Ace of Spades Chronicles : Book One by P.R.Sharp

illuminating the far end of the tunnel. For a brief moment, he was transported back to Kandahar, when a Taliban skirmish line coming out of the low morning sun, broke through a tree lined defence and fell on his patrol like black leaves falling in autumn. He blinked and shook his head, as he realised with impending distress, that the
    shadows dancing in the exit weren't trees backlit by the sun, but were in fact multiple hostiles approaching down the northern pathway from the direction of the medical facility and the supermarket car park. The bastards were performing a pincer movement! He slapped his hand around Zola's shoulder and pulled him back, but Zola shook off the Corporal’s grip and continued to squirrel away the last remaining bags of pilfered cash. Yates angrily sniffed and caught the pungent aroma of urine and decay that loitered in the shadows. "Have you seen what this plan of yours is going to cost?" He hissed and punched Zola between the shoulder blades with his meaty hand. Zola span to counter a second fist, but Yates easily hooked his incoming arm and turned the Sergeant to face the wall of infected that were entering the tunnel from the exit end in a skirmish line of their own. Zola struggled from Yates’s grasp and hurriedly replaced the plastic light cover to the housing, bashing it with the ball of his fist. For a moment, it seemed to hold, but then it sprang from the metal casing and clattered to the floor, swiftly followed by bags of money falling one by one to land at his feet.
    "No!" Zola half whispered, half moaned. He fell to his knees and gathered up arm loads of the plastic wallets as they continued to fall like copper pennies from an amusement arcade coin log. Yates watched as his friend of eighteen plus years became a wretched, sorrowful sight to see, scrambling through the muck and litter to recoup his stolen money, completely oblivious to the accelerating mass of undead heading straight for them. Yates backed away as one grabbed Zola's boot. Zola turned and in an instant, came back to his senses. He kicked the brute in the face with his heel, tearing putrefied flesh from the cheek bone and managed to stumble backwards to the wall where his rifle stood. But it was too late. Even as he rolled onto his back and readied the weapon, they fell on him. Yates opened fire and the darkness of the tunnel flashed with sporadic images of the attacking horde.
    ***
    Xander saw the muzzle fire centred in the subway tunnel and the scattered faces of the infected captured in the white flashes, but he couldn't see the Corporal or the Sergeant. Far too many developments sprang into his mind as he quickly looked over his right shoulder and saw that the first claymore was about to be triggered by the large group advancing from the supermarket. Another hasty glance over his left shoulder informed him that the infected coming down the long, fence panelled path would soon meet a welcoming ball of flame and shrapnel. As he looked back, however, he saw that there were countless infected clambering over the road side crash barrier above his head. Shooting your team mate in the face at point blank range on a breakfast of granola bar and luke warm cauliflower cheese was not the best way to start the day, he considered, as a plume of anxious nausea made it all the way up to his throat, but was forced back down his oesophagus with a defiant gulp. He ran back to the subway and ripped open the Bergen. He pushed the bags of money that were meant for Walker's mother and his share to one side and extracted every piece of gadgetry and explosive device from the deep well and side pockets and made a quick inventory. His eyes snapped to an incendiary grenade and without hesitation, he pulled the pin and lobbed it as far as he could towards the supermarket infected. His throw could not have been more perfectly timed; just as the grenade bounced once and exploded, sending a white hot ball of flame across the ground, the leading