Ragnarok Rising: The Awakening (Book One of The Ragnarok Rising Saga) by D.A. Roberts

and hit the bloody postman with the Mogadishu Drill . My shots hit it twice in the chest and once in the middle of the forehead and it dropped like a stone. Shu was being calm, selecting his targets and conserving his ammo. That was good. Shu also looked a hell of a lot calmer than I felt.
    “ Henderson, aim for the head, you dumbass!”
    Henderson was still in full blown panic-mode as he tried to change the magazine with fingers that appeared numb. He managed to drop the empty magazine and fumbled for another one from his belt. He was completely oblivious to the zombies that were nearly on top of him. The rest of us were making steady progress, but our accuracy was down to about one kill for every four or five shots fired.
    It’s one thing to put fifteen rounds from a Glock into the 10 ring on a paper target. And it’s quite another thing entirely when the adrenalin is pumping and you’re facing targets that will eat you if they get close enough. To say we were scared was the understatement of the century. That’s right about the time that Henderson decided to try and run for it. He dropped his pistol and jumped off the hood of the Charger. He didn’t make it very far.
    “Get back here, you idiot,” I yelled as my slide locked back.
    I had to take my attention off of him to reload. While I changed magazines and dropped the slide, I heard a blood curdling scream. I looked up in time to see two zombies, one a young girl of about 15 and the other a big hillbilly in bloody over-alls, drag Henderson to the ground. Before I could get off a shot, he was completely covered with zombies. His screams abruptly began to gurgle and then cut off entirely.
    “ Henderson’s down!” I called out.
    “Changing mags,” yelled E-2 from the other end of the barricade.
    “Hold the line!” I screamed, and returned to my own shooting.
    “More approaching on our nine!” yelled Spec-4.
    “There’s a fuckload of then, too,” called E-2.
    I stole a quick glance to my left and swore at what I saw. Another group, this one much larger than the one we were facing, was rapidly approaching. There were probably close to a hundred of them, maybe more. They were still a few hundred yards out and I knew we had only a couple minutes before we’d be overran completely.
    E-2 returned to the firefight, after loading a fresh magazine. We were making good progress when suddenly E-2 went down screaming. A zombie had crawled under the Humvee and pulled him down. It was savagely taking chunks out of his legs and he was bleeding profusely. I mentally named those kind Crawlers . I don’t know why that came to me right then.
    Spec-4 snap fired a quick shot and blew the back of the skull off of the Crawler , but the damage had been done. E-2 was screwed and we all knew it. The slide locked back on my final magazine in the Glock and I dropped it without hesitation. Quickly, I snagged the big Mossberg off of the hood in front of me. Then I let fly with the lethal .00 buckshot as fast as I could work the pump on the shotgun. I emptied the 8 round tube in less than twenty seconds, the last round taking the head completely off of Henderson as he stood back up.
    I saw all of this like it was in slow motion. Henderson had only been recognizable by the gray uniform that he wore. Most of his face had been chewed away and he was covered in blood. Shu was falling back towards me as the last few zombies began to come through the barrier. We needed to get the hell out of there, in a bad way. Screw the roadblock.
    “Cover me, I’m reloading,” I yelled.
    “Last mag!” answered Shu.
    “Grant!” called Spec-4.
    I looked up in time to see Spec-4 toss E-2’s M-16 at me. I dropped the shotgun and caught the assault rifle with my left hand. Although it had been years since I’d fired an M-16, it all came flooding back to me in an instant as I shouldered the weapon and shot the last three on our side in quick succession.
    “Clear!” I yelled.
    “Clear,” echoed