Unchosen 16

There was a flicker of motion ahead of me, and I drew my revolvers, not yet lifting them from my hips. My guns weren't for the long shot, but when they hit something, typically it never got back up. There was another movement off to the left, and Chasity shifted her rifle toward it, before another came, slightly off to the right.

"What are they, gramps?" called Doc. Boy wasn't bad in a fight, but he had a tendency to get the nerves in the moments before the bullets were loosed. I ignored him, since I couldn't answer his question anyway. I felt more than I heard him and Tex edging in close behind me. With an unknown number of targets, and thus far no reason to believe they had guns, massing wasn't a bad tactic. It'd get ugly if we were wrong, though.

The howling noises came again, and again, from the left, right, and rear, a few here, and several there. From the sounds, I'd guess we had at least a dozen, but it was obvious they were trying to intimidate us and throw off the count. That was when I decided there wasn't any point in waiting for them to queue the music.

"Chasity, edge forward, slow, steady. Tex, Doc, keep up and cover the rear," I said quietly. I heard a snort from Tex, but when Chasity began half-stepping it forward, I heard them moving along behind us. It had the desired effect.

From the left, I caught a blur of motion, and leveled that revolver and fired, barely glancing to make sure of my aim. I heard a shotgun roar behind me, then the chatter of submachine gun fire, just as a mass of yellow, scabrous forms came hurtling out of the darkened doorway of a wrecked building, spreading out as they came. I didn't have time to look at them closely, so I just brought both of my guns together and let the hammers fall. Directly beneath me, steady as the beasts rushed us, Chasity aimed and fired in a smooth rhythm. Shift, aim, fire. Work the bolt, aim, fire.

All at once, we were the only things standing in that cratered court, as the survivors fled, screaming in rage and fear, leaving their fellows to bleed out their lives on the shattered stones.