They were in. They were past the long corridors where even a single man could have held them off. Once they made it to the first floor it would be even easier.
They hit the stairwell running and made it halfway up the first flight when the door slammed open above them. Jessie had his gun up and shot instantly, sending round after round into the stairs, the walls and anything he could see that was moving above him. The warriors should have stopped. They should have retreated. They should have tried to find cover but they kept coming. The brainwashed masses were as intractable as the undead but the bullets stopped them. They didn’t take a hit to the chest, have half their insides blown out and shrug it off. Grunts of pain and shouts of anger mixed with the explosions of gunfire. Bodies fell and tumbled down the steps, bodies spilled over the railing and flailed all the way to the basement. Jessie kept firing until the magazine was empty. His hands flew to reload but a woman in gauzy silks slammed into him, screeching and clawing for his eyes. He slapped her aside, sent her smashing into the wall and he heard the air whoosh out of her. Scarlet grabbed a handful of hair and sent her head over heels tumbling down the stairs. There were no black clad guards, they were sending down the unenhanced. They were ordering the weak to their deaths. The servants were flooding the stairwell at the bellowed commands of someone on the main floor. They were easy to break, easy to hurt and easy to kill. Jessie let the borrowed rifle fall and started slicing his way through the crowd. They didn’t have weapons except for their fists and their rage but they had no hesitation. They ran to the slaughter clawing for eyes, trying to kill with their bare hands. It was almost as if they were screaming and attacking in slow motion for the enhanced teens. They saw every angry face, each grasping hand or swung fist and blocked them. They tried not to turn it into a massacre, tried to fling people over the rails or toss them down the stairs behind them but sometimes there wasn’t a choice. They wouldn’t stop attacking, they wouldn’t stop trying to pull them down. It was a thousand times worse than killing the undead because these people could be saved if they had the time.
They fought their way upward, being slowed by the sheer number of cooks and cleaning girls and maintenance men blindly throwing themselves at the pair. Occasionally a knife or club would flash towards them but they were easily avoided. The two knocked the servants aside and fought their way up, the stairs behind them was littered with broken bodies and moans of pain. Automatic gunfire erupted above them and Jessie felt the impact against his shoulder, felt something slam into his collarbone and felt Scarlet shove him aside almost as fast as the bullets poured down into them. His hand dipped for his gun and the bullets found the shooter, sending him screaming away from the landing with a shattered rifle and a shattered hand with most of the fingers missing.
A fat man managed to get his hands in Scarlets hair and pulled a bloody hank of it away as he screamed and beat at her. Jessie had enough trying to be gentle to people who were trying to kill them and shot the man in the face. He aimed his gun and sent round after round into the servants and slaves. His finger danced on the trigger and bodies splashed all over the walls. Blood, lungs, livers and brains painted gory patterns on everything and his fingers slid a new magazine home and continued to kill. They knew the ways of war. He tried to get his left arm to work but it hurt, it screamed out in agony when he tried to move it. The Kevlar had deflected the bullet, kept it from punching through skin and bone, but didn’t stop the sledgehammer blow that came with it. His whole arm was numb and throbbed and he had a hard time making it do what he wanted, move like it should.
The last of them tumbled and fell, dying or dead and they stood alone on the landing. The door slammed shut above him as he watched and waited for a few beats to see if it would open again. To see if more suicides were coming for them. He breathed deep with the pain then realized she wasn’t at his side. Jessie spun but she was there, leaning against the wall. He sighed with relief until he saw the spill of black running over her hand and dripping to the floor. She’d taken one of the bullets to the chest.
She smiled at him, at the look of surprise and shock, and her teeth were darkened with blood.
“It doesn’t even hurt, really.” she said, her one dull green eye shining in the dim light. The other black and dead.
She stood, moved away from the wall and the patch of dark liquid oozed down the concrete. Her nostrils flared and she forcefully pulled a hungry gaze away from the bleeding pile of corpses at their feet.
