Scavengers. Part 13

Gutierrez nodded, haunted by Robbins's suspicions that the government was cutting them off from the rest of the world. "Of course. The computer's in the first room to the left. Use it as long as you need."

He held the door open for the men as they entered the clinic trailer. His head snapped toward the road as another ambulance pulled to the front gate. They just kept coming.

CHAPTER 20.

The echo of crunching metal and wrenching car frames died in the night with a skittering of broken gla.s.s. The Hummer came to a stop upside down, rocking on its top. Frank and Dejah hung from their seat belts. Shaun moaned from where he'd ended up on the Hummer's ceiling. No sooner had their vehicle come to a rest than each of them scrambled to free themselves. The winds.h.i.+eld was a webbed mess of safety gla.s.s, and most of the other windows were completely broken. As long as they were strapped into the vehicle, they were sitting ducks.

They heard the shuffling footsteps of Sickies coming nearer the vehicle.

Dejah, dazed and dizzy from the sudden lurching of the accident, tried to get her bearings and worked to free her latch.

Frank freed himself first. His latch came loose and the belt slid back into the seat. He turned to help Dejah just as she managed to gets hers loose. She fell on top of him. He grunted with the impact.

"Hurry!" he whispered. "Get the boy." Dejah saw a blue flash of gunmetal in the old man's hand as he slid his way out the broken window like he was twenty years younger and did this seven days a week. Gunshots rang in the confines of the vehicle like snapping M-80's in a tin can. The sound of gunfire had made her momentarily deaf, and that made her more anxious; with ringing ears she couldn't hear how close they were.

"Shaun," she whispered urgently. "Shaun!"

His head lolled. He was only half conscious. A gash beneath his hair was bleeding a lot. A thick stream of blood ran into his hair and dripped on the inside roof below.

"Jesus." Dejah ripped off a shred of her s.h.i.+rt and pressed it against his forehead with his hand. "Hold this there, Shaun. Apply pressure. There you go." She looked nervously through the broken window.

Two more gunshots rang out.

A fire-blackened arm, cracked and oozing with pus, jammed through one of the open windows. It latched onto Dejah's ankle. She screamed.

Too late, she saw the creamy white eyes of a badly burned man, bloated and flesh oozing with infection, slip into the Hummer. He had her leg.

"Go!" Dejah yelled at Shaun and pushed him through the window where Frank stood, firing off shots. No sooner had Shaun climbed free of the cab than she felt grinding teeth dig deep into the flesh of her calf.

She screamed, enraged and in pain as she twisted. She grasped a nearby tire iron that must have shaken loose from the back of the truck in the accident. Dejah wielded it like a morning star. She bashed the iron repeatedly, rapidly, into her attacker's face.

Skull bones crunched. The face was a ruin. With each new impact, a wet smacking sound filled the cab. Black ichor, maybe something that once was blood, splattered from the groaning skull. Repeated blows to the thing's head caved it in like a rotted squash, yielding a pulpy mess of diseased brain, cracked bone, and flaps of oozing skin. She destroyed the skull completely before the fiend relaxed its grip on her bleeding leg.

"Dejah," Shaun grasped her arm from where he stood and pulled her across the shards of broken gla.s.s to get her out as soon as possible.

"I'm low on ammo and they ain't slowing down folks," Frank said. "We've gotta find a new ride fast."

Dejah tried to stand but screamed with pain and collapsed again. Her new wound was vicious. Draping Dejah between them, the men, young and old, ran as fast as they could manage. With her between them, going was slow.

"There," Frank nodded toward a red Dodge Ram in good shape expect for a fender rammed into the guardrail. They made a beeline for it. Cars were in their way. Sickies s.h.i.+fted through the wreckage behind them.

Hunting them.

"Oh, G.o.d, please," Shaun gave a small earnest prayer.

