Hold it you son of a bitch! Hold it!

He was past the room as the third burst of gunfire came from with in. He ducked into the room he had first seen the zombie emerge from, collapsing to the ground as a searing cough exploded from his lungs. The single cough became a fit of them, with Zack spitting thick bloody gobs of mucous between each one. After what seemed an eternity the coughs stopped, and Zack lay there paralyzed with pain, gasping for air. His wound had broken open and his side was wet with hot blood.

You're dead! The zombie heard you and is going to come back and shoot you!

That was enough to give him the strength to pull himself to his knees. He heard footsteps in the doorway behind him, and turned to see the superzombie step into view. This is it. Zack told himself as the zombie raised the M-16 to aim at his chest.

The creature's attention was suddenly diverted towards the nursing station. It spun, trying to bring its rifle to bear when another M-16 sounded on full automatic and bullets began to riddle its chest and face...

After the close call down below David had set his M-16 to full automatic in the elevator. He exited the elevator and looked down the hall, seeing the scattered bodies of hospital staff and soldiers lying about. He turned the corner to the west wing and saw the superzombie taking aim at someone in one of the rooms.

I'm too late! I'm too late! The zombies had reached Zack's wing and were executing the patients. Without thinking David took aim and fired. His clip ran dry in a few seconds and his bullets had little effect on the superzombie. David threw himself behind the nurse's station as the superzombie returned fire. Three dead nurses lay on the floor behind the station counter.

David's hands were shaking as he reloaded. Without looking he poked the gun around the desk and emptied the clip down the hallway. The zombie returned fire, the bullets splintering the station counter. David crawled through the nurse's station, brushing aside a few chairs and two portable oxygen machines before exiting to the south wing and staying down behind the counter. He would be out of sight when the zombie came around the corner from the west wing. He reloaded again. It was his final clip. Half empty at that. He cursed himself the fool for wasting his bullets so quickly. He flipped the M-16 back to three round burst mode...

Zack couldn't believe his fortune when the zombie began walking back towards the nurse's station. He crawled to the doorway just as wild gunfire ricocheted past the room down the hallway. He heard the zombie fire back. Zack peeked out the room. The zombie was near the nurse's station now, completely ignoring him. A dead soldier lay ten feet up the hall from where Zack knelt in the doorway. His M-16 entangled in his dead arms.

You wait you die!

Zack crawled to the soldier's body and began pulling the M-16 free. The super zombie had reached the nurses station and fired a burst around the corner. It still hadn't noticed him. Zack had to roll the dead soldier onto his back to get the gun free. Zack checked the magazine. Empty. But there were two more clips in pouches on the soldier's web gear. He loaded a fresh magazine into the gun while keeping one eye on the super zombie. It stepped into the nurse's station and out of his view.

You're not getting away that easy you son of a bitch!

Zack was going to kill it. He owed it to whoever had saved his life as well as to those patients that had died while he had fled for his life. He pulled himself to his feet with a groan of pain and began to stumble down the hallway...

David nearly screamed with fright when the zombie fired a burst into the nurse's station as it stepped around the corner. To bad it hadn't hit one of the oxygen machines. It was as if a light bulb had suddenly gone off in David's head.

The portable oxygen tanks!

If one of those were shot it was sure to explode. But would the explosion kill him as well? He was as good as dead anyway so he had nothing to lose. He could hear the zombie walking through the center of the nurse's station. Taking a deep breath David rolled sideways into the open walkway. The superzombie was ten feet away, gun ready to fire. David froze for a split second, but that was all the time the superzombie needed. A smile crossed its blackened, peeling lips as it fired the gun point blank at David's chest.

But the gun clicked empty.

The zombie let out a hiss of rage and took a step towards David.

David screamed with terror and fired into the nearest portable oxygen tank as he threw himself back for cover. The tank exploded, engulfing the superzombie in flames and throwing its body over the counter onto the east wing floor. The explosion consumed everything behind the nurse's station, causing the second tank to explode...

