Coldbrook (Hammer)(149)

Chaney nodded his thanks, then roared across the square.

Vic fired again, but the trigger clicked on empty. ‘I’m out.’

‘Here.’ Sean handed him his pistol and Marc took the rifle, digging in his rucksack for spare ammunition. They were shouting, the gunfire ringing heavy in their ears.

They crossed the square, and Vic looked back to check on the convoy. The school bus ploughed into three zombies, its wheels bouncing across several prone corpses. Should’ve let them go first, he thought. Then the driver slumped down across the steering wheel and the bus veered to the left and smashed into the police station steps.

‘Stop!’ Vic shouted.

‘What?’ Sean said.

‘Bus crashed.’

‘Vic, what do you think you can do about it?’ Lucy asked desperately. Olivia looked up at him, scared, her eyes wet. He looked around, trying to assess the situation. Other vehicles had followed them into the square, following the bikers onto the road that led out of town and down towards Coldbrook. Almost there! Vic thought. But there were zombies running at the bus, and the gunfire sparking from its windows was inaccurate and panicked.

Chaney had paused on the other side of the square and was looking back. Vic raised his hand.

‘Don’t you dare leave us,’ Lucy said.

Vic pointed at the bus. Chaney revved his bike and his rear wheel screeched as he powered back across the square, kicking up clods of turf from the green, heading for the police station.

‘Keep the rifle,’ he said.

‘Vic—’

‘Daddy—’

‘Don’t you dare leave us!’

‘Lucy, there are kids in there,’ Vic said, and in his soft voice they all heard the truth. With everything he had done wrong, leaving them behind would be one step too far.

‘You said you’d never leave me again,’ Lucy said.

‘He won’t,’ Jayne said. ‘He’ll be back. You’ve seen his shooting.’

Vic kissed Lucy and Olivia. ‘You need to go on,’ he said. ‘Get Jayne down to Coldbrook and inside. Straight down the air vent, and Holly will be waiting.’

‘I could come,’ Marc said, and he meant it. But he also nodded when Vic refused, acknowledging how important he had become.

Vic climbed over Jayne and slipped from the car, his M1911 in one hand, Sean’s pistol in the other. For a second as the car powered away he locked glances with Lucy through the back window. Then he ran for the bus.

The sound of the other vehicles’ engines faded, and the hooting of the zombies was appalling now.

‘Well, come on!’ Chaney shouted. He and two of his gang had reached the bus, and while Chaney fired a pistol at the advancing zombies – shotgun swinging empty from his other hand, ready to club anything that came too close – the other two men were struggling with the bus’s door. The kids inside were screaming. The three remaining adults were shooting from smashed windows.

As Vic sidestepped a running dead child, wondering what he had done, praying that he would see his family again, a woman on the bus turned her gun towards him.

‘No!’ he shouted, but she fired anyway. He ducked down, waiting for the pain. It didn’t come. Someone hit the ground behind him.

‘Squatting for a shit?’ Chaney shouted, and he actually laughed as he came to help Vic up. His hand was huge and sweaty.

‘Not sure what I’m doing.’

The other two bikers had prised the bus door open, and Vic and Chaney followed them on board. One of them grabbed the dead driver and pulled him aside, a wet mess. Kids screamed and the adults shouted louder to try and calm them. The bikers seemed not to notice.

‘Stray bullet,’ one of them said.

‘Fuck that,’ the other drawled. ‘Stray bullets, plural. Steering column’s wasted.’

‘This bus is f*cked?’ the first biker asked.

‘This bus is f*cked.’

‘And here come the cops,’ Chaney commented, kicking the doors closed.

Vic saw who Chaney had been referring to. Sheriff Blanks and two other cops – ex-cops now, he supposed – had emerged from the station’s smashed front door and were coming down the steps. The pretty officer who’d once let Vic off a parking ticket had what looked like a fence post embedded in her abdomen.

As the adults quietened the kids, that dreadful, gentle hooting came in to fill the silence. From the several streets that met on the square, and many of the buildings around them, the dead of Danton Rock converged.