The gun bucked in his hand, jerking about like he was trying to hold a handful of bees, palm stinging and a familiar ache settling into his arm. There was nothing quite like it and he grinned, then checked the readout.
The figure clicked up, 134, 135, then stopped. One of them was still alive. That was odd, but he hadn’t known the smart bullets to be wrong before. Looked like the evening wasn’t over quite yet.
He saddled up, holstering the gun in the saddle, then sighed in pleasure as the hover discs purred and he rose into the air. As he rushed over the dust-covered plain, he stared up at the tower block, and shook his head. All this over a couple of thousand homes and half an acre of land that no one wanted. It wasn’t like he hadn’t offered decent cash for it, either.
His eyes went down to the screen set between the handlebars. The last one was still alive, though barely. They came in sight, three bodies clad in slate-grey overalls, freshly decorated with splashes of red. He shook his head as he saw their guns, old-style shotguns. One even still had its wooden stock. That had to be worth more than the three of them put together, but of course, it made no difference, not now.
They called themselves the resistance, but if they meant to resist, surely they knew they had to get better weapons? He shrugged, climbing off the bike and wandering over. The last he came to was staring blankly at the sky, eyelids flickering as his blood ran out onto the barren ground. He knelt next to him.
“The block’s mine. It was mine when I tried to buy it three months ago, and it’ll be mine when every last one of you peasants lies bleeding out on the wasteland. D’you hear me? Take that with you to hell.”
He stood, wincing as his back cracked, then put his boot into the man’s side. He hadn’t the energy to move, but his eyes widened for a moment, then sagged closed. Stait spat, then turned back to the bike. As he passed, he picked up the wooden-stock. He could strip it; the wood was worth enough for the effort. He hadn’t got rich by passing by, or stepping over, opportunities.
He looked up at the tower again, at the lights that flickered through the gloom of the evening, and the dust that filled the air. He needed that block. They were getting smart, learning, and he needed to move, get his family out of the low rise. Stairs were easy to defend. The steel barrier they’d thrown up around the city had done well in the last four years, but he wasn’t convinced it would stay that way. The zombies were growing, in both number and invention, but the city rulers were happy to sit back and let them develop, using the culls to pacify the populace. But not Stait, not a chance. He wanted his insurance, and that block was how he intended to get it.
