Part 13 (1/2)
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.