One Second Later

Had she been a lip-reader, she might have realized what Dane was trying to say were the foulest obscenities a man can throw at a woman. It proved that—just like zombies—Dane’s head would continue to function when severed as long as the brain was undamaged. However, since he no longer had access to his vocal cords, he couldn’t give sounds to the curses his mouth was forming.

It didn’t matter though. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Next to his head was his severed arm, chainmail sliced cleanly in two. Though the arm didn’t move, it still held the pipe bomb in a tight grip between its fingers. Courtney kneeled down and pulled the bomb loose, then pinched the fuse between her thumb and forefinger of her gloved hand. To her dismay, the sparks continued to burn down the fuse from the inside out.

Panicking, she flung the bomb off the roof where it fell six stories down to Main Street. It bounced off some random zombie’s head, leaving a large dent in its cranium, and landed on the pavement amidst hundreds of shuffling feet.

Covering her ears, Courtney peered over the edge to watch the result.

It was magnificent really. There was a thunderous boom and a fiery explosion that sent every zombie in a thirty-foot radius sailing through the air in little bits and pieces and dominoing many others, showering them with blood. When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, there was a large crater in the middle of the road.

Courtney uncovered her ears.

She picked up her wakizashi and sheathed it, then picked up her Socom where it had been lost during the struggle with Dane. She reached into the back of her belt for another clip and loaded it into the gun. Finally, she situated the red dot on Dane’s forehead and pulled the trigger. His existence ended rather awkwardly in mid-swear with his tongue dangling out of his mouth.

Courtney dashed back across the rooftops.

Leon was on the other side of the bridge across the alley, putting bullets into the heads of all the zombies who had followed them up the ladder. There were at least thirty walking around on the rooftop now, with many more already terminated and lying face down.

Courtney began highlighting their heads with the red dot and pulling the trigger. When her clip was exhausted, she dropped it and loaded the final one. With five more shots and Leon’s help, they cleared all but one of the zombies. Deciding to save her last few bullets, Courtney gave the final zombie—some horrendously ugly dead guy with wire-frame glasses—a hard front kick to the ribcage, sending it head over heels off the roof and down to the alley below.

However, it landed on something a lot softer than concrete.

Peering down there, Courtney could see that every zombie in Wakefield was gathering around the building, shoulder-to-shoulder as they clawed at the bricks. She could not even see the actual street beneath their bodies. Hundreds more undead were in line coming up the fire escape and negotiating the ladder. They had also engulfed the two humvees parked below. Everywhere she looked, wrinkled blue faces were staring back at her.

In her hurried plan to eliminate Dane, this was something she had forgotten to factor in. Since there wasn’t a pack leader herding the zombies anymore, the entire undead army was coming after the food stranded on the rooftop above.

The odds were not in her favor.