"Up!" Frank said. They needed to heave Dejah over the hood of a Toyota Camry to get to the Dodge truck. They had good momentum and if only the move would've been in tandem, if only one of the men had been a little stronger, they might have made it. Instead, they couldn't lift Dejah high enough. Her knees bashed the side of the car. The jarring motion caused Frank and Dejah to cry out.

Dejah slipped from Shaun's hands. "No," he yelled.

She reached for them. She heard the sound of footsteps behind her, right behind her. And she knew it was over.

Again.

Oh G.o.d, not again...

And then came the pain.

"Oh, h.e.l.l no, you mother f.u.c.king Sickies!" Frank laid down a spray of bullets fast as he could pull the trigger, but they'd begun to ravage Dejah. Frank charged into the crowd and fired at them, point blank, shoving them back with fists and kicks. He reached into the crowd swarming atop Dejah like hungry ants and fought them off.

Shaun watched, reeling in horror, as Frank beat them back with hand-to-hand combat. They chomped the old man's arm, his neck, his shoulder. They dug ragged fingernails into his thighs and the soft flesh of his torso. When he pulled Dejah from the ground, she was a soaked mess of blood, grease, and road dirt. Her clothes were ripped, her flesh in tatters. The old man would not let them take her.

He fired another round into a fat woman who'd reached them late but pressed her weight against the others, threatening to pin them. A skinny black woman made a terrible screeching sound and launched herself into the air like a wingless bat, claws and teeth bared.

Frank fired.

The shot caught the woman between the eyes. Her brains made a fine spray in the moonlight. She halted in midflight and spun backwards like a trapeze artist whose strings were cut.

"Come on, d.a.m.n it!" Shaun rushed to Frank's side and helped him heave Dejah's blood slicked body the rest of the way to the truck. Just as they got the driver's door open and heaved her broken body inside, Frank turned and shot his last round into the head of an approaching Sickie. It spun on one foot and fell, half its head blown away. The slide of the semi-automatic pistol stayed in the open position. The gun was empty.

As Shaun slid into the seat, he felt a hard protrusion against the small of his back. In his daze from the wreck and the ensuing frenzy, he'd completely forgotten he had a pistol. d.a.m.n it!

"Come on, Frank, I've got you covered." Shaun finished tucking Dejah's broken form into the far seat of the cab and turned to help the old man.

He froze, gun in his hand, as he saw the sheer wall of Sickies rus.h.i.+ng toward them in a hungry wave. One look at Frank - too far from the truck, too near the Sickies - and Shaun knew he was in a bad way.

His heart lurched. Tears blurred his vision. He gritted his teeth and reached out for the old man.

"Frank!"

"No kid! Go on, close the door or you're finished." His voice was strained with pain and exhaustion. "Save yourselves."

"I'm coming for you."

"Don't be stupid, kid!"

"No-" Shaun's protests were silenced. Frank twisted as two Sickies yanked him onto the hood of the Camry. The old man slipped and Shaun's throat tightened. His heart gave a kick when he heard Frank shout two dreaded words: "Kill me."

And then again: "Kill me!" Frank had mustered his strength to make his request in a voice so full of authority that Shaun couldn't refuse to comply with the directive.

He had the gun in his hand, palm sweaty on the grip. The truck's door was still open. They were swarming over the hood of the Camry, dragging Frank down to their wicked h.e.l.l. Shaun raised his arms, both hands on the pistol to steady it. An aching lump formed in his throat and tears filled his eyes, but he held the weapon firm. He had an agonizing glimpse of Frank, wincing now, screaming in pain.

The gunshot racked Frank's body. Gun smoke poured from the barrel.

Shaun fired again. This time he saw the bullet make a perfect round hole, b.l.o.o.d.y, just left of the center of Frank's deep-lined face. His eyes went blank with blessed death. Then the old man was gone under the gnas.h.i.+ng teeth and ripping claws of the infected.

