They were barely out the door when a trio of shots echoed up the corridor towards them. Cameron grunted as one slug caught him low in the chest and another tore through his right arm, spinning him off balance, sending the gun sprawling out of reach. Instinctively he reached for his arm and felt the dampness on his sleeve, the wet copper smell overpowering that of cordite and spent gunpowder in the confines of the corridor. Jaira spun round the doorway and fired a single shot in to the darkness. Muzzle flashes lit up the darkness at the end of the corridor. Drawing his second Beretta Cameron fired off half a clip, deliberately aimed low as recoil kicked his shots high.

Jaira swept forward, covering Cameron until they were just outside the room, only to hear the sounds of a furious struggle, a gasp and heavy thud. They burst in and everyone paused including the six women conducting a ferocious dog pile on their guard. Under other circumstances it would have been high comedy. He was bent at the waist, one woman with her arms wrapped around his neck, another forcing the man's gun hand high towards a hole in the ceiling, with a woman wrapped around each leg as a sixth was clearly about to panther lunge him. At the sight of the weapons pointed towards them, the women already holding him tightened their grip, as he struggled to bring his gun arm down, dealing a vicious sucker punch to the redhead holding his right arm. Jaira beat Cameron to the punch as she took three long strides and planted the hot barrel upon the center of the man's forehead, causing his to gasp in pain as the barrel burned a circular mark in to his forehead, “Drop it,” she hissed.

Outside, the trio had waited and they had jumped like coiled springs as the world shook like it was in a snow globe. Robert stood and had taken two steps in to the courtyard, lit by the light of what was no doubt Cameron's handy work when Natalie grabbed the back of his jacket, and pulled him back, “Wait!”

“For what?” he said as the flames began to spread out off the cafeteria towards the second floor of the building, searching for more fuel even as it spread through the rest of the ground floor of the building

“Wait,” she repeated, tightening her grip as he tried to break free yet again, “Just wait.” the guards posted around the fortress left, heading towards the conflagration as the crew slipped between them and crawled aboard their armored home, “Glad I hung on to the key,” thought Robert as he collapsed in to the driver's seat while Natalie snatched several LAWs from the open packing crate.

The engine gave a roar as Robert dropped them in to first gear and rolled across the parking lot towards the building in question, mangling motorcycles, ATVs and the few overzealous men who heroically stood their ground, bullets bouncing off the thick hide of the Fortress as they parked, sealing off the glass fronted doors of the building. Scrambling over, Robert mashed down the air horn, drowning out the roar of gunfire as machine guns and grenade launcher unleashed and orchestra of destruction. Robert slid in to the front passenger seat and flicked the laser sight mounted beneath the barrel, a storm of shell casings spraying from the breach of the weapon. Several of their former hosts returned fire and Robert winced as several rounds bounced off the windshield, “Cameron, Jaira, could you please hurry up?”

Inside, the one remaining guard had been knocked unconscious and with Jaira in the lead, they made good time towards the door. The echoes of gunfire reached them through the walls and the orchestra of warfare was ten times louder as they loaded their eight rescued hostages aboard the Fortress. Their hostages were in poor in shape and most had exhausted themselves and in the press of bodies, Cameron nearly missed Natalie as she swept past with a pair of LAWs rattling against each other slung across her back, “Hey!” he shouted, “Give me the launchers! I'll crack the gate!”

“You think that you can hit the target?” asked Natalie, as she pushed through Cameron’s nod, “You need to account for drop over distance and wind direction to say the least. And if you miss either shot, you might destroy the drawbridge!” Cameron couldn’t counter those arguments as he made his way to the cab to take control of the gun from Robert while he slid in to the driver’s seat.

She took off through the building, taking the stairs two at a time as she made her way to the first room on the right and its third window, “ Straight shots, about sixty meters, no wind to compensate for, zero degrees elevation,” She mumbled. The caps slid off the ends of the tube as she extended it to its full length and flicked up the rear sight, “Fire in the hole!” she called and slapped the trigger firmly. The recoil was nonexistent as superheated exhaust gas vented through the open doorway of the room, setting it and the walls ablaze. The missile had barely left the tube before the second was in her hands. A voice crackled in her ear to let her know that the shot had mangled the left drawbridge housing.

Whoever it was came out of nowhere and she had only a moment’s warning as the blade found a purchase between the plates of her body armor. She turned away from the slicing blade but not quick enough as it plunged through her flank. She gasped as the icy pain ripped through. Her attacker grinned evilly at her and lunged again but this time she was ready, blocking the thrust as she trapped the offending wrist and pulled him in close, letting her knee smash in to the man’s solar plexus.

He doubled over and she stepped back, opening up enough room between the two of them as she swung her foot towards the outstretched head. But her opponent was good, catching her outstretched foot and pulling her off balance and to the floor and clambered atop her, punching down with his left hand like a pile driver.

The first punch drove her head back in to the stone floor but she blocked the second and flipped him on to his back and clambered back to her feet, swaying slightly but directly in to the path of the blade opening up a deep gasp across her forearm. Staggering back, she collapsed against one of the stacked desks. He piled atop her, but she managed to coil her legs between them and push him in to the wall as she struggled back to her feet. Finally she cross drew her sidearm and unleashed a stream of bullets, perforating her opponent.

