Part 13 (2/2)
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.
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