Shaun gritted his teeth. He fired one more shot at a Sickie that leapt over the hood of the Ram and thrust its arm into the cab. Shaun's shot exploded through the back of his skull. The infected man went limp, arm stuck in the door, keeping it from closing. The truck was swarmed like a kicked anthill. Shaun shouted, as much to expel his growing feelings of terror as to give him the boost he needed to wrench the dead man's arm free of the door and slam it closed.

The shut door sealed them against the darkness of the morning's early hours. Against the darkness of the world gone insane.

The Sickies, faces of all sizes and shapes, whites of eyes bloodshot, other eyes just milky white orbs, teeth broken and tongues swollen, wet and black with rot, smeared skin that had broken open and was oozing with the disease...the miasma pressed around the vehicle. Their claws sc.r.a.ped. They groaned. Moaning echoed through the vents. The windows were covered with the infected, scrambling over one another in their desperation to reach them.

Shaun sniffed back shudders of fear and looked over at Dejah.

She was a mess. Worse than when they'd first met at the tollbooth.

After all they'd been through, seeing her like this was the worst thing ever. He'd seen her regenerate from gruesome wounds, but this...she was covered head-to-toe with blood. Whole sections of her left arm were eaten away, along with the majority of her left thigh - eaten down to the bone in some places. Sinew, gristle and vein hung in tattered shreds of grue. Her abdomen was ripped open, a flap of skin hanging like wet tissue paper dyed purple. From the opening shone her innards: unrecognizable. Her face was clawed. Patches of her hair were ripped out in the tug of war fight with Frank to save her life. One eye was closed, one eye, half-open, shone white, as if it had rolled back into her head.

Somehow, she still breathed. Perhaps it was the last ebb of life leaving her now, but while she breathed, Shaun dared hope. Miracles could happen. He had to believe it.

He looked around the windows again. The creatures swarmed.

He had to believe.

CHAPTER 21.

"Carson here. We've got some activity. Looks like two folks overtaken and holed up in a truck on I-20, just past the edge of the compound. A third person is down."

The chirp came over the walkie-talkie scanner in the still of the morning. David Murphy blinked at the counter where the talkie stood. The springs of his cot creaked as he rolled over, putting down the paperback he'd been reading by candlelight. He glanced around the former Sunday school cla.s.sroom turned dormitory. The others slept, some fitfully, but none of the other eight people in the room awoke at the announcement.

He went to the counter and slightly turned down the volume of the talkie.

"I hear you, Reeves," said a second voice. "You takin' a posse to the interstate?"

"Ten-four. Maurice, T.D., Kathryn, and Graham are getting up now. We're loading up and heading down."

"Great way to start a Monday morning, huh? You gonna need any more help?"

"Nope, that should do it. We've got the launchers. Should clear it for us okay."

"Be careful. May G.o.d watch over y'all."

"He always does."

David thought he could hear a grin in Carson's voice.

Reckless s...o...b.., he thought. But then, how many people had been saved in just the past few days because he was reckless. Carson fancied himself some kind of anointed Chuck Norris h.e.l.l bent for revenge. Invincible. Or at least he thought he was. At the very least, he was not at all afraid of dying. He claimed the right of Heaven like a warrior claimed the right of Valhalla.

Best of luck, Carson, David thought. The talkie went dark. He looked around the room again, sitting on the edge of his cot. Something beside him moved in the gloom. He caught his breath. Just barely stopped himself from screaming.

"Sorry," whispered Matthew. He was six. He'd taken a liking to David, probably because his Mom had, too. Caitlin lay asleep two rows over. "I have to pee." The child's big eyes s.h.i.+mmered in the light of David's candle.

Thoughts ran through his head, but none of them louder than the reminder that kid had just seen his father ripped open and gutted by the infected three days ago.

David nodded. "Come on," he whispered. He took little Matthew by the hand into the hallway bathroom.

