Kenji yelled something from upstairs.

Daniel was in the living room, looking out the front windows of the house. “Say again?” he shouted back.

“Group of three!” Kenji said. “Coming in fast. They’re heading straight for us.”

Yep, Kenji had confirmed it. They were here. The battle for the farmhouse had begun.

Jack, Maria and I were crowded around the kitchen windows. We were looking at the tree line of the creek, trying to see them, waiting for that first infected person to break through out into the open.

“I don’t see them yet,” Jack said.

“How?” Maria asked. “How did they get here so fast?”

From in the living room we could hear Daniel swearing.

“They’re getting closer!” Kenji said from upstairs, “I’m gonna open fire.”

This was one of the things we briefly discussed earlier. How close do we let them get before we start shooting? The creek was at least half a mile away, maybe further. This was a tough shot, even for a trained sniper like Kenji. Especially in the dark. And we did not want to waste any ammo.

“Yeah, OK,” Daniel answered. “Take them out.”

“But what about the noise?” Maria asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “They know we’re here. We have to take them out as soon as possible, before they get too close.”

“I still can’t believe they got here so fast,” Maria said. “We ran all night. We’re exhausted. They got here in half the time? How?”

“Maybe it’s like in cycling, you know?’ Jack offered. “Like the peloton.”

“The what?”

“In cycling events like the Tour de France, the peloton, the main group, they always catch the breakaway riders.”

“How?”

“They take turns at riding in the front of the group. So essentially the riders at the back have a wind break.”

“So the zombies in front provide a windbreak for the rest?” Maria asked. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Is it?”

A gunshot pierced through the dark night. Kenji had taken the first shot. I looked out through the window again, over the front paddock. I still couldn’t see anything.

As soon as Kenji had opened fire, Daniel smashed out the front windows in preparation for the onslaught.

Jack kissed Maria on the head. “Get upstairs.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“I will. Come on, Rebecca. Time for target practice.”

We had decided to position Maria upstairs with Kenji. She could help him reload and run ammo up to him if he needed it. She could also act as a spotter. And we figured she’d be safer upstairs then downstairs.

As Maria made her way up to the second floor, Jack and I settled into the living room, picking out a spot next to Daniel.

“Don’t stick the barrel of your gun too close to the window,” Daniel said. “They’ll just reach in and grab it.”

“Right.”

The windows had been boarded up yesterday by Daniel. He had left gaps between the boards so we could fire our guns. When he had done this, I had no idea why. Well, now I knew.

We heard more gun shots from upstairs. Kenji was showing off his deadly precision. The howling moaning screams of the infected were the only other noises in the night.

“Let Kenji shoot the ones further out,” Daniel said. “Concentrate your fire power on the ones that slip through.”

Once again my heart began to race. You would’ve thought that after all the close calls we’d had over the past month, I’d be getting used to this type of adrenalin fueled situation. But unfortunately, that was not the case. I was just as scared as ever.

Kenji continued to shoot. I strained my eyes, trying to see into the darkness, trying to see the infected. But I couldn’t. Kenji must have amazingly good eye sight, I thought.

Another gun shot from upstairs. The noise made me jump. It was then I finally saw an infected person, sprinting out of the tree line, coming for the house.

Right on cue, Kenji took it down.

These were the breakaway zombies, according to Jack. But then the main group showed up. The peloton. Too many to count. It was like the drought had broken and the creek had flooded. But instead of flooding with water, it was flooded with infected people. They were flowing out of the creek. They sprinted across the paddock. They were coming right for the house.

Half a mile away.

“Hold your fire,” Daniel whispered. “Wait until they get in range.”

We had done such a good job of avoiding the infected up until now.

And now?

Well, now we would find out if our extra shooting practice had paid off, or if it was just a waste of ammo.

Kenji kept up his impressive display of shooting skills. As soon as the infected climbed up and out of the creek bed, Kenji would take them down. He hardly missed.

But the thing is; each shot needed to be a head shot. So even when he hit the target, if it wasn’t a direct head shot, even if he shot them in the chest, the damn things got back up. Some of their legs were blown clean off, but then they would just keep crawling towards us.

The horde showed no sign of thinning out. I was beginning to get more and more worried.

Daniel on the other hand was calm. “The infected, the ones with no legs, they should be easier to shoot in the head once they get closer. Also, they won’t be able to chase after us.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jack said.

Jack looked visibly worried. Even in the dark, you could see the fear all over his face.

“If you can’t shoot them in the head,” Daniel continued. “Shoot their legs out. Got it?”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”

“Take the safety off,” Daniel said to Jack.

Jack looked down at his rifle like he didn’t know what he was doing, like he didn’t know how to fire a gun.

“Hey,” I said to Jack. “As long as we stick together, we can hold the fort.”

He finally found the safety and flicked it off. He nodded. He didn’t say anything.

Suddenly it was like the banks of the creek had completely broken, the flood of infected spilled out on to the paddock. There were too many for Kenji to pick off by himself.

We had to open fire.

But Daniel forced us to wait. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

After we saw how many infected were coming for us, I wondered if Maria wouldn’t be more useful downstairs, on the front line. But it was too late to change the plan.

I gripped my rifle tighter. At that moment, I was doing my best to get my hands to stop shaking, doing my best to control my fear. The problem was I had this little voice in the back of my head. A scared little voice. It kept saying. “You guys are so screwed. You don’t have enough bullets for this. You’re not gonna make it.”

