That wasn’t standard zombie operating procedure.

I didn’t have time to think about what it all meant because a handful of zombies turned and shuffled toward me with grasping hands. I chambered a round and shot the zombie closest to me, before skipping back a couple of steps, letting lead fly as I did. I caught two more coming in, but the last couple made it past the hail of fire, partially sheltered by their slow to fall, dead-again compatriots. They were on me a second later.

The first caught my arm, yanking it down, the barrel of my gun pointed at the asphalt. The second latched its mushy, ripe arms around my ribs, gibbering like a sailor with Tourette’s. If I hadn’t been busy getting killed, I might have blushed.

My breath whistled from my lungs as the zombie squeezed tight, its powerful arms leveraging my ribs into my lungs with an audible creak. I gasped for air, but what little I could suck in was tinged with the sickly, bitter taste of rotting flesh. The zombie’s snarling face hovered inches from mine. I was almost tempted to give in just to avoid the stench.

Almost.

The gun useless, as shooting a zombie in the foot is as effective as asking a politician to do what’s best for his district, I dropped it to free my hand. Wrapped up in their arms, the first adding his insistent love to the embrace, I didn’t have much room to work. The only good thing about the situation was that they weren’t tearing at me or biting. That would have really sucked.

Zombie cooties and all that.

As things were, it was a contest of strength and will. While I couldn’t match them in the will department-zombies trended toward being relentless-I was more than a match for them physically. I also had the benefit of over four hundred years of martial arts experience.