Zack was dropped by the concussion of the blast, but he had time to see gouts of flame mushroom out from the nurse's station. When he looked up several seconds later he could see fire licking the countertop to the nurse station.

What the hell had exploded?

Zack started to rise when he felt a pair of hands clamp onto his ankle. He look back to see that one of the dead nurses had returned to life and grabbed him. Her mouth was agape as she pulled herself towards his foot to take a bite. He gave a scream and kicked her in the face with his free foot. But his kick was weak and it did little if anything to faze the zombie. It drew its mouth nearer, opening wide for a bite. Zack twisted his body into a sitting position, and a lance of fire stabbed through him as he felt something rip inside him. He let out another scream of pain as he stuck the barrel of the M-16 in the zombie's mouth and pulled the trigger. The back of the creature's head exploded like an overripe watermelon.

The other corpses in the hallway were now beginning to stir.

Zack slowly, painfully pulled himself back to his feet, bloody saliva dribbling from his lips. He switched the M-16 to single shot. The automatic fire sprinklers overhead kicked on, and water began to rain down on him. Careful to avoid the stirring corpses, Zack continued down the hall...

The cool water from the fire sprinklers brought David out of his daze. He felt weight on him and quickly scrambled to his feet. Part of the nurse's station counter top fell aside as he stood. His head was a numb buzz from the explosion, his body a mass of aches and pains. Ten feet down the east wing he could see the still flaming superzombie trying unsuccessfully to rise-up. David walked towards it slowly, raising his gun as the sprinklers doused the creature. Its head had been blown completely off its body, also its right arm and leg. The stink of burnt, rotten flesh was overpowering and David fought the urge to vomit. The smoldering corpse again tried to use its single arm to push itself up onto its single leg only to fall back to the ground. In his peripheral vision he spotted movement to the left from the west wing. He spun ready to fire.

"David! It's me!" It was Zack!

He staggered around the nurse's station with an M-16 in his hands. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a bloody white hospital gown. If Zack hadn't spoken he could have easily passed for a zombie. David ran up to him and Zack put an arm over his shoulder, leaning heavily on him.

"Are you ok?"

"I'm fine." Zack gasped. "We have to get out of here. There are more zombies down the hall." They began walking towards the elevator.

"The main lobby is crawling with zombies as well." The water from the sprinklers had plastered his hair to his skull and soaked his clothes. The elevator pinged and Zack stepped away from David and they both raised their guns to fire but stopped as Mac stepped into the hall. He had donned a flak jacket and combat helmet since David had seen him last. The flak vest looked as if it had taken a few bullets.

"I was hoping to find you up here." Mac said, holding the elevator door for them. The dead soldier was still lying where David had left him. Zack leaned back against the side of the car as the door closed.

Mac flipped the Elevator Stop switch so no zombies outside could accidentally open the door by pushing the button. He handed them each a fresh clip for their M-16s, which they quickly loaded.

"I told you to stay put!" Mac barked.

"I couldn't leave Zack here." David said.

"If he hadn't come I'd be dead right now." Zack said.

"How did they get in the base?" David asked. "We were told the perimeter was secure."

"They came up through the sewer grates. Sneaky bastards came in right under our fucking noses."

"What made you come looking for us?" David asked.

"Ron radioed me and asked me to check on everybody. When I got there Jennifer told me where you went. So I came after you."

"Thanks." David said.

"I'm just looking out for my own ass."

"What do you mean?" Zack asked.

"I plan on taking that bus ride out of here with you. I figure saving your ass bought me a ticket." Zack got a small laugh out of that which in turn became a cough, which in turn became a fit of coughing.

"Are you ok?" David asked when the coughing passed.

"I'm fine." Zack said, wiping blood from his lips. "Let's just get the hell out of here."

"We're between a rock and a hard spot. The lobby is crawling with deadfucks." David said sourly.

"How do you think I got up here?" Mac asked.

"Did you kill them all?"

"Enough to get by but you're going to have to stay sharp once we get down there." He looked at Zack. "Are you going to make it?"

