Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (6 page)

Something blurred through the air to hit
Bitey in the side of the head with a wet 'Thwap!'. Jake saw the
hilt of a slim knife protruding from the creature's temple as the
zombie took another step and fell, animation already leaving its
yellow eyes. Syrup-thick goop began leaking from the hole in its
skull onto the roof as Cho appeared over the rear zombie's
shoulder.

While Jake shut the stairwell door and began
fighting the clustered dead, Kat finally came to a stop thirty feet
up their zip-line then slid back over their rooftop landing site,
cursing him quietly all the while. Yanking one of the knives from
her belt, the blue-haired ninja-girl quickly slashed the harness
away from her waist, and dropped the remaining five feet to the
surface of the roof. She landed in an easy crouch, flipped her
knife over the back of her hand, caught it again by the blade, and
then sent it winging through the air like a deadly hummingbird
where it spiked Bitey-ghoul in the temple. Snatching another knife
from her belt, she sprinted towards the human/zombie free-for-all
at top speed.

By the time she reached Jake and the
remaining creatures, Kat was in
I'm-Going-To-Kill-The-First-Fucking-Thing-I-Fucking-See mode. She
wasn't messing around tonight. Normally, she'd toy with them for a
bit, since engaging the corpses was barely a challenge when it came
right down to it, unless they attacked in large numbers. But now?
Nope. Kat was deadly serious as she pounced on the first zombie,
viciously shoving her blade up between its occipital protuberance
and the Atlas of its spine. The knife severed the horror's brain
from its spinal cord, effectively turning it into a still-snapping
mouth attached to two-hundred and ten pounds of unresponsive
meat.

Pushing the limp creature to one side as it
fell, Kat moved on to her next target. The one Jake had by the
throat. Not waiting for it to notice her presence, Cho put a hand
on the rear of its skull, grabbed its chin firmly with her other
and wrenched the zombie's head forcefully one-hundred and eighty
degrees to the rear. Doing so broke the zombie's neck and, in her
anger over the nasty thing trying to chow down on someone she cared
about, dislocated its lower jaw. The zombie's mouth hung open
uselessly, and its dead eyes still oriented on Kat as she
stiff-armed the corpse over the roof's edge.

With Kat basically saving his bacon yet
again, O'Connor experienced an unreasonable moment of
embarrassment. No, it wasn't a sexist, caveman-must-kill-mammoth,
thing. He just didn't want any of his companions to feel as if he
couldn't handle himself when it came to dangerous situations. Being
hip-deep in a zombie apocalypse was bad enough; he didn't need to
be labeled as the group idiot to boot. Growling through clenched
teeth, Jake gave up on pulling his crowbar from the zombie's neck
for the moment. Instead, he slapped its grasping hands away and
swept its legs. As the ghoul dropped, Jake yanked his K-Bar from
the door frame and slammed it into the top of the creature's head.
The zombie made a sound resembling a very wet hiccup and its eyes
crossed, as if trying to see what had killed it (again), then it
collapsed.

Little known fact: removing a blade that's
been rammed
through
bone, rotten or not, is a pain in the
ass. Jake learned this as he strove to free his knife from the
zombie's skull. He was still pulling at the blade when Cho stepped
in front of him, crossed her arms, and began tapping one
biker-booted foot rapidly on the ground.

Ah, crap...
Jake groaned mentally and
glanced up at her from the corner of his eye as he wiggled the
Tanto blade free. Kat’s face displayed no expression at all. Not
fear, not relief, not excitement, nothing. Her body language came
across as Kat-On-A-Hot-Tin-Roof pissed off, however.

Jake knew this because of her 'tells'. Nearly
everyone had them. If you spent enough time around someone and paid
attention, you could gauge a person's moods on some of their
subconscious body movements. Laurel, for example, nearly always put
at least one hand on her hip and cocked them to one side or another
when she was irritated. George's was to bite at the end of his
ever-present cigar, or clench the muscles in his neck, or both.
Kat's worrying tell was when she crossed her arms and went still.
That was pretty much when you wanted to be very,
very
choosy
with what came out of your mouth next.

“Uh. It seemed like a good idea at the time?”
Jake winced.

Kat's level gaze was disturbing.

