down after them, sliding on unidentifiable brown goo that was on the top of the stairs.
Charlie and I spun and ran for the edge of the gazebo, jumping onto the railing and climbing up onto the crossbeams that supported the roof. The timbers groaned a little as unaccustomed weight was put on them, but they held. Beneath us, the dead had surged forward and a crowd was gathering underneath us, grasping at the air and raising their dead eyes to the ceiling.