Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (2 page)

Well. Maybe I'll write about that later

Above excerpt taken from the
popular “The Chronicles of Jacob O'Connor: Year Zero”

“Are they still there?” Katherine asked.

Jake O'Connor glanced briefly towards the
ugly, plaid couch where Katherine Cho lounged, absently kicking her
feet. She sat with her legs hung over the headrest, shoulders
beneath her on the seat so she was nearly upside down, toying with
an equally ugly and threadbare throw pillow.

“Yes. Just like the last time you asked me,
ten minutes ago.” Jake replied, tensely.

“No need to be snippy. I was just curious.”
Kat pouted adorably and flipped her ugly pillow across the couch.
“Besides, there's not much else to do cooped up in here.”

“It's been a long two days; I'll give you
that.” Jake shook his head.

Roughly forty-eight hours prior, the duo had
been motoring east with the rest of their friends—having just
rescued Jake's long-time friend Allen Ryker and the muscular blonde
EMT Maggie Reed from a band of well-armed and (partially) trained
marauders. Said marauders had raided, and then incinerated, the
safe-house their rag-tag little group had sheltered in just outside
New Holland, Ohio. They'd also taken Allen and Maggie, along with
the teenage Karen Parker and Allen's squeeze-of-the-month Heather
Bell, captive as another quartet of Jake's companions had watched
helplessly from within their zombie-pulping transport, the
Screamin' Mimi. After reconnecting with Jake's party, they'd all
decided to track the hostile abductors and take their friends back
by force.

Seventy miles, one smelly crawl through a
sewage plant's drainage ditch on Jake's part, and eight dead
marauders later, they'd managed to retrieve Allen and Maggie, but
Karen was still missing and Heather had been killed. The
dark-haired young woman had managed to escape her captors just as
they'd reached their waste treatment plant hideaway outside
Mulberry, Ohio, but not for long. After escaping her restraints,
Heather had been mowed down by a flurry of gunfire from the rest of
the aggressor convoy and left where she'd fallen in the field
across the road. Jake and the others would've buried their
companion, but the mobile dead in the area had all but consumed her
body. The survivors had settled for killing every bandit within the
sewage plant, and making good their escape with a marauder safely
trussed like an ugly turkey in the bed of their Hummer.

Then the survivors made their way back to a
small, little-used airport in Wilmington, where the rest of their
party awaited their return with supplies, weaponry, and their
transport.

That
had
been the plan anyway.

It all went right out the window when Jake's
rescue party encountered a large pod of the dead. George Foster
(Special Forces “fixer” and Navy veteran) had brought their Humvee
screeching to a halt and they'd all stared at zombies that filled
the road before the upcoming overpass, from shoulder to shoulder,
in far greater numbers than the survivor's ammunition supply could
have dealt with. Not even the modified Humvee they'd obtained, with
its thick crash plate over the front bumper (tastefully painted
with a large fanged smile) and windows covered with a grid of
inch-thick steel bars, could make it through a horde that size.
They'd fled back the way they'd come, at speed. Realizing there was
no way past the horde, Jake reluctantly decided it was his
responsibility to provide a distraction and lead the rotten,
staggering crowd away, allowing the others access to the airport
and relative safety. His decision hadn't been received well,
especially by his red-haired lover Laurel, but they didn't have
other options. At least none that would keep them from becoming
zombie-kibble. So Jake had convinced his friends to make tracks,
while he once again played a life-and-death game of Pac-man with
the oncoming dead.

Over his repeated (emphatic) protests to the
contrary, Kat had invited herself along for the jaunt.

After dodging zombies through miles of
Wilmington's abandoned streets, the pair had taken refuge in the
town's Collage Hall, or “Old Hall” as the plaque out front read.
The four-story, brick building had bars over its first-floor
windows, which were high enough to prevent even the most determined
zombie from clawing its way in, but it also had one drawback: It
only had one door. Granted, said door was a thick, steel, security
job that wouldn't cave even if the maggot-heads outside got it into
their molding skulls to mob the entrance, but there was no rear
access.

So much for adhering to fire code,
Jake had mused as they'd searched hurriedly for an alternate
entrance.

