She hit the water hard and went under. The next instant there were hands all over her and she screamed, slapping them away. She spun around, teeth clenched, fists raised, and barely recognizing the faces of her battered husband and her daughter as they grabbed at her.“Behind you, Mom!”Eleanor turned.The water was full of zombies. Four of them were already wading toward her, less than ten feet away. She let Jim and Madison pull her back as she scrambled to get the shoulder strap of her M-16 off her arm.“Come on, Mom! Hurry!”The screams of the dying filtered down from above them. People were running, leaning over the retaining wall, yelling for help. The rattle of gunfire was nearly constant. A military helicopter raced overhead, a dim shape, like a dark, gigantic bird against a black sky. And sounding above it all were the zombies in the water, moaning with a fevered intensity that was deafening. Eleanor looked around and realized there were hundreds of zombies closing in on the refugees who had fallen from the Beltway, and the thought occurred to her that this must be what it felt like to be caught in the middle of a swarm of sharks in a feeding frenzy.She heard an ear-piercing scream.She turned and saw a woman get the flesh stripped from her body by a huddling mass of the infected.For a second, all Eleanor could do was stand there and gawk at the sight of that woman wailing in pain and fear, and she was hardly aware of Jim putting his hands under her shoulders and lifting her from the water until she was most of the way into the boat he had found.Eleanor dropped down into a cushioned bench seat, still staring at the woman.
