Free Scarlet Dream by James Axler

the end of Grant’s Sin Eater, shuddering in place, ignoring the stream of bullets that drilled through his tiny hand. His other arm, withered to something like a twig-thin branch, jabbed at Grant, stabbing him in his side so hard he felt it through the protective weave of his shadow suit.
    With a single mental command, Grant sent his pistol back to its housing in his sleeve, and the corpse child stumbled as he lost his grip. Grant was ready, however, and he drove the hard end of his bent knee straight into the undead child’s face, knocking him to the floor.
    An instant later Grant was turning, shoving anotherwalking corpse aside as he sprinted toward the far side of the room, away from the glass-walled office.
    â€œKane, Brigid—hang tight,” Grant ordered over the Commtact. “I just had an idea.”
    â€œMake it quick,” Kane responded as he threw the attacking zombie over a desk, knocking a bulbless lamp and an empty filing tray flying.
    Behind Kane, three more undead figures were making their way toward him in their unwieldy but determined manner, the one with the black walking stick thrusting it in front of him like some kind of sword.
    Â 
    B RIGID LEAPED from the floor, the undead woman’s hand still clutching at her ankle. It didn’t matter as Brigid’s second kick had wrenched the rotten limb free of its socket, and now she dragged the hand and arm along with her as she ran back to the crates where she and Grant had hidden. Behind Brigid, the fleshless woman flapped her remaining arm as she struggled to pull herself up from the floor, moving with all the grace of a drowning man.
    Brigid shoved her TP-9 back into her low-slung hip holster, reached for the crowbar resting atop the crates.
    As the corpse woman staggered toward her, maggots visibly writhing in the stump now hanging in place of her arm, Brigid lashed backward with the crowbar, smashing it against the corpse’s face with all her strength. The undead creature rocked on her heels, and Brigid kicked out hard into the corpse’s pelvis, forcing her backward. Then Brigid swung the crowbar once more, this time from low to the floor, bringing the metal tool up in a vicious arc that rammed the claw end straight into the woman’s ruined face.
    The corpse-thing whined in some approximation of pain or surprise—Brigid didn’t know which—andstumbled backward, pulling at the metal bar now lodged in her face.
    Bunching her fists, Brigid took a pace toward the stumbling undead woman, preparing to knock her down once more, only to hear a growling noise from far off across the hangar bay. But this time the growling wasn’t coming from a recently dead thing’s long-dry throat. Instead it was coming from an engine as Grant started up the artillery truck that had waited in the redoubt for over two hundred years.
    Sitting in the cab, Grant pumped the accelerator and the truck rumbled to life around him. The vehicle was rusted and worn, and all four tires were flat as road kill, but at least it operated along the same basic principles as the Sandcats he had driven back in his days with the Cobaltville Magistrate Division.
    The corpse figure of a man was slammed against the hood and disappeared from view beneath the body of the truck as the vehicle picked up speed.
    As he urged the artillery truck across the metal decking toward the distant glass walls of the office-lab, Grant glanced out to his right and his eyes met with Brigid’s. The corpse-thing with the crowbar in her face sinking to her knees in front of her.
    â€œWant me to get the door for you?” Brigid asked, her words amplified over the medium of their linked Commtacts.
    â€œSay again?” Grant asked.
    But Brigid was already sprinting across the room, rushing behind the truck as it picked up speed. Grant glanced to his left and saw Brigid running onward deftly avoiding the shambling undead figures as she hurried toward the closed