The man on the barricade did not move. He simply watched the riot van, his rifle held loosely across his chest. Hex killed the engine, and the sudden silence felt heavy, expectant. Quinn's hand rested on the grip of his pistol. Every instinct he had was screaming. The clean street, the watchful guard, the quiet—it felt too perfect, too staged.
Then, the silence was shattered.
A sustained burst of automatic gunfire erupted from the far side of the clinic, a sound so loud and violent it seemed to tear the air apart. It was followed by a chorus of snarling, guttural roars—the sound of a horde.
The man on the barricade spun around, his calm demeanor vanishing, replaced by a frantic urgency. He shouted something Quinn could not hear, then raised his rifle and fired two quick, controlled shots towards the back of the building.
"It's not a trap," Hex said, his voice a mix of awe and alarm. "It's a fortress. And it's under siege."
He hit the ignition, the van's engine roaring back to life. He drove them around the block, moving towards the sounds of the fight. The scene that greeted them was one of organized chaos.
The back of the clinic opened onto a large parking lot, which had been turned into a kill zone. The chain-link fence was higher here, reinforced with sharpened poles and concertina wire. Three defenders were positioned on a makeshift scaffold built against the clinic wall, firing down into a sea of infected that pressed against the fence. There were dozens of them, maybe over a hundred, a writhing mass of bodies clawing at the wire, their sheer numbers causing the fence to bow inward.
"My God," Quinn breathed. The defenders were good. They were firing in controlled bursts, picking their targets, conserving ammunition. But they were hopelessly, catastrophically outnumbered. For every infected they dropped, two more seemed to take its place.
Quinn studied the attackers. They were a mix of shamblers and runners, a chaotic swarm of aggression. But there was something different about them. They were not just randomly throwing themselves at the barricade. There was a persistence to their attack, a focused pressure on one specific section of the fence that felt… coordinated. They were not just a random horde that had stumbled upon the clinic. They were attacking it.
"They're trying to break it down," Hex said, echoing Quinn's thoughts. "They're focusing their weight on that one section."
As he spoke, a loud tearing sound ripped through the air. A support post on the fence snapped. The section of chain-link they had been targeting buckled, then collapsed inward, creating a breach.
A wave of infected poured through the gap.
The defenders on the scaffold yelled in alarm, redirecting their fire into the breach, but it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a garden hose. The first line of infected swarmed over the sandbags, their path now leading directly to a secondary entrance into the clinic. Two more defenders, armed with melee weapons, met them at the door, a desperate, last-ditch attempt to hold the line.
Quinn watched the brutal, unequal fight, his mind racing. He saw the defenders being pushed back, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. He saw the open door, a direct path into the clinic, into the place that held a doctor, medicine, and hope. He saw Lily, her small face reflected in the passenger-side window, her coughing fits a constant, painful reminder of why they were here.
He could drive away. He could turn the van around, leave these strangers to their fate, and try to find another path, another hope. It would be the smart thing to do. The safe thing.
But he looked at the defenders fighting for their lives, fighting to protect the sanctuary they had built. He saw Mark, swinging a baseball bat in a doomed, heroic charge. He saw himself, promising to protect the innocent. He could not just watch them die.
A snap decision, born of instinct and desperation, took hold.
"Get us closer," Quinn said, his voice hard as steel.
"What?" Hex stared at him. "Quinn, that's suicide."
"That door is our only way in," Quinn said, checking the magazine on his pistol. He chambered a round. "Their defenses are collapsing. In five minutes, that clinic will be overrun, and any chance we have will be gone with it. We're not getting in by knocking. We're getting in by fighting."
Hex hesitated for a fraction of a second, his pragmatic mind warring with the insanity of the plan. Then he looked at Quinn's face, saw the grim, unshakeable resolve in his eyes, and nodded. "Alright. Hang on."
He slammed the van into gear and drove it not at the main gate, but along the side street, using the building itself as cover. He brought it to a screeching halt near the edge of the parking lot, just out of sight of the main horde but close to the breach.
"Lily, listen to me," Quinn said, turning in his seat. He unbuckled her and pulled her into the front. "You are going to stay in this van. You get on the floor, in the back, and you do not get up until I come back for you. Understand?"
She was crying, terrified by the noise and the violence, but she nodded bravely. "You'll come back?"
"I will always come back for you," he said, his voice softer than he intended. He kissed her forehead. "I promise."
He left her huddled on the floor in the back and turned to Hex. "Give me cover fire. Focus on the ones closest to the door. Create a path for me."
"You got it," Hex said, resting his shotgun on the edge of the open window.
"Ready?" Quinn asked, his hand on the door handle, the fire axe in his other hand.
"Ready."
"Go!"
Quinn threw the door open and launched himself out of the van. At the same time, Hex opened fire, the shotgun's roar adding to the cacophony. The blast of buckshot tore into a group of infected that had started to turn towards the van, dropping three of them in a heap.
Quinn ran. He sprinted across the twenty yards of open pavement that separated the van from the breach, his heart pounding in his chest. He was a single, moving target in a world of chaos. An infected turned towards him, and he swung the axe in a wide, horizontal arc without breaking his stride, cleaving it almost in two.
He reached the breach, leaping over the fallen fence and the bodies of the dead. He was in the kill zone now. The two defenders at the door were still fighting, a man with a crowbar and a woman with a machete, but they were being overwhelmed. The man went down, a creature latching onto his leg, pulling him to the ground.
Quinn roared, a guttural sound of pure battle rage, and charged into the fray. He swung the axe, its heavy blade biting deep into flesh and bone. He was a whirlwind of controlled violence, his movements precise, deadly. He was not just fighting for himself anymore. He was fighting for his niece, for the memory of his family, for the strangers who had dared to build a sanctuary in hell.
He fought his way to the door, clearing a small, temporary pocket around the surviving woman. She stared at him, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief.
"Get inside!" he yelled over the din. "Get back!"
From his position in the van, Hex continued to lay down covering fire, his shotgun blasts providing precious seconds, keeping the bulk of the horde focused on the main fight.
Quinn stood at the threshold of the clinic, the axe held ready, a lone guardian at a broken gate. He had no idea if this was a haven or just another tomb. But he had made his choice. He had committed. And as more infected poured through the breach towards him, he braced himself for the flood.