World War Z_ An Oral History of the Zombie War ( PDFDrive )

hair hung in patches from her tight, leathery skin. Her swollen belly puffed through a faded black
T-shirt that read G IS FOR GANGSTA. I centered my sight between her shrunken, milky blue
eyes…you know it’s not really the eyes that make them look all cloudy, it’s actually tiny dust
scratches on the surface, thousands of them, because Zack doesn’t make any tears. Those
scratched-up baby blues were looking right at me when I pulled the trigger. The round knocked her
on her back, steam coming from the hole in her forehead. I took a breath, sighted my next target,
and that was that, I was locked in.
Doctrine calls for one shot every full second. Slow, steady, mechanical-like.
[He begins snapping his fingers.]
On the range we practiced with metronomes, all the time the instructors saying “they ain’t in no
hurry, why are you?” It was a way of keeping calm, pacing yourself. We had to be as slow and
robotic as them. “Out G the G,” they used to say.
[His fingers snap in perfect rhythm.]
Shooting, switching, reloading, grabbing sips from your camel pack, grabbing clips from the
“Sandlers.”
Sandlers?
Yeah, the Recharge Teams, this special reserve unit that did nothing but make sure we never ran
dry. You only had a certain number of clips on you and it would take a lot more time to reload each
individual clip. The Sandlers ran up and down the line collecting empty clips, recharging them from
crated ammo, and then passing them out to anyone who signaled. The story is that when the army
started training with RTs, one of the guys started doin’ an Adam Sandler impression, you know,
“Water Boy”—“Ammo Boy.” The officers weren’t too jazzed with the tag, but the Recharge Teams
loved it. Sandlers were lifesavers, drilled like a fuckin’ ballet. I don’t think anyone that day or
night ever found themselves one round short.
That night?
They just kept coming, full on Chain Swarm.
That’s a large-scale attack?
More than that. One G sees you, comes after you, and moans. A click away, another G hears that
moan, comes after it, and moans himself, then another one another click away, then another. Dude,
if the area’s thick enough, if the chain’s unbroken, who knows how far you can pull them in from.