“Dislocated, maybe?”

“Al,” Finn sighed. “Upstairs and stay there. Lock the door. Lock every damn door.”

“You just got shot!”

“I field-dressed it. Go on.” Finn turned and broke into a steady if slow jog.

A chorus of moaning rose in volume down the street. But it wasn’t enough to drown out the noise of the garbage truck serving as the settlement’s front gate chugging to life.

Andy was going to let in the infected. The whole settlement was dead.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Daniel had an aneurysm. He could feel it. Without a doubt it was going to pop if he didn’t find his girl right f**king now.

He jogged down Main Street, his small semblance of calm thinning with Finn’s blood on his hands. He rubbed his palm on his jeans, spread his fingers out and wiped off the blood in between them. His gun was slippery.

The kid was alright. He was on his feet, swearing like a trooper and finishing padding the bullet wound in his shoulder.

Daniel headed up the search party. The group gathered at the Blackstone gate would do fine for his search and rescue squad.

Someone here had to know where Owen would have taken her.

He dodged the tractor they had been tearing up the tarmac with, less than 50 meters out when he saw Andy. Then, Daniel’s feet faltered.

The young man came streaking out from beneath the shadows of a line of shop awnings to the east. He held a small sub-machine gun in his hands. The weapon pointed straight at the four men standing clueless by the garbage truck.

Andy’s mouth opened in a silent scream. A war cry.

“No!” Daniel raised his pistol, fired off three shots in the boy’s direction.

Andy started firing. His victims were clustered so close they didn’t stand a chance. The four men toppled, torn apart by the volley of bullets. Blood sprayed the road, the truck. It went everywhere, bright and beautiful in the light of the rising moon.

Andy’s head turned and the weapon followed. Bullets sprayed up stone at Daniel’s feet. He threw himself behind the tractor, hitting the ground hard while bullets punched into metal. His teeth clinked and his shoulder sang, jarred by the impact.

Then the bullets stopped. The sudden silence chil ed him to his bones. His ears stil echoed with the inferno of noise from a moment ago.

Shit.

Daniel pushed to his feet, feeling every day of his forty-odd years. He snuck a look around the side of the tractor and his gut plunged.

Andy was climbing into the cab of the garbage truck, slamming the door shut. “Oh, no.”

He aimed at the door, firing at the little prick as the truck came to life like some monster of old. Or maybe more akin to the monsters of new. The infected were wel revved up – moaning and snarling on the other side of the big machine.

“What happened?” A hand clapped down on his shoulder and one of Santa’s buddies puffed to a stop beside him.

Others didn’t stop to ask questions, opening fire on the garbage truck’s front windscreen. Glass shattered. Inside the cab Andy jerked and fell, spread across the steering wheel. His head was a ruined, red mush.

It didn’t matter. Mission accomplished.

Andy had managed to reverse back two, maybe three meters. He had almost cleared one lane of traffic and it was more than enough.

The infected spilled into town.

Gunfire filled his ears. Daniel ejected his empty clip, reached for the spare in his back pocket. A weird kind of calm took him over.

His hands held perfectly steady. They were fighting for their lives now. No question about it.

More of the townsfolk arrived, standing alongside him, taking aim. Before them, bodies staggered and flopped and fell, soon replaced by more. The horde gathered on the bridge and along the fence lines poured through the gap in their defenses. Some fell upon the four men Andy had kil ed until a hive of moving limbs surrounded the bodies.

Several tried unsuccessfully to climb the front of the garbage truck to get at Andy.

There were too many of them pouring through to get close enough to reach the truck and close the gap.

Close by, something howled, loud, long and mournful. More joined in and the noise eclipsed al the weapons with ease. Yipping and snapping sounds came from the other side of the truck.

“What the f**k was that?” Santa looked as good as Daniel felt, cheeks puffed up and purple.

“At a guess?” he yel ed back at the man. “The dogs Ali saw, or something like them.”

Santa blanched, turned and hollered, “More guns in the hardware.”

Daniel grabbed his thick wrist. “Where’s Owen?”

Santa squinted, shook his head. “Your woman’s fine. Sent her home.”

It was all he needed to know. The relief was exquisite. Breathtaking. He stupidly grinned, ignoring the look from one of the townsfolk near him. The apocalypse could wait. Or not.

The assembled were slowly being pressed back by the onslaught of infected. Some were slipping through the gap to collapse mere meters before them, but others were spreading out into the town.

This was not a fight they were likely to win.

“She’s safe.” Finn elbowed in beside him, a rifle slung over one shoulder and a pistol in each hand. The front of his shirt was stained dark with blood and there was a tangle of bandages spanning from around his neck to beneath his left arm. An almighty wad beneath his left collarbone, where the bullet had hit.

“You’re a walking happy meal looking like that.” Daniel jutted his chin at the kid’s chest.