There just needed to be an annoying male voice telling you when to reload and it would be perfect. But there wasn’t and the zombies rushing them weren’t carbon copies of each other and wouldn’t vanish when hit. They were dressed alike in their waiter costume, but very different. Some were almost sprinting toward them. Others were struggling just to walk. The more whole “I obviously died by my throat being bit out” were fast and the “I got swarmed by a bunch of them and obviously got really eaten up” staggered.
The runners went down fast, since they were the front of the pack, but they were so quick they closed the gap between the living and the undead with startling swiftness.
Luckily, Ashley and Ned did exactly what they were supposed to do. Mike had taught them to divide up the zombies into, as he put it, “Pie slices” with everyone taking one slice to concentrate on. Jenni fired right down the center. Ashley fired at anything to the left of them as Ned took care of those on the right.
The swarming zombies fell quickly as the shots hit them true. Some even tripped over their comrades, landing hard on their faces, before having their heads blown off.
The three humans backed up slowly, all trying not to panic as the gush of zombies faded out to a trickle. As the last shot echoed through the room and the last zombie toppled forward, they all three let out the breaths they had been holding.
“We did it!” Ashley beamed happily.
Jenni nodded grimly, and said, “But listen. ”
From the distance was the sound of running feet, grunts and growls.
“Shit, they’re coming,” Ned muttered.
They ran across the dining room, jumping over the dead bodies, moving to the far side. Jenni began to shove over the heavy tables, making a barrier as fast as she could. The other two joined her.
Mike, Nerit, and the rest of their teams ran in the door. Seeing the upturned tables and all the dead bodies, they quickly understood what was happening.
“Check the kitchen,” Mike ordered.
Nerit moved faster than any woman her age should be able to and motioned to Shane to heave her up onto the bar behind the upturned tables. She immediately aimed toward the main doors.
The grunting, moaning, screaming zombies were drawing closer.
“Kitchen is clear with only a back door into the side street,” Felix said.
“If we have to, that’s the way we’ll fall back,” Mike answered.
The dining room doors busted open and Travis, Katie and Roger ran in. Katie sprinted across the room, evading the tables and bodies, with Travis close behind. Roger huffed, as his huge girth swayed as he moved, but he managed to reach the overturned tables just as the doors swung open again.
Katarina's team ran in. They rushed headlong through the tables, knocking over chairs, and tripping in their panicked state. The reason for their desperation became quickly clear. The doors never closed for they caught on the mangled, mutilated bodies of the dead right behind the last team.
Katarina fell in her haste to get around a table. The first zombie in the mob reached down to grab her and Nerit put a hole through his head.
There was hesitation to fire from the people huddled behind the tables. With three people running in desperate haste toward them and blocking their view, Nerit took a majority of the shots.
Jenni aimed for the zombies furthest from the running humans and fired off a few shots. She could feel the tension growing steadily as the room slowly filled.
Katarina managed to get up and run again, but four more zombies grabbed hold of her denim jacket. She twisted, yanked, and squirmed her way out of the jacket and broke free, running again.
Jenni heard a man’s scream and barely saw one of the men, whose name she did not remember, go down. Gunshots rang out steadily, but the man kept screaming.
“Nerit!” Mike’s voice was an order.
Another shot, then the man stopped screaming.
Katarina reached the tables and squirmed behind them. She quickly turned to fire at a zombie in hot pursuit.
There was no sign of the other man. He had gone down so silently, no one had noticed. The room was now clogged with the undead. They were tripping over their dead comrades and falling over chairs and tables. The most agile had pursued Katarina, but as they had drawn near the barricade, they had gone down in a hail of bullets.
Jenni kept firing, aiming as much as she could, but she was terrified and that terror made some of her shots go wide.
Her gun clicked empty, and Mike shouted at her, “Reload. ”
She almost burst out laughing.