“I feel it, Jessie.” she said and shuddered.
He grimaced and tucked his nearly useless hand into the pocket of his jacket.
The black blood was dripping down her leathers, oozing slowly out of the hole instead of spurting. She was standing instead of on the ground writhing in pain. He touched her face. He leaned in and kissed her, tasted the venomous poison on her lips.
“Our job is almost over.” he said. “We can both rest soon.”
She smiled a sad smile and started up the stairs. He could hear the sound of her broken ribs grating together over the squelch of their boots in the puddles of tissue and blood. They crouched low and listened at the door. There were sounds of chaos, not the orderly assembly of another wave of attackers. Jessie had feeling back in his hand, flexed his fingers and pulled his other Glock. Scarlet shoved the door open and he spun out, both guns up and throwing lead into anyone wearing black. Bullets flew back at them but they rolled away and Scarlet moved faster than they could aim. There were statues and elaborate columns decorating the large, open casino. Filmy curtains and glittering palm trees along with disco balls and stone relief carvings were scattered throughout the room and even as the bullets flew, Jessie couldn’t help but think he’d never seen a gaudier mashup of styles. A pair of cartoonish fiberglass sphinx with brightly painted faces stood guarding a three-thousand-year-old jewel encrusted sarcophagus. Mummies were displayed on the walls along with thrashing dead hanging in chains. Black uniformed guards shoved panicking, barely clothed servants towards the two bloody leather wraiths that came boiling out of the stairwell with guns blasting and batons smashing. Maximum confusion, overwhelming shock and awe. Two against a hundred. Jessie targeted his first shots at the lights and dumped the room into dimness.
He saw what looked like leaders, the high council maybe, running out of a conference room. They wore gold robes and were festooned with necklaces and head dresses and rings. He sent bullets into backs and bellies, rolled behind a column painted in hieroglyphics and dropped spent magazines. Gun fire ricocheted across the room, clouds of smoke and puffs of stone dust from heavy caliber bullets filled the air. Scarlet danced her dance of death, unkillable and unstoppable, a dervish of movement and angry thuds of steel on bone. Jessie drew their fire and dashed from one position to another, guns spitting flames with bullets that exploded into flowers of lead. They ripped away huge chunks of meat, left some of them dead before they hit the ground, some of them with so much blood loss they died reaching for a gun to try to fight back. They were super soldiers. They were enhanced. They were stronger and faster but they still died when the cross-cut bullets expanded inside of them leaving huge holes where living organs used to be. They weren’t schooled in the art of war like Jessie had been. They’d never had to live by the gun, it was only something they shot on occasion. It wasn’t an extension of them, wasn’t a part of who they were. Gauzy curtains went up in flames from spilled oil lamps and added their own dancing light to the nightmare scene. Their bullets chased Jessie around the room. They tried to anticipate his moves, tried to shoot where he would be but he wasn’t there. They could barely follow him and the Heretic as they rolled and jumped and spun and killed. They were machines of flowing grace. Precise and blindingly fast. A flash from a muzzle, a blur of leather, an explosion of gunfire. Weapons were pointed but the spot was empty, the death came from a dozen feet away or from behind a stone coffin.
Jessie’s last magazine ran empty, the slides locked back and he dove for a dropped rifle. Automatic
gunfire from an AK stitched a line of holes in the tile floors and he rolled back behind a concrete column, pulled his blades and waited for the bullets to stop.
“He’s empty! Get the Heretic! Shoot the Heretic!” one of them yelled and all guns turned towards Scarlet.