“Look, it was either that or… Well, actually
I don't have an 'or'.”

Cho held up one hand. “Stop. Just stop
talking.”

“But—”

“Seriously? I'm going to slap you in a
minute. And it will hurt.” Kat moved to peek cautiously down the
darkened roof entrance. “We'll discuss this when we're not trying
to avoid tons of zombies. With Laurel.”

Oh, yeah. That's going to be an enjoyable
conversation,
Jake thought.

“Anything?” Jake retrieved their backpack,
and then his crowbar as Kat watched the stairwell. He cringed as
his hand felt the grimy wetness of zombie body fluids coating its
surface. He wiped the steel clean as best he could on the doughnut
shop zombie’s soiled apron before joining her at the
door-frame.

“Let's make sure.” Kat pulled a loafer from
the foot of the nearest corpse and tossed it down the stairs. The
shoe made a few quiet thumps before coming to rest at the bottom,
more than enough to attract any dead inside, so she and Jake waited
a few minutes for any response.

Satisfied there weren't any
Hungry-Hungry-Horrors lurking immediately below, the pair moved
slowly into the structure’s interior. It seemed to be some kind of
local governmental building, but Jake was at a loss to say which
branch. All the offices were the same. The same dust-coated desks,
the same inactive PCs, same uncomfortable-looking visitor chairs.
Pretty much the average, useless, bureaucratic haven that everyone
shrank from entering. A place to “Hurry up and wait”, as the saying
went.

Allowing for her greater abilities when it
came to moving stealthily, Kat took the lead as they proceeded to
check on the dead out front. Jake followed a few paces behind,
covering her rear and giving the shadow-quiet young woman a bit of
a lead. If there were any creatures at the entrance, they'd have a
tough time noticing Kat as she crept soundlessly along, as opposed
to Jake's more not-so-silent treads. He watched from the hallway
twenty feet away as Cho ghosted across the lobby and looked out
front. Kat motioned for him to join her, so Jake did his best to
stay low and not trip over anything in the dark, as he moved
forward to peek through the dirty glass door. The crowd was still
there. Still milling aimlessly about on the open grounds of Old
Hall.

“Doesn't look like they noticed
anything.”

“Nope,” Kat said in a low voice, and not a
whisper. The sound of someone whispering tended to carry far more
easily to the human ear than just speaking quietly. “Keep an eye on
them while I check the back door. Make sure you don't make any
noise while I'm gone? You know what? Just don't move, okay? That
way you won't do anything foolish and attract the big, honkin'
horde of zombies outside.”

Jake gave her a level gaze. “You're not too
big to put over my knee, you know.”

Kat stuck her tongue out at him and
disappeared down the hallway at speed. He watched zombies stagger
around and, once again, marveled at her ability to move so quickly
without making any sound. It was a bit unnerving, actually. When
they'd sheltered (read: been trapped) in George Foster's immense
Columbus safe-house, more than once she'd startled Jake badly when
he'd turned around to find her sitting next to him at the table. Or
in the motor pool. Or on the roof
.
There'd been no warning.
No footsteps, no rustle of cloth, no stray breeze caused by her
approach, nothing. She'd just suddenly been
there.
At that
point, Jake was inclined to believe her claim that 'Mom, taught me
the Ways of the Ninja'.

Besides, he'd seen Kat fight.

He wondered if she could teach him how to
move like that.

“Back's all clear.”

O'Connor started at her quiet voice near his
ear. Once his heart rate went back to normal, he turned his head
slightly to find Kat looking over his shoulder, not quite touching
the side of his face with her own.

“That's very off-putting, you know.”

“How so?” Kat asked, not taking her eyes of
the horde.

“What if you scared me and I'd I jumped into
the doorway?” He managed not to leap from his hiding place next to
the entrance in surprise, but it was a near thing.

Kat shrugged, giving him an easy smile. “You
worry too much. You didn't freak out. And you didn't scream like a
little girl either. I'm impressed. Really.”

“I will spank you. And it will hurt.”

“Promises, promises.” Cho bumped a hip
against his and nodded towards the rear of the building. “Come on.
I checked the street out back. Not a maggot-head to be seen. Let's
flee.”

Jake followed her through the dark lobby. “I
think the word is retreat.”

