Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King

by Blackmore, Keith C.

A hundred more voices joined the first screamer, or so it seemed, and then a boots-to-metal charge up an unseen, yet quivering gangway. Through fading coils of smoke, blurry figures appeared, flailing their arms and screeching notes of ravenous hunger. All the while Monica was somewhere behind Gus, behind them all, pleading that they just listen to her, just listen and move their asses.

  A shape stumbled out of the back doorway of the gatehouse, tripped by the dead islander lying there. That stumbling figure bumbled to one side and pitched off the roof, falling some fifty feet to the water below, where the lake swallowed up the thrashing screamer in one great gulp of a splash.

  Others pushed free of the gatehouse, stepping over the roadblock and running full tilt across the slanted roof. They stampeded across those cedar slates towards the island. They were heedless of the uncertain footing. They ignored the danger.

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” Gus panted, his eyes on the verge of popping from his face.

  Monica said it best, as the sight of those charging creatures unlocked her mouth so that she could finally formulate the one word she was trying to convey all along.

  “Mindless!” she screamed. “MINDLESS!”

  17

  The mindless charged across the rooftop, shrieking, snarling, howling. An inhuman gush of fury. Feet hammered across wooden shingles. Some of the mindless fell through rotten wood, crumpling to their knees or thighs. The rampaging figures behind them slammed into the floundering roadblocks, the impact causing the runners to plummet from the roof and into the lake, where the waters churned with limbs and torsos.

  Across the water, figures emerged from their rides like wraiths pushing aside coffin lids.

  Collie squeezed off a short burst, blasting the foremost of the mindless off the roof. “Move!” she yelled, breaking the paralysis of those nearby. Gus moved, but only to flank her, drawing his gun and taking a shooter’s stance.

  “This way,” Eva yelled, getting his attention. “Everyone to the Point.”

  But not everyone was running. Some of the islanders had taken a full blast to the face from the exploding piss bags, and they were staggering about as if mortally stricken by acid. Perhaps they were, as the few drops that had made contact with Gus’s profile lit up his skin there as if being devoured by worms. That horrible sensation caused him to drop his aim and rub at the side of his face.

  “Go!” Collie ordered without sparing him a glance. “Go! I’ll slow them down.”

  She hefted her German-made hell-bringer of an assault weapon and took aim. She fired, her upper frame thrumming, the rifle’s ejector spewing casings in a dull arc. Short, flaming beams of light erupted from the muzzle, lancing into the mindless charging across the roof. Arms were blown off. Torsos exploded in cherry-red puffs. Bodies were twisted in mid-charge and launched over the other side as if hit by a speeding car. A few heads burst, the bodies continuing a step before dropping and rolling off the edge of the roof.

  The charge faltered again.

  Half a dozen islanders crouched behind the gates. They held shotguns and pistols, searching for targets and well aware that their attackers were coming overhead. The man called Garrett was among the defenders, gripping a sidearm while waving at Eva to get going—when a crossbow bolt spurted out of his cheek, torqueing his head hard to the left.

  The sight of the man toppling unlocked Gus’s legs just as a shaft of light whizzed by his shoulder, missing him by a few hairs, and whistling hatred loud enough to startle. That drove him into a crouch, where he retreated a few frantic steps before dropping to his chest. A wave of bolts hissed overhead. Steel flashed in the daylight, and Gus glimpsed those deadly missiles a split second before they smacked loudly into wood and rock.

  Run, his mind screamed, but he was unwilling to leave Collie.

  The few islanders remaining at their barricaded posts fired blindly, hitting nothing.

  Collie was on one knee and aiming at the cars across the water. She trembled as she returned fire upon the attacking enemy.

  One masked shooter flew backwards as a burst tore into his chest and tossed him between the cars.

  A second shooter had his head blown off before he could take better cover.

  A third figure ducked behind an open car door, so Collie put a short burst through the machine’s front in a vicious patter of tin. Shredded metal and steam peppered the air. Windshields were ventilated in harsh lines. A few nearby trees caught those steel-jacketed hellos, where the bullets chomped into the wood in explosive puffs of fiber and splinters. Collie strafed right, then left, and back again, controlling the recoil and her aim.

