Free Crucifixion - 02 by Dirk Patton Page B

dressed down I shoved
him to the rear of the group and told him he was on rear guard.  Running to the
front I sent Rachel to the left flank, told Dog to go with her, and started
running towards the plane again.
    The path that Mayo had cleared was already collapsing as
more infected pushed into the area and I yelled for the group behind me to move
faster.  Rifles started firing behind me and I was burning through a lot of ammunition
to keep the path open.  I was about to call Mayo on the comm unit when the Pave
Hawk roared back into a hover and the minigun opened up again.  Bodies started
disintegrating from the heavy slugs which continued on through them to also shred
the pavement.  We ran through the aftermath of this, the air thick with a fog
of pulverized asphalt mixed with body fluids from the devastated flesh of the
infected.  Sure wish I had a mask on.  We still had a good distance to go when
the minigun fire ceased, infected quickly moving into the open space it had
carved. 
    “Minigun is jammed,” Mayo’s voice told me over my ear piece.
    Not bothering to acknowledge I changed rifle magazines again
and slowed so I could maintain a level of accurate fire, but there were so many
infected the herd was closing in faster than I could shoot them.  Even though
the three rifles behind me were firing single shots they were all firing as
fast as their triggers could be pulled.  I was worried that nerves were getting
the best of Rachel and the two MPs and they weren’t hitting anything, but I
couldn’t spare a moment to check.  Three females were pushing through the
lumbering males and one of them had just broken free of the press of bodies and
was sprinting directly at me.
    I had her head lined up for a shot when a body slammed into
me from the side, very nearly knocking me to the ground.  Reflexively my finger
pulled the trigger and the round punched into the female’s body instead of her
head.  She stumbled for a step, then resumed her sprint.  I glanced to the side
and saw Major Masuka on the ground wrestling with an infected female that had
apparently sprinted into the flank and tackled her.  The two of them had then
slammed into me.  Taking care of the more immediate threat first I pulled my
pistol to engage the sprinting female to my front who was now almost close
enough to touch.  Whipping the pistol up, I fired just as she launched herself
into the air.  The heavy bullet destroyed her face and punched out the back of
her skull, but the corpse was already in motion and slammed into me, knocking
me back onto my ass.
    Kicking the body away I scrambled back to my feet, grabbed
the long hair of the infected that was on top of Masuka and yanked the female into
the air, letting a badly bleeding Masuka scramble to her feet, and tossed the
infected a yard in front of me.  A male tripped over the female and fell on top
of her giving me a moment to holster my pistol and bring my rifle to bear.  Two
fast shots dispatched each of them then I raised my aim, searching for the two
other females.  They were less than 10 yards away and I snapped off two more
quick shots to put them down.  More males pushed in as they fell and there was
nearly a 50 yard deep wall of flesh between us and the plane.
    “Get that goddamn minigun going!”  I shouted into the comm
unit.
    Blasting through the remainder of the magazine I put in a
fresh one but instead of starting to fire I grabbed a grenade off my vest,
yanked the pin with my teeth – always wanted to do that and it only took the
apocalypse to make it happen – counted to three and tossed it deep into the
mass of bodies in front of me.  A heartbeat later it detonated and cleared a
small area.  I repeated the process with five more grenades until I was out,
then brought the rifle up and started dropping infected again.  The firing
behind me was still at a furious pace and I could hear three distinct rifles so
I was reasonably confident our rear and flanks were