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around with a high backhanded swing. I caught him just
above the ear with a glancing blow. His head snapped to the right and popped
against his shoulder but he kept coming. He reached out and grabbed the strap
of my AR-15. I panicked. The thing was useless to me now. Every time I swung
the empty gun would flop around on its strap and interfere with the blow. I
shrugged out of the strap and let the gun drop to the deck. I took two steps
back and with a primal scream I went in for a jab. With two hands on the shaft
of the baton I used my entire upper body to slam the small ball shaped end of
the baton into the monsters forehead. There was a wet sloppy sounding pop and I
found that my baton had punctured the skull and was imbedded six to eight
inches into this guy’s braincase. I pivoted and took a step back. With both
hands I yanked the baton backwards. To my horror, instead of coming free of the
skull it pulled the body with it. As he fell forward, his shoulder hit my thigh
and knocked me off balance. I pulled my baton out at the moment he impacted me
and felt dread as I fell backwards.
    My worst fear in a fight has always
been going to the ground. If I allowed my momentum to carry me, I could roll
through the fall and come up fighting but I worried that the corpse of my most
recent victim might impede my progress. With one opponent, there are tactical
advantages to getting in close. But this was different. This was an army of
hungry dead people with a one-track mind. The ground was the grave.
    Luck was with me and I rolled all
the way over my left shoulder and came up into a squatting position. Three more
zombies came forward over the corpse at my feet as I leaped up and backed away.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the end of the pier was only 10 feet or so
away.
    Time was running out. I might be
able to dispatch the three but then I was going to have to jump. There were no
more options. The one on my left reached for my neck. Instinctively I raised my
right hand, and stepping to the right, I caught his arm at the wrist and
smoothly rotated into an arm bar take down maneuver. He lost his balance. I
brought my left hand up to his shoulder and with a heave spun him into two
more. With a push, I knocked the three of them over in a writhing pile of
putrid flesh. I stepped back and then swung my baton down onto the head of the
nearest one. I felt the skull give and then stepped back yet again. The three
on the ground began to sort themselves out in a morbid slow motion dance.
    The crowd behind them was starting
to move in. I lost hope at the sea of snarling heads disappearing in the murky
blackness. I backed into the corner of the rail. End of the
road. Nowhere to run. No bullets left. My arms
felt like numb noodles from all the swinging. With a half sob half exhale I
jumped up onto the rail. I took one last look at the wall of death that was
slowly creeping towards, turned around, tucked my baton under my arm and
unsnapped the buckle on my gun belt and pulled it out to the side. From a
decade of post shift habit I pulled the belt as my left hand instinctively
unsnapped each of the leather keepers that fused the gun belt to my pants belt.
The fifteen pounds of leather and tools fell from my hand, flopped onto the
railing, hung there for a half a second and then slowly slid over and fell to
ocean below with a loud splash. I still had my baton. There were only three or
four feet between me and the first of them, at this point .
I figured I would take one last swing and then leap clear.

Tilt Rotor

10
    There I was. Standing on the
handrail of the pier swinging my Asp like I was harvesting wheat. There was a
lot of splatter and bits of scalp hanging from the end of baton. My arms were
numb. Back and forth, up and down. I was just about to leap backwards into the
cold ocean below when I heard… no felt a roar of man made power; the throbbing
“ whump-whump ” of a rotor. It was a deep visceral
feeling as rotor blades whipped