Siege
The gate to Carlos's lot was 100 meters from the porch. The first kudlak to arrive was in the clothes of a rancher, accompanied by three lurching sheep. There was a faint crack and a high-pitched whine. The sound was repeated, and a sheep fell dead. The kudlak reached out and touched the gate, then gripped one of the metal bars with both hands. Slowly but surely, the metal began to bend. Spots of rust appeared where the undead hands touched. Then a .22 bullet went into its skull just above the left eye socket. It fell, got back up, then walked in a tight circle twice before falling down again, to lie there thrashing.
Carlos watched from his chair. He wore sunglasses, and a cap with a headdress that covered his neck. He had fired the killing shot with a bolt-action magnum rimfire rifle, which had twice the range of the standard .22 Long rifle.
"Why don't they die- stop- when you shoot them in the head?" Billy said. "The movies always say that even a zombie can't survive with its brain destroyed."
"Well, Billy, you obviously can't depend on movies for information," Carlos said. "But, I'm pretty sure the movies had the right idea. They just underestimated what's necessary to do the job. The human brain is a very large, very complex and very durable organ. No one knows what, if anything, most of the brain does. As far as anyone can tell, the only parts of the brain that are essential to life are the hind brain and brain stem. Apart from that, there's no form of head trauma that someone at one time or another hasn't survived. And that's what happens with normal, living people. I'm sure these things go down even harder." He fired the rimfire at another kudlak, which twitched on its feet as a round bounced around the inside of its skull. "All in all, it's more practical to destroy the inner ear- the organs of balance," Carlos said when it finally keeled over. "If that's not working, they can't get up no matter how long they try. Though they might still crawl respectable distances."
At first, the kudlaks came singly or in small groups. Carlos laid down enough fire to keep their numbers down to no more than a dozen at any given time. But then, starting at 1:00, the main mass of them arrived. While they were concentrated on the road, enough were walking on the earth to send a cloud of dust ahead of them. Though it was very hard to make out features of individuals, these had clearly been the inhabitants of the station center: women and men, and far too many children. Twenty of them reached the fence at once, and before Carlos could bring down five of them, forty more had arrived. He donned a dust mask and continued to fire, bringing down a kudlak every third or fourth shot, until he ran out of magnum ammunition. By then, the gate was already half-open. The chain broke, and kudlaks poured in.
One got ahead of the general mass, and was rewarded with a Casull slug that punched into its temple and back out behind its ear. It fell at once, and did no more than thrash where it lay afterwards. A rimfire shot brought down another advancing ahead of the group, which got up but quickly fell back into the throng. A few seconds later, another rimfire round hit a kudlak in the temple, but only staggered it. In frustration, Carlos fired a .410 blast at 70 m range. The steel shot caused a number of flesh wounds. A kudlak with blood coming out of its ear got itself turned around, and plowed into its fellows.
Carlos fired more shots, to marginally better effect, bringing down eight or nine kudlaks before they closed to 50 m range. There, the kudlaks encountered the inner fence, which separated a discrete front yard from the rest of the lot. By now, they were fanning out.
Carlos fired both barrels five more times, then he stood up. "Time to take the fight to them," he said grimly.
He descended to the ground through the van, and emerged carrying the flame thrower. While flamethrowers had initially been banned by Australia's arms laws, loopholes had been created for homemade devices used by farmers and ranchers, who had legitimate use for them. While still regulated, these were classified as agricultural tools rather than weapons, and were indeed distinctly useless against anything but weeds and dry brush. Carlos' propane-fueled specimen was more marginal than most, with a range of 5 meters with a favorable wind.
He jogged straight for the gate, breaking stride to shoot one of them that had climbed more than halfway up the fence. He let fly with the flame thrower three meters from the gate, and the flame jet just reached the kudlaks. Only three of them caught fire, but the rest recoiled. The ones that lit up fell thrashing to the ground. He ran to the left, spraying more of them as they moved for the left flank. About as much fuel landed inside the fence as outside of it. Flames spread quickly through the brush. A cluster of bushes near the corner ignited, sending the kudlaks retreating the other direction. He bracketed them and sprayed until the fuel tank went dry. He had to retreat to get away from the spreading blaze.
Carlos hooked up a second tank while he was on the move. The kudlaks were regrouping on the right. He fired at them as they clustered at the corner from 3 m range. The jet curled with the wind, and instead lit up two of the undead that had wandered 7 m downrange. He closed in, until clutching hands through the fence threatened to grab the flame thrower muzzle, and sprayed. Seven caught fire, and the rest reeled back. He looked up just in time to see an exception as it topped the fence. He fired the .22 straight up and put a bullet through the palate. It froze, hung for a moment and fell back, landing on at least one other kudlak with a sticky crunch.
Even with flames in front of them, the kudlaks crowded toward Carlos. He loaded and emptied his gun five times before falling back. He tossed a quarter-stick of dynamite to knock down kudlaks grouping on the right, then torched them with the rest of the flamethrower fuel. He cast it aside and circled around the right side of the house. The wind was fanning the flames, enough to cut off the right fence. But kudlaks were making their way around the blaze on the left. Just as he arrived, one of them came down inside the fence. He shot it with a Casull slug, and used a .22 on one just topping the fence. It fell, dragging another with it, and the bodies struck at least five more. He closed to point-blank range and fired the last of his ammunition into the crowd, shooting ten kudlaks in the head. He heard a thump, and turned to see a kudlak sprawled a few meters away. It had scaled the rear fence and come down in the garden, only to trip on a low chicken wire barrier that separated the garden from the rest of the yard. Four more were already in the garden, and a dozen more were scaling the fence. He retreated to a garden shed.
Within moments, three kudlaks converged on the shed. They were greeted with both barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun. Carlos threw open the perforated door of the shed, shot down two more kudlaks, and sprinted to the garden. He hurled a dozen cylinderes into the garden. Each made a beeping sound, and then released a cloud of orange mist: aerosol insecticide. As he threw the last one, a kudlak tried to grab him. He downed it with a blow to the ear of the blunt end of his hammer and followed up by driving the point into the back of its skull. Three more were coming behind. He ignited a flare, and the kudlaks recoiled. Then he tossed the flare into the garden, whch instantly erupted into flames.
Fifteen kudlaks were caught in the immediate blast. The wind blew the flames back, igniting many more behind the fence. One of seven kudlaks in the yard also caught fire, and a dull KRUMPF of imploding air sent them all sprawling. Carlos dispatched the three nearest himself with his hammer, and shot three more. He retreated once again to the garden shed. The threat from the rear was netralized, but a steady stream of kudlaks were coming over the left fence. Carlos broke a small window in the side of the shed and fired through it, bringing down fifteen more of the undead. Just before the kudlaks could reach the door of the shed, he stuffed several fistfulls of shells in his pockets and ran out, much faster than was necessary to outpace the undead. One kudlak wrenched the door of its hinges and stepped in, surveying the interior with whatever new or old senses it had. If it had any remaining reason or memory, it could have itemized the shed's contents thus: a rack of tools, a dozen "bug bombs", six boxes of 25 shotgun shells each, 30 kg of chemical fertilizer... and a lit stick of dynamite.