Knight in the City: A Zombie Apocalypse Survival Tale by Stephen J. Beard Page B

teenage girl just because their boss told them to?
    Then it occurred to me:  They didn’t have to kill me or John outright.  They could just leave us behind or trap us and let the zombies do it for them.  I didn’t want to become a zombie.  Whatever they tried to do, I vowed I wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
    As we walked past the hospital parking garage some zombies came shambling after us.  Ben, John and Tyler took the first few.  But soon there were too many and I stepped up with my tomahawk and started pulling my weight.  After I took out three or four I began to tire.  This wasn’t like shooting the crossbow.  Swinging the tomahawk around was tiring.  And I had to kill more before we reached the ER entrance.
    There were several ambulances packing into the drop off area.  Many sat with their doors open.  Corpses and dried blood covered everything.  Twenty or so zombies were milling about this area and quickly turned their attention to us.  This time we fired our crossbows first to thin the herd.  When they got close there were only five left and we went to our tomahawks again.  I killed two close up.  We retrieved our bolts and felt like we were being watched the whole time.
    The door to the ER was a sliding glass door like they have at the grocery store, only bigger.  Behind it were a lot of zombies.  We couldn’t tell how many because all we could see were zombies.  And they were looking at us like we were dinner.
    “Now what?” I asked as I leaned up against an ambulance.
    “Same as usual,’ said Ben.  “We open the door a little and control the flow of zombies.  Then take them one at a time.”
    John volunteered to go up and open the door.  I guess he thought that Ben and Tyler wouldn’t shoot him in the back.  Not while we were still needed anyway.
    The door slid open and we fired one at a time.  One at a time, the zombies went down.  Soon the doorway filled up with corpses.  We were getting low on bolts anyway.  The three men went up and began getting bolts from the heads of the corpses as they pulled the bodies from the doorway.
    As Tyler bent over and reached for a corpse, a zombie from inside grabbed his coat.  The zombie fell onto Tyler, biting and snarling.  John grabbed the zombie off of him and flung it to the ground.  With a quick, practiced motion, he pulled out his tomahawk and plunged it into the zombies head.
    “Thanks,” said Tyler as he took John’s hand and stood up.
    “You’re welcome,” replied John.  “Now maybe you won’t kill me and Tabby.”
    Tyler froze and Ben just stared for a moment shifting his gaze from me to John and back.  They both looked as if they might say something but the glass doors exploded outwards, covering all of us with shards.  Zombies poured out.
    I froze.
    I was maybe thirty feet from the door.  Zombies shamble slowly but I stood there like a statue for what seemed like five minutes.  It’s funny how time slows in these situations.  I thought that was only something that happened in movies.  Then John was grabbing my hand and yelling.
    “Run,” he yelled.  “C’mon Tabby.”
    We ran to the closest ambulance and climbed up to the top.  Ben and Tyler were right on or heels.  Zombies surrounded the ambulance.  There must’ve been sixty or seventy below us.  Enough to rock the thing back and forth.  As long as they all didn’t end up on one side I don’t think they would tip it over.  We were definitely the center of attention.
    “Fuck,” said Ben.  “Now what?”
    “We don’t have enough bolts for all these things,” said John.  “And we can’t reach down that far with our tomahawks.”
    “And if we shoot our rifles we’ll bring every zombie in downtown,” I added, wanting to contribute.
    “I’m still trying to figure out why the two of you haven’t killed Ben and me, said Tyler.  “If you knew we were told not to bring you back, why didn’t you take us out?”
    “That’s not