The Darkest Days (Death & Decay Book 0.5) Read Free Page B

of a woman with an
arm that ended in a ragged stump at the elbow. The second shot
struck the abdomen of a snarling man who limped as he dragged the
mangled remains of his right leg.
    “The head!” Wyatt shouted. A half a dozen
brutally disfigured monsters converged on them at once. Others had
noticed the commotion they had created. “Shoot them in the
head!”
    Wyatt cursed as his first shot missed its
target. The wild animals were a couple of yards away, but their
unpredictable, staggering gait made it difficult to aim for such a
small target. As the limping man moved closer, his arms swung up as
he reached for Wyatt. This time, when Wyatt fired his weapon, the
bullet found its mark.
    In the time it had taken for him to dispatch the
one attacker, a handful of others had quickly joined their ranks.
With each second that passed, their odds of any positive outcome
became more and more slim.
    Suddenly he saw it. A small gap opened in their
ring of captors.
    “Let’s go!” Without waiting, Wyatt grabbed
Trevor’s collar and dragged him along. After only a few steps,
Trevor turned to follow.
    As they dodged between the groping hands, Wyatt
assessed their situation. Behind them, more of the deranged moved
down the road towards the station. The front of the station was
swarming with people as they tried to escape the vicious maws at
their heels. Neither path would be easy.
    “Cover my back,” Wyatt shouted over din. “I’ll
make a path towards the station. Move fast and stick close.”
    “Clear!”
    The shots rang out as they slowly pushed
forward. The mass of bodies raged like a storming sea with the
combatants shifting and moving unpredictably. Wyatt’s heart raced
as his eyes frantically and impossibly tried to catch every
movement. He fought down the urge to simply run for safety. More
than anything, he wanted out of the expanse of snarling face and
grasping hands.
    In quick succession, he fired four shots and
cleared a relatively wide path. “Let’s go!”
    They stepped forward as a group of the ravenous
monsters managed to tackle a man to the ground. The man’s screams
cut off abruptly as the group tore into him. In the blink of an
eye, the man disappeared underneath a pile of the gluttonous
creatures.
    With the brief pause in their progress, the
pathway closed up. Wyatt’s heart sank as their path
disappeared.
    A cry just over his shoulder ripped his
attention from their desperate situation. He whirled around to see
Trevor’s forearm gripped in the teeth of a ragged, middle-aged
woman. Without thinking, he brought his gun to her forehead and
pulled the trigger.
    “Shit!” Trevor could only stare at his arm as
trails of blood ran from the wound to drip off his fingers. “She
bit me!”
    “Come on! We have to move now!” Trevor’s gun had
fallen from his hand somewhere into the fray of feet.
    Wyatt’s shots became more erratic as he tried to
cover both of them while they ran through the crowd. One down. The
second target toppled as the bullet slammed into its shoulder and
spun the body around. The action was enough to open a path. He no
longer cared about whether or not they were down for good. He would
never be able to end all the fighting by himself.
    The third shot hit a woman in the hip, causing
her leg to collapse. The doors to the station were close now. Wyatt
could see three people at the doors. Two of them were firing into
the crowd, holding the monsters at bay, while the third was
snatching up survivors and taking them inside.
    “Thomas!” Wyatt called out with relief as an
older man with a small paunch and salt-and-pepper hair stumbled
directly into their path. The relief quickly turned to horror as
Thomas turned towards him. Blood was plastered across his face like
a mask. Thomas sneered as he caught sight of them and charged.
Wyatt backpedaled a few steps and ran into Trevor.
    How could he raise his weapon against a fellow
officer?
    “Thomas, stop right there!” he