They filled the street ahead of us, a shambling horde with gaping jaws and rolling eyes. Some looked human except for a few sores or open wounds on their exposed faces and hands. Others lacked limbs or skin or sensory organs. Their clothes hung in tatters or in perfectly-creased folds and all of them, all of them, were coming for us and they wouldn't stop until we were torn to pieces.
"We've got to go," I shouted at Ifiyah. I tried to grab her arm but she shrugged me off. With short clipped words she ordered her girl soldiers into a firing formation - the same one she'd used back on the docks.
There were a lot more of them this time and their movements were less constrained. I just didn't know if we could survive this.
"We can outrun them, head down a side street," I suggested. The dead took another step toward us. And another. They would never slow down. "Ifiyah..."
"They have no guns, Dekalb," the commander said as if she were brushing off an insect. "They are so stupid, to lie for us in wait here and they even have no guns."
"This isn't an ambush - they're not capable of that level of planning," I insisted. I looked at Gary, the smartest dead man in the world, and he nodded a confirmation. Ifiyah waved me away. I turned to Ayaan, thinking she would understand that this was not a traditional military skirmish.
But Ayaan ignored me studiously. Unlike the others she had to know what was about to happen. She'd been there, in the hospital, when the girls died. I could see her breathing hard through her nose, her jaw clamped shut but she didn't move from her firing crouch. Orders are orders, I guess. The girls opened up with their rifles, going for head shots only - just like they'd done back at the dock. Maybe, I thought, maybe Ifiyah was right. Maybe I was just a coward. The girls were trained soldiers and they weren't panicking. Maybe making a stand here was exactly the right thing to do.
"We're fucked," Gary moaned, tugging at his leash. The other end had been securely tied to a fire hydrant.
The dead fell one by one without a sound but others merely crawled over the inert bodies and continued with the advance. Ayaan and Fathia knelt together and spotted for one another, thinning out the ranks of those closest to us but even as their rifles snapped and spat more of the dead spilled out into the street. I could remember this place in happier times and just how crowded it had been then but it was nothing like this. The noise we made must have been drawing every animated corpse in the Village.
"If I kill enough," Ifiyah shouted, "they can learn, and inshallah they will runaway!" I don't know who she was talking to - she certainly wasn't looking at me.
I moved back just to scout the side streets and saw that they were blocked as well - not with the solid wall of the dead that stood between us and the river but with dozens of straggling corpses moving toward us from every direction. To the east - away from the river and therefore farther from safety - the street looked relatively clear but who could know what we would find even if we ran now?
Right next to me one of the girl soldiers - a skinny one with scrapes on her kneecaps - switched her rifle over to full auto and sprayed bullets at the oncoming horde. Panic had gripped her - at this range it would be impossible to get accurate head shots firing that quickly - and Ifiyah moved quickly to smack at her hands and make her stop. She was wasting bullets if nothing else.
I could see the girl's eyes as she felt the cold intensity of her commanding officer's anger suffuse her. I had expected to see fear there but instead I found only shame. The soldiers were ready to die here if Ifiyah ordered it, certain that to die for a noble cause is better than to live without honor. They had never known anything else but this perfect discipline, this unquestioing subservience. They weren't old enough to understand that authority figures can be wrong, too.
Personally I'd rather live even if it meant having the word COWARD tattooed on my forehead. When the dead emerged from the side streets and began to flank us I snatched at Ayaan's arm and howled into her ear our need to retreat. I figured if anyone could talk some sense into Ifiyah it would be her.
The air went out of me as the stock of her AK-47 slammed into my stomach. "You don't give me my orders!" she shrieked over the noise of the company's rifles. "You give no orders at all, gaal we'el! Sedex goor I tell you this, and still you chirp like a baby bird at me! Waad walantahay!"
The dead came at us thick and fast while I tried to get my wind back. They came right for us, never deviating, never turning aside. The bullets weren't even slowing them down. Ifiyah ran back and forth shouting encouragement or abuse at one or another of her kumayo sisters. A dead woman in a green cardigan and wingtip shoes came up on her left, somehow having slipped through the cracks in the girls' defense. She reached for Ifiyah trying to get a handful of her jacket, her headscarf, her flesh and she cut the dead woman in half with automatic fire, literally separating her torso from her legs in a roiling haze of torn skin and bone fragments. "Sharmutaada ayaa ku dhashay was!" Ifiyah howled, her face lit up with exultation.
The dead woman didn't even pause. The second she hit the ground she began crawling toward Ifiyah again. The commander emptied the rest of her cartridge into the body but somehow missed the head. Before she had a chance to reload two skeletal arms were wrapped around her calf and broken teeth sank deep into her thigh.
Two of the girl soldiers pulled the corpse free from Ifiyah's leg. They stomped on the dead woman's head with the heels of their combat boots until there was nothing left but grey pulp. It was too late, though. Ifiyah clutched at her wound, her rifle forgotten, and gazed up at her charges as if looking for ideas.
Her authority was gone. Her certainty had evaporated the moment those broken teeth broke her skin.
For a long sickening minute nobody fired a weapon and nobody moved, except the dead, who kept stepping closer.
"We need to find a secure CCP," Ayaan finally said to me, breaking the spell, "and you're our regional specialist." So engrossed with what had happened to Ifiyah I didn't see her come up and I yelped with startlement. "Get us out of here, Dekalb!"
I nodded and stared east on Fourteenth. Only a few of the dead staggered toward us from that direction. "Somebody untie him," I said, pointing at Gary. "He's a doctor. A takhtar. We need him." They did as I said. The dead man claimed he couldn't run so I detailed two of the girls to carry him. If they disliked this duty they were too well-trained to say so. I picked up Ifiyah myself - I was disturbed to find she weighed only a little more than my seven year old daughter Sarah - and then we were running, tearing down Fourteenth, our weapons clattering against our backs. We dodged around the dead there as they clawed at us. One of the girls got snared by a particularly dextrous corpse but she kicked him in the face and got free again.
Out of breath before we'd covered one avenue block I didn't let myself slow down until we ran past a building covered in scaffolding and the street opened up into the tree-lined expanse of Union Square. I realized then I had no idea where I was going. We were headed away from the river and the safety of the ship. What kind of shelter could we possibly find from the dead?
I stopped and set Ifiyah down very carefully. Her eyes were wide as she stared up at me. I panted for air, oxygen bludgeoning my lungs as I stared at the storefronts and the trees and the statues all around me.
There was no sound at all.