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

They could not see him, but they all knew that he was busily taking out targets from his hiding place, aiming carefully at anything he saw moving from amongst the enemy positions. No doubt he had already killed a score of their attackers as they sat hunched behind their blazing guns and silhouetting themselves as he took careful aim at their heads.
    Tommy was in severe pain and losing a lot of blood. The field dressing that had been hastily placed over his wound was soaked through and bright red as the hole in his flesh continued to gush. However, he refused to release his grip on his rifle. The weapon would not leave his grasp until he finally died. Tina helped him to move, but he was becoming weaker by the second, stumbling along as she supported him with his arm flung across her shoulder. She hoped that they would find a place where they could stop for a few vital minutes, giving them the time to stem the bleeding and redress the wound before he bled out.
    A roar above them made them duck into cover as a streak of light screeched over their heads just a metre or two above them. They felt the heat of the projectile as it soared through the air, leaving a faint white trail of smoke in its wake, and accompanied with a string of tracer bullets that snapped loudly as they passed over. With a shuddering thud, the rocket slammed into a building just twenty metres ahead of them. It detonated with a blinding flash, sending sparks racing outwards in all directions, and quickly followed by a shockwave that pushed against the bodies of Al and the others as they were still dropping to the floor, searching for cover. Shrapnel smashed into the buildings all around the centre of the explosion, shattering windows, brickwork, and bone as it ploughed through the corpses still mindlessly wandering through the battle-zone.
    The pressure of the explosion pushed against Tina’s skull like a vice. She screamed with pain and fear and shock as the world around her juddered, and the hard ground slammed into her body. Her vision danced and blurred, and she felt herself tumbling into blackness as her consciousness began to slip from her.
    Al sprinted forward a bound as a cloud of dust and smoke spilled out from the building where Phil had been positioned. The walls, already severely damaged, had collapsed inwards, and the roof had fallen in through the floors. The moment he saw the damage, he knew in his bones that nothing could have survived.
    “Phil, Al, radio check.” Just the hiss of static was all that came back to him. “Phil, Al, click twice if you can hear me.”
    He tried again and again, but there was no answer from within the wreckage of the house. Al needed to act fast. Their FRV was gone, and more than likely, Phil along with it. He turned and glanced back behind him as more tracer whizzed through the streets and crumbling buildings. He saw movement all around them. Dark shapes were converging on the area from every side, ignorant to the machinegun bullets that ripped through their bodies and chewed up the streets around them.
    “Move, Tommy,” Al screamed back at the two prostate forms that were still reeling from the rocket that had obliterated their rendezvous point. “Tina, get him up and get going. Phil is gone, we need to move.”
    Tommy was scrambling through the dust and debris, trying to climb to his feet while Tina writhed beside him from the effects of the blast that had engulfed and overwhelmed her senses just moments before. Tommy coughed and sputtered, reaching down and grabbing Tina by the arm, ignoring the pain he felt surging through his body.
    “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
    The dead were closing in from all around them. Al fired into a number of bodies as he bounded through the rubble, ignoring the deluge of bullets clapping at the air and slamming into the ground. Again, his rifle ceased firing, and without a second thought, he released the magazine and instinctively slammed a fresh one into place. He