“Are we coming back?”

“Oh, hell no.” Jake shook his head.

“Then we're fleeing. Retreating suggests the
intention to eventually
return
and continue fighting.” Kat
cracked the back door slightly and double checked the area before
hopping down the outer stairs one by one. “Since we're not going to
do that, we're most definitely fleeing.”

He raised an eyebrow and followed Kat down a
side alley. “That's a pretty fine distinction. How, exactly, did
you come up with it?”

“Hey, don't let the cool hair fool you.” Kat
blew a rogue strand of her blue-dyed pixie-cut away from her eyes
and noiselessly pulled her sword. Swiveling it into a Zatochi or
reverse grip so the blade sat up against the back of her arm, the
pretty Ninja-girl began strolling almost uncaringly down the alley,
all the while humming tunelessly to herself.

O'Connor didn't know what to say to that.
Despite what some of the other members of their party believed, he
knew Kat was quite intelligent and possessed a frighteningly quick
mind. It was just a little difficult for people to realize that,
mostly due to her habit of being distracted by nearby discussions.
Or articles of clothing. Or even shiny objects. He just rolled his
eyes and followed her swaying hips, trying mightily not to stare at
the “Hello Kitty” patch stitched to the left buttock of her pants,
towards refuge.

They were trotting past Wilmington's Dairy
Freeze when everything went pear-shaped.

Kat stopped as she came abreast of the
dumpster in the alley on the building's southern end, did a double
take, then yanked Jake down beside it. He began to demand an
explanation, but she quickly clapped a firm hand over the writer's
mouth, forestalling any comment. She tilted her head to the left,
crossed her eyes, and let her tongue loll out of her mouth, then
nodded in the direction they'd been heading. Kat's meaning was
clear enough, even if her mode of communicating it was a bit
ridiculous. When Jake nodded, she removed her hand from his
face.

“How many?” he breathed.

Kat glanced around the dumpster quickly.
“Enough. Take a look. Carefully.”

Jake moved into a squatting position and
slowly rose just enough so that his eyeballs topped the dumpster's
cap.

“Shit.”

The front of the Dairy Freeze had seen better
days. During the initial outbreak, the ice-cream shop's windows had
been broken and what little glass remained was coated with a
repugnant film of dust, dead insect caprices, and long-dried bodily
fluids. Those disgusting little fang-like shards, along with the
shadowy interior of the shop, gave the Dairy Freeze a definitive
This Is The Entrance To The Underworld look. Jake thought the clown
statue at the door, with what seemed to be part of someone's small
intestines hanging from one uncaring, plastic hand, gave it the
final soul-chilling touch, too.

The thirty or so zombies shuffling around in
the parking lot out front didn't help either.

They were awful. That was a given, really.
Walking corpses and all that. The things were a kaleidoscope of
wasted flesh; missing jaws, missing faces, torn out throats, limbs
and even abdominal cavities that had been gnawed away. Yet somehow,
despite massive damage, the zombies shambled on oblivious of their
wounds like Energizer bunnies. Gore-covered, totally horrific,
inconveniently carnivorous Energizer bunnies that seemed to rot at
a vastly decreased rate. Once again, Jake wondered how whatever
animated the creatures preserved them in some way, and how the
living could hope to overcome an enemy that couldn't feel pain or
fear.

Shaking off his momentary reverie, O'Connor
again knelt beside Kat. “Well, that way's out.”

“We can't double back either, that's for
sure. Not through the horde back there.” Kat frowned in
concentration and chewed at her lip. “Can't zip-line over this
group. The roof elevation and angles are
way
wrong for that.
We could skirt the crowd's edge. Take out the eight or ten closest
to us and break for the opposite corner—”

“But that would have the rest close by and on
our heels when we bolt.” Jake shook his head. “They'd start moaning
or tripping over stuff and attract more—”

“Then we'd be right back where we started two
days ago,” Kat finished. “Running with a crap-ton of maggot-heads
on our butts, which we'd have to try to lose
again
before we
could head back to the airport.”

Jake scanned the area again. “Any ideas?”

“All this thinking is giving me a headache.”
Cho sat and leaned against the dumpster. “Besides, it's your turn
to come up a plan. I thought up with the last one.”