Well Fed - 05 (7 page)

All clear.

He found the door, still holding, and listened.

Another piercing note, deep in the marble guts of the mansion, long and lingering as if someone were being tortured at leisure. That made Gus screw up his face. What the hell passed for
leisure
in this place? His mind fluttered for a moment, realizing his unloving pursuers were no longer pounding on the door, and a thread of light outlined the doorframe.

The lights were back on outside.

Gus hauled the end of the sofa back, gathered his helmet, and pulled it on. His hand located the door handle, and he took a breath before pulling it open a crack.

Well, holy shit.

Blue light from the ceiling cast an icebox hue across the hall and floor. Gus realized the interior of the house had cooled considerably. Gimps stood in the hall, directionless, waiting for another scream and no longer interested in the morsel trapped inside the reading room.

They didn’t wait long.

Another skin-tightening wail hooked the attention of the zombies and lured them away.

Not interested in following, Gus crept away from the undead flow, along a corridor three times the width of a regular one. The ceiling lights glowed overhead, spaced out along the corridor like a segmented spine. Collapsed tables lined the baseboards. Decorative art pieces lay on broken legs. White dust from shattered vases and small statuettes coated the floor. Over time, the dead had shattered the various pieces of furniture and kicked everything against the wall. Gus slunk past two separate washrooms, their heated thrones intact, and he fought down the impulse to check for toilet paper.

The scream rang out again, farther away now, marking almost a minute.

Gus stopped and put his back against a wall.
A minute? Was someone prodding a person on a clock?

A handful of zombies came around the corner, five castoffs from an S&M party dressed in their finest leather and zipper masks. In the blue hue of the lights, they shambled toward him at best speed. Gus gawked at them, seeing for the first time how the floor in their path wasn’t a floor at all but a huge pit the width of the corridor, not twenty feet from where he stood.

Gus didn’t move. His helmet hid his smirk.

“That’s right, you freaks. Come to papa.”

The first deadhead, dressed in a slick getup that spoke of wild sex parties, walked over the pit.

The illusion of the floor art threw Gus for a moment before he retreated from the advancing pack as they waltzed across, sneering as if they’d known all along.

When they got into range, he dispatched the five with relative ease, bashing open their brainpans and scattering them across the floor. He walked to the center of the floor art, impressed with the detail, disbelieving that such a level of trickery could be achieved. A short note of pain echoed again through the corridor, almost a grunt that time, urging him to hurry. Gus didn’t
want
to hurry, scared of what he might discover.

He moved to the end of the corridor, which branched right and left. Alternatively, he could check out what was behind a door just ahead. Gus looked for undead and, seeing the coast clear, went to the door and tried the knob. A rewarding
click
followed.

A sudden, frightening hiss split the air, and something punched Gus hard in the center of his back, squashing him against the wood. The force stunned and startled him. He fell and rolled over just as a second hiss bounced his helmeted head off the marble. Gus groaned and pushed himself into a sitting position, looking around as he did so.

Jesus Christ
.

Walking toward the floor pit and dressed like a predator from the apocalypse was… an archer. The archer wore a Korean mask depicting an old man grinning hugely, his right eye looking down an arrow nocked to an archaic but still effective bow. Snow-white fatigues, camouflage for winter hunting, took on a blue tone under the lights.

Gus’s face contorted in horrified wonder.

Just as the archer released.

The missile hissed through the corridor like a black bolt of lightning and nailed Gus’s sternum, bucking him against the wall—a perfect shot any other time, ruined by the heavy folds of his Nomex gear. It wasn’t bulletproof—hell, as far as Gus knew, it couldn’t stop a hunting arrow either.

But it had. Cold.

However, Gus’s sternum felt as if it had just been stomped on by a sumo. He winced, holding a hand to his chest. It wouldn’t surprise him if the impact had fractured bone.

The Korean Mask peeked up from the bow, enormous grin blazing in the blue light. He smoothly extracted another arrow, notched the bow, and drew back until his fingers touched a wooden cheek.

Gus lurched into motion, feet finding traction and propelling him forward just as a shrieking arrow
twanged
off his left thigh, dropping him to a knee with a yelp. The meat of his leg felt as if it had just been tenderized by a sledgehammer.

