After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution

by Hately, Warren

  Even as it peeled away from her, the trooper’s fist remained glued to her own ponytail, and Lilianna clattered backwards as Hoskeens dived on top of her.

  And then the M16 spoke again.

  The burst fire flayed his neck and face and blew the Fury’s brains out backwards as it slapped down wetly atop her, carnage emptying onto her face and nearly into her mouth, and enough to conjure violent retching regardless. These were panicked moments, but Lilianna was helpless to do aught but react bodily to the vile torrent as she wriggled sideways, Hoskeen’s single hand clutching the rifle strap as its final action, and then Lila got to her knees and stood, pulling her weapon free like a calf pulling itself from the ruin of its mother.

  And then she was truly violently ill.

  A nearby burst of automatic fire cut through Lila’s helpless vomiting. She wiped her face, her mouth, only now daring to breathe and doing so with difficulty, clumps of human flesh stringing in her hair and across her face as she blinked to see Vegas sprint from cover with Szczyz following in a tactical advance, rifle raised and gunning down two more Furies escaping from the theater, drawn to their clamor, and Mercy wheeling the armored Jeep about so that its tires slid noisily across the cold wet surface, thumping over one of the fallen which promptly burst to send a torrent of gore sideways from beneath the Jeep. The armored car scrunched clear of the dead Fury, Mercy forcing it into a tight loop at the back of the compound as Vegas rushed to the edge of the theater’s fallen metal door to pull it down on an angle just a second before more dark shapes leapt out from the platform and atop him.

  Vegas went down beneath four more of the things.

  It looked utterly hopeless.

  The armored Jeep braked hard, the gearbox complaining loudly as Mercy reversed just long enough to line up the run at the improvised ramp even though now their companion lay at the bottom of it, buried beneath writhing figures which scratched and clawed and bit.

  Lilianna could now see simply ramming the armored vehicle up and into the doorway wouldn’t be enough to stem the flood of reanimated intruders still inside the Council meeting, but Vegas needed help – and when she glanced to Szczyz, Lila was shocked to see two more Furies come on the tall woman trooper from behind.

  One of them was Montana.

  Lila’d hoped her friend was among those already killed during the fightback in the desperate minutes after the initial Fury attack, but the only sign of injury on her beautiful friend was a cut above one wide-open eye. The expression of deranged hunger was alien to her face, almost mesmerizing for Lilianna who watched spellbound as Montana and a man in mechanic’s garb pulled Szczyz backwards and bit into her throat from either side.

  “No!”

  It was all going to shit.

  Lila tightened the grip on her gun and ran for Vegas, fighting back the tears that told her it was too late to save the female trooper. The four Furies huddled on top of Vegas were directly in front of Lila as she ran, and ten yards out, she stopped again and shot the first of them.

  Then her gun clicked empty.

  Vegas struggled free of the pack with blood coursing down his arms and beneath his feet, but he had a shiv in one hand he’d used to kill one of the fiends, and once upright, he pulled the pistols from his belt and shot the others into obedience. Lila glanced again towards Szczyz, tears running freely down her face even as she saw the brave older woman wrench herself free too, a hand clutched to her throat as if to hold her head on, and she drew a Glock as well and shot Montana point-blank between the eyes.

  The remaining Fury then slammed into her, and he and Szczyz went down hard.

  Mercy gunned the Jeep and it careened forward, Vegas scuttling out of the way as another Fury appeared at the top of the podium, completely failed to see the unlit armored vehicle rocketing towards it, and then the Jeep hit the metal door ramp – which crumpled.

  The vehicle was too heavy.

  All that armor left the squat Jeep far from aerodynamic, and as it accelerated up the proposed ramp, the metal door folded in half and the Jeep’s lower wheels struck the concrete lip of the loading dock.

  The whole vehicle tipped up, ass end coming up and over in a terrifying display as the Jeep obliterated the fast-blinking Fury caught in front of it, then cartwheeled forward, headlamps and other loose pieces of wreckage a blizzard of shrapnel. But the Jeep’s aim was true, and it struck the remaining upright door and the gap of the missing one beside it, then continued on through in an elongated scream of metal and glass and timber giving way as the whole thing barreled on into the theater’s backstage area and vanished from sight.

  Any loose Furies not previously spotted in the yard came out of hiding at that point, the maelstrom of the flipping Jeep as loud as a bomb going off. That it had only widened the rear exit rather than blocking it was an added insult to the injury Lilianna wasn’t sure she could forgive, and she might’ve fallen to her knees hopeless at that moment too except she could hear Mercy somehow screaming out for help from beyond the saw-toothed stage doors.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Things had to be bad for Lilianna to fall into blasphemy. Normally, she eschewed anything like the bad example her father’d set throughout her life. But seeing Montana – and now Szczyz laid out, unmoving as the mechanic tore her Kevlar open, bloody-mouthed, feasting on her throat, and breaking ribs to reach her heart – it triggered an almost near-total surrender.

  After all these years escaping by the skin of their teeth, she was going to die here.

