Free Empire by David Dunwoody

MOVING!!"
        
        "Okay. No one's moving." Duncan stammered. "Turn that fucking radio off!" Zaharchuk ordered. Duncan got a good look at the gun; it was a .50 Desert Eagle. Seven in the magazine at best, maybe one in the chamber. Overkill for a dealer in a ghost town, even with the occasional zombie. He was itching to use it, too. "Z," Duncan said slowly, "Listen. A rotter killed Syl. He was trying to climb outside. Why would we murder him?"
        
        "Why would you leave?" Zaharchuk spat. "I came back and...and..."
        
        "We didn't know you'd come back." Jenna said. She could see the pistol shaking in the corner of her eye. "We're here now, all right?"
        
        "I don't want to stay with you people." Zaharchuk whispered. He backed toward the door, alternating his aim between Duncan and Lauren. "You killed him, you fed Syl to the zombies. You'll do it to me. No. NO!!!" He bolted out of the building.
        
        No one moved. They waited, waited for him to reappear and start shooting, for it all to end. He didn't come back.
        
        "We should get going." Jenna said. Duncan nodded in agreement. Lauren pointed to the manager's office and said, "There's a hall that goes to the rear exit."
        
        "Good idea." Duncan looked at Jenna. "You okay?"
        
        "It wasn't pointed at me." She replied, and went into the manager's office.
        
        
    14.
    Surf and Turf
        
        "Was that the garbage man I shot?" Patrol Officer Douglas asked, propping his rifle on the bucket seat beside him. P.O. Hamman shrugged and kicked an empty cooler across the floor. Every beer he'd drank had made him more seasick as they patrolled the Harbor coast, but it was better than being sick and sober. Steadying himself on the boat's railing, Hamman stepped into the pilot cabin and slapped the radio. "Damn thing. I know I heard something about a storm earlier."
        
        "So let's go to shore." Douglas rummaged through their dwindling supply of ammunition. "We can camp on the beach for a few nights."
        
        "I'd rather drop anchor and stay out here." Hamman replied. Every rotter they'd picked off was probably on its feet and walking through the city. In better days, they'd been able to radio the positions of downed zombies to burn teams on the shore; now they were alone. "What if we're the only cops left in town?" Hamman mused.
        
        "Then we can run ashore and steal some more beer." Douglas quipped. He stared down the barrel of his sniper rifle, finger brushing the trigger. Another ounce of pressure and he could send his brains out across the water like chum for fish, the living ones anyway. Hamman eased his partner's head out of harm's way. "I need to eat something, man."
        
        "We could cast a couple of lines and see if anything's still biting."
        
        "Fuck fish. Dammit..." Hamman really didn't want to go ashore, even for an hour. He'd fired two dozen rounds into the city in recent weeks. There were rotters waiting for him, his bullets swimming in their soft guts. When he managed to catch a few hours' sleep he always saw their gray faces crowding around him. And he was always helpless to defend himself, or even to run away.
        
        Douglas scanned the city through his rifle scope. "You know, us being stuck out here, with only these guns, we can't kill the rotters."
        
        "I know."
        
        "We could stop there from being more of 'em."
        
        Hamman frowned at Douglas. "Whaddaya mean?"
        
        "I mean, anybody still in the city's gotta be infected. Or will be. Right?"
        
        "I still don't follow."
        
        "Buddy, if WE got rid of 'em, like now, we could go home."
        
        Hamman was chilled to his core. Douglas smiled as if he'd just crapped a kitten out on the deck. "We'd be done, we could call off the patrol