Her sidearm spent, it slid from her fingers as she struggled to bring the second LAW to bear and cursed. Using the LAW to support her weight she slid from window to window until finding the line of sight required. Beyond the walls, the first detonation had stirred the sedentary gathered dead and now congregated around the drawbridge itself, their clawed hands reaching up to the bridge, sagging under twice the weight it was accustomed to

Already dizzy, she shook her head clearing away the static and stars before her eyes and then finally taking aim and with a muttered prayer squeezed the trigger. In her weakened state, she had forgotten that LAW rockets produce extensive exhaust gas that requires a thirty degree arc of twenty meters to vent clearly. Her shot was from the second window down and without a doorway behind her, there was nowhere for those gases to escape through as they struck the far wall and turned back. She had felt the heat wave and realized her mistake only seconds before it struck with physical force. Ribs cracked as she struck the window frame. Her clothes burned and the scent of burnt and ash reached her, skin and flesh ablaze as pain radiated to her brain from every part of her body.

But her shot was on target as the drawbridge fell open and let the dead spill in to the compound, “Fortress to Archangel: What's the hold up?” shouted Cameron over the grenade launcher as he unleashed a salvo in to the advancing dead. The shrapnel tore them up, but the dead have never felt pain and continued forward. Whatever holes the grenades blew in the lines of advancing dead were filled rapidly as the undead pressed forward with the characteristic single minded determination they were infamous for.

“Archangel,” she coughed once, and bit down on her lip as fire lanced up from her ribs and wiped blood from several wounds that laced her face, “Arch…man down… I’m…hit.” She gasped out the words, forcing them through a growing tightness in her chest that made each breath more difficult to take. Scrambling amongst the debris and found the spent, warped tube of a LAW that she used to hoist herself, back to her feet, pain now shooting down her ribs on both sides of her body, as she noticed for the first time the blood trickling down the side of her face. She staggered through the numerous small fires burning all around, making it as far as the corridor before black spots filled her vision.

She blinked, shook her head, and half regretted it as her vision cleared but her ribs sent another wave of agony cutting through her, “Need...” she choked, and fell to one knee the darkness closing in with renewed determination, “...need...” she slid to the floor face first, as she lost the battle against the pain.

“Archangel!” called Cameron, “Repeat your last!” Silence reigned in Cameron's ear as he clambered down from the turret, narrowly avoiding one of the girls, curled and cowering on the floor. He stepped over her, reaching for the one of the rifles on the rack, and shouted to Jaira over their guns, even as he leapt through the open side door towards the building.

Nastia appeared from the second trailer, grabbing Jaira's arm, and she nodded in understanding, letting the Russian redhead go – she had the necessary medical experience, training, EMT paramedic bag and the collapsible backboard. Jaira ran back, manning Nastia's gun to send another wave of bullets out in to a pocket of the local residents who continued to fire at the Fortress, instead of focusing their attention on the undead closing upon them.

The pair found Natalie at the top of the stairs, lying face down with blood pooling around her head mocking a halo. Nastia dropped to her knees; hand in the shoulder bag as she attached a C-collar around Natalie's neck, then checking for a pulse. Cameron snapped open the stretcher and placed it against Natalie's back, “Set,” he said and together they rolled her over until she lying on the stretcher as Nastia listened to her chest and identified the problem, confirmed by quickly running her hands down the broken ribs, “Broken ribs, decreased breath sounds on the left side, hypoxia, cyanosis and tachycarida.... shit.... tension pneumothorax,” muttered Nastia, she grabbed a pack of alcohol swabs and sterilized an area of Natalie's chest, “Largest syringe you can find, remove the plunger from the end of it!” she snapped.

Cameron repressed the urge to ask what she was doing as Natalie set up and infiltrated an IV line. Cameron thrust the syringe in to the redhead's shaking hands, “Sternal notch, 45 degrees,” muttered Nastia, as gunfire sang a song of slaughter, the fortress's grenade launcher the bass drum to the orchestra of death. Her hand shook for a moment and then settled as the needle slid through the flesh between her ribs. Au audible hiss erupted as air exited Natalie's thoracic cavity and her lung expanded. Taking a moment, Nastia repeated the procedure on the other side of her chest, and was rewarded by a less intense hiss. Nastia exhaled a breath she didn't realize that she had been holding. Strapping her comrade to the stretcher, she finally looked up at Cameron, “Stable for transport!”

Between them, they maneuvered the stretcher and then in to the Fortress, somehow managing to thread through the crowded interior to lay her down in her bunk. Satisfied that they had done what they could, Nastia shouted to Robert who put his foot down on the accelerator. Every gun that could be brought to bear against their aggressors, human and dead faced the wrath of the Fortress. It began to move its slow heavy ponderous weight gaining both momentum and speed knocking the first ranks of the undead out of the way, until the press of bodies itself slowed them. Robert flicked two switches on a central console in rapid succession, activating the close quarter defenses.

During the construction of the Fortress, they had considered the possibility that the undead could surround and swamp the massive vehicle. Their planning paid off as the external floodlights snapped on, throwing out a blinding wave of light that was stupefying in its intensity. The second switch raised the flapped covers on the sixteen boxes mounted all around the Fortress. Inside the Fortress, Robert flipped a third switch and the each of the mounted boxes unleashed a salvo of six shotgun shells fired en masse.

Robert continued to plough slowly through the still gathering undead as one hundred and forty four shotgun shells send buckshot through the press of dead bodies like a scythe through a cornfield. They ploughed across the bridge, smashing the undead in to the already overflowing trench beneath them as they found open ground leaving the male population of Cottonwood to deal with the undead now streaming in to the compound more than a little determined to consume and devour the inhabitants, their fates sealed.