"Does my steel leg taste good, you bastard?" Gantzuke growled through gritted teeth, cursing viciously as he pumped three suppressed shots into the head of a grotesque female zombie.She was dressed in a torn red bikini, with patchy, disease-ravaged hair like a leper.
Swish! Swish! Swish!One bullet exited through the zombie's twisted mouth and smacked against Gantzuke's metallic leg—but he barely registered it, feeling only a dull vibration.
The sharp, terrified shriek of a teenage pop star made him snap his head left.Still lying on his side, with the zombie corpse clinging tightly to his calf like a desperate, blood-soaked lover, Gantzuke twisted his torso and leveled his rifle.
"Get down!" he barked.
Meenda immediately dropped to the ground, just as a string of supersonic bullets hissed past her head, hot enough that she smelled the singed air.
Splat!Brain matter and blood from the two men chasing her exploded onto her hair and shoulders, making her scream in terror.
Kicking furiously, Gantzuke dislodged the zombie corpse tangled around his leg and crawled over to drag the sobbing, trembling young woman behind the shelter of the coral rock.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!A hail of bullets pelted the rocky cover, shattering coral and spraying shards like a storm of deadly needles.
Meenda curled into a ball, hands clamped tightly over her ears, wailing uncontrollably.If Gantzuke had been paying closer attention to her scream, he might've noticed—it was oddly musical, hauntingly beautiful, even amidst the chaos.
Five armed men in half-military gear stormed in, firing suppressive shots to keep Gantzuke pinned down while others maneuvered to flank.They weren't stupid movie henchmen running into gunfire—they were trained fighters executing a textbook assault.
"Left side, incoming!"The voice in Gantzuke's earpiece made him pivot instinctively.Tap-tap! Tap! Tap!Three rapid shots: the first man took two rounds through the chest; the second and third men each got a bullet to the head.
The gunfire paused—but only for a second.A grenade clinked into the sand by his right leg.Thump.
Time froze.Gantzuke snatched the grenade and hurled it back in one smooth motion.
BOOM!The explosion kicked up a wall of sand and shrapnel, flattening two enemies.Gantzuke sprang up from cover, spraying them both before they could recover.Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap!Each shot clean and precise, dead-center chest or forehead.
He caught his breath and scanned—Meenda was gone.
Damn it!
"Leemo! Where the hell is she?" Gantzuke shouted into the comm, nearly blowing out Leemo's eardrum.
"She ran into the shack behind you!" Leemo barked back."But forget that for now—five more coming! Fifteen degrees from your current position, seventy meters, near the second shack!"
Gantzuke sprinted for cover behind a coconut tree, using the wrecked boat and the zombie corpse for additional concealment.
"Is she your Miracle Girl?" he asked through gritted teeth.
The radio crackled in brief silence.Above him, the sky was a vivid, merciless blue.
"...Yes," Leemo replied finally. "But that's not important right now. They're coming."
The crash of the surf, the salt on the breeze—it all seemed muted as Gantzuke leveled his rifle toward the second shack, lining up his red-dot sight.
"Come on, you bastards," he growled under his breath, spitting sand from his mouth.
He tried not to think about the rank piss-stench staining the wet sand where some thug had taken a leak earlier.
"They're moving," Leemo announced in his ear.
But Gantzuke already knew.He saw them first—he was perfectly positioned.
Tap-tap-tap! Tap! Tap!Silent, deadly bursts.Each shot sent an enemy crashing into the sand, lifeless, as Gantzuke gunned down two more of Amun's men in rapid succession.
Leemo grinned behind his screens, watching the slaughter from his drone feed.This kid... he's a natural-born killer.