Well Fed - 05 (58 page)

Three blurring shots pistoned into Collie. She deflected the first, slapped the second down––a mistake as the blade unzipped her thigh to her knee––and magically parried the third aimed for her face, lifting it enough that the blade’s edge parted her mask straight up the middle, the pain electric. The connection stunned her.

Sick stabbed for her heart.

Collie darted away, slipping gracefully through the opening left by his lifeless left arm. Sick slapped the wall face first, absorbing the impact before whirling into Collie’s hand. She slammed his head against the wall like a fleshy mallet before he spun around, clapping her skull with a forearm.

Collie collapsed against him, and their hands knotted, tired now, pushing each other away like children not wanting to eat their vegetables, seeking control while forcing openings…

Until Sick missed a thrust.

Collie’s knife sank into his kidney, producing an unmistakable sharp hiss of breath.

For an instant, she stared him straight in the eye.

Sick’s face dipped until he rested his forehead against hers in a solemn meeting of minds. There they stood for seconds until she twisted the knife, hard enough that his legs gave out, and he sat down as if very, very tired.

Gasping for breath and feeling blood flow, Collie bent over. She almost passed out, seeing blood coating her hands. She located and picked up the fallen Bowie.

Sick sat with chest heaving, dark eyes twinkling with all the smoky hate and malice of a spider only partially crushed.

Taking deep breaths, Collie pushed his head to the side. He did not resist.

There were no witty one-liners.

No speeches.

Only immediacy.

Collie inserted the knife deep into the hollow of his neck. She twisted the blade as if coring an apple and ignored the resulting, bubbling fountain. Sick twitched, grunting softly before exhaling in a gush.

He toppled over, painting the wall in an oily smear.

After confirming the kill, Collie gave the dead man no further thought. She staggered back, holding herself together.

She glanced at the doorway, the guns, and finally Gus.

Collie took two unsteady steps toward him before sinking to her knees with a groan. She bent over, palms flat and sticky against the floor, until her forehead rested against the boards in a deep meditative bow.

Then she rolled onto her back and did not move.

Feeling as if he’d downed a two-four in twenty-four minutes, Gus watched her creak to a stop and blinked with blood-rimmed eyes. He dragged a hand over his face and struggled to sit up, fell over onto a shoulder, and made a second attempt, meeting with some success.

“Collie.”

No answer.

“Collie.” He crawled toward her, wondering why she was moving away, then realized he was actually moving backward. He changed gear, feeling internal cogs rumble and finding “forward.”

“Collie.”

Nothing. Then…“Yeah?” as if she was waking from a dream.

Eyes widening, Gus stopped an arm’s length from her with his mouth open. “You’re alive.”

“Mm,” she answered neutrally. “Just gimme a minute.”

“Sure, sure,” he managed and dropped to an elbow, staring fearfully at her profile. “You need me to do anything? Collie?”

She turned her head and frowned, not impressed with the interruption.

“Sorry, sorry.”

Seconds dragged by, then Collie took a painful breath. “Gunfire’s… not as… heavy.”

That prompted Gus to listen, and he listened very hard. Shots still rang out, but not as heavy as earlier.

She indicated her mask, trying to lift it. Gus reached over and pinched it, making a face at the gruesome pair of cuts from her chin to her cheek. He sat up, swooned, and then got both hands on the mask and hauled it off her entirely.

The face beneath it momentarily stunned him.

Doused in shadows, the left side of her face resembled an oozing slab of ham. Collie hissed as he pulled the fabric away from her head, the blood smeared on her skin.

“Should’ve… left that in place,” she slurred.

“Yeah,” Gus replied, balling the mask up and pressing it to the parallel slits, seeing another cut above her left eye dribbling into her ear. “Thought you were supposed to run,” he said.

A smile brightened the train wreck of Collie’s face. “I’m not… dickless.”

“No, you’re not.” Gus chuckled nervously, wringing the mask out and alarmed at the amount of blood. More blood seeped from Collie’s form, and he felt his heartbeat quicken in panic.

“Might… have a problem,” Collie whispered.

“Is she alive?” a woman’s voice asked.

