Dead City. Joe Mckinney

both scrambled back to the patrol cars, avoiding the people who were coming after us from three sides now.

      As we circled around to the trunk of my car I noticed that Chris was having trouble keeping up. He had gone pale, and his breath rattled in his throat, like he was choking on phlegm.

      “You won’t be able to shoot,” I told him.

      “I’ll cover you. Get the shotgun.”

      I popped the trunk and pulled out my shotgun case. The Department gives us the Mossberg 500—a standard, tough-as-nails twelve-gauge pump, built to take a beating and fire just about any kind of shell made.

      I dumped six green beanbag shells into the magazine tube and another into the breach. We’re not allowed to use slugs on patrol, only the less-than-lethal beanbag rounds.

      The beanbags are still pretty fierce, though. One or two hits at less than ten yards can put almost anybody on the ground and leave them with a couple of broken ribs, no matter how tough they think they are.

      I closed the trunk. “You ready?”

      Chris nodded, but he looked very sick. “What’s wrong with them? I shot that guy. How come he’s still walking?”

      “I don’t know,” I said.

      They stumbled closer. Watching them come, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at a crowd of walking corpses. It was like they had stepped right off the screen of some Hollywood horror film.

      We moved out, staying on the driver’s side of our cars and careful to keep the engine block between our positions and the crowd that was still advancing on us through the grass.

      The whole time we were doing that I could hear our cover officers getting closer, and from the way the engines and the squealing tires were starting to drown out the sound of the sirens, I figured they were just outside the subdivision.

      Help was less than two minutes away.

      I pointed the shotgun at the three men who had just entered the circle of street-lamp light next to our cars.

      Chris was still standing, but he was bleeding badly. It was running down the side of the car where he was leaning for support.

      I focused the shotgun’s ghost ring on a man about ten feet away and yelled, “Get down on the ground!”

      The man ignored my order and walked right into the fender of my patrol car. It was like he expected to just walk right through the car.

      “Get down on the ground!” I yelled.

      He turned and moved around to the front of the car, his hands out in front of him, ready to grab.

      When he stepped into the street, I fired.

      My first shot went wide of center mass, hitting him in the shoulder. The impact spun him around, and he went down to his knees, but he didn’t cry out. He didn’t even try to clutch at the spot where the beanbag hit him.

      I racked the next shell into the shotgun and raised the barrel, ready for another target.

      When the man I had just beanbagged stood up, turned, and faced me again, I felt my heart sink down into my stomach.

      People just don’t do that.

      I’ve beanbagged people before, and nobody has ever just stood right back up, even from a glancing blow.

      I searched his face for some indication that I had hurt him, but there was nothing there. There was no emotion, no expression, no content of any kind. He was empty. The eyes seemed to look through me into nowhere.

      “Stay down! I’ll hit you again. Stay down!”

      I aimed my next shot more carefully. I took my time and centered the ghost ring right in the middle of his chest.

      He was less than five feet away when I fired, and he took the full force of what a twelve gauge can do. The blow knocked him backwards, off his feet, and laid him out flat on his back.

      At that distance I wouldn’t be surprised if I smashed his sternum into dozens of little pieces.

      I racked the shotgun again. That noise usually clears every room that hears it, but none of those people seemed to care.

      They didn’t run, or blink, or look to each other for support. They never paused at all. Their pace never varied, even when they reached out to grab at us. Every move was slow and plodding, like an old woman trying to climb a flight of stairs.

      More of them were coming around the front of the car now and I fired two more beanbags as quickly as I could at the first two in line.

      The one closest to me went down.

      The one behind him staggered back, but didn’t fall.

      “Stay back!” I yelled. The air around us was filling with gun smoke, and there were so many of them coming at us that, even with the shotgun, I couldn’t keep them back.

      The first guy I bean-bagged walked into my car again. I jammed the barrel into his chest and fired. I fired again as he fell to the ground.

      Chris and I backed up.

      We were out of shells and the shotgun was useless without them.

      I went for my Glock.

      “What are they, Eddie?”

      “Move! Move!” I said, and pushed Chris along the side of the car. I almost had to carry him to get him to go because he was having trouble supporting his own weight. He couldn’t run at all.

      As we reached the back of my car, I froze.

      From between my car and Chris’s car another man stumbled into our path.

      He turned and faced us and in that one moment I lost all composure. His face and his arms were a mess. There was blood everywhere, and his face was so badly shredded that I could barely recognize his features.

      What looked back at me wasn’t a face at all. There was a massive gash starting just below the left eye. It was blood red and protruding from the socket like a squashed grape. The gash opened downward in a jagged triangle that spread around the jawbone, ending at a flap of skin that was caked over with dirt and hanging uselessly from his neck. Gleaming white pearls of teeth showed through the sinews of what remained of his cheek.

      His right arm was just a bloody stump, but he reached for me with it like there was still a hand attached.

      I lowered my weapon in confusion and disgust, then snapped it back up. “Stop! Don’t move!”

      But he kept on moving.

      I fired a single shot square into his chest, and he rocked back on his heels, teetering for a moment before regaining his balance.

      His gory arm came up again, and he reached for me.

      I aimed with both hands.

      My gun barked three times, and all three shots slammed into his chest. Again he rocked back, but I couldn’t make him fall.

      My training told me that it was body armor—nobody can take that kind of pounding unless they’re wearing body armor.

      When he came at me that last time, I aimed for his face and fired a single shot. The bullet struck him in the cheek, and a gory bloom of blood spray and bits of flesh and bone and teeth spread out across the white hood of the police car behind him.

      The man flew backwards, landing on the car’s push bumpers. I watched him struggle to regain his feet and more than anything else in the world I wanted to run as fast and as far away as I could. The shock of what I had just seen and the juice pumping through my system made me want to throw up.

      I grabbed Chris by the shoulder and pushed our way to his car. I tossed him in the backseat and forced my way back to the driver’s seat.

      So many people had gathered around us. They were everywhere, hands tugging at my uniform,