  Her father would be destroyed – but it was Tom’s disappointment she feared most.

  Fortunately, Vegas ran almost straight into her and dragged Lilianna upright as he moved them both in the direction of the compound’s street exit.

  “Time to cut and run,” he said.

  “No!”

  There was no sense to it, but Lila couldn’t adjust to such a turnaround within such a sudden timeframe, and despite the lack of any idea what to do, or how to resurrect her half-baked plan, she stood immobile and let the black man’s hard grip come loose as he eyed her wildly.

  “Girl –”

  Mercy’s cries for help came again.

  Lilianna took one of the pistols from Vegas’ hand and ran for the theater.

  *

  THE THUNDERBOLT OF the flying Jeep had cleared a devastating path directly into the back of the dinner theater, and any number of bodies lay twisted and in pieces along that trail of wreckage. Not all of them were still, either, with Furies lined up for the exit flayed and amputated and torn asunder, but functioning still where their heads remained intact.

  The Jeep was upside down, nose to the ground and propped at rest against a chunk of internal scaffolding that contributed to the stage, off-camera for now, and the noise of the vehicle’s grinding engine and spinning wheels failed to conceal the snarls and moans echoing through the low-roofed auditorium and away beyond where Lila had any chance of seeing them, shrouded by the huge black framework of the backstage, the scaffolding for the structure, and then beyond them lights and a bailiwick of black-painted flats – chipboard dividers either ready to serve on stage, or contributing to a network of back rooms and corridors for the actors long since departed from the devastated venue.

  The Jeep’s engine seemed stuck, even though its axels were broken, and the angle of the wreck meant Mercy either wasn’t able to get the door open, or worse, was so messed up inside she couldn’t get free anyway. Lilianna scanned the challenge, duly daunted, and reached to cock the slide on the handgun only to realize it didn’t have one. Swallowing hard, she picked up a length of steel strut and pierced it downwards into one of the monsters, and then another Fury laying plastered across the brutalized warehouse floor. Another Fury rose, staggering to its knees across from her, and Lila was thrilled beyond measure when it’s head exploded wetly, the corpse dropping to reveal Vegas with a look of dark misgiving on his handsome, carefully-scarred face.

  “Thank you,” Lila said.

&n
bsp; Vegas motioned at the monolith of the inverted wrecked Jeep.

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  If it were a movie, Vegas might’ve added “Princess,” then maybe winked. Crucified beneath the reality of real life, the proud man looked like he finally understood what pants-pissing terror was like. He blinked repeatedly, glistening with sweat that made him look like a terrified onyx statue brought to life by some evil magician, and entirely against its will. Still, he weighed the fire ax in his hands as Lilianna also turned to survey their predicament, motion or at least the sense of it in the walls all around them and beyond the turn to stage right.

  “Cover me,” she said.

  Lila jogged further into a backstage darkness made worse for the theater lights still burning ahead and beyond the blockage of the stage curtains themselves. Lila had to blink, and side-step another half-felled undead, before she could get to shelter on the far side of the upright Jeep, scanning quickly upwards like a mountain climber before tentatively giving the whole wreck a gentle push.

  But it was stuck good.

  Vegas came into view on the other side of the armored Jeep, and the sound of his ax meant he was doing the business – and Lilianna knew the rest was up to her.

  She got a foot onto the topside of the wheel and used the back doors as handholds to haul herself up, considering a knife between her teeth, and then thinking better of it as she struggled to balance, conscious of the fetid tissue in her hair and gumming her eyelids. And then she tried opening the back door and nearly fell before acknowledging she simply couldn’t lift its steel-reinforced weight.

  Further she climbed, checking her weight now as well as her balance as she went higher, catching a look at Mercy crushed against the far side of the cabin pretty much diagonally opposite her. The military vehicle’s armor was now a huge liability, because the passenger door wasn’t any lighter than its kin, and the metal grille across the bulletproof windows was just as daunting. Lilianna motioned to get the black girl’s attention, and Mercy looked back through the gloomy view utterly disoriented, slumped, and still in the safety belt she’d strapped on in the seconds before her ill-fated headlong dash into the old theater.

  Vegas called out urgently, and Lila caught his look and nodded.

  “Mercy,” she said as loud as she dared, though the jig was up for stealth anyway. “You have to come down. Get into the back.”

  A stoic yell came from the other side of the Jeep and then Vegas was backing away, swapping the ax for the remaining gun in his possession he leveled and fired twice, then changed angle and fired again. On the fourth try, the magazine was empty, and he tossed the weapon and weighted the ax again and Lilianna jumped back to the ground.

  The prostrate Fury she’d ignored earlier now lunged at her, catching Lila around the ankle and keeping her stuck just long enough for one of the dozen-or-so Furies now circling them in the gloom to take its chances darting in at her like a wolf from a pack trying to separate the weak sheep from the flock.

  Lilianna was damned if she was going to be the stray sheep here.

