Swarm
THIS WOULD BE over in seconds, not minutes, and they all three knew it.
“The fog. Can we get into it somehow? Will it let us through?” When she didn’t reply, Tony snapped, “Rima! Don’t look at them! Look at me. The fog … can we cross?”
“No.” She tore her gaze from the ravening swarm nearly on them. “That is, I … I don’t know. Emma, maybe, but …”
“No way,” Emma said. Then, almost to herself: “Where’s Jack?”
“Watch it!” At Tony’s shout, Rima jerked round just as that girl—the hanger—launched herself on a rusty screech. Gasping, Rima tried for a chop, but then Tony was sweeping the butt end of his pike in a sharp uppercut. The wood handle caught the girl under the jaw. Her neck snapped back, and as the girl blundered back into three other rotters, he whirled the pike around and drove forward. The point punched through the girl’s breastbone with a dull thuck. No blood spumed, but the girl’s mouth gaped in a howl, and ichor, sticky and foul, boiled in an inky torrent. Still yowling, the sound like a file dragging over metal, the girl staggered onto her heels as Tony yanked the pike free.
“Back up, back up!” Tony jabbed with the pike, batting at hands right and left, trying to keep his swings short and controlled. To his right, Rima saw Emma sweep her pike low to the ground so it snagged a young boy at his ankles and sent him sprawling. “Good girl!” Tony yelled. “Both of you, get as close to the fog as you can!”
Rima saw why he wanted that, too. The dead flanked them in a rough semicircle, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t pass into the fog either. It wasn’t ideal, but that meant no dead could come round behind them. She felt the prickle of the fog’s energy along her neck and back. She chopped in swift cuts, first right and then left, trying to vary the rhythm. Please—she had no breath to shout at the woman—please, help them, help us!
To her right, Tony choked up on the pike and raked it in a fast, sideways cut so violent Rima heard the whistle as the point sped through the air. The iron shaft smashed into a woman whose left arm ended in a jagged tooth of bone. Careering sideways, the dead thing flailed with one good hand, bringing down two more as she fell, the three of them toppling like pins.
That was when whatever good luck they were going to get ran out. As soon as Tony’s pike cleared, more dead piled in, hands outstretched to grab.
“Tony, to your left!” Darting forward, Rima brought the chopper around in a wild swing. She felt when the blade clipped the arm of a bedraggled man with muttonchops, shaving skin and then stuttering over bone to skip away.
But she’d also done exactly what Tony warned her against. As she finished the follow-through, her center shifted. Pulled off-balance, she floundered into a staggering half turn to the left. In the next instant, she felt hands scrambling up her back, fingers whisking at her neck. Something knotted in her shawl and pulled tight. The thick wool inched down, and then a wave of panic crashed into her chest as her air cut out.
No! Dropping the chopper, she clawed at her neck. There were other hands on her now, and they bore her to the snow, smashing her facedown the way you might bludgeon a large fish you’d just hooked. She felt cold sheet over her face. Snow clotted in her mouth and plugged her nose, not that it mattered, because she couldn’t breathe anyway. Above the pound of her pulse, she thought she heard Tony bellow something, and then Emma’s shout. An instant later, whatever had hooked her shawl jerked and then the pressure eased: not a lot, but enough that she was already blindly surging up from the snow.
Coughing, she wrenched the shawl from around her neck. Tony … Emma … the chopper, where’s … She spotted the chopper’s bone handle two feet away to her right. To her left, Tony had impaled her attacker in the neck. The pike had pierced clear through, and the hook was now snagged under the dead woman’s right ear.
“Hurry, Tony!” Emma had her back to him, and now she swung her pike, jabbing at hands and bodies. A boy—most of his chest gone and only shreds of muscle clinging to jagged ribs—clamped both hands on the pike’s handle and gave the girl a mighty jerk. Crying out, Emma stumbled, then loosed her grip on the pike. Without her weight, the boy lost his footing and staggered to one knee. Racing forward, Emma aimed a kick for the boy’s jaw. There was a sodden crack, and suddenly, half the boy’s jaw ripped free to career away, like the broken handle of a jug, into the snow. Gargling, the boy clapped both hands to his ruined face. Seizing her pike, Emma levered the iron spike upward. Another crack, and this time what remained of the boy’s head split in two. The girl danced back. “Tony, come on!”
“Can’t!” Try as he might, he couldn’t wrest his pike free. “Clear out, Emma, back up!”
“No, let it go!” Emma shouted. “You can have mine!”
“She’s right!” Rima croaked, as the dead woman wrapped both hands around the pike’s iron shaft. “Let go, Tony! Leave it!”
Too late. As the woman fell back, her momentum dragged Tony forward and off his feet. Rima heard Emma shriek as grasping hands shot out to latch onto and then swarm up Tony’s pike. A leering boy with no lips opened his naked jaws—
Tony began to scream.