Chapter 8

Audrey hit the gas as she passed me her rifle. It had a longer range than both my SMG and .40, so I took it and stood up in my seat, resting the gun on the top of the windshield and firing into the crowd as best I could. My marksmanship wasn't the best in a moving vehicle, but I managed to pick off a few on the outskirts. It wasn't a patch on Foxy, though. She was going to town on the massive cluster in the centre, becoming as close to an angel of death as it's possible to get. An angel of death that used a shotgun and hand grenades, anyway.

We pulled up and I handed Audrey her rifle back, charging in with my .40 and dropping another four. They were pouring through the door thick and fast at this point, each of them in full moan. The sound was resonating through the group loud enough to make my ears hurt. It didn't slow Foxy, Ash or Shaun down. They worked together like an efficient team that cut through them mercilessly. I noticed Ash especially was out to settle a score and seemed to mostly go after the female zombies. Yet again, I found myself wondering what had happened in there.

"Behind us!" Audrey yelled out. Sure enough, when I looked over I saw a second group emerging from the tree line. These ones were different, though. They were your typical zombie and I guessed they were attracted by the moans of the others in the compound.

"You girls take care of them!" Ash called out. "We've got these walking pustules!" I didn't wait for Audrey's signal to get back in. I vaulted the door and landed in the back seat, snatching the rifle back and bracing it. Audrey swung around with almost enough force to throw me backwards. Luckily, the grip of the gun was resting on the crossbar of the roof and I could use it to keep myself stable. We sped towards the new crowd of infected with me playing sentry and firing into the crowd. The bumpy terrain threw my aim all over the place, but I was able to compensate well enough that I could drop several of them. The moans rising up from the crowd only seemed to increase in volume. That meant we'd pissed them off.

"If you line up, we can do this all quickly and go home!" Audrey called out to them as she rammed one that had strayed from the crowd and I dropped another six. "No? Didn't think so!"

"Reload!" I called out. Audrey passed me up another magazine as I dropped the one I'd ejected into the back foot well. I slammed the new one in and kept firing. Off in the background, I could hear Shaun yelling to Foxy over the booming of grenades and Ash yelling out as gunfire filled the horizon. Between us, we were probably going to attract everything risen within a mile. Luckily, Audrey was doing a brilliant job of mowing down everything shambling into our path and my marksmanship hadn't slipped a bit since my death. I hadn't let it. As soon as I was able, I was straight back to holding a gun and regaining the muscle memory in its use. Any archaeologists digging up our cabin in three-hundred years would find our mines, spent shell casings and a bunch of guns fired so often that the barrels melted and think there was a war there. It was paying off now.

We were taking out the last few zombies while I started to appreciate the kick Shaun used to get out of being an Irwin. Audrey knocked down the last two as I dropped the rifle, grabbed my .40 and put a round in each of their heads. We were circling around to rejoin the others at the compound when a harsh thumping sound due North of us. I looked over as a second round of moaning started and a large shape emerged from the tree line. Its brown fur was missing in several places, the skin underneath a necrotic grey and exposed muscles hanging loose from previous fights. It prowled forwards like a walking tank and started heading towards the compound. Wasting no time, I tapped my ear cuff to get a connection.

"Shaun, disengage! You guys have a fucking bear coming up behind you!" That was when more moans drifted from the tree line. More bears emerged, smaller and in much better condition. They looked like they'd have been cute in life. Now, they were especially dangerous. "Make that bears as in plural! It's got cubs!" I could see Shaun whirl to face the new danger and call out to the others. On any other day at any other time, he'd be overjoyed to see a zombie bear. Old habits and so on. But this was literally the worst time.

Unbidden, I began to flash back to just before the Ryman campaign. Receiving Jake's video and seeing what had happened was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. And my Shaun is an Irwin. I'd seen some shit. But if I had to guess, I'd say this was pretty close to how he must have felt. The sense of being overwhelmed rapidly by decreasing odds and yet knowing you had no choice but to fight on. Until now, even through my own death, I'd had no idea how he stayed so defiant despite knowing what was inevitably going to happen. Now I did. We were battling on despite the fact that there was no way our ammo was going to last us. If Foxy had any more grenades, she would undoubtedly have still been using them. Audrey's rifle was running low and probably the only thing we had enough of in the entire fight was gas for the ATV. We hadn't expected anything close to this magnitude. We'd got ourself into the kind of trouble we'd need a miracle to get out of. That was when Audrey reached for the ATV's radio.

"All contacts, we have a Broken Arrow situation! Repeat: we have a Broken Arrow situation!" With that, she put the radio back and turned to me. "George, there's a box under the driver's seat with a flare gun and some flares! Load up and fire one straight into the air! Everyone has to see it!" I did as I was told, setting the rifle down and jumping down into the foot well to grab the box. I slammed the flare in and fired straight up just as we reached the compound fence. Foxy shot the lock out just as her shotgun clicked empty and she grabbed two pistols from her back. We ploughed on through and smashed into the mob of the plagued zombies in a shower of blood and mucous. Regular decon showers weren't going to cut this. Shaun ran over to pull the gate shut, probably figuring that being trapped with a bunch of especially toxic infected was better than trying to fight a bunch of toxic infected and a family of bears. That gate wasn't going to hold for long, though.

"Now what do we do?" Shaun asked. His main weapon had also run dry. He was down to his revolver now and wasn't looking happy about our odds.

"Help should be coming." Audrey told him as we dismounted. "We just have to hold them off until then!" I threw her rifle to her as I grabbed my SMG, now cursing how useless a weapon designed to do full-auto was in this situation. I clicked it into semi-auto and we readied up as even more moans came from inside the compound.

"How many fucking workers did Clive have?" Shaun asked. It was supposed to be rhetorical, but Ash took it upon herself to sling her gun and start counting on her fingers.

"Well, you've got the cleaners, the doctors, the other scientists, the teachers-" I saw Foxy flinch involuntarily. Maybe her space lobster bait needed to be strengthened. "-then there's the gaggle of whores and the eight schools' worth of snot-nosed little bastards he sired off said whores, the female populace of those kids he possibly planned to interbreed with one day and I only wish I was joking when I said that. So when we run the math on that, it adds up to roughly... A lot." Just then, the next wave of infected burst through the open compound doors. While zombie moans all perfectly mirror each other, witnesses will swear that they hear a slight variation in tone when zombies get to be whatever equates to pissed off for them. In that moment, I heard that variation. These ones were especially angry and they were out for blood.

And then, a miracle happened.

"I, Jake Townsend, do declare my intention- being sound of mind E.T.C- to leave everything I own in the event of my untimely and incredibly probable death in the field to the Orphans of the Rising to be divided up among any organisations that care for them in accordance with whoever wants what. I don't care where it goes. If you're reading this, I'm dead. It's not like I'll be able to deliver it. And if, after the reading of this will, you should see me trying to make the delivery in person, for fuck's sake shoot me!"

The personal will of Jake Townsend.

April 5 2037.

All requests pertaining to the will have been honoured.

All proceedings related therein closed as of February 14 2040.