Gus looked up to see Maggie at the doorway, a hand to her head.

“Yeah, but she’s bleeding bad.”

“Bring her here.”

“She’s
bleeding
.”

In a surprising display of strength and willpower, Collie crunched her stomach and slowly sat up, silencing the man at her side. “Let’s get out… of this shithole.”

She placed a hand on Gus’s shoulder, and together, they stood.

Collie winced at placing weight on her legs but got walking. They shuffled toward the door, stopping near the rifle. She bent over with a soft groan and picked the weapon up, her blood pattering the floor all the while. Gus slid over to her left side as she looped the rifle’s strap over her right shoulder.

Gunfire popped and crackled beyond the trailer walls.

“It’s still war out there,” he said.

“I know who started it,” Collie replied.

For whatever reason, the sniper stopped shooting.

Relief flooded through Shovel. He aimed and fired short, blazing burps from his weapon, exploding heads and dropping zombies as they struggled to close the distance to the sandbag wall. His followers got more consistent with their shots, punishing the undead, even picking off the ones who stepped off the ramp and skidded to the sides.

Then the main act opened, and the minigun screamed, sounding like an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. The sole gunner of Giovanni’s gun crew bit down and bared his teeth as fifty rounds a second thundered from the six rotating cannons, straight into the mass of zombies spewing down the ramp. A killer mixture of lead and tracers shredded heads and upper torsos in spectacular fashion, misting the air with flying chips and tissue. It seemed as if God himself had lowered a monstrous weed whacker directly upon the advancing dead and swept them away. The gunner panned left and right, mowing down whatever shambled forth, ripping the evil spark of life from those unsightly husks in an unrelenting hail.

Some of Shovel’s people grabbed their ears and stared at the destructive maelstrom before them. Shovel himself crouched in cringing awe at how the dead’s upper trunks blew apart, the minigun’s wrath blitzing entire rows in a blink.

The gunner strafed the right side of the ramp, cutting a messy line across the zombies collecting there. In ten seconds, nothing stood, and a silence fell over the scene only as long as it took to turn the minigun’s wrath onto the left side. The weapon rattled to life once more, and gleaming brass tumbled from underneath the cannon’s barrels. The gunner howled at the power under his command, directing the murderous stream at the leftovers farther up the ramp. Tracer fire leaped up the incline, blowing apart everything it touched in great puffs of chalky gray.

The few zombies remaining withered and did not rise again.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Slick Pick muttered nearby, the curse ringing in Shovel’s ears. People stood from behind the sandbags, forgotten rifles dangling at the ends of their arms.

Then a defender buckled over, and a single report rang out.

Shovel flinched and looked about as his raiders yelled warnings. A ski-masked man flew backward as if yanked by his collar, a hole in his chest.

“Find that cocksucker!” Shovel yelled. “
And kill that sonavabitch
!”

Wallace sank his head into the leaves and mewled in conflict, fighting, struggling, subduing that mindless craving that attempted to wrench away from him all control, all sense of
self
. Never had he experienced such an overwhelming urge to forget everything and just feed. He slammed his head into the ground, but that did nothing. He shook. He swore. He gripped his rifle and pulled it to his cheek. The craving pushed,
willed
him to push, to transition over to zombie unlife. A black cloud of needles seemed to engulf him, evil stimuli seeking a reaction.

Collie.
He mentally projected her name inside himself, once more summoning memories. Every image darkened around the edges as if blistered by extreme heat before they winked into nothing.

Wallace growled and moaned, and his hands attempted to push himself off the beanbag. Unchecked fright burst through his person, and he felt that dreadful tide lessen its grip. He grabbed his rifle, not remembering having let it go.

Anchoring himself, Wallace focused and mentally pushed back.

The urge relented, subsided, and slunk back to that pit in his core.

Wallace held on to his weapon like a man clinging to a cliff’s edge, waiting for another attack.

None came.

The virus was there, however, circling the rim of his consciousness, gathering strength for the next assault. The thought made Wallace ache with weariness.

A harsh mechanical
whhrrrrr
stole his attention, a sound like a hair dryer set to its maximum power.