Ricketts emptied the last few rounds from his AK into her as she flipped high over a stone coffin and brought her baton down on the head of a guard trying to follow her with his rifle. Jessie saw the big bullets rip into her and send her crumpling gracelessly to the floor. He rolled away from the cover of the column, grabbed the rifle and sent more rounds towards the black-clad men on the other side of the room. They dove for cover and guns stopped hammering for a moment. The smoke was cloyingly thick in the dimness from the flying debris and fires from toppled lamps. The guards sent a few more rounds in their general direction but they were shooting blind from the far side of the casino. They were too afraid to attack, they knew they were outclassed by the kid with the guns and out maneuvered by the Heretic with the steel fists.
Jessie crawled over to where she’d landed in a broken heap and pulled her towards him. The bullets had torn through her leg, breaking it and leaving it twisted at an odd angle. His eyes were dry, he was all cried out, they knew this was coming and he didn’t want to be consumed with sorrow in their last few minutes together.
“We almost did it.” she said. “We almost finished them.”
Jessie leaned against the Sarcophagus of some ancient king or queen and pulled her into his lap. Blood was tricking down his cheek from a bullet graze or a splinter of flying stone, he didn’t know which. His back hurt, his breath was short. He must have taken a bullet or two in the Kevlar. He stroked her two-tone hair and looked at the destruction that lay all around them. Bodies of servants and soldiers littered the floor, a dozen small fires were finding more things to burn and were spreading fast. Shattered lights, kitschy decorations, food and curtains were strewn among the dead. He should be digging for more ammo, looking through the bodies for another magazine. The guards would be coming soon, they’d regroup, maybe gather some servants and send them in first but they’d be right behind them. Scarlet was done for, with her busted leg, she was a sitting duck. Him, too if he didn’t find some bullets. He couldn’t take the guards hand to hand, especially in the shape he was in and definitely not two or three of them at once.
They waited for an attack to finish them off but it didn’t come. The smoke got thicker, the fires spread and they heard the men cowering on the far side of the casino, shouting into radios, awaiting orders.
“We won.” he told her and watched the shadows from the fires dance across her face.
He held her, put his cheek against her hair and felt the coolness of her body. Black blood still trickled out the holes in her chest and leg but she wasn’t in pain. Those receptors were already gone, eaten away by the curling black tendrils.
“I’m tired, Scar.” he whispered. “I’m through hurting. I’m through fighting. Let’s rest. Let’s move on to whatever is next.”
“No.” she said. “We have to finish. My father still lives. Ricketts still lives. They’ll rebuild.”
A few more shots rang out over their heads and they heard more soldiers gathering. Jessie sighed, pulled a rifle out of the debris and checked it. Empty.
“I take care of guards.” Scarlet said with difficulty. “Don’t let. Father escape.”
It took her a moment to form her next sentence, the words were hard to find. Her mind was growing darker by the minute. Fading. Erasing.
“Promise me that.” she finally said.
Jessie stretched over to grab another rifle and a bullet spanged off the floor. He jerked his hand back and cursed. They were pinned down behind a stone coffin. They were inching closer. It would only take them a few minutes to start flanking.
“You can’t walk, let alone run.” Jessie said. “When they get close, I’ll roll out. I’m fast, they’ll probably miss. They’re lousy shots, if you haven’t noticed.”
She smiled up at him, both eyes black.
“Mother is in here.” she said and patted the jewel encrusted sarcophagus they were using for cover.
“You finish me.” she pointed to her heart.
“Me and mamma, we finish them.”
Jessie thought he was all cried out. Thought he was ready for the end. They’d go down together with guns blazing. They’d die side by side and he was good with that. Ready for that. Hell, he wanted that. He wasn’t ready to sink a knife into her heart then watch her turn into a full-fledged zombie. He’d already killed her once when he poisoned her with the serum. She wanted him to kill her again and then once more after she was dead. He couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. She was asking too much.
“Hurry.” she struggled the words out as they heard Ricketts giving orders, sending men to both sides of the enormous room. It was getting harder to breathe.
“You must.”
She pulled his hand closer, the one still wrapped around his blade.
He tried to smile, the grim scar on his face tightening.