It was Kat who'd found their way in. Noticing
the newly-painted fire escape, she'd run at the wall, leapt high,
planted one biker-booted foot on its brick face, jumped skyward off
its surface
,
and caught the bottom rung of the fire escape
with one hand as Jake watched open-mouthed from the sidewalk. She'd
then proceeded to hang down head-first from the ladder like a
trapeze artist and catch Jake's hands in a firm grip when he'd
jumped skyward for all he was worth.

After powering up by the main-strength in his
biceps, O'Connor had gained the lower rung and awkwardly muscled
his way up the ladder past Kat's inverted form. She'd aided his
efforts by pushing him up from below by way of (shamelessly) taking
a double handful of his buttocks as he slid by her. She could have
simply retained her grip on his vest, but had decided that wouldn't
have been half as much fun.

Besides, he'd been looking up
her
shirt, so fair was fair.

As Jake dangled there, he'd been treated to a
view of Sir Isaac Newton's discovery acting upon a world-class set
of breasts beneath the taunt fabric of Kat's thin tank top. Her
cut-off, belly shirt gaped quite a bit normally anyway, because she
liked showing off the firm lines of her slim midsection, but
hanging upside down? No one could blame him for a bit of discrete
ogling. Kat
was
damn attractive, and he was only human.

Katherine Bright-feather Cho made no
apologies for her looks. Mama-san had fallen for a hunky, Native
American Air Force pilot back in the day, and she’d received her
exotic features from both parents. Her complexion was that of mild
Earl Grey tea and many people asked whether her ancestral heritage
was Japanese or Chinese. Her reply was always,
I’m Squaw.
Kat's facial features displayed the high cheekbones and dark eyes
of her Navajo father, and her trim form moved with panther-like
grace due to daily lessons in several different styles of martial
arts via her mother from the time she began to walk. That, coupled
with her habit of wearing midriff shirts to show off her
well-defined abs, hair chopped into a ragged pixie-cut (dyed blue,
of course), tight black leather pants, biker boots, a quirky sense
of humor, and an unreasoning tendency to mask her intelligence by
faking a “vapid vixen” personality type, made her an appealing (if
somewhat intimidating) young woman.

Once they'd pried open a second story window,
the leery pair had scoured the building's interior until they were
satisfied there wasn't a zombie or ten lurking in any of the rooms,
waiting for its next unlucky meal. Afterwards, they'd cautiously
made for the ground floor and decided to keep an eye on the
stumbling horrors as the crowd passed on the avenue outside.

Unfortunately, the horde did
not
simply continue flowing along the desolate side street and pass
obligingly by as Jake and Kat had hoped. The awful corpses began
stumping onto the grounds of Old Hall and spread out, almost
filling the lawns, completely enveloping the shaken pair's hiding
spot.

That had been nearly two days ago.

After recovering from the initial fear of
being trapped within a virtual lake of zombies, Jake and Kat
decided to collect whatever resources they could find within Old
Hall. Their quiet search discovered a few useful items but nothing
really promising. The contents from a half empty vending machine
(chips, granola bars, and some fairly stale peanuts), a can of
instant coffee, a half a dozen tea-bags (along with a
two-thirds-full bottle of top shelf vodka from the bottom desk
drawer of the administration officer's desk), four packs of various
cigarettes, two books of matches, half a bottle of Ibuprofen, a
twelve-pack of Jolt Cola and, tucked behind jugs of bleach in the
janitor's closet, and a small Zip-lock bag of what Kat proclaimed
to be (after taking a deep appreciative whiff) high-quality,
medical-grade marijuana.

Jake convinced her not to test the quality of
the last outright, sighting they didn't know if zombies outside
would be attracted by the smell of burning cannabis. Kat had
relented, but pouted briefly as they tried the faucets in the
restroom, thankfully finding that the building's well-fed water
supply was still available.

Then the pair retreated back up to the second
floor and inventoried everything they'd carried with them on their
“Dead Run.” Jake's tac-vest yielded: two MRE entrees, his full
canteen, a fifty-foot bundle of paracord, two candles, five
magazines for his M-4 rifle (twenty-nine rounds each), a pair of
binoculars, a small first-aid kit, a four ounce bottle of Iodine,
three Zip-ties, and an emergency blanket. Additionally, he carried
two spare magazines for his Hammer pistol (ten rounds each), a
Gerber multi-tool, a liquid-filled compass, three chemical
glow-sticks, a full roll of duct tape, one maritime flare, his
Zippo lighter, a Ka-Bar, fixed-blade, Tanto-style knife, a Surefire
tactical LED flashlight, and three latex condoms.

