The hissing, heaving sound grew like a punctured valve as Zombies charged into the plaza below, heading straight for each of the elevators. Andy’s rifle cut through them down as Miraculous Ricochet lines danced before his eyes. But something was off. They were faster than before–more purposeful. A fire smoked in the purple depths of their eyes. Wisps of smoke escaped each exit wound, blowing like snuffed candles. Zombies stampeded to the top of the escalator opposite him, stomping through a carpet of charred bodies, kicking up black dust. Andy slung his rifle over his shoulder and mounted the machine gun, firing on the escalator opposite him. But as he opened fire, his Augmentation’s guidelines faded away–seemingly, the HMG’s rounds were too penetrative to ricochet off the zombies’ skeletons. They blasted through the compact horde, tearing through limbs, smashing spines and skulls to pieces. Zombies fell in droves, but those behind them leapt over the corpses of their brethren, barely slowing.

A zombie pounced at him, crashing into his barricade and falling over the balcony into the plaza below. They had reached the top of the elevator beside him, climbing over the railings to get around the tables. That level of cognition was new, but there was no time to contemplate it. He had to act. Andy drew Julie and fired a Vortex Shot into the horde. The power rushed through him and into Julie–the two of them entwined like a gyroscopic force, swelling to a climax which took him by surprise. Julie screamed, blowing apart everything in her path. He fired twice more, relishing each vortex, the soft pushback of Julie’s recoil steady in his grasp. Each Vortex Shot cleared the elevator, but just as quickly as he exhaled, relishing in ecstasy, another wave surmounted the steps, charging towards his barricade.

Attention: Experimental programming initialised.

Andy barely registered the AI’s voice as a warm rush filled body. He climbed atop the marble plant pots and aimed Julie down the escalator, holding her outstretched in both hands. Energy swelled from his feet to the tip of his skull, then compacted into a single, powerfully unstable cell in the centre of his chest. The space around them was drawn towards Julie’s muzzle, warping reality, twisting and pulling into him. The pressure was immense, but Andy held them both in the moment, feeling the energy rage inside him, a liquid fire of hormones and electricity and something else. Love?

Andy squeezed the trigger. The pressure shot down his arms and into Julie’s slender mechanism. She screamed in his grasp. The vortex they summoned was ear splitting. Andy was flung backwards as it roared down the escalator and through the plaza, obliterating everything in its path, a whirlwind of devastation that rained down a clatter of bones and body parts in a cloud of dust left in its wake.

Slamming into the floor, Andy skidded to a halt. He dropped Julie, and she slid up to his face. For a moment, the two of them lay there, recovering. “Woo baby, you’ve got some kick!”

Andy unscrewed his hip flask with one hand and knocked the absinthe back, rising to his feet. “You gotta be gentle to me,” he said, staggering back towards the balcony. Beneath him, zombies on the periphery of the massive vortex blast were getting to their feet. Some were crawling across the ground, their bodies blown apart, their heads intact. Hundreds more were lifeless, corpses once again.

Vortex Cannon upgrade initialised, his AI said. Power expenditure unstable. User discretion advised.

A gunshot whizzed past his head. Andy holstered Julie and slung his rifle around, firing on the cultists outside. A group of them had approached the glass on foot, unassailed by the horde. Zombies sprinted past them as though they weren’t there, despite the crackle of their rifles.

“Get down!” Clara yelled behind him, echoing in his radio channel. Andy ducked into the cover as gunshots pelted the marble pillar behind him and slammed into the heavy tables of his barricade, shaking them with each thud. Clara returned fire from the roof of her kiosk behind him, but the horde of zombies ate the shots, charging past the cultists to get inside the plaza.

“The breach,” Clara radioed. Andy jumped on his machine gun just in time to fire into the zombies on the opposite escalator, stemming the tide. Limpy fought atop the steps, lodging his hatchet in the skull of a zombie trying to climb over their small barricade of tables. The scientist stood behind him, flinching as he fired his pistol into another. They wouldn’t last a second if the full force of the horde breached.

Spent shell casings flew past Andy’s face as he pulled the HMG’s muzzle down, carving through the horde. But then his gun clicked dry. “Empty,” he yelled over the sound of gunfire feeding the remaining belt into the tray. Since he had fired the Vortex Cannon, the horde had avoided his escalator. Andy gritted his teeth as he squeezed the trigger, spitting carnage across the plaza. Wisps of black smoke spurted from his targets, obscured by the haze of decimated flesh kicked up by his high calibre rounds.

Cultists poured in through the entrance, taking cover behind the steel beams which held up the large glass archway above their heads. Bullets shook his barricade as they advanced. A close shave sprayed splinters over his gloves and the sleeve of his jacket. On the balcony opposite, zombies climbed over the congested dead, slamming into the barriced one at a time, knocking it backwards, their bodies compressed against the sides. Slowly but surely, they were being overrun.

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Limpy dispatched a zombie with his hatchet, then the scientist took his place at the front of their barricade. The merc ducked out of view, then a drum-roll of explosions detonated above their heads. Like a cymbal crash, a hail of glass shards plummeted towards the plaza–a sudden blizzard of razor-sharp ice and twinkling shards. It reminded Andy of Christmas. The glass pelted the plaza below, raining death on the cultists. They screamed, covering their faces, but the glass ripped them to shreds, cutting through their leather jackets like butter. Some fled for the exit, but Clara gunned them down. Others collapsed on the floor, bleeding profusely. That caught the zombies’ attention. The purple glaze in their eyes diminished as many turned to feast, as though noticing the goths for the first time.