"Looks like I don't have a choice." Zack said wincing with fresh pain. Mac looked at him doubtfully for a moment before flipping the stop switch off and pushing the button for the main lobby. There were several zombies just outside the elevator when it opened but Mac quickly blasted them. The trio fanned out into the lobby, killing all the zombies in sight before exiting through the shattered main doors onto the street. The sound of gunfire in the base could still be heard as the S&D groups of soldiers battled the zombies in the base. Tank fire still came from the perimeter battle as well. With Mac keeping watch, David helped Zack along and they moved as quickly as possible back towards the barracks...

Chapter 16.

Saturday June 23 2001 Fort Douglas Salt Lake City, UT 3:00 PM.

"You've got to be shitting me." Jenkins said flatly as they came over a rise and the rear flank of the zombie horde came into view, stretching as far and as deep as they could see. Matt quickly brought the bus to a halt and they all took a moment to survey the scene.

An occasional explosion erupted in the zombies midst, throwing broken bodies through the air. From this distance the Apache gun ships looked no bigger than small birds. But the effects of their chain guns and missiles were brutally evident as they mowed down dozens of zombies at a pass. But for every zombie that was destroyed another was there to take its place.

Matt could see the barricade at the main gate of Fort Douglas; five Abrams tanks defended it now, supported by hundreds of soldiers. The army of zombies was advancing from the suburbs to the west and the main hospital access road to the north, no further than fifty yards from the barricade. The tanks had their main cannons leveled straight ahead at the advancing army of zombies, blasting hundreds of the tightly packed zombies to chunks of meat with each blast. Meanwhile, the gunfire from the soldiers dropped the zombies almost as quickly as the tanks. But the swarm, still a quarter mile deep, kept coming. The radio squawked with hundreds of transmissions, all screaming for backup, for extraction. Some screamed for God, others for their mothers. But most were unintelligible screams of terror.

"We have to go through that..." Matt said.

"Are we fucking crazy or what?" Jenkins said with a coy little smile on his lips.

Matt looked at Susan and saw her staring at him, her eyes cold. She nodded her head to him. Matt turned back to the wheel. Just as the bus began rolling again he caught movement in one of his side mirrors...something dark and swift, just a few yards behind the bus. It looked like a...

"SUPERZOMBIE!" Jenkins screamed at the top of his lungs, startling them all. He was facing the rear of the bus and had brought his M-16 up and began firing the instant the superzombie leapt onto the back of the bus. The rifle bucked in his hands as he squeezed of burst after burst. The bullets shattered the window and began chewing into the superzombie's flak suit. The armor was slowly being whittled to pieces, but he was just wasting bullets. He raised the gun and fired at the superzombies face, but it tucked its chin to its chest and the bullets chewed into its combat helmet. Within seconds Jenkins magazine clicked empty and the superzombie slowly raised its head to look at him. Its skin was black and leathery, shriveled to the skull, bleeding thick, black, tar-like blood. Its blackened teeth were broken and oversized, twin ovals in the face where the nose should have been, and gaping, oozing, eyeless sockets. Despite having no eyes it looked right at him.

And it smiled.

Jenkins instinctively took a few steps back and began fumbling for a clip. The superzombie lunged its upper body through the window and began to wriggle its bulky form into the bus. Matt watched the whole ordeal in the rear view mirror, growing more alarmed by the second.

"Kill that fucking thing Jenkins!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Jenkins had finally succeeded in reloading his rifle and once again began squeezing three round bursts into the zombie's head and torso. But the bullets may as well been paintballs for all the effect they were having as the creature finished pulling itself into the bus.

"Fire in the hole!" Jenkins screamed as he cocked the grenade launcher and aimed it at the creature's chest.

Matt hunched low over the wheel and Susan ducked between two seats.

