The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3) by Luke Duffy Page A

returning to her like a howling wind, her mind was released from the grip of stunned inactivity. Without thinking, she sprang forward, ignoring the burst of machinegun bullets that hissed and snapped by her head. She reached down and grabbed hold of Tommy by his wrists and hauled him towards her, pushing down hard with her legs until she fell back into the cover of the building. Tommy landed on top of her as a flood of snapping projectiles ripped into the patch of ground where he had been sprawled just seconds beforehand.
    Al pulled himself back into cover, tearing the empty magazine from his rifle, and reaching for another. The air around them still roared with gunfire, but they were out of immediate danger for now. The building that they hid behind absorbed the salvos, but it would not hold back the rounds for long. Eventually, under a prolonged assault, the brickwork would weaken and the bullets would smash their way through the multiple layers of walls within the structure. He had seen it demonstrated on many occasions. He had even witnessed huge trees with trunks that were two metres thick being felled by sustained fire from a machinegun.
    Tommy was howling with pain. He writhed on the floor, holding his hand against his smashed shoulder where a round had punched through, shattering his collar bone, and tearing the flesh. Already, he was soaked with blood and losing more by the second.
    Tina, crouching beside Tommy and tearing at the wrapper of his field dressing, became aware of other distant sounds. She realised that she could hear more noises of battle coming from the north. The distinct echoing rattle of automatic fire and the low concussions of high-explosives that caused the ground to shudder were clearly audible. She knew what those distant sounds meant. Their base was also under heavy attack.
    “Al,” she shouted, “the base…”
    Al paused and looked towards the north, trying to focus his hearing as another volley of machinegun bullets hammered away at the walls behind them. He heard the raging battle in the distance, and his facial expression quickly turned from anger to confusion.
    “Harry, send sit-rep, over,” he demanded through his radio, but there was no answer. “Harry, Al, radio check. Send sit-rep, over.”
    Their personal radios only had a basic planning range of one-point-five kilometres and even less in a built-up area where tall structures could interfere with the signal. In a direct line, they were roughly nine-hundred metres from the outer walls of the FOB, but in their current situation, it could very well have been nine-hundred miles. The base was not answering their calls, and the patrol was completely cut off and pinned down.
    “Harry, this is Al; we’re in heavy contact approximately one kilometre south-west of your location. Send sit-rep, over.”
    He waited, but there was still no reply. Either the base was in the process of falling to their unknown enemy, or they were too busy defending the walls. The sky towards the north flashed and blazed as the battle raged. Tracer rounds sailed through the air across the horizon like distant laser beams, travelling in all directions as the attackers and defenders fought for control of the Forward Operating Base.
    “Phil, you see much from where you are? I’ve lost comms with zero. They’re under attack,” Al anxiously called into his radio and turned to look in the general direction of Phil’s position. “We’re pinned down behind the building with the beer poster on the gable end, fifty metres to your half-right.”
    “Roger that, Al, I have you visual,” Phil replied calmly, his voice sounding clear and almost robotic. “No comms with base. You have dead ground to your right and buildings to the south for cover. Stay low and make your way back to the FRV.”
    Moving in a crouch and flinching against the cracks of whizzing bullets and bone crunching explosions, the three of them began to snake their way towards Phil’s location.