A yank on the back of his shirt pulled Spencer away from the bullets he attempted to collect. “Spence, they’re coming. We need to go!”

Looking up from the wrecked SUV, he saw that his sister wasn’t wrong. The undead gathered and although not overwhelming in number yet, they came for them in all directions. With a yelp, Spencer stuck his pistol into his pants, snatched up the axe, and joined his sister.

“Which direction is dad?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but the shots came from this way.” She gazed at him and when she returned her eyes to the shambling half-men, something had changed. “Load your gun,” was all she said, before bringing her rifle up and shooting the closest zombie trough the forehead.

Spencer hurried to load his revolver. His manic fingers dropped nearly as many bullets as he loaded, but he was on the last round when a violent elbow knocked the gun from his hand. He expected clawing fingers to be racking at him, but instead he saw that a skinny zombie with a limp blood washed arm moved toward Emily’s exposed back.

His pistol lay a yard away and open, so instead, he snatched up the wood axe and without really thinking, smashed it into the skull of the zombie. It collapsed with a dull moan. But the others converged on them.

Spencer had just enough time to snatch up his pistol, before Emily grabbed him by the wrist and said, “We have to go!” They rushed to the edge of the closing circle of moving dead and paused just long enough for Emily to shot two of them in the head. Spencer clicked the pistol shut and joined her in firing. He wasn’t near as good a shot as his older sister, but managed to waste two more of them before his pistol was once again dry.

Two big zombies lumbered in on them from both sides trying to block off their escape. Emily must have been empty too, for she smashed the one on her side in the face with the butt of her rifle. With a wild growl, Spencer swung the axe one-handed into the knee of the gory man in a KFC shirt. The zombie stumbled and fell. Slick red hands grabbed at him, but the siblings rushed on.

“Dad!” They both started to yell, but this only drew the attention of the stray zombies that banged their fists on random apartment doors. No other normal people remained in the courtyard and the others stumbled their way.

“When I find dad, I’m going to kick his ass!” Emil shouted. “Leaving us to be eaten alive, just rescue some damn slut he was too embarrassed to even introduce to us. What a prick.”

“He didn’t know,” Spencer countered. “We just need to find him and Jewels and get the hell out of here.”

“To where,” she panted. “Our house is overrun, our car is stuck, and these things are all over the place?”

He didn’t have an answer, but then he spotted something. There was a children’s playground with a huge jungle gym. “Em, if we climb up there, we can reload and they won’t be able to get us. I don’t think they can climb that well.”

She looked uncertain for a moment, but then said, “Okay, let’s go!”

They dodged and lashed out at the groping hands and faces that tried to block their flight, but made it to the jungle gym and rushed up to its peak.

It turned out that Spencer had been wrong. The evil things could climb, but they proved slow and clumsy at it. Many also lost their grip and became stuck or knocked other of their kind through the bars.

They had enough time to reload and then the blood bath began. With the creatures slowed, they had time to pick their shots. They fired point blank range at the ones on the jungle gym first, but then moved out into the courtyard. Emily in particular used her rifle with a deadly effect.

Time lost meaning as their world became gunfire, exploding heads, and blood. Emily cried out like a twelve year old banshee as she made shot after shot. Spencer had less bullets, so he switched to his axe with the ones that drew too near.

How he and his sister, just two little kids, had become such killing machines, remained beyond his understanding, but their young minds craved life and those lives were what the dead wished to tear from their bodies.

The firing stopped and it shocked him to see the inner courtyard of the apartment complex free of the walking dead for the first time. Still, his elevated position allowed him to see that the constant gunfire was drawing in a second wave from the road.

“Em, I’m on my last six shots.”

“I’m low too. We need to-”

Her statement was interrupted by a pained yell.

She looked over at him wide eyed. “Oh no! That sounded like dad!”

To be continued next Saturday.

You can discover where Spencer and Emily enter the Eternal Aftermath Here!