For the few seconds Andy had been distracted, admiring the carnage, the zombies had surmounted the escalator barricade opposite. Andy picked up his HMG again, turning its barrel on the breach, but a few forerunners got through. One grabbed Specs as Limpy fended them off, shoving and chopping with his handaxe. Andy stemmed the oncoming tide, but didn’t trust himself to hit an accurate shot with HMG against those in melee–the recoil was too much, and if he missed and killed one of their tag-alongs, Clara would never let him hear the end of it.

Suddenly, the HMG stopped kicking back. It was jammed. Andy ripped the feed open and wrenched the lever back, freeing the mechanism. He didn’t have to look to know what he was doing, the procedure had been downloaded into his brain without his knowing. He had it functional again within five seconds, but in that time, half a dozen zombies had climbed the escalator and were bearing down on the defenders. The merc and scientist fell back, firing their pistols as they fled. Clara picked her shots from the kiosk, but Andy’s angle wasn’t good enough. Fixing his posture, and braced and lifted the machine gun up to his hip. His forearms felt like steel beams in his iron grip as his brand new Heavy Weaponry skill pumped steroids into his muscles, fixing his posture and strengthening his bones. He retreated to Clara’s position, firing bursts of shots across the plaza. The HMG’s recoil rippled through his body like waves, causing him to sway and pulsate, forcing him to fix his legs while he fired.

“This is the last of them,” Clara shouted. “Stand and fight.”

An explosion sounded from behind. Andy swung around. There were no corridors which led from the first floor to anywhere else in the shopping district, except for access to stairwells at the back of shops. But they had locked the doors and closed the shutters on what storefronts possessed them. Cultists must have snuck in and planted explosives. There was another detonation, and movement flickered in the shadows behind shop windows. Zombies slammed against the glass all around them. Suddenly, they were surrounded, but Andy held his fire. For now, they were separated by the glass. That gave them seconds.

“Get back,” he shouted to Clara. She leapt down from the kiosk, but then gunshots shattered the glass, and zombies poured in. They tore through a display poster in the window, stumbling into the plaza, streaming towards them with a single-minded hunger. Andy squeezed the trigger, arching his machine gun like a scythe, mowing the horde down. Someone screamed behind him. Andy’s head snapped around as his heart stopped, but it wasn’t Clara. A zombie had grabbed Ballpit. She ducked and ran, but in the wrong direction. Andy returned his attention to the surmounting horde, stepping backwards towards their fortified position as the machine gun bucked in his hands. He could see Ballpit in the corner of his eye going the wrong way. Clara and the others were behind him, near their fall-back point.

“Help her!” Clara screamed, dropping to one knee, shooting the assailants.

Ballpit fired her pistol point-blank, stumbling over, emptying the clip in a matter of seconds. But Andy couldn’t spare a second–the moment he unfocussed on the horde, they would be overrun. Beside him, Clara dropped her rifle and drew her pistol, but a new stream of undead charged at them sidelong. Within seconds, her magazine was empty again. They were too exposed. Andy shoved her back with shoulder, never taking his finger off the trigger until they were at their barricade.

Dipping through the restaurant doorway, Andy caught one last glimpse of Ballpit buried beneath the crush of bodies. Her golden eyes pierced the blackness, then they were gone. She screamed, and in the absence of gunfire, the sound was piercingly shrill amongst the dry white-noise hiss of the horde. Andy drew Julie–for some reason, that seemed more proper than the HMG–aimed down her ironsights and put the woman out of her misery.

Andy was dragged inside and the doors closed after him. Limpy thread a plank through the handles as bodies slammed into the other side. The windows were fortified with heavy tables, piled two-high and three-deep.

Clara grabbed Andy’s shoulder and took him to the dining alcove where their supplies were sorted. Among them were the trinkets he’d gathered in case they had to fight the vampire. Clara’s eyes were wide, but focussed. She seized the payload. “We can make it out the back.”

“Steal a vehicle?”

“There’ll be plenty from the cultists we killed. The horde’s up here now. Quickly.” She shouted to the others and ran into the kitchen area. Andy watched them leave. A weight expanded in his chest, solidifying his limbs. He wanted to move, to fight the feeling, but knew he couldn’t. He didn’t want this to be the last time he saw his sister, but it was. He had to die, and she had to live.

Andy placed his machine gun against the wall and followed the group into the kitchen, at the back of which, a door which led into an access stairwell. The stairwell would take Clara to a loading area outside. Andy waited for the last of the tag-alongs to follow his sister through the door, then latched it shut behind them. He returned to the main room, retrieving his machine gun, facing the barricades. Zombies battered the glass beyond. Gunshots pelted their defences. Andy thumbed his radio on, but the words escaped him.

“Idiot,” he growled, taking a swig from his hip flask. He emptied and pocketed the flask beside his cigar. Limpy had said to smoke it at the end, but this wasn’t the end yet. He still had to kill the vampire, or else it would catch them on the road. The night was young, and they didn’t stand a chance outrunning it.

A zombie pressed its face against the glass, purple eyes drenched in blackness. Something looked at him from behind those eyes. Not the lifeless vestige of an animal mind–something cognisant and powerful.

“I know, I know,” he said. “I’m coming. Just you fucking wait.”