Jenkins squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked in his hands and the grenade plowed through the zombie's ruined flak jacket and into the soft, rotting flesh of its chest. The impact of the grenade knocked it back against the bullet ridden rear door and Jenkins threw himself towards the floor. The grenade exploded less than a second later and the superzombie exploded from within, the force of the explosion blowing the rear door from the bus and taking what was left of the zombie with it.

"Is everybody alright?" Ron's voice screamed from the walkie-talkie.

Matt grabbed the hand unit from the dash. "We're all fine. Jenkins killed it."

Ahead, the legion of zombies was less than fifty feet away. And to his horror he could see two more superzombies closing in, one to either side. "Heads up!" Matt called into the walkie-talkie and the rear of the bus simultaneously. "We got two more superzombies closing in!" He dropped the talk box and put both hands back to the wheel. In the side mirror he could see Ron swing the rig out to his right to run parallel with him. Matt had the bus at an even 40mph when he plowed into the first wave of zombies. The sickening thud/crunch of dozens of bodies being barreled aside reverberated through the bus. The wheel jerked in Matt's hands as the bus steamrolled the zombies. But instead of parting, the sea of zombies only converged tighter. The bus quickly ground to a crawl as hundreds of zombies swarmed from all sides. Matt cast a quick glance to his right, where the rig had pulled right alongside. Ron's face was set in a sneer and he fought the wheel to keep the big rig on the road. It too moved at a snails pace.

Susan aimed her rifle out a window on the left side and triggered the grenade launcher at the approaching superzombie. Her shot missed by over a dozen yards, blowing half a dozen zombies to pieces. Without breaking stride the superzombie raised its own M-16 and let loose a burst of return fire. Susan ducked to the floor as bullets zinged above her head raining broken glass onto the seats. Once the rain of bullets ended Susan reloaded the grenade launcher. Jenkins joined her and aimed his grenade launcher at the superzombie as well. They fired near simultaneously, but both of their shots were long, exploding well beyond the deadfuck. As the superzombie reloaded its gun on the run, the mob of zombies parted just enough to let it pass.

In the rig Rick was screaming at the top of his lungs as he emptied his weapon out the passenger window at the superzombie approaching twenty yards out. One of his bursts blasted its bottom jaw from its face with a spray of leathery flesh and black ichor, leaving its tongue to wriggle freely. But the creature kept coming.

"I can't stop the fucker!" Rick screamed, ducking back into the cab to reload.

"Use you grenade launcher!" Ron retorted, his eyes never leaving the road. His foot pressed the rigs petal to the metal, but they moved no faster than 5 mph. They were still more than a half-mile from the Fort Douglas main entrance. It may as well been one hundred miles.

Rick cocked the grenade launcher and leaned out the window to aim but the superzombie was nowhere to be seen. He quickly ducked back into the cab.

"It's gone!" he exclaimed.

"What?"

"The superzombie! It's gone?"

"Where did it go?" The rig rocked violently from side to side as more zombies were ground beneath the wheels.

"I don't know."

The window at the back of the cab exploded inward and one of the superzombie's arms burst through and hooked itself around Ron's throat and began choking him. Both of his hands left the wheel to claw at the zombies arm. With no one to steer, the rig began swerving to the left, angling right for the school bus.

Rick twisted and jammed the barrel of his M-16 out the window, into the zombie's mouth with a tooth-shattering crunch and pulled the trigger. The better portion of the zombie's head disintegrated into rotted, leathery flesh and black liquid. But the arm retained a solid grip around Ron's throat. Out of the corner of his eye Rick saw the yellow school bus looming closer. Letting go of the M-16 with one hand he grabbed the wheel and yanked it hard to the right and the rig immediately peered away from its collision course with the bus...

Susan cocked the grenade launcher and took aim at the superzombie once again, seeing it reload it s own weapon as it drew to within ten feet of the bus. The sea of zombies gave it ample room to quickly pass through them as it closed to five feet. She pulled the trigger; a direct hit! The superzombie was engulfed in the grenades explosion...

