Week 50, Day 3
Austin had come to the siege with a very special gun, taken from a cache of weapons from a black ops unit. The weapon was an American-180, a gun that fired the meek .22 rimfire cartridge, but did so at a rate of fire of up to 1200 rounds per minute from a magazine with a capacity of up to 375 rounds. Extensive modifications to this specimen had included an even larger magazine. As the sun rose on the third day of the onslaught, the gun finally clicked dry as he fired on a back charging the second line of barricades on the left side of the lower corridor. Jay stepped in and dispatched a wounded male. Then Pearl stepped up beside him, firing a large-caliber pistol with no heed of the terrific noise.
The pack had come, not through a breach in the first line of barricades, but from the breached front of a storefront adjoining the casino. Already, more zombies were pushing through. The volunteers at the first barricade turned to fire on the threat at their rear, and reinforcements were already coming from the other end of the corridor. It was enough to keep the zombies coming through the storefront from gathering into a swarm, but not to push them back and resecure the door. Meanwhile, the swarming zombies at the first barricades would only grow stronger. Austin gave the order to prepare for what he knew was inevitable: "Everyone, fall back to the second line!"
Within minutes, the zombies were pouring into the corridor from both ends, some coming directly from the entrances and others moving in from the main corridor. The attackers' very numbers did more to slow them down than the fire of the volunteers. "Don't worry!" Austin shouted. "We planned for this; it's just a little ahead of schedule!" Even as he spoke, he winced involuntarily at a crash from his right. The well-barred doors that directly connected the lower corridor to the casino were straining inward.
Fortunately, at almost that moment, another sound rang through the mall: the roar of engines, accompanied by the thumps of bodies striking metal. On the right side of the corridor, the zombies pressed even harder at the inner barricades, less in aggression than in sheer panic. Behind them, the Tremors Truck lumbered into view. Sydney fired a machine gun from the truck bed as the vehicle plowed through the edges of the swarm, veering off from the tight-packed throng at the intersection. The mini-Hummer golf cart and the little Isetta followed, further decimating the thinned edges of the swarm and cutting down zombies that ran after the truck. Then all three vehicles turned tail, drawing zombies after them. More gunfire could be heard around the corner, from more volunteers emerging from the side entrance.
"All right, all available guns forward!" Austin shouted. "Cut down anything past the first barricades, but no further!" It was doubtful whether anyone paid him any particular attention as the volunteers rushed to the barricades and beyond. Choruses of gunfire began to alternate with the grisly sounds of blades and bludgeons deployed in close combat. Meanwhile, the roar of the truck grew louder again, and then quieter, as the vehicles made another pass to bait the zombies further down the corridor. As for Austin himself, several volunteers made a point of escorting him back to an impromptu command center in the theater entrance.
"We're at the rear entrance fallback position," Sydney announced over the radio. "I got a dozen guys with me; the rest are dropping back to the side entrance."
"Good!" Austin said. "They can use the same ambushes we tried in the practice run on the zombies that follow them. Then they throw open the doors and drop back to you."
"Roighto, just like we practiced." After a moment of silence, Sydney added, "Texas… we lost a few."
"Same here," Austin said. "Out."
He rubbed his eyes wearily before looking up. He managed not to start when he found Pearl standing silently beside him. "What now?" she asked aloud.
He pointed back to the breach, belatedly remembering to maintain eye contact when he spoke: "We have to do something about that. We can't resecure it, and. by now there isn't much point… But we have to know what's going on on the other side."
Pearl nodded. "And the rest?"
Austin shrugged, matching the deaf woman's exaggerated body language. "When we open another entrance or two, things will get better here… at least for a while. After that, we can try out traps and ambushes. Thin them out, make sure there aren't too many of them gathering in one place… and really, that's all we can do."
Atop the Stratosphere tower, Branson stood beside Tal and Duke, watching the man known as Q climb aboard a ride called X-Scream. Duke was looking through a telescope on a tripod, while Tal talked to the chief- or, as it would probably be better to say, at him. The chieftain seemed somehow distracted, or detached. His gaze kept drifting south, toward Circus Circus, and when he looked elsewhere his eyes invariably went to the thirteen-year-old girl at the controls of the ride. He was jarred when Tal loudly said, "Well?"
Branson belatedly realized he had been answering questions with vague affirmatives, and no idea what the questions were about. "Oh," he said, "I'm sure the weapon will be quite effective."
"Yeah," Tal said, "but what about the zombies? What do you think is up with them?"
He pointed to the street below. In the last 50 hours, the distribution and migratory patterns of Vegas's zombie population had been in flux. The most visible and unexpected result was that the concentrations of zombies on the northern Boulevard were growing thicker, evidently from mass migration down from the north.
Branson shrugged. "They'll do what they're gonna do," he said. "All we can do is look out for our bottom line… Are you ready, Mr. Q?"
Q was just finishing setting up the enormous artillery-based rifle on X-Scream's passenger car, which ran on a short track suspended over the edge of the tower. "Yeah, much as I'm gonna be," said Q. "I could use a few degrees of depression, though." Abbie threw a few switches, and the entire track tilted, enough to send the car rolling forward.
Duke spoke: "Well, I don't like it. That boy came up with a plan based on everything we know about the zeds' behavior, and the first thing that happens is that they do something we've never seen before. I say, that's always bad. I think we need to reconsider whether we should support…" His voice trailed off as Abbie looked sternly over her shoulder at him.
"All right!" Q shouted. "If you look to the south, there's a swarm-class concentration of zombies surrounding the Circus Circus KOA campground. Range… horizontal… approximately seventeen hundred meters. If you look through the telescope, very carefully, you should be able to see a bull, two meters in height, wearing a basketball jersey… Ah, and if you haven't done so already, now's the time to put on ear protection. It will be absolutely essential."
Branson put on a pair of oversized earmuffs, and stepped forward to look through the telescope. Sure enough, there was an especially tall zombie… And then there was a noise like a clap of thunder, accompanied by a noticeable vibration through the platform, and with no appreciable delay, the tall zombie was suddenly without a head.
Then Branson raised his head, and saw the X-Scream car rolling back up the track.