  That short but meaningful contact sent the masked shadows diving for cover.

  She wasn’t finished, however.

  “Oh, you sweet bitches,” Collie whispered, searching for targets. “You have no idea…”

  She pivoted on her knee and turned one windshield into a tracery of spider holes and sparkling ice chips. She ripped a line through another hood, the car vibrating from the impacts. Heads bobbed and ducked, but no one presented a viable target.

  The mindless—the familiar undead once thought extinct—resumed their charge across the roof of the bridge. Not wanting them to think she’d forgotten about them, Collie swiveled back and unloaded. The zombies had reached the halfway point when the bullets tore into them. Bodies jerked and jigged before tumbling off the roof. Two heads exploded in a meaty drizzle. One figure was blown backwards in a spray of dark matter and fell out of sight, twisting like a livid eel. Collie blew the leg off one completely before altering her fire and taking out huge chunks from a clump of torsos, blasting the undead from the roof entirely.

  The charge again faltered, the air misted with pieces of flying meat and ink. The mindless stalled, fumbling about the newly dead cluttering the path. Some tripped and fell, screaming into the water. A few actually recognized the direction of the gunfire, just before 5.56 mm rounds ripped across their upper chests and faces. One screamer took a full burst across the chops, which blew out the back of his skull. A second later, Collie shifted and scalped another with a single bullet.

  She ceased firing, her empty magazine falling clear of her weapon. She turned to run just as the bus withdrew in a frightening rattle of wood and metal. A dust cloud billowed out from the entrance.

  Gus crouched behind the operator and watched as the bus backed up. He didn’t think that was a good sign. Shadows lining the opposite bank crept back behind their cars, sensing the lull in the return fire. There they stayed low and gathered strength.

  “Follow me,” Collie ordered and ran past him.

  Gus did just that.

  The last thing he saw before taking off was the mindless who’d fallen into the lake… clawing their way to shore.

  Collie withdrew some twenty meters before ducking behind the corner of a small green cottage. Gus stopped beside her, pushing her back a step, and slammed his upper body against the clapboard wall.

  “Stay low and out of sight,” she told him.

  “I know,” Gus grated. “I’ve been shot at before.”

  Collie replaced her magazine with a slap and a good luck tickle.

  Gus peeked around the corner, scanning the bridge. Cars and trucks were now in reverse, spinning jets of dirt into the air. The far shore was a mess of dead rides and exhaust, but shapes moved within that mess. Of the islanders, they were either dead or nowhere in sight.

  “Collie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we’re the only ones left.”

  Collie pulled him back and took the corner. She stuck out half a head and glanced about. A second later she withdrew and pointed to a trail cutting between a pair of cottages and disappearing into the forest. There, one man waited and waved, urging them to follow.

  “That Davis?” Collie asked.

  Gus checked. “Yeah. Looks like him.”

  “So much for defending the homeland,” Collie said and stopped right there.

  Motors were revving up again.<
br />
  “I gotta take care of that bridge,” she said.

  “How?”

  As an answer, she opened the flap of her breast pocket.

  Gus winced at the sight of the golf-ball-sized grenade.

  Another bout of collapsing metal echoed over the lake’s surface, followed by a short shriek of hinges and an earth-shaking clang, as if an enormous manhole cover had crashed onto the ground. A surge of engines then, and a gravelly spewing of crushed stone followed.

  Gus stood next to Collie and peeked around the corner.

  One of the mindless, dripping water, stood in the very spot he and Collie had just vacated upon the grassy ridge. The zombie spotted him immediately and charged, water-logged clothing flapping as it ran.

  Gus took a two-handed aim and squeezed off three shots before one bullet blew apart the thing’s head, not twenty strides from the cottage.

  He was about to speak when Collie yanked him back.

