Free Just Another Day at the Office: A Walking Dead Short by Robert Kirkman, Jay Bonansinga Page A

garbled groaning noises behind him, and he slowly turns around to gaze up into the milky eyes of monsters.
    The boy squeals with horror. One of the biters grabs at him, but the boy darts away, and he almost makes it to a side alley when another pair of zombies lurches out from the shadows of a doorway. With a yelp, the child dodges the newcomers, stumbles, and falls to the ground. The blanket flutters down into a filthy puddle.
    Now the little boy is surrounded, and he lies on his back. Too petrified to scream, too paralyzed to cry, he lies there and looks up at the cadre of corpses towering over him, opening their jagged, blackened mouths, reaching out with insatiable need.
    The sudden burst of automatic gunfire reminds the child of his dad’s chain saw.
    The attackers stiffen suddenly as armor-piercing slugs zip through the backs of their skulls, exiting the front of their faces in clouds of red. Before the zombies go down—one by one—the continuing bursts smash through the backs of their legs and torsos and spines, making them jitter and dance, a macabre boogaloo in a haze of blood-mist.
    Then they collapse like dominoes, and the boy sees four men running up with machine guns.
    “Check him for bites!” the slender one says as the men approach. This thin man has hair as dark as crow feathers and he’s so skinny, his muscles so tightly coiled, he looks as though he’s made of hammered steel.
    A man with a bandanna on his head kneels next to the little boy. “He’s clean, he’s okay!”
    “Get him inside somewhere,” the dark-haired, skinny man says. “And meet us back at the fence.”
    It is now obvious—even to this traumatized little boy—that this thin, dark man is a leader. His eyes gleam with some kind of magical power that the child recognizes.
    Maybe he’s an angel.
    Or a demon.

    Philip Blake turns and heads back the way he came, his wing men, Gabe and Bruce, following along on his flanks, running to keep up. Each man carries an assault rifle and a row of extra magazines in their belts. They don’t pause to pick off any stray individual zombies—they have bigger plans.
    Working their way back to ground zero—the place where the fence caved in—they encounter growing numbers of dead. Philip learns very quickly that the best way to use the TEC-9 is not to go for a direct head shot. He’s not good enough with the machine pistol yet to hit the bull’s-eye of a moving target.
    The best way to use the thing is to spray in the general vicinity of the head.
    He gets another chance to practice this technique when a grouping of biters lurch into his path as he is approaching the crossroads at the north end of the street. Without breaking stride, he points the blunt nipple of the muzzle at their upper bodies and jacks the trigger—four quick bursts that strafe across the zombies.
    Their flaccid bodies jerk and twitch and do the death-dance, as the top edge of the barrage finally connects with brain matter. Sequential puffs of pink mist paint the tree trunks behind the biters.
    The dominoes fall, one by one—quicker and cleaner than in any shooting gallery.
    Philip turns the corner and runs into another firing line of zombies—dozens of them—spanning the width of the road. Philip and the other two men widen their stances, drop empty magazines, slam in new cartridges, jack the levers, and unleash a torrent of hellfire.
    The street turns into a gruesome dance party of jerking craniums.

    “The fence stays down! You understand?! It stays down until I say different!” Philip yells from inside the raised tailgate of Martinez’s battered SUV, which is parked up against the corner of the fallen fence. The carryall—filled with weaponry and ordnance from the National Guard station—is split down the middle, and Philip is rooting out assault rifles for the townspeople. He turns and tosses another gun to a middle-aged father standing behind the vehicle.
    “What’s gonna keep more of them from gettin’