Coldbrook (Hammer)(157)

Vic glanced across at the gate he’d just come through. The trucks crashed together again, crushing several zombies between them, but the attackers had swarmed. A dozen were inside and running for the bus, several falling as the men on the truck’s roofs opened fire, others reaching the vehicle as he slammed it in reverse and pulled the wheel hard to the right. Even with the hampered turning ability, he was lined up just right. He floored the gas pedal. Back past the guard building – windows smashed, door off its hinges – more gunfire erupted. An explosion. Someone screaming, and—

They don’t scream!

Vic glanced forward – and wished he hadn’t. One of the trucks’ gas tanks must have been punctured by a stray bullet, and now the spilled fuel had ignited and the truck was ablaze. A guy had dropped from the driver’s side and was running across the compound, his clothes and hair aflame, zombies grabbing for him as he ran, tripping him, falling on him and biting even as the flames flared in their hair and transferred to their own clothing.

Vic turned away just as the second truck caught fire.

Something was scraping across the ground beneath the bus. It thudded against the chassis. He slammed the brakes and stopped them just right, tail end facing the duct housing with a two-foot gap to open the rear emergency window. Perfect.

The banging continued.

‘That was some pretty f*cking shit-hot driving, Sandra Bullock,’ Chaney said. ‘Now let’s get that candy and ice cream.’ He waited until Vic was up and moving down the bus, bringing up the rear. His shotgun boomed again, and Vic’s ears rang.

‘How many cartridges do you have?’

‘At a guess, three more up the pipe.’

Vic pulled his M1911. He had no idea how many bullets remained, if any.

The rear emergency window fell away when it was opened, and the kids were helped over into the duct housing as quickly as possible. Huddled on the small platform inside, shaded from the sun, Vic could see Holly helping them.

Will the ladder inside hold us all? he thought. What if someone falls? What if one of those things gets in before—

Screams, shooting, and he saw a child snatched down from the back of the bus. The kids still inside the vehicle surged back, and one of the bikers – standing with one foot on the rear window frame, one propped against the duct housing building – fired down between his feet.

Kids were now screaming, crying, panicking, and Vic’s heart broke for every one of them. I hope he killed her before they bit her, he thought as he and Chaney exchanged a quick, loaded glance.

They didn’t have long. And there was nowhere else to go.

The second truck’s fuel tank went up and its door smashed through the front of the bus, scything into the upright supports ten feet from Chaney and Vic. Vic felt a wave of heat and saw people burning, smelled cooking flesh. His mouth watered involuntarily, then he retched.

‘*,’ Chaney said, one arm around him as they moved closer to the rear window. The second biker was lifting the kids and throwing them across the narrow gap. The adults had gone over, and they grabbed the kids and hauled them in, set them on the ladder, reached out for more. The guy straddling the gap fired again and again, and then he shouted as his gun’s firing pin clicked on empty.

Vic pushed past the few remaining kids and leaned out the window. He looked down between the back of the bus and the duct housing and saw bodies left and right. They were crowding to get into the gap, but the zombies that the biker had shot had formed a barrier on both sides.

‘Go!’ Vic shouted. The biker ducked down and stepped through the duct hatch, then turned and reached for the next kid.

A burning man climbed the pile of corpses and reached for the window. Vic shot him in the top of the head. On the back of his leather vest was the word Unblessed.

‘How many more?’ the biker asked.

Vic looked around, and for the first time he was staring into the kids’ terrified faces. He managed a smile, and one of the little girls smiled back.

‘Six,’ he said. ‘Chaney?’

Chaney plucked up a girl and launched her through the window. The others soon followed.

Vic leaned from the window and shot a woman from Danton Rock. She bore no visible wounds, but her eyes were dead. She fell and rose again, because his aim was off. When he went to shoot her again, his gun clicked on empty.

She climbed the corpses, planted a foot on the dead burning man, and leaped.

Vic ducked inside the bus and the woman smashed against the window frame, tearing her face. Her arms came through and she kicked against the metal, trying to get a hold.