Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,153

They’d taken their stand in front of the elevator doors, but the line had crumbled to the right of the doors, because the young guard, Miller, was sitting against the wall bleeding, with the other guard holding pressure on a neck wound that gushed crimson over his hands. Jenkins had moved up to take their place in the half-circle of guns, but he had a handgun and the zombies didn’t give a shit. Two of them launched themselves at him and the weak part of the circle. Damn smart for zombies.

Gonzales was there firing point-blank into their faces. He had a .45 and at that range it blew one head to pieces, so that it was just left with hands reaching blindly, but he was dry-firing into the face of the second, and it turned to him with a hungry, evil expression. I fired into its head from less than two feet away with the frangible round, and the head exploded in a fountain of blood and brains. There was bone in there, but it was always the soft, wet parts that made for the spectacular visuals.

Gonzales glanced at me with wide eyes, his naturally dark skin paled almost gray. The look was enough; he’d known he was almost out of ammo when he stepped up to shield Jenkins and the two guards. Dev was beside me; he still seemed shaken and didn’t have the AR to his shoulder yet. I didn’t have time to babysit him, but in that moment I realized he’d never seen combat. He’d seen action – shootings, violence, hand-to-hand, and hand-to-claw – but he’d never been in this kind of chaos. I counted him out for the fight and started shooting the zombies that were trying to pour through the gap in the defenses. I tried to take their lower faces out first, because once they couldn’t bite, they were half-disarmed. I blew off most of a zombie’s shoulder and arm as it reached for me with its remaining arm. The ruin of its face meant it couldn’t bite me, but it could still strangle me or tear out my throat if I let it get a good grip.

Al was on the other side of me firing his own .45 into the reaching hands and gaping mouths of the zombies. The slide on his gun slid back and stayed there, showing he was out of ammo.

Gonzales moved back up beside me with the bull pup shotgun in his hands. Dev had recovered enough to start handing out the extra weapons and ammo; good.

Al fell back; I hoped to get more ammo, or another gun, and I kept shooting anything that moved outside our small circle. Nicky was beside me now; he shot the face off one zombie, then let his AR swing on its tactical strap so his hands were free, grabbed the zombie at the shoulder and upper arm, and pulled. I had a moment to watch his muscles strain, the veins on his arms raising with the force of what he was trying to do, and then he pulled the zombie’s arm out of its shoulder socket. It was fresh zombie, so basically he’d just pulled a man’s arm off with his bare hands. It wasn’t just a matter of being fucking strong, but he’d known where to grab to disarticulate the shoulder joint. Maybe later I’d ask him how the hell he knew that.

No matter how impressive it had been, it meant Nicky was out of ammo.

Al was on my other side between me and Gonzales. Al’s .45 had the slide back in place, and I didn’t ask if he was locked and loaded; I knew he was. Let’s hear it for grabbing all the extra ammo we could carry.

I stepped back, letting them know they needed to cover me if they could, and both of them stepped up. I opened the flap of the bag I was carrying and Nicky was close enough to reach in and get his own fresh magazine. He swung his AR on its strap, slapped the magazine home, and we started to move up again.

Edward’s voice was in my earpiece. ‘I’m out!’

I dropped back, and Nicky and the others moved up to cover the gap. I had the AR magazines, just like Dev had most of the handgun rounds. I reached in the bag one-handed and had an extended magazine in my hand as Edward’s hand came into view. He took it like we were running