Melee
The blast from the garden shed tore through the backyard. About fifty kudlaks were caught in the blast zone, and not one kept its feet. Of them, about half were brought down for good. A dozen were torn to pieces as they crowded around the shed, and others took shrapnel to the hindbrain or spine. One exceptionally hapless specimen was decapitated by a piece of the shed roof. Of those that retained some measure of functionality, about two-thirds could only crawl, due to mangled or missing legs, damaged spines or burst eardrums.
Unfortunately, the blast also heavily damaged the rear of the house. Boarded windows broke open, the door was knocked ajar, and a fist-sized hole was blown in the concrete directly behind the shed. Considerable damage was also done to the fence, and large swaths of the protective fires were snuffed out. Two dozen stragglers soon found their way into the yard. A kudlak knocked the back door the rest of the way open, and two more walked in after it. One of the crawling kudlaks made its way around the right side of the house, until it encountered a cellar trapdoor. It pried open the door, and there was a chorus of screams. Then, just when it was halfway in, there was a crack like a splitting melon, and the kudlak halted.
Carlos threw open the trap door. "Stay here, kids!" he shouted over his shoulder. He rushed around the corner, bounding over a crawler that tried to bite through his boot. He found five of the walking kudlaks jostling each other to get in the door, He fired both barrels, downing four and staggering the fifth, which went down for good at a blow of his hammer. He reloaded and turned to bring down two of the newcomers, then started dispatching crawlers with his hammer. They were not only going for the door, but climbing up the walls. One got high enough to smash a second-floor window. Carlos used a shotgun shell on it, and another on a crawler that grabbed hold of his ankle. Finally, as the first of the new arrivals reached the porch, he ducked inside.
Within a moment of Carlos's entry, there was a flash and roar from the shotgun. A kudlak inside fell. As the next kudlak stepped through, there was a dim flash of a swinging hammer, and it fell just inside the threshhold. The one behind it was hit as it stepped over the twitching body, and fell forward. A third fell back, its nose caved in, and another tripped over it. Four, then six kudlaks piled up behing this barricade of bodies, and before any could get through the door, another double-barreled blast felled five of them. As the sixth stood, seeming perplexed, it was grabbed by the arm and pulled forward to fall under a swing of Carlos's hammer. As the body fell, there was a sound of splintering wood inside the house, and Carlos withdrew with a curse.
Colleen swung a pipe at the kudlak which pushed its way through the inside cellar door, with enough force to bend the pipe. It fell with its temple and one eye socket caved in. While it tried to rise, a crawler came over it. Colleen jabbed downward, lodging one end of the pipe into the back of its head. The body spasmed, and the teacher retreated with a shriek, leaving the pipe. She had mistaken the convulsions of the destroyed nervous system for a continuing attack, and so had no weapon when the first attacker regained its feet and staggered in. She drew back in time to escape a grabbing hand, only to run into a cabinet. A ten-year-old boy, a promising little athlete, hurled a croquet ball and hit it in the ear. It staggered and toppled back, to land squarely on the upright pipe. When it started to sit up, its rib cage rebounded against the pipe. Before it could free itself, Esther finished demolishing its skull with a heave of a rock. Moments later, Carlos descended the stairs. "Damn it! I left the choke point for nothing!" he fumed. He ran back up the stairs, and fired the 12-gauge four times.
Only a handful of crawlers remained at the door, and Carlos easily dispatched them with his hammer as they came over the bodies of the fallen. Then he heard a crunch of falling masonry just out of sight, and ran around a corner to a reading room. This was where the explosion had knocked a hole in the wall. He entered the room to find the hole expanding, as a standing kudlak and two crawlers clawed at the edges. Brick and plaster cracked and crumbled, not simply at applied force but in what seemed like a rapid process of material decay, as if the natural wear and weathering of years and decades was being compressed into moments. He fired a blast at the standing kudlak. With a hint of agility, it tilted its head to one side, but still fell with one side of its face laid open. He lunged forward to brain a crawler. The other, which had been torn in half at the waist, beat a surprisingly rapid retreat. He beheaded it with a shotgun blast just before it reached the edge of the porch. As he leaned out, the fallen kudlak abruptly sat up and grabbed hold of the gun. The gun cracked open on its worn hinge, and when he tried to pull it away from the kudlak, the weapon snapped in two. The kudlak rose to its feet and lunged for him. Carlos had just enough time to load and fire one shell from the open chamber. A cloud of gas and powder sprayed out along with the shot, searing the kudlak,s flesh while the shot tore apart its skull. It fell still in flames.
A quick sweep showed the first floor to be empty of undead. He looked up the stairs, and saw the door still firmly shut. Then he saw that the front door had been pushed open from inside. He cursed and ran out the door. As he crossed the threshhold, he hear a faint hum, and dived aside just in time to avoid being hit by his own Bus. The righthand door was torn off its hinges, and a corpse, no longer even undead, slumped behind the wheel. The Bus slammed to a halt against a wall, and Carlos lunged inside. A screen on the console showed twisting and squirming shapes, an oscillating, inhuman squeal came from the speakers, and a red light was flashing on the uplink equipment on the dashboard. Without hesitation, Carlos smashed the uplink with his hammer.
The noise from the console became a rising scream, and the console screen flared with something like static. Carlos dived out the lefthand door and ran for Colleen's small car. He smashed a window and rummaged inside, before running back with a pair of jumper cables. In 45 seconds of creative rewiring, he hooked the Bus onboard computer directly to the hydrogen turbine. "Can you say `power surge', sucker?" he shouted. He flipped a switch, and jumped out of the car as the turbine activated. The speakers reached a crescendo and the screen flashed a brilliant electric blue-white before both went out. At the same time, sparks and smoke erupted from the console.
Abruptly, the thin black smoke thickened into a milky white mist, translucent but quite visible. The mist poured out in a sudden surge, then blew straight for Carlos. Electric sparks came from the cloud, shocking Carlos. He hurled his hammer into the mist; its passage left a hole in the mist, and its advance was stopped for a few moments as it coalesced back together. It was just enough time for Carlos to run inside. The mist seemed to race after him, and advanced faster still when his retreat ended in a corner of his living room. As the mist surged and spread to envelope him, Carlos spun around and thrust something out in front of him. It was the old boomerang. The mist seemed to brake, but momentum carried it forward, and as it cascaded against the boomerang, it vanished.