“I only wish we had more time.” he whispered and gripped the knife tighter, her hand wrapped around his. “But we’ll be together again in a few minutes, as soon as we finish this.”
Her eyes got wide and one cleared a little, a hint of green coloring it one last time.
“We do, Jessie. The time machine. Bring me back.”
Gunfire erupted as the guards lay down suppressing fire and men scrambled to new positions. Scarlet tightened her grip on his and plunged the knife under her ribs, aiming for her barely beating heart. He held her, felt the cool blood ooze over his hands, felt her go limp. She’d come back in another moment and he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t kill her again. Jessie laid her aside and released the hasp on the coffin. He shoved at the cover and the thing inside erupted into movement at the first hint of light, sending the lid flying off. The long-imprisoned mother sprang to her feet with a snarl and a keen of hunger then leaped from the prison she’d been in for nearly a year. Gunfire rang out and someone yelled a warning. She sprang towards the men, claws outstretched and ignored the bullets. She felt nothing except hunger as the rounds tore through her.
Jessie started crawling for the stairs in the confusion. Every gun turned toward the day one zombie as she leapt from one victim to the next with inhuman speed and ferocity. Arms were slashed, necks ripped open, faces bit as she grew more frenzied with every new taste of blood. Gunfire filled the room and bullets were sprayed in panic. The soldiers blindly shot everything that moved and at every sound they heard. Thick black smoke from the plastic columns and palm trees hung in the air making it hard to breathe and impossible to see. The curtains hung from the ceiling were engulfed in flames and dropped burning materials into the room below. Automatic gunfire filled the casino all around him as men tried to kill the screaming and leaping thing. It moved so fast it could have been two or three of them, it was impossible to tell with the fire and smoke filling the room. Panicked shots punched through other black clad bodies, sent gouts of blood and bone splinters sizzling in the flames. The leaping wraith tore out chunks of fresh meat and sprang for the next one, hands extended, broken bones ignored. The red frenzy was in her, the black eyes were merciless, her speed unmatched and her strength was savage grace. Smoke from the fires was thick as they spread and small flames found fuel then blazed into infernos. There was no ventilation, no open windows, nowhere for it to escape. In the booming of gunfire and screams of pain, during the snarling and tearing of flesh, amid the cries of terror and panic, he slipped away from the carnage. Chaotic gunfire continued behind him as Jessie crawled under the smoke haze for the stairs. It became more sporadic and random as more of them died and came back as monsters. Some tried to run. Some fired blindly. Some tried to fight. All of them died.
Jessie stayed low until he made it to a tumbled statue blocking the exit. Coughing and choking, he squeezed into the stairwell. His eyes burned and watered
and the tears didn’t stop even when he was out of the smoke and struggling up the stairs.
33
Jessie
The men darting from the lavish conference room, the ones with the flowing robes and bejeweled fingers, had ran for the stairs and Jessie followed. He coughed as he pulled himself up, trying to get the smoke out of his lungs. He had one last job to do. One last promise to keep.
They had fled in panic. There were no fire escapes on the casino. No ladders leaning against the building for an emergency way out. They were running to their rooms to wait for someone to save them. Cowards going to hide while their servants and soldiers cleaned up the mess. Except the servants had fled, the few still alive. The religion that demanded obedience, even with the daily doses of devil’s breath, wasn’t as strong as their fear and desire to live. The soldiers were dead or dying, felled by bullets or steel or ripped open by rampaging undead.
Someone was running up the stairs above him, he heard the boots slapping and knew it was a soldier. One who had escaped the carnage below. He should try to hurry but didn’t have the strength. They’d be there when he got there. Below him the stairwell was glowing orange as the fire spread and licked at the drapes and banners decorating it. He heard a door burst open above him. The man on the run had made it to the top floor as Jessie plodded onward and upward. Scarlets last words kept spinning through his head. Bring me back. She’d said. The time machine.
Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache Page 27