“You
fucker
!”

The archer stoically walked forward, nocking a new arrow. Gus could see the white plumage of several more missiles over the man’s shoulder, deadly to any other guest, but thank the Lord above for quality-made fire gear. Gus stumbled out of the way just as another arrow split the air and imbedded itself with a
whuk
into the doorframe, splintering it and missing Gus’s ass cheek by a few fingers.

Shaking off the effects of the arrows, Gus hobbled at best possible speed down the trashed hallway, weaving from side to side to present the hardest target possible.

SssssssTT!

An arrow slugged him in his left shoulder, twisting him off his feet and sending him crashing through a doorless entry. The clatter of the missile falling to the floor echoed through the hall, and Gus caught that mournful scream again as he stumbled toward a sofa set. He flipped over it, bouncing off soft cushions and onto a plush rug. Metallic shutters blanketed and protected a glass wall spanning the width of the room. Light reflected in its surface. Judging by the rugs, sofas, and the pair of massive white brick fireplaces adorning the north and south walls, Gus figured he was in a living room as he slammed himself against the edge of the opening.

“Who are you, huh?” he yelled, bringing up his right hand, frankly amazed he still had a hold of his bat.

No reply.

He glanced up, seeing the handrails and a walkway of the second floor, jutting out twelve feet above him and leading back into the area above the hall he’d just come from. Hope flared, but how could he get up there? With the overhang, there was no way he could climb over the fireplaces. Grunting in discomfort and still feeling the numbing effects of being struck by arrows, Gus lumbered back to the entrance and discovered the door actually slid across on rollers. Grabbing the handles, he pushed with everything he had, intending to seal the living room off like a bright vault.

The Korean Mask filled the closing crack, appearing in the last second just as it shut with a clap of wood. Gus straightened with a grunt. There was a simple eye hook on the frame, and he flipped it into place, locking the door just as the man on the other side attempted to open it.

Gus smirked in false sympathy at the attempt. He turned around, taking in the far wall of glass, and one feature grabbed his attention.

A set of double doors marked each end of the glass, leading nowhere as the metal shutters beyond forbade any escape outside.

Gus chugged toward a pair, anxious and not believing for a second he’d escaped the snow-camo archer. Crossing the living room floor, he saw the doors opened
inside
and immediately craned his neck up to the overhang and walkway above. He opened both doors and threw the closest one wide open, as far as possible, and stopped it below the edge of the overhang. Gus eyed the doorknob.

A foothold if he ever saw one.

He sheathed his bat and staggered toward a heavy-looking sofa chair. A second later, he manhandled the furniture piece into position against the door. He climbed onto the chair, got one boot on the nearby doorknob, and swung his other boot to the knob on the other side, straddling it like a pogo stick. It worked for all of a split second before Gus fell back, unable to keep his hands gripped to the doorframe. He eyed the glass for a moment before punching the pane, shattering the glass with a combat-gloved fist. Then he stepped back onto the knobs and looped an arm through the wrecked frame of the door.

Gus reached up…

And his fingertips touched the closest wooden post. Close but no cigar.

Never easy.
He bent his knees, prepping himself for––

He jumped four inches, clasping onto the post for dear life. His bruised shoulder quivered with pain, cranky as a rusty winch, but he held on and slowly hauled himself up, wishing he’d done more chin-ups in his life. He wheezed. Squealed. His boots scrabbled against the door. He snaked an arm between two posts above and swung his left leg––wincing at the charley horse still in his thigh. Taking a quick breath, he opted for his right leg, feeling it drag against the door below.

“
Fuck
,” Gus gasped, spittle spurting from his lips. Leave it to him to do it the hard way.

Panic gave him precious strength, and he pulled his head up to where he could rest his chin on the second level if there was room. But then he burned through whatever strength he had, straining, sucking down huge gulps of air while gravity dug in and pulled him back down.

A set of hands latched onto his forearms.

Shock dropped Gus’s mouth wide open.

“Fuckin’
work
, willya!” Talbert grated, covered in body armor and grimacing as he struggled to pull Gus up. He grabbed the Nomex by the loose folds covering Gus’s thigh and flipped him over the railing like a heavy sack of fertilizer.

