5.2
Corvus reacted instantly, but it wasn't fast enough.
The metal teardrop sliced cleanly into the right side of his chest, popping his lung like a balloon. He barely managed to slip behind the thick central tree before taking any more damage.
He huffed deep, hollow breaths, and the animals bore down on him with what seemed like thousands of rabid mouths.
Right hand forward again, he fought for his life. Familiar dark streaks ran over his skin, muscles, and bone.
We're two of a kind.
For an instant, he saw suited government officials bearing down on him instead of rogues. He froze, but only for an instant–it wasn't his time to die.
He glimpsed its discreet movements–the skeleton, moving in on its cornered opponent.
Corvus's prospects of survival looked bleak.
CRACK
A deafening sound came from the base of the towering tree. More cracks followed from above, and huge, blackened branches came crashing to the ground, crushing undead animals beneath them like flies.
As the heavy pieces of wood slammed into the forest floor, fragments of the branches ricocheted off the dirt and flew through the air, clouding it with a fume of dirt and needles.
Corvus slunk around to the other side of the pine and, like a three hundred foot tall door, the tree screeched and hinged at its roots.
It sounded like a volcanic eruption when the central tree made contact with the earth, bringing half the ring down with it. If any birds were still left in the trees of that forest, they would have had no choice but to flee as every trunk and every branch vibrated like the strings on a guitar. In fact, the entire surrounding area could have been an instrument for the reverberating chord that it played.
The zombie animals that had managed to avoid getting sandwiched between wood and dirt were back on the attack, not taking an instant to mourn their fallen comrades. They clearly didn't care for anything except hunting down their enemy and eliminating him as they madly scrambled through the thick, murky air.
Corvus dashed out of the now completely bare opening that had been created and into the trees that flanked it.
Through the dark clouds of debris, he saw the blurred movement only a few yards ahead of him and fired. His shot forced the skeleton to move behind a tree, and he took the split-second opportunity that followed to cover the final distance that stood between the two of them.
When the skeleton reemerged, gun at the ready, it saw no more than ten feet of space. Without taking aim, it fired, landing another shot in its assailant's chest.
Corvus lunged forward with his entire lanky frame, and he just managed to close his fingers around the muzzle of the gun that was staring him down.
He tore the weapon out of its owner's bony hands and let it fall. With his other limb, he reached for the skeleton's neck.
His white hand stretched wide open.
The skeleton jerked its body around and stumbled away from the towering shadow that was threatening to consume it. It sprinted into the clearing, and, once again, raised an arm to point to the sky.
In the distance, the three hidden onlookers saw the second wave. The zombies poured out of rotting houses and pounded their feet into the ground, mouths drooling and eyes fixed forwards as they galloped full speed towards the battle.
Corvus dropped to his knees. The black marks had spread even further, and the disease ate away at his body relentlessly. His muscles could no longer keep up; their fibers were dying, and they sought relief.
It wasn't just oxygen that entered his airway; he could feel the blood polluting his lungs. Through the opening in his face, which hung low on the end of a limp neck, he splattered his own knees with a mouthful of it.
Hmm… We almost died.
BOOOOM
The ruined town shook as a solitary shot roared.
Broken, the skeleton's body folded and toppled on top of its own gun. There was a jagged hole where its heart had been.
Jelani, Blake, and Nikki came flying down the hill. The remaining members of the first wave of rogues had completely surrounded Corvus, who remained on his knees, lazily using a hand of bone that was draped with hanging, bloody strands of skin to beat them back.
His wound count only rose as Blake hastily unzipped a backpack. "Jelani, you'll finally get what you were waiting for."
He threw both the pistols they had at Jelani's chest, who caught them, and without a second's hesitation, rushed into the fray.
Jelani shot with both hands and put the soles of his boots into the faces of any that dared to get too close. There weren't many still alive, so it wasn't long before he and Corvus had eliminated the last of them.
However, the danger was yet to be cleared. They all knew it was only a matter of moments before the next swarm came crawling into sight.
Blood dripped to the ground and dirt blew in the wind.
Jelani clenched his jaw. Where are they?
The vision of a terrible reality came into his mind.
"Give me ammo!" he yelled at Blake, who immediately reached into the backpack and tossed a few magazines at Jelani. He frantically stuffed them into his pants' pockets and sprinted out of the clearing at full tilt.
Urging his body to squeeze out every last drop of explosive power within it, he flew around the base of the hill. He kept his eyes locked on the landscape ahead, cutting it so close as he sidestepped trees that their bark tore deep scratches into his shoulders.
Every millisecond counted.
In the far distance, the tail end of the horde came into view.
Shit.
He came to an old street, and his feet bounced off the asphalt with the rhythm of a machine gun, knees high and arms pumping.
There wasn't a single thought in his mind apart from speed.
Rounding a final corner, he saw the very sight he'd been dreading: a lone girl, swarmed by a pack of bloodthirsty dead things. She ran pathetically, swinging her gun around like an axe, they were practically upon her. There was no escape.
No time, he thought.
Eve was still at least 100 yards away. Within a few seconds, they'd be piled on top of her like piranhas, and she would be no more than a hunk of meat to them.
"EVE!" Jelani screamed at the top of his voice. There was no way to tell if she'd heard him, but he turned to the side and wound up, drawing his right hand back and extending his left arm forward.
The gun rocketed through the air, spinning like the wheel of a race car. Jelani, resuming his full-out sprint, watched its trajectory with baited breath, praying it would find its target.
An animal pounced, jaws spread wide in preparation to clamp its teeth around Eve's face, but its neck buckled as the flying weapon cracked into the back of its skull.
The gun tumbled into Eve's hands, and she began her desperate bid at survival.
Without aiming, she fired, clicking the trigger like a button on a remote as beasts flew in like bugs. She only needed to survive for a few seconds–that was all the time it would take for Jelani to cover the distance.
Not even bothering to slow down, he came flying into the mob. The savage creatures bit at his legs and leapt at his head, doing everything they could to drag him to the ground, but he knocked them aside like stuffed animals. One by one.
Right, left, right. His feet dragged through the resistance of teeth and claws, as if he was walking upstream through a river of bodies. How do you break through resistance? Throw it aside. Beat it down.
At the end of the river, he found Eve, and the two of them stood back to back in the center of mayhem, firing off every last bullet that they had. When their ammo ran dry, they used their bare, bloody knuckles to fight back the unrelenting storm.
Even the last remaining zombie clearly hadn't learned from its brothers' fates, as it launched itself at Jelani with full reckless abandon.
Eyes turning to his final target, he drove his fist through its snout, snapping it to pieces.
The two fighters swayed and collapsed to the ground in unison. Jagged dark lines crept out from their wounds; death was spreading.
As their bodies did everything to fight back against the plague, they both shut down, heads falling still against the blood-stained earth.