Carson led the way through the forest on a four-wheeler. He was dressed in camouflage, face painted black and green, only the whites of his eyes s.h.i.+ning in the moonlight. A M-32 40mm grenade launcher and an AK-47 a.s.sault rifle were strapped to his back, a Beretta 96G pistol on each hip. The Jeep, with the other four people inside, bounced over the hill until it reached the bottom of the rise and the edge of the forest. Interstate 20 stretched before them. Carson held a fist in the air, stopping his four-wheeler.

The Jeep rolled to a halt behind, headlights beaming over him like spotlights on a prison escapee. Two of the doors opened and slammed closed. Graham and Kathryn, came up on each side of him, both wrapping their arms through the straps of their rifles, placing stocks to their shoulders, aiming at the vile crowd of h.e.l.l's children. To Carson, they just looked like d.a.m.n movie zombies - rotten, guts hanging out, blood and s.h.i.+t all over their faces; but according to the reverend, these infected b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were h.e.l.l's children. Children of h.e.l.l. Sinners. People that must have majorly f.u.c.ked up in some huge way to get zapped with such punishment from G.o.d. He recalled the old campfire song that said and they'll know we are Christians by our love, which was no longer the simple truth. Now, the lines were easily drawn. Christians equaled healthy. Infected equaled h.e.l.l's children.

This one's for you, Reverend.

Carson loaded the grenade launcher with a Kolokol-1 canister and fired a well-placed lob into the mob of h.e.l.l's children that were streaming over the red Dodge Ram he'd seen in the perimeter cameras. The grenade landed right where he'd aimed. It popped and emitted its ga.s.ses. The ground crew donned their gas masks. Carson counted down from sixty, loudly. By the time he'd reached one, they could see the ma.s.s of h.e.l.l's children falling to the ground in unconscious heaps on the Interstate around the truck.

They rushed to the scene in a small squad wedge formation. The three in the lead used their AK-47s to waste the zombies rendered unconscious by the gas. The two flanking them broke off after the zombies were cleared and opened the truck.

"Oh my-" gasped Kathryn. She gagged, reeling backward, when she saw the gory mess that was Dejah in the pa.s.senger's seat of the truck. Maurice came up beside her.

"s.h.i.+t ... this one's a goner."

"No!" shouted Shaun as they pulled him from the driver's side of the truck. "She's okay. She's immune, you've got to ... bring her...." His eyes rolled into his head as the roiling tendrils of gas knocked him out.

Maurice and Kathryn looked skeptically at each other. T.D. looked over their shoulders, formulating an opinion that didn't get announced because Carson wasn't one for wasting time.

"Grab her, let's take her back," ordered Carson. "We'll keep her sequestered and if we have any trouble, we'll take care of it then."

"We've got the kid loaded up," said Reeves.

"Let's get out of here," Carson said, taking a few shots at some groaning children of h.e.l.l, just to make sure they wouldn't get up again, spraying grue across the blood-slimed asphalt.

The four-wheeler and Jeep turned around, heading back into the dense forest hills south of the interstate. They left the road in stillness, the haze of Kolokol-1 drifting like mist over water among the bodies of the dead.

David delivered young Matthew to his mother's bedside when he heard the announcement on the walkie-talkie that the group was returning with two people in tow. "We've got one kid, teenager, dazed and seems okay, but a woman ... not so good. We'll need Doc Ward up front right away."

David stood there for a moment. He wasn't a doctor and maybe he couldn't do a d.a.m.n bit of good, but he'd done some emergency medical battlefield training before he'd been s.h.i.+pped off to Desert Storm years ago. d.a.m.ned if he would probably remember any of it, but they might need some strong backs or some strong stomachs. Besides, he was curious and he wasn't getting a lick of sleep. Maybe there was something he could do.

He blew out the candle. A swath of darkness cloaked the room. He felt young Matthew's eyes follow his progress as he crept out the door of the makes.h.i.+ft dorm. Closing it lightly behind him, he made his way through the maze-like corridors of the church's school to the front of the building.