Ron's vision was going black, his throat clamped in a vice, his head a pressure cooker about to explode. His strength was fading rapidly. He feebly clawed his hands into the doughy, semi-mummified flesh of the superzombie, but it was to no avail. The zombie's arm was like a steel coil around his neck. With his fading vision he could see his brother screaming, but there was no sound save for his own heartbeat, thundering in his head. As he began to drift into unconsciousness he gathered the last of his strength for one final heave...

Matt had braced himself for the impact but at the final moment Rick had grabbed the steering wheel and prevented the crash. But Matt's eyes were still wide with horror as the headless zombie began to pull Ron from the drivers seat and out the window. He saw Ron's body give one final lurch and amazingly break free! The superzombie stumbled back against the trailer and Matt was amazed to see its right arm was missing from the shoulder socket down. Ron hadn't broken free of its grip; he had ripped its rotted arm from its body! The headless, one-armed superzombie stumbled blindly foreword, planting its foot wrongly and fell off the side of the rig into the sea of zombies. But Matt had seen superzombies in action before. The zombie may have fallen off the rig, but the arm was still in the cab. And very much alive!

Rick watched his brother slump foreword against the steering and begin coughing as he gulped air. Amazingly Ron had kept his foot on the gas pedal and the gas pedal pressed to the floor. He cast a quick look to make sure the superzombie had fallen from the rig. It had. Rick reached over to pat his brother on the back but before he could Ron screamed with pain. As he fell back against the seat his hands went to his groin. Rick could see the zombies arm across Ron's lap. The tattered remnants of the fatigues sleeve still clung to it. Its bony, leathery hand was bunched into a fist at Ron's groin. He let out another scream and hunched foreword once again, trying to free his balls. Rick let out a snarl of rage and grabbed the arm with both hands.

"You fucking little piece of shit!" he barked as he pulled it free. Ron let out another scream staying hunching tighter over the wheel, but he kept his foot on the pedal. The arm writhed like a snake in Rick's hands while trying to grab hold of him. With another snarl he dumped the arm out the back window. Ron's stomach was a mass of cramps. Every breath was like inhaling fire. Waves of nausea washed over him making it a constant fight not to vomit. Total exhaustion weighed on him like a ten-ton blanket. Somewhere in the back of his mind, through the fog of pain and exhaustion, he knew that should he let the rig come to a stop that both he and his brother would be eaten alive. A rolling black wave of nausea overtook him. His vision went gray. The only sound a high-pitched whine. And strangely, a chocolate mocha scent wafted through his nose.

"Good job brother! Good fucking job!" Rick said beside him. What the hell was he talking about? "Are you going to be ok? Do you need me to take the wheel?" Ron blinked, just now becoming aware that he was still behind the wheel driving the rig. He took as deep a breath as possible without coughing and pushed himself up off the wheel. His gut lanced with cramps, his balls felt twisted inside out. Another wave of nausea hit him, making him want to shit and puke at the same time. But he continued breathing deeply and the cramps slowly began to fade.

"Yo Bro?" Rick again. "Are you okay? Do you want me to take the wheel?"

"No." Ron's voice was no more than a groan.

"Are you sure?" Ron only nodded.

They were now less than a quarter mile from the Fort Douglas main entrance. The troops there had regained control of the frontline, due mostly in part to the tanks and infantry flamethrower units. Hundreds of zombies lay burning in stinking heaps, which in turn drove the zombies back. Those that did continue to advance were funneled in between the burning rows, making them much easier to contain. As the yellow school bus and rig drew closer the perimeter soldiers pushed harder. The front end of the zombie ranks crumbled under the combined might of the tanks and the flamethrower infantrymen. When the two vehicles finally broke through into friendly territory a cheer went through the defenders. Both vehicles came to a halt at the main gate. Two soldiers quickly came aboard the bus with M-16s in hand while one opened a door on either side of the rig.

"Has any of you been bitten?" one of the soldiers asked Matt. His eyes were a cold gray.

"No." Matt said. The soldier nodded to the other who walked the bus, checking all of them for bites despite what Matt had said... Jenkins stepped up and nodded to the first soldier.