Two Alive, стр. 13

in the brother’s alarm line, dozens upon dozens of them kept moving through it like it was nothing. The boys reached the edge of the retaining wall, above the docking area, and decided they had to jump. The stampede behind them had swarmed the woods and they had nowhere else to go. They both hit the pavement below and turned around to start firing on the charging masses. Eight shots from Antonio’s Glock G19 and four from Miles’ slower rifle was enough to put down the closest strikers, but the crowd just trampled over the fallen and kept coming.

Antonio swung the assault rifle around from his back and hoisted the weapon to look down the sights, “We shouldn’t have come here! I fuckin’ told you!” He opened fire before Miles could respond.

Miles turned to look around for an escape route while his brother held off the approaching waves. To their left was the confusion of shopping carts, the truck, and a dead end. He tapped Antonio on the shoulder and started running to the right to go around the building but stopped when he saw a large group of slower moving lurkers starting to round the corner.

“Oh shit.” Miles lifted his Dragunov and started firing, “Man down, where you from!” He sang and fired again.

“Miles! Miles!” Antonio stopped firing. “We gotta get in the store! Follow the path! Follow the path, c’mon!” He went running down the lane of arranged pushcarts and up the dock stairs.

Miles went after his brother with dozens of fiends flying from the man-made cliff above, crashing into the asphalt. They splatted and smacked the ground, one after the other and those that didn’t break their legs or worse got back up and continued to chase the brothers. Antonio reached the steel door at the end of the dock and started kicking and banging on it. When Miles reached his brother, Antonio had already spun around to the growing multitudes of infected and had his AR-15 raised. Miles tried lifting the shutter door but quickly figured out that it wasn’t budging. A wall and a closed door was in front of him and at least two hives’ worth of strikers were seventy meters behind him. The brothers were trapped.

Miles got down beside Antonio, who was taking a knee and they both started shooting into the crowd of biting and screaming and clawing and bleeding and spitting and barking, infected freaks. For each that went down, two seemed to take its place as the hoard poured over the carts trying to muscle their way through. However, the creatures couldn’t help but run down the bottlenecking path of shopping carts in an almost ordered line of riotous maniacs and it made them somewhat manageable. Until they started crawling and climbing over each other as they smashed into each other. None had reached the top of the ramp to the dock yet but they were getting closer and closer with each passing second.

Antonio reloaded a clip in his assault rifle and pulled his gold Beretta free to empty the remaining bullets in the handgun. “I’m reloading!” He called out to Miles, even though his brother was right next to him and could see the action being done.

Miles was zipping from one runner to the next, taking out the closest freaks with headshots and slowing down others by clipping their legs and ankles. He toppled one and sent dozens falling with the creature from the way it dropped. With two bullets left, he fired them both to stall more fiends, then swung his pack around to reload.

“Miles reloading! I’m reloading!” Miles said, going through the motions of the task without looking because he couldn’t take his eyes off the waves of striders still on their way. The boy’s heart was pounding in his chest and he felt a chill run down his spine as the song in his head shouted “YAWK! YAWK! YAWK!”

“Fuck! Fuck!” Antonio sprayed his assault rifle indiscriminately into the masses and knew things were looking bad for them. He looked at Miles, who was looking at him and he shook his head. “I knew I shoulda brought them grenades today.” He flashed a quick smile, but it faded just as quickly. “To the last bullet.”

Miles swallowed hard and raised his rifle, “To the last bullet.”

In a worst-case scenario, like this one now, the old man always said use every bullet you got. Rather go down dying after I know I’ve spent everything I had to survive, he’d say. “To the last bullet” was almost a declaration for a suicide pact when faced against impossible odds. So Miles and Antonio were both unloading their guns into the carnage in front of them as the strikers were getting closer and closer.

“Miles switch to your pistols!” Antonio shouted over the gunfire and the growling hordes that were even louder than their weapons.

Miles continued using his rifle, counting off the shots as he picked off fiends left and right. The creatures were now on the dock and clambering over each other to continue towards the boys. Miles still had five more bullets in his Dragunov and wouldn’t change to any other weapon until he had used each one of them. After firing two and missing the next shot, he took a moment and inhaled deeply while he lined up his second to last shot. Antonio’s screaming made him miss that one too.

“Miles!” Antonio shouted. “Get your fuckin’ pistols out! That sniper rifle is too slow!” He then emptied what was left of his assault rifle. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and stood up as he pulled both handguns free from his waist. He began nailing the raving fiends with his aim focused on those closest to them.

Miles fired the last shot of his rifle and hit two infected who dropped at the ramp and caused a pile up. He smiled to himself and