Benny knew that it could not hold. There were too many of them, and the dirt walls were not densely packed enough to hold the branches. He drew his sword and began chopping at the dead behind the line, lopping off hands and arms, squatting to cut through ankles, rising to take heads. He tried to build a bulwark of bodies that would at least slow the advance of the entire horde.

Then, with a groan of splintering wood, the line gave and the whole mass of them surged forward in a collapsing melee. The zoms Benny had maimed and killed crashed down, and the others flopped down on them. He kept cutting, trying to bury the active zoms under the weight of as many quieted ones as possible.

The sword was incredibly sharp and Benny was a good swordsman, but this was work for a butcher’s cleaver. Time and again the blade rebounded from bone and tangled in loose clothing.

Benny’s arms began to ache and then to really hurt. His breath came in labored gasps, but still the dead kept coming.

So many of them. So many that Benny ran out of breath to apologize to them. He needed every bit of breath just to survive. He staggered backward, defeated by the sheer impossibility of the task of defeating so many zoms in such a confined space. Running seemed like the only option left. With any luck the ravine would narrow to a close at some point and a tight corner would allow for handholds to climb out.

He backed away, then spun and ran.

And skidded to an immediate stop.

The ravine ahead was not empty. Out of the dusty darkness came a swaying, moaning line of the living dead.

He was trapped.

Chapter 5

5

“COME ON,” BENNY SAID AS THE DEAD ADVANCED TOWARD HIM, BUT even to his own ears there was no passion in his tone. No real challenge. No life.

And no way out.

The steep walls of the ravine were too high and the dirt too soft; and the narrow, snaking passage was blocked at both ends by the dead. All he had left were the few seconds it would take for them to climb over broken bodies and heaps of dirt to reach him.

This is it.

Those words banged like firecrackers in his head, loud and bright and terribly real.

There were too many of them and no real way to fight through; and even if he did, what then? He was still trapped down here in the dark. He had already killed ten of them and crippled another dozen, and in a stand-up fight he believed that he could cut at least five or six more of them down in the time he had left. Maybe as many as ten if he could somehow keep moving.