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barely crept forward a few yards when the tide drove the boat into the rocks behind them with a sharp bang.
    John didn’t bother to turn toward the figures in the distance to check whether they had heard; the creatures seemed to have preternatural hearing. The ‘plan’ such as it wa s, unravelled like worn fabric.
    “Run!”
    John put his head down and sprinted. He was quicker than Ash, but he was gratified to see the pilot keeping pace with him, bounding over shrubs and branches, his speed a product of unhinged terror.
    Behind them, John could hear the now-familiar crashing and shrieking of pursuit. He didn’t look back. There was nothing to be done about the chasing pack: the true danger lay in the possibility of them running headlong into another group. He saw nothing, kept charging forward until his lungs felt ready to burst.
    He was pulling ahead of Ash now, and he risked slowing a little to look back. The pilot, to his credit, wasn’t far behind. Of more concern to John were the shapes he could make out further back: more of them now, crashing through the trees, some falling, and bouncing back to their feet almost instantly to give chase.
    He remembered the weapons he had lost in that first chase. The sword. Ridiculous as he had felt the weapon to be, he would have given anything to feel that cold steel in his hands now.
    Ash had closed the gap; John focused on the way ahead, leaping over a rock that threatened to put an end to things, and then suddenly the trees thinned and he burst into the clearing, unaware of the hysterical laugh that burst from his lips.
    The cho pper sat where they had left it, untouched.
    Behind him, Ash screamed in triumph, the sight of his beloved helicopter apparently pouring extra fuel into his engine. The pilot took off like a sprinter, and John could almost swear he heard the man cackle as he closed the gap.
    John reached the chopper fractions ahead of Ash and leapt inside; his eyes immediately landing on the objects that made his heart feel like dancing.
    Secured to a rack on the far wall of t he chopper he saw something that might just give them a chance: M27 assault rifles.
    John snatched o ne up, slamming in a full clip.
    “ Get this thing going!” He roared as Ash clambered into the cockpit, and leapt back out onto the grass.
    There were too many to count now, a seemingly endless stream of them gushing from the woods into the clearing, the nearest of them only thirty yards or so away, closing fast.
    As the helicopter’s engine hummed into life, blades gradually turning in the night air, picking up the pace, John levelled the weapon, arms shaking at the recoil as he poured bullets into the damn things, his wordless yell of triumph barely audible above the chattering gunfire.
    Still they came, clambering over their fallen comrades, slowly gaining ground. John slammed in another clip, and then suddenly there was another roaring next to him, Ash, gun in hand, spitting lead across the clearing as the chopper’s blades approached full speed above their heads.
    “What the hell are you doing?” John yelled as he squeezed the trigger. “Get this thing off the ground!”
    “Helping!” Ash roared back.
    John cursed. The things were getting closer, pooling around the chopper like liquid. They were surrounded now, dozens of the infected coming at them from all directions. Fighting was hopeless, guns were hopeless. Escape was their only chance. He leapt back into the helicopter, still firing, and grabbed Ash’s collar, hauling the pilot aboard even as the grasping fingers clawed at him.
    Ash was yelling, firing wildly right up until the moment that John slid the door shut, wincing at the impact as the things outside crashed into the metal. John plucked the gun from the pilot’s grasp and threw him bodily into the cockpit.
    “Go!” he scre amed.
    It took only seconds, the longest period in John’s life, and then the ground began to fall away from them. He could feel the weight of