Re: Maggie, Amelia & Joshua
[She lost the woman and the kid in focus. It wasn't the kid and the woman who were facing the innings in the courtyard and Maggie's boots hit the dust of the entrance to the courtyard at a pace and she veered right instead of left, before firing into the swarm that staggered around the cars and the bike. The crack was loud, it shook a couple of birds from the trees nearby and the dead all turned in one direction, right as Maggie moved forward instead of back. She hit the first of them with the butt of the gun, efficient across the back of the neck, and the next, that was the knife driven up through the spatter of molten, rotting flesh and a tug to get the blade back.
It wasn't beauty. It wasn't even clean. The sun hit as the dead did and the smell was thick and choking, steaming in her throat as she gagged and hit and kicked and slashed trying to get back to the fucking car. She looked only briefly for the silhouette of the woman with her kid, listening over the godawful moaning shit for the sound of a car door slamming. The knife wicked into the rotted-plum density of a head, and Maggie turned on the dusty toe of her boot, the resultant oozing of blood over her favorite shirt - her only shirt - as the thing swung at her.
The car door slammed. Maggie shot. The knife slipped in blood-slick fingers, bit into her own palm as something mostly dead grabbed at her shoulder. She kicked wildly, the heel of her boot pulverizing long-fragile bones, splintering a rib-cage and grappled for the door of the car, blood smearing the windows, before she closed her fingers around the driver's side door and felt the lock click open beneath them.
She slid in, slamming the doors on the slippery run of fingers, the rancid smell and reached - not for the keys and the gear-shift, but over the passenger seat for the vodka kept in the glove compartment, sun-warmed, and poured a small measure over her hand, hissing through her teeth. The rest, that could wait. The keys twisted, and the engine caught, and the rest of them would have to fend for themselves. They were moving.]