Red Devils

32

Private Fred McCarthy took aim from the hayloft hideout where he’d spent what felt like forever since the dead had attacked. He fired, felling another one of the foul monsters, then put down his weapon and scratched another mark on the wooden window frame. Sixty-eight in total.

Gunfire came sporadically from the farmhouse across the way, but McCarthy reckoned only one or two of the boys were left fighting now. Most others were gone. He hoped they’d got the hell out of here, but he knew they probably hadn’t. He thought it most likely that they were undead now; damned to keep fighting and keep killing until their decaying bodies failed them.

McCarthy had only a couple of shots left. He thought he should make them count, but he knew it didn’t really matter. A few more of them taken out would barely make any difference now when so many remained. The one he’d just brought down had been already replaced by many more, and as the sun rose and cast long, dragging shadows towards the village of Namur, he saw that there were hundreds still coming across the fields.

The ground floor of the barn was full of dead flesh. The place was surrounded, too. McCarthy couldn’t see a way out. And they knew he was up here, he was sure they did. He’d heard them on the steps, and one of them was hammering at the hatch trying to get to him now. It wouldn’t be long before they got inside. They’d keep coming until their sheer combined bulk forced the hatch open.

He slumped in the corner with his back against the wall and waited for the inevitable. It was just a few minutes later when the wood splintered and they came surging up into the loft.

McCarthy saved a bullet for the first of them, but wished he’d held onto it for the creature following immediately behind. Sergeant Phillips. The reanimated corpse of his squad leader was trapped halfway through the hatch. McCarthy had a single bullet left. Did he put his sergeant out of his eternal misery, or end his own suffering before it began?

The shot rang around the flesh-filled farm, echoing across the emptiness, causing the dead to surge and herd again, converging on the isolated outpost. McCarthy lowered himself out of the hayloft window and dropped into the decaying crowd below, using them to cushion his fall.

He was up and on his feet again in seconds. Punching and shoving with one hand, slicing and stabbing with the blade he held in the other. From here it looked like all of mainland Europe had been overcome by the dead, but McCarthy was still alive, and by God, he was going to go out fighting.