“Remember,” Daniel said. “Short, controlled bursts.”

I checked my personal ammo supply one more time.

After our shooting practice sessions, we each had six magazines left. Each mag contained thirty bullets.

Six magazines multiplied by thirty bullets, equals one hundred and eighty bullets.

One hundred and eighty bullets. Each.

We all knew this would not be enough.

I can’t remember the exact moment Daniel said ‘open fire’. I just remember the noise.

The noise, of the gunshots.

All three of our rifles, firing in close proximity.

After a month of sneaking around, it was the loudest thing in the world. And I’m pretty sure my first few shots completely missed. Automatic rifles tend to pull back, which pulls the barrel upwards. I had to concentrate. Keep the barrel low. Aim for the head.

“Aim for the head,” I whispered.

I went through the first two magazines in the blink of an eye.

So did Jack.

Daniel had to keep telling us to slow down. “Short, controlled bursts,” he said in between shots.

You could tell Daniel’s training had kicked in. He was completely calm, completely focused. He was leading by example and eventually Jack and I got our act together and we got into a sort of rhythm.

Upstairs, Kenji would take out as many infected as he could, as soon as they climbed out of the creek bed.

Then Daniel would take out the ones who had made it past Kenji’s deadly aim.

The ones that managed to slip through both Daniel and Kenji were left to me and Jack. Once they were nice and close, we were able to take care of them.

But there were thousands of infected. Kenji was right; it was probably the whole town.

And they were getting closer.

The voice of fear was getting louder. Almost as loud as the rifles and the moans of the infected.

The voice was saying, “Why didn’t you reinforce the barricades? Why didn’t you double board the windows? Why didn’t you find more bullets? Why couldn’t you find any water? You should’ve stayed away from that town!”

The main group was about a hundred yards away. A lot of the infected were falling.

Falling backwards. Falling forwards.

A lot of them were getting back up.

A lot of them continued crawling towards us.

Just when we thought we had seen the last of them, more came streaming out of the creek, out of the dark. Pretty soon they were on the front porch. They were banging up against the boards of the window sill. Banging up against the front door.

The hinges were breaking. The wood was splintering.

Daniel dropped his rifle, threw his weight against the couches and the book shelf that were barricading the front door.

“Keep shooting!” he yelled.

So we did. The one and only good thing about the infected being so close was that it was easier to shoot them in the head.

“Do we fall back?” Jack asked, shouting over the noise of the guns and the infected. “Do we go upstairs?”

“No! Not yet. Not until they break through!”

“But if they break through it’s too late!’

We were arguing and shooting. We were holding our ground but all I wanted to do was run.

“Short controlled bursts!” Daniel shouted.

I drowned out the voice of fear, the voice that was telling me to run.

I got into a zone.

Shoot.

Reload.

Aim.

Fire.

Short, controlled bursts.

Aim for the head.

It was terrifying seeing the infected up close and personal. Their clothes were ragged and torn and stained with blood that had hemorrhaged out of their mouths and noses and open wounds. Their faces looked skeletal thin. Their eyes were hollow and lifeless.

And yet the energy they possessed, the strength, it was simply incredible.

Kenji appeared at the top of the steps, waving us up. He obviously thought it was time to move.

Jack and Daniel were still shouting at each other, still arguing about what to do.

I was reloading my rifle when suddenly I heard the roar of a truck’s engine.

It sounded big.

At first I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But then the lights appeared. The truck was speeding up the gravel driveway. It then turned, veering off the path, coming right for us, right for the horde.

There were people on the back of the truck. They had guns. Lots of guns. It was difficult to see who they were, or what kind of weapons they possessed because the headlights of the truck were so blindingly bright. But they must’ve been packing some serious firepower because they cleared out the remaining infected in a matter of minutes.

The ones they didn’t shoot, they ran over with the truck. It appeared to be a dump truck, the kind they used in mining for removing rocks and boulders and dirt. It was big, reinforced with steel plates and wire mesh over the windshields and windows. And whoever was driving it was a damn expert. They crushed the infected with reckless abandon. Automatic machine gun fire continued to tear through the horde and the ground. Limbs and dirt and other assorted body parts flew through the air.

The truck came to a stop just outside the front door. The lights blinded us.

A voice spoke, amplified by a loudspeaker or a bull horn. “Everyone remain calm. Do not resist.”

Jack raised his rifle.

“No!” Kenji and Daniel shouted at the same time.

Daniel lowered the barrel of Jack’s gun. “They’ve got us outmanned and outgunned.”

“It’s OK, Jack,” Kenji said. “Just be cool.”

“How did they know we were here?” I asked. “Have they been following us?”

A voice from behind the lights told us to drop our weapons. Get on the ground, face down. Hands behind our back. They told us not to worry. They had secured the area. We were perfectly safe.

People then emerged from behind the lights; they were nothing more than shadows at that point, shapes silhouetted against the lights.

They chopped down the boarded windows with axes. When they got closer we could see that the people were all wearing bandannas over their faces.

They told us to stay down, keep still. They tied our hands together. Some of them used handcuffs. Some used those plastic zip tie things.

We were then ordered on to the back of the huge dump truck.

We were blindfolded.

I knew that these people had just saved our lives, but I couldn’t help but feel we were nothing more than prisoners.