Page 4

He looked into the kitchen and the two left in there shambled towards him.  He clubbed them quickly and pushed the kitchen door shut.  One got up and he had to hit her again.  His right arm ached already; he had been sitting bedside vigils, not training to swing a sledge.

The damned flimsy door was quivering by the time he retrieved the rifle.  It was fussy work trying to reload it without the use of his left hand, and he spilled rounds on the floor.  He didn't try to pick them up; he had more in his pocket and if that wasn't enough he was dead.  He had lost count of how many rounds he had put in.

Never wait for them, Hank told himself.  They have time on their side.

He yanked the door open and immediately backed up to the fridge, resting the rifle on his rag-wrapped had.  Four of them were there.  It took three shots to down the first, two for the next one, and he got lucky with the one shot each on the next two, and then he ran out of bullets again.

Fill it, idiot.  Fill the magazine.

Their corpses blocked the doorway.  He hid between the wall and the open door as he put more rounds in the tube magazine, his fingers cold and numb, his heartbeat shuddering through his body, nausea gripping his belly and burning the back of his throat.

He stepped out and shot one in the face--three shots; his first two went wide--then had to step on somebody to get through the doorway but his leg twisted and Hank found himself on all fours looking into Jim Vanderbeek's face while .22 shells bounced on the floor and then he puked from the pain.

His knee hurt like hell now and it was all he could do to stand up, vomit bitter in his mouth.  There was a blonde woman facing away from him so he could touch the muzzle to her head before he pulled the trigger, saving rounds.  Then three more, seven more squeezes on the trigger, he was aiming too low, and their heads bobbed jerkily as they walked.  His ears were ringing from the gunshots.  It didn't seem so loud outdoors.

Deb Lichti came around the corner from the powder room and he almost delayed because she wasn't wearing her glasses, but dead Deb could find him just fine and that took three more shots.  He tried to shoot her again but the chamber was empty and Deb fortunately was down.

His leg hurt like glowing white electric wires were strung through it and he leaned on the rifle a little before reloading.  His left hand throbbed after every heartbeat.

There were still some upstairs, Mabel and Elaine and maybe more, but he didn't want to go up the stairs.  Not just for what was up there but he needed his good hand free to pull himself up using the railing and that meant he couldn't shoot.

He was gasping for breath now.  He had stopped noticing the smells of cordite and feces and blood.

He stood by Red's body and counted the stairs.  Sixteen of them.  Nothing moving at the top.

He sat on the third step and cradled the rifle with his good hand, then pushed with his left leg to lift his butt one step.  Then he looked frantically behind him in case one of them had arrived, drawn by his high-pitched grunt of effort.

He did that five more times before one came to the top of the stairs.  It was a stranger, which made it easier to squeeze the trigger.

Hank's arms were trembling so badly it was only luck that he caught the thing in one leg and he bent and clung close to the steps to avoid it as it fell.  Once it landed at the bottom of the stairs it was easy to shoot: only three more shots to hit the head.

Hank reloaded the rifle while he had the chance.  One.  Two.  Three.  He threw away the empty box.  He spent a moment cursing himself for not picking up the rounds he had dropped and then he looked at the top of the stairs again.

Three more steps and his eyes would be above floor level.

It hurt more with every step.  His knee was throbbing slightly out of sync with his hand, an alternative heartbeat.  And there was one of the ones he didn't know, coming out of the upstairs bath.  He rested the barrel on the top step and fired.  Missed.  He aimed again, tried to ease his breathing the way Dad had taught him, squeezed off one more shot.  She fell down, didn't get up again.

Good.  He didn't know how many rounds he had left--maybe a dozen.  Make them count.  Make them count.

Sweat was dripping down into his eyes.  Heh.  How come he hadn't noticed this last one was naked?

Hell, he hadn't thought of sex for a year. Not dead yet, he told himself, and chuckled without humor.

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