  A squall of crossbow bolts slammed into the cottage, hard enough to rattle wood. One bolt punched through the thin clapboard with a shiver. Several more blew past the corner, needling the very spot where Gus had been standing a second earlier. More missiles sped onwards, ending their killer flights in other cottage walls, trees, and bouncing off rocks.

  The sound of one engine alone rose and overpowered the motorized chaos beyond.

  “This way,” Collie said. “Watch your ass and watch my back.”

  Gus would do just that.

  They hurried around the back of the cottage, ignoring the frantic waves from Davis. They stopped at the other corner of the home, where they had a better view of the bridge’s closed gates on the island side.

  That mighty engine flared again, and a speeding mass entered the tunnel with a jarring crackle and crunch of wood. The vehicle raced along the interior like a speeding torpedo, the sound amplified by the enclosed space.

  “They’re going to ram the gate,” Collie said behind her lowered rifle.

  No sooner had she spoken when a pickup with an attached snow plow smashed through the closed barrier. The gates blew outward, folding up and over the machine’s hood in a spray of wood. Planks crumpled and were swished away like freed propellers. Slabs of debris fell from the rampaging truck as the driver fought for control. Lengths of wood bounced off the roof and flipped out of the box bed. The machine halted in the clearing with a spray of dirt, drawing up broadside in a swirl of dust.

  The truck huffed and smoldered, the front blade scratched and mean-looking, but far from finished.

  Until Collie lobbed the grenade under the machine.

  The blast launched the truck skyward about ten feet, lighting up the day in a frightening conflagration that both lifted and engulfed the frame in a fiery fist. The rig slammed back to earth with a two-ton crunch of metal, the husk charred and burning. Tires blew out with ear-crackling bangs.

  Collie bared her teeth.

  “We go now?” Gus asked, ready to run five minutes ago.

  “Fuck no,” she said, propping her rifle alongside the house. She dug out the other grenade. “One more of these bitches will take care of that bridge.”

  A zombie clambered up over the little cliff facing the lake, dripping water and savage because of it. Gus sighted the thing and fired four shots before one round tore away the left side of its head in a brutal smear of color.

  “Collie, those fuckers are coming ashore.”

  “Yeah?” she said and cocked back her arm. “Ever tell you I kill at dunk tanks?”

  Not waiting for a reply, Collie stepped out around the corner and threw her second grenade as if it were a baseball being sent home from right field. The explosive bauble didn’t fly down the throat of the bridge, however, but rather bounced a few feet short before wobbling inside and greeting a second oncoming vehicle—just as its headlights flared to life.

  The blast blew apart the bridge mouth, sending fragments and shingles both sideways and skyward in a storm cloud of destruction. Flame flashed and waved merrily for a searing split second. Gus glimpsed the car’s grill go straight up before the sides of the bridge puffed outward. One shard of debris, a lightning bolt of metal or wood—he didn’t know which—actually impaled a zombie through the head as it was rising up over the nearby embankment.

  Then the resulting dust obscured everything.

  “Happy birthday,” Collie said, a little breathless. “Now we go.”

  18

  All had been going well, right up until the islanders started firing back. Firing back with automatic weapons, no less, at which point the sound and fury of such a surprise cranked the head of the Vulture toward the prisoner called Carson. Trucks and cars surrounded the captured man, who was currently strapped to a forklift, his bare feet kept in place by duct tape. Vast amounts wrapped his forehead and naked torso as well. The Leather had, in fact, used a complete roll on the mechanic.

  A red ball gag filled Carson’s mouth, preventing him from talking. The exposed rubber was slick and dewy, and every now and again, snot streamers fired out from the man’s nose as he released a breath. Carson didn’t look well since being captured. He’d certainly lost color after they extracted information from him, information that detailed the location of the island village, the men and women living there, their professions, and their defenses.

  Including the number of weapons.

  At no time did Carson say anything about automatic rifles. Or grenades.

  That…angered the Vulture.

  The grim executioner wearing the bronze leather mask straightened. The Bronze caught the stern look from the Vulture, and he hefted a hammer.