Kat had given him a grin and raised one
delicately arched eyebrow over the last.

“What? You can use them to carry water, or
even keep tinder dry,” Jake explained.

“Uh-huh.” She chuckled.

Jake sighed as she fought a giggle fit, then
they went through what she'd brought along.

Kat always flat-out refused to wear a
tac-vest, insisting that it would only slow her down. The pretty
Asian sported only her trademark midriff tank top, black leather
pants, a pair of flat-soled knee-high biker boots, the
steel-embossed forearm bracers she'd looted from a motorcycle
dealership, and a web-belt carrying a trio of small pouches along
with two magazines for the Glock 17 riding in its tactical holster
on her left thigh. She'd managed to grab her small EDC (Every Day
Carry) bag, which Elle had thrust at her before they'd jumped from
the roof of their still-moving Hummer though, and now began pulling
items from inside.

Her contributions were as follows: two more
MREs, a roll of toilet paper, a sharpening stone for her sword, a
hundred-foot coiled length of climbing rope, four weighted throwing
knives, two spare magazines for her pistol (nineteen rounds each),
a bottle of Manic Panic “Royal-blue” hair dye, a tube of MAC
“smoked-purple” lipstick, a fingernail clipper, two pairs of
underwear (basic black Vicki's bikini-style), a ten pack of
Hubba-Bubba chewing gum (original flavor), a small Hello Kitty
figure holding a little plastic sword, an audio CD (Joan Jett and
the Blackhearts Greatest Hits), and twelve more Latex condoms.

Staring open-mouthed at some of the
“necessities” she always carried, Jake was, perhaps for the first
time in his life, at a total loss for words. Knowing full well if
he pointed out the utter uselessness of lugging a bottle of blue
hair dye through the zombie apocalypse, an argument would
immediately ensue, he chose to remain silent on that one. Instead,
he picked up the strip of condoms. After considering them for a
handful of seconds, he slowly turned his head to give Kat a level
gaze.

“And you're carrying these because...?”

“Hey! Unlike
someone,
I don't have any
problems admitting it.” Kat shrugged. “I like having sex.”

He blinked, clearly taken aback. “Well.
That's...um... blunt.”

Cho smiled impishly. “Should I phrase it
another way? Knockin' boots? Tappin' dat ass?”

Jake felt a migraine beginning behind his
left eye.

“Humping like lemmings? Ridin' the O-Train?
Gettin' my freak on?”

Dropping the strip of condoms back into her
bag, Jake closed his eyes and silently begged his building headache
to recede. “You have no shame, do you?”

“During the apocalypse?” Kat piped happily.
“Let me think. Nope. Not one bit.”

Picking up her Joan Jett CD, he gave her an
inquiring look.

Kat's smile grew wider. “Mood music. Never
hurts to be prepared, right?”

“Forget I asked,” Jake mumbled, and Kat
started stuffing things back in her bag.

That night and the following day alternated
between tense moments of fear and lessons in boredom. While it was
necessary for the pair to keep careful watch on the dead outside,
none of the things seemed at all interested in their hideaway. It
didn't appear as if the creatures could smell them, or possessed
any kind of weird “sixth sense” allowing them to target a living
human, so that was a plus. Jake had theorized previously that
zombies hunted solely by visual and auditory means, so as long as
neither he nor Kat were heard or spotted peeking through the
blinds, they were safe enough for the moment.

There were some problems, however.

First? O'Connor and Cho were trapped inside
Old Hall. There was no way to leave without being seen by dozens
(if not hundreds) of the dead. Making it safely past that many
motivated flesh-eaters, and escaping afterwards without being
bitten, would be a real chore. Even for the two of them.

Second? If they
did
manage to break
through the creatures encircling the grounds, the things were sure
to follow as they made their escape. After putting some effort into
leading all those zombies away from their temporary camp within the
airport, they didn't want to lead the herd back towards their
friends.