“All right, all right,” she huffed. “Just let me get a few practice shots.”

She fired three more times. On the third, she managed to blast a chunk of bone, skin, and most of one ear from an infected woman’s head, but not enough to kill it.

“Son of a bitch.” She ground her teeth, took a deep breath, and readied herself to try again.

“Try this, sweetheart,” Mike said in a gentle voice. “Move your left hand further down the forearm, and relax your shoulders-”

“Dad, just stop. Okay?”

“But I’m just-”

I decided it was time to intervene. “I noticed something that might help,” I said, giving Mike a pointed look. He let out an exasperated breath and stepped back.

“Be my guest.”

As I took his place next to Sophia, the difference in her demeanor was immediate. Gone was the tension, the irritation, the shallow breathing of someone about to lose her temper. When I went to move her shoulders and arms, she became pliant under my hands.

“You want to relax here and here,” I said, touching the two sides of her trapezius muscles. “Just take a breath and kind of roll your shoulders around. Good. Now take this hand and move it forward. It’s too close to the mag-well back here, makes it hard to switch your point of aim. Having your hand farther down the barrel makes for a faster transition.”

Behind me, Mike sputtered and fumed. “But … but that’s the same thing I just …”

I glanced over my shoulder at him and shook my head. His shoulders sagged. He threw up his hands, walked over to the other side of the container, aimed his carbine, and began killing infected with savage enthusiasm.

There you go, big guy, I thought. Work it out.

“Okay, close your eyes, Sophia. Now take a deep breath. Fill up your lungs.” I kept my hand on her back, making sure she did as I said. “Now let it out slowly. When I say go, open your eyes, pick a target, and fire with both eyes open. Make sure the red dot is just a little bit high.”

Her ribcage contracted, contracted, and when it was at the halfway point, I said, “Go.”

Her eyes opened. They were clear, focused, no longer clouded with eagerness or frustration or anything else. The scope was slightly below her line of sight. Keeping both eyes open, she raised it, acquired a target, and squeezed the trigger slowly until the report caught her by surprise—exactly the way it is supposed to be done. Ten yards away, a splash of black and red spouted from the back of a ghoul’s head, and it slumped to the ground.

“Perfect,” I said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Start with the closest targets, then try to hit a few farther away.”

She spared me a glance and a white-toothed smile. “I think I got it now.”

“And be careful where you aim.” I pointed to where Dad and Blake had taken up position. “We don’t want any friendly fire.”

She nodded soberly and promised me she would be careful. I relocated to the middle of the container, split the difference between Mike and Sophia, and lay down in the prone position. The metal was hot underneath me from baking all day in the sun, but I ignored it. Firing from the prone position is the most accurate way to do business, and I wanted to conserve as much ammunition as possible. The high vantage point afforded by the shipping container gave me an excellent field of fire. It would be a shame not to take advantage of it.

I dialed the magnification on my scope down to 2x and started taking potshots at the infected closest to the main building. Mike and Sophia were doing a good job eliminating the ones closest to our side of the parking lot, while Dad and Blake were steadily mowing down the undead on their side. Despite the progress they were making, it was obvious from my perch they would have to fall back soon. It seemed that for every infected they dropped, two more emerged from somewhere to take their place. I began focusing my fire on the periphery of the horde, trying to cut their numbers before they could reach the parking lot.

The reticle in my vision found what was once a man still wearing a torn and bloody business suit, tie flapping in the breeze, one wingtip shoe missing. The uneven footing caused him to lurch dangerously with every step, looking as though he were about to fall over before wheeling his arms around and righting himself. I timed his movements, noticing that when he stood up straight, there was a second of two of hesitation before he tried to make the next step. So I waited.

Step, totter, groan, flappy-flap of the arms, next foot comes forward, pushes off the ground, torso straightens, head is up for a second and-

CRACK.

Down he goes. Next target: middle aged woman, obese, cardigan, long denim skirt, sensible clogs on her feet, most of her face missing on the right side, right arm chewed down to gristle and bone. Probably someone’s grandma once. She was lumbering at a steady pace toward Dad and Blake, both of her legs still intact. I waited for her to rock left, then pause on the sway to the right before transitioning to the other foot, and CRACK.

The bullet struck the back of her head on the part called the occipital bunt and blew most of it off, leaving a ragged, dripping mess in its wake. The wound did not immediately kill her, but it scragged her wiring enough she did a face-plant and stayed there in a twitching, quivering heap. Rather than waste a bullet finishing her off, I moved on to the next target.

A minute or two later, the chamber locked open on an empty magazine. I dropped it, stowed it, and slid home a new one. Before I started firing, I did another battlefield assessment.

Mike and Sophia were doing a good job of reducing the horde on our side. They had widened the semi-circle of ghouls around the container by several meters and counting. Dad and Blake, on the other hand, were dealing with a far denser cluster of undead and were slowly retreating toward the vehicles, dropping corpses as they went. At a signal from Blake, Lance left his post and ran over to back them up. Tyrel, evidently tired of being left out of the action, disappeared into the Humvee for a moment, reappeared with Mike’s M1A, steadied himself on the roof of the Humvee, and filled the air with a cadence of hollow booms.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a dust plume approaching from the south. I came up to my knees and peered in that direction, trying to see who was coming. A few seconds later, a Humvee rounded the corner and pulled into the parking lot. The driver slowed and conferred with the man beside him as though unsure how to approach. I saved him the trouble by standing up and waving him over.

On the way to our position, the SAW gunner standing in the roof turret opened up on the horde with tight, controlled bursts of fire. He had obviously learned a thing or two about fighting the undead because rather than aim center of mass or try for headshots—which would have been next to impossible in a moving vehicle while firing on full-auto—he aimed at the infected’s legs.

Blood and bone and kneecaps and lower halves of legs disintegrated under the hail of bullets. The gunner disabled dozens of undead in the space of less than thirty seconds, and while it did not kill them, it reduced their mobility to a crawl. More importantly, it did so quickly and en masse. I found myself nodding in approval.

Have to remember that one.

The Humvee stopped below us, a few yards away. I shouted to them, “Looks like you missed a few.”

The soldier in the turret turned toward me. “Sorry. Didn’t search this far north, figured all the infected would be coming from the south.”

“Looks like you figured wrong.”

He had the good grace to look sheepish. “How about you folks back off? We’ll take it from here.”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “How about you ride around and do your leg-shooting trick with the rest of these things, and we’ll come behind you and mop up.”