Dead City. Joe Mckinney

April and Andrew, sitting at home and going through the whole bedtime routine, totally unaware of what just happened.

      April would put Andrew to bed, make herself a sandwich, and turn on the TV to watch the news.

      She would learn about everything from some talking head, and because the investigation was still going on, they wouldn’t say the names of the officers involved or how badly the officer at the hospital was hurt.

      The news would say something like “His condition is critical” or “He’s in stable, but guarded, condition.”

      But those words don’t mean anything when you need to know how your husband is doing. They’re meaningless, too full of ambiguity to answer the desperate questions. They’re sterile and confusing and totally useless and God! Why did I have to beat myself up over this? Why all the doubts?

      I just wanted to sit there and rock myself to sleep. As uncoplike as that sounds, that’s all I wanted to do.

      I could feel the tears welling up behind my eyes and I thought, Perfect.

      My sergeant was supposed to be on the way. He would open up the door to the EMS unit and find me there crying my eyes out.

      I wondered who was going to have to be the one to come in and talk to me. Stevenson was the junior sergeant, so it would probably be him, even though he wasn’t my direct supervisor. They always get the junior man to handle the unpleasant—

      Gunfire.

      I could hear a roll of pistol shots that sounded like firecrackers through the metal walls of the EMS unit.

      They were coming from several different directions at once. Screaming and yelling erupted all over the place, though I couldn’t hear what was being said or recognize any of the voices making the noise.

      More gunfire.

      The shots were coming so fast and so close together that I couldn’t count them. I recognized the crack of the Glock—lots of them—and the booming authority of the shotgun punctuating the pistol fire like an exclamation point.

      I jumped off the gurney, forced my way out of the EMS unit, and into the street.

      The EMS techs had parked with the doors of the unit away from the scene, and when I ran around the side of the ambulance I was bathed in red and blue strobes.

      There were people everywhere, running, yelling, fighting with each other.

      Two EMS guys had a third man down on the ground. They were struggling to keep his shoulders pinned to the pavement, and he was doing everything he could to bite them.

      Another man in a firefighter’s uniform was facedown on the running boards of a fire truck. He wasn’t moving.

      I saw one of the guys from my shift on his hands and knees, swaying back and forth like he was about to fall over. His hands were soaked in blood.

      A frantic crowd of civilians were running past me, but there were others walking toward the scene with that same staggering walk I had seen earlier.

      I saw several small mobs coming down to the street from nearby lawns.

      The red and blue strobes cut through the yellow glow of the street lamps, giving everything and everyone they touched a strange, pallid cast.

      Off in the distance I could hear more sirens, but they seemed to be heading away from us.

      Two other officers from my shift were taking cover behind a police car and firing their handguns into an approaching crowd of people.

      Even as I reached for my gun and ran over to join them, I couldn’t believe we were shooting unarmed people. It went against everything I was trained to do and everything I had been brought up to believe was sacred.

      But no matter how I felt about it, I still went down right beside them and pointed my weapon at the approaching crowd.

      The officer to my right glanced over at me when I crouched down next to him. “What the hell is going on?” he yelled.

      “I don’t know.”

      “What are those things? I shot one in the chest six times and he still kept coming.”

      He didn’t wait for me to respond. He stood up and started firing over the hood of the car. He emptied the entire magazine, ejected it, and dumped in another with such speed I thought there was no way he could be aiming his shots.

      The slide dropped back into place on his Glock and then he was firing again. Brass casings went flying through the air, bouncing off the sides of the police car and rolling toward the curb.

      “They won’t fucking die.”

      And then they broke through our lines.

      Through the smoke and strobe lights I saw shadows move. The shadows turned into badly torn and abused bodies, still moving and still walking.

      They came through gaps in the cars and attacked a policeman who was firing at them from behind a car door. They collapsed on top of him in a writhing mass of arms and faces. I could hear him screaming for help even though pistols were going off right next to my ears.

      An officer named Flores ran into the open to help him.

      Several of the people who had overcome the other officer got up and shambled toward him.

      Flores was a wiry, tough little guy and a crack shot—I knew that from shooting next to him during in-service. He could empty an entire magazine into a target the size of a dinner plate at twenty-five yards and make it look like anybody should be able to do it.

      He aimed at a man in a sport coat and slacks and fired three times.

      I could tell he hit the guy because the impact stood him straight up. But the man kept walking toward him, seemingly unafraid and unconcerned by the bullets smashing into his chest.

      Flores stood his ground, though. He raised his gun again and fired three more shots.

      When the man kept coming, Flores fired a single shot into his forehead, and that dropped him to the ground.

      A moment later, Flores was firing single shot after single shot into the crowd, and bodies were dropping with every trigger pull.

      It was disgusting to watch, and beautiful, in a way. His speed and accuracy were unbelievable.

      But even as he leveled the crowd in front of him, more and more people were approaching through the darkness and smoke. They didn’t make a sound, which was the eeriest thing about them. With the rest of us yelling all around them, the only noise they made came from their shoes dragging on the pavement.

      I couldn’t tell how many of them there were or even where they were, because our visibility was next to nothing. And the part of the mob we could see wasn’t giving us a chance to regroup and organize.

      I turned and saw more people walking toward us from the rear.

      There were already more people than I could count walking between the cars in front of us and to our right. Flores was still firing like mad, and when he fired his last round, he holstered his gun and began to fight with his nightstick.

      He had one of the old-style black hickory batons and he was swinging for their heads.

      He knocked one of them over and brought the baton down so hard on the back of the guy’s head that the nightstick snapped in half.

      He threw away the pieces and reached for his collapsible metal baton.

      The crowd closed in around him. There were just too many of them for him to take them all, and they managed to pull him down to the ground.

      I didn’t see him die. I couldn’t stand there and watch that happen.

      It was no use shooting anymore. There were so many of them and they were so close to each other and to the other officers that I couldn’t fire and be sure I was hitting the right people.

      Most of the officers