Both men collapsed on the walkway, staring at each other.

“The fuck you come from?” a dazed Gus puffed at the missing man.

“The fuck
you
come from?” Talbert shot back, stooping low behind the railing.

“The fuck you mean ‘you’? Adam sent me to look for your missing ass.”

“Yeah, well, y’took your goddamn time.”

“I just fuckin’
got
here!”

“I heard you come in a couple of fuckin’ hours ago! The fuck you doin’ down there? Makin’ a sandwich? Tourin’ the goddamn grounds?”

“Hey, dicksmack! There’s a fuckin’ army of shitbags down there, in case you haven’t noticed. And a Snow White bitch shootin’
arrows
into my fireproofed ass.”

“Yeah, I know all about that afterbirth,” Talbert said, becoming serious. He wore no helmet. The black plates and scales of his armor looked intact, but the creepy part in his hair had been tussled.

“You know him?” Gus barked.

“Jesus Christ, I’ve been holed up here for fuckin’ half a
week
––course I know about him.”

Something puzzled Gus. “Where’s the rest of your knob gobblers?”

“Hey, they’re
assholes
to you. They’re dead.”

That one word took the wind out of Gus.

Talbert shook his head and was about to speak when he looked to the first floor. His eyes narrowed. “Holy fuckin’
shit
.”

The Korean mask archer stepped through the door beneath, bow held at the ready.

“It’s him.”

“Who’s ‘him’?” Gus wanted to know, pressing himself against the wall.

“Fuckin’ Donald.”

The sudden mundaneness of the name befuddled Gus’s bullet train of thought.

“Who?”

“Gus, shut that shit trap you call a mouth for a second, willya?”

The archer sidestepped toward the fireplace on the living room’s far side, grinning mask upturned in their direction, studying them merrily. He retrieved a fistful of arrows from his back, nocking one and managing the others between his fingers of his string hand.

“Well, shit,” Talbert grated. “You better be able to run.”

“Yeah, why?”

“Good, ’cause he’s gonna machine-gun us, and I’m not fuckin’ carryin’ your saggy ass.”

“Wha––”

“
C’mon!
”

Talbert bolted for the far end of the carpeted walkway, toward a doorway. Gus froze for a second before rising and following, running, sneaking quick peeks at the ghostly figure of Donald below. The archer wasn’t moving at all.

But he
was
aiming.

Then the arrows flew.

A section of the railing splintered from the impact of the first barbed head.

Another arrow ricocheted off Gus’s helmet, bouncing him off the wall. He crashed to the floor.

A third snake sizzled between two posts and struck him like a pickaxe.

“C’mon!” Talbert yelled at him.

Gus pulled himself up, feeling like a fly ripping its own wings off, and staggered forward to the doorway, where a crouched Talbert waved him home.

“Run, y’chickenshit,
run! Everything you got! C’mon!
”

Three more arrows sizzled through the railing, pummeling Gus’s frame and hindering him like a wounded elephant. The shafts bounced off and hit the wall, raining onto the carpet. Bent over, on hands and feet with his ass up, Gus staggered to the door.

The last foot, Talbert reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, hauling him out of harm’s way.

Gus fell onto a queen-sized bed while Talbert slammed the door behind and propped a chair up under the knob. Gus groaned, feeling as if he’d just been pulled out from under a stampede. Every movement hurt.

“All right,” Talbert said. “If that cocksucker decides to climb up after your ass, he’s gotta come through that door. And if he does, I’ll split his fuckin’ head open and giggle all the while.”

Gus saw Talbert brandished Matt Miller’s machete. The bedroom, rustic with ergonomically matching furniture and eye-pleasing earth colors, spun for a second.

“You okay?”

The question coming from Talbert surprised him, but his helmet hid it. “Feel like corn kernels… in a flattened piece of shit.”

Talbert chuckled darkly. “You’re a poet, bro.”

Gus let that one go, seeing how the dickhead had saved his ass and all.

“That coat,” Talbert nodded, indicating Gus’s. “Must be puncture proof. Same shit as Kevlar vests.”