  Carson’s eyes bulged. His cheeks puffed as he struggled for breath. Whimpers laced the air. The Bronze stepped in close, where Carson’s bare feet were taped to the forks. The toes had remained exposed for better access. Three of the little piggies on his left foot had been smashed into red pulp and now resembled flattened grapes. The mechanic had started talking after only one of his toes received the hammer, but the Vulture deemed the others necessary, as punishment.

  Carson grunted and spewed more snot. He managed to thrash a little, but he was so bound by duct tape, the struggle amounted to nothing more than muted twitches.

  The Vulture wondered what else the mechanic had forgotten to tell him.

  Kneeling at the leader’s right knee, a half-naked meat puppet cleared his throat. The Vulture ignored the meat, and the nearby Leather brought the enslaved individual to heel by pulling hard on his leash. The meat puppet croaked, unable to breathe, and settled down.

  That minor interruption quelled, the Vulture held up a hand, staying the Bronze’s hammer just a little longer. The leader then regarded the bridge’s entrance.

  The bus reversed in a surge of horsepower, pulling back the makeshift ramp on its roof, the very ramp that had allowed the Leather to bypass so many walls in the past. Two pickups replaced the bus, reversing until they were mere feet away from the weakened gates. Figures scrambled between the two vehicles, hooking chains and quickly getting clear. A hand chopped the air, and the trucks spun dirt before yanking the gates off its hinges.

  The way to the island lay wide open.

  The rammer was given the signal to go, and the truck equipped with the snow plow entered the tunnel.

  The legions of the Leather, armed with heavy crossbows, unleashed a wave of bolts at the island. The sight of that deadly sprinkle distracted the Vulture from Carson.

  The rammer smashed through the gates on the other side. The truck skidded to a stop in full view—seconds before the vehicle exploded and left the earth riding a geyser of flame. Blazing chunks of wreckage rained down, some smashing into the mindless flailing around in the water. That spectacle shocked several of the Leather, freezing them where they stood.

  The Vulture, however, bristled with anger.

  Three shots rang out, informing the leader that some of the enemy still lived.

  The Vulture motioned for three cars to enter the t
unnel. He then signaled his lessers to prepare to advance. A hundred fighters reloaded their crossbows, while a hundred more readied axes, clubs, and spears. The ammunition of the old world had long since dried up, so the Leather had adopted more primitive but just as effective weapons, preferring the medieval might of points and edged steel. They didn’t mind revving engines of their machines, however, considering them the war chariots of a new age.

  The Age of Leather.

  The cars disappeared into the tunnel depths, and the Vulture raised his hand, ready to unleash the army at his back. Carson had told them lies, as incredible as it was. The Vulture would personally attend to his punishment.

  The far end of the bridge exploded in the same spectacular fashion as the rammer. The unexpected blast surprised them all once again, including the Vulture, who had dropped into a crouch. He straightened and stared at the smoking wreckage, taking in the ribbons of flame and dense coils of smoke. The lead vehicle had been destroyed. Perhaps even all three.

  Leather-clad figures soon entered the bridge’s interior, hands shielding their faces. They entered the smoking aperture, coughing, yet forging ahead.

  A minute later, word came back.

  The bridge, while damaged, was still intact. Cars could not pass, but the Leather could cross on foot.

  That pleased the Vulture, who sensed a greater game afoot. The islanders, those remaining, were readying themselves for another attack. Or worse, attempting to flee. The Vulture suspected he’d been lied to once again.

  Organizing his thoughts, the leader was distracted by the unruly meat slab who had the gall to stand and tear off his mouth gag.

  “That’s the same shooter—” the meat gasped before the Leather holding onto the leash pulled hard, transforming the words into a pain-filled grunt. Red-faced and grimacing, the meat dropped to his knees.

  Three lessers wielding pipes and bats moved in to deliver punishment.

  The Vulture stopped them with a hand.

  “Guh,” the meat panted, once again permitted the privilege of breathing. He clawed at the leash, granting himself a little more slack.