He recognized it at once.

Wallace fitted the rifle’s stock to his shoulder, screwed his eye into the scope, and zoomed in on a mass of unmoving corpses littering Whitecap’s doorstep. The dead resembled a raked graveyard of coleslaw, chopped, diced, and served. The living down there rose from their positions as if finishing prayers.

Living
.

Hatred coursed through him. He swung back to the last place he’d spotted Collie, panned around, and froze, rooted to the spot.

Collie
.

She was bleeding and being helped along by Gus and another civvie. They headed toward one of the single-story office buildings.

Wallace’s scope shifted, a little awkwardly because of his missing fingers, and saw the pack of road savages turning, looking for other targets. They would find Collie and Gus and the other woman.

They would, unless he did something about it.

Wallace aimed at a torso and blew a hole out of it.

He took his time, sighted another, and killed that one too.

He panned right, sighted another target, a woman, and saw bodies flutter around the edges of the scope. She moved, looked his way, crouching and running forward.

“Shit.”

He couldn’t rightly draw a bead on her.

She stopped to fire, and suddenly bullets whined and hissed around Wallace’s position. Splinters flew off a tree. The ground around him coughed violently. Wallace remained calm, placed the scope’s aiming dot on the shooter’s chest.

Bang
.

The impact smashed her backward, skidding perhaps three feet across the cement.

Wallace hunted for another target.

The three of them reached the office, ignored the little faces pressed up against the glass, and crashed through the front door. Fourteen kids, aged maybe six to twelve, drew back with screams as Gus shrugged Collie off in a high-backed chair.

“Gus!” Little Becky cried and ran to him. He hugged her, embraced the moment, and then repeated with little Chad until he drew back from both, still feeling the final residual effects of whatever Sick had pumped into him.

“You guys stay here with Maggie, okay?”

The kids had questions on their anxious faces, but he didn’t have time to answer.

“Where are you going?” Maggie asked.

“Where
are
you going?” Collie said weakly.

Hearing her speak got Gus moving around the office area turned play pen. “We don’t have much time. We gotta leave before they know we’re here.”

“Motor home?” Collie asked.

“No keys—unless you have them?” he put to Maggie, returning from a cabinet with a roll of duct tape.

“No, I don’t.”

Gus peered out the window and saw the towering bulk of the Kat truck.

“I’ll take that.”

“You can drive it?” Maggie asked skeptically.

“Yeah. Well, maybe. It’s an automatic. Probably outfitted with a push-button start. My…” Gus’s throat constricted at a memory. “My younger brother used to drive one. He told me all about those rigs.”

“That’s all the way across the lot!” Maggie blurted. “Open ground.”

“Go,” Collie told him, hefting the battle rifle to her chest. “I’ll cover you here.”

Gus went to the door and figured it was a hundred meters to the Kat—almost twice that if he took the scenic route, following the chuck-wagon ring of parked vehicles and trailers. Maggie was already bawling at Becky and Chad and the rest of the youngsters to lie down on the floor.

Cracks and pops of gunfire rang out across the cemented field. Shovel’s people fired over the roofs of the trailers, toward the hills.

Gus met Collie’s eyes.

And ran out the door.

He sprinted, feeling giddy, taking the long way around and ready to roll under a trailer or whatever was next to him if bullets flew in his direction. Part of him couldn’t believe his brother would fire upon him, but another part wasn’t so certain. Gus’s feet pounded across the cement-covered ground as he glanced north toward the mountain, seeing figures crouching and firing into the hills. Some spilled backward violently, shot dead.

Wallace
, Gus realized, already gasping.
Keeping them busy.

Gus focused on the truck.

Wallace swore as he missed yet again. The little ridge he’d taken cover behind popped and sprayed dirt in the constant hail of return fire. One bullet had hit half a foot from his right elbow, surprising even him. But he stayed focused, kept the hunger at bay, and returned fire, allowing Collie and Gus to formulate a plan of escape.

Dirt peppered him to his left, but Wallace ignored it, sighting a big man with a silver face and axe crouched near the flatbed.