  With a violent roar, she snatched up the steel rod again and swung it hard into the oncoming creature’s face at the same time she pulled her leg roughly free, ignoring the pain of fingernails raking her skin. The metal strut cracked the dead middle-aged man’s forearms and staved in his jaw, arresting his momentum too, and then Vegas cut the Fury down from behind.

  He grabbed Lilianna by the wrist.

  And just then they heard someone else cry for help from inside the theater.

  *

  ALTHOUGH SHE’D STARTED running with Vegas, it wasn’t with the intention to quit. There had to be a way to free Mercy, but right now they were set to get killed, and that wouldn’t help the other survivor either. But then, when the man’s voice rang out to them, joined by several more people warbling in terror, Lilianna stopped dead in the backstage doorway.

  She shot the first of the Furies hurrying after them, and that scattered the pack. The Furies dodged left and right to evade any more follow-ups, and Lila dropped the steel rod to grab Vegas’ wrist.

  “This way.”

  There was a door under the shadow of the back wall which led into the first of the cardbox corridors of the backstage. Lila went through it in a rush, but Vegas pulled free of her grasp long enough to ransack the AR15 from a trooper decapitated during the Jeep crash. Seeing them making an unexpected exit, the Furies skulking all around charged the door as well. Vegas put his shoulder to it as it swung closed, and his wide glowing eyes bore into Lilianna with mixed frustration and horror.

  “Girl. . . .”

  “Grr, stop calling me that.”

  Lila ignored him, straining her ears, and Vegas didn’t bother saying anything anyway, giving them the second or two needed to home in on the people crying out. The door rebounded with a failed forced impact, and more screams and snarls sounded across the way. The backstage corridors didn’t have ceilings, wholly reliant on the ambient lights beyond the stage, it seemed. A metal staircase over their heads caught Lilianna’s eye.

  “I’m going to give you a boost,” she said to him, then motioned up.

  “What?”

  Vegas craned his head, made difficult for him by one and then another mad charge at the door. He looked ready to start cussing again, but instead, ghost-faced, he looked up into the metalwork and saw their escape, and just as quickly frowned and shot back at her, “I’m not leaving you down here with them.” The strangers at the door made their presence known with renewed growling, but the door was quiet for a second.

  “I’m not strong enough to lift you up behind me,” Lila said. “You are.”

  “But the door –”

  “The rifle,” Lila said. “Give it to me.”

  Her M16 was gone, whereabouts unknown. Scraping noises resounded from the door Vegas pushed back into with all his strength, undercutting any further discussion. Without yielding his brace position, Vegas unspooled the AR15’s strap from around his forearm, paused, then tossed it to her.

  Lila took only a second to stow the gun at her back before she knelt and made a step from her two hands. And, having second if not third thoughts about the whole thing, Vegas quit his position and stepped into the cradle of Lilianna’s hands.

  He was a little optimistic about how much weight the girl could take, and his first attempt looked like a deliberate effort to stamp down hard on Lilianna’s hands even when it wasn’t. Lila made a flustered noise, and Vegas caught himself going off-balance, and Lila repeated the move as Vegas re-oriented himself more carefully, the pair of them muttering a one-two-three cut short at the end as the plywood door burst inwards, and adrenal strength gave Lilianna the power needed to drive Vegas high enough to grab one of the metal steps passing over them.

  Vegas hauled himself around the structure by strength of hand alone, and Lila staggered backwards, her fear with greater momentum than her tripping feet, which sent her down on her heiny clutching the assault rifle for dear life and more than half-a-dozen Furies pouring in at her.

  She braced her feet either side of the narrow hallway and opened up.

  Lila only paused once while emptying the clip into her attackers, and by the time it was empty in a few seconds, only two of the six still moved. A woman with half of her face blasted away was trapped trying to grab for her from beneath her slaughtered companions, and a bloated man at the back escaped the gunfire altogether. The pale Fury glowered at the dead choking the corridor in front of it like a middle manager, disappointed in his team, but without the authority to fire them himself, and Vegas whistled in just enough time for Lila to grab hold of the hand he offered as he hauled her aside. Leaning over the side of the metal stairs he’d straddled, he swung Lila up and across until she could brace a boot atop the dividing walls, from where they could see the thrashing shadows created by a half-dozen people ensconced deep in one of the inner cubicles, the theater’s old green room, lit by several retro lava lamps that now matche
d the horror movie their night had become.

  “Come up here,” Vegas said.

  He barely flinched even though his arms bled from several recent bite marks. Not for the first time, Lilianna was at least grateful the bites themselves communicated nothing of the Fury’s disease or plague or mad contagion, whatever it was, or whatever it was Professor Hamilton said it could not have been. Lila patted Vegas sympathetically, but he only had eyes back behind her at the rifle she’d emptied and left to the Dead.

  “Fuck, girl, that was close.”

  They huddled together on the staircase. Lilianna swallowed with difficulty, terror as well as elation at her survival flooding through her and wanting expression in something mad and foolhardy and life-affirming like grabbing the beautiful rugged man and kissing him like no one had ever kissed her – certainly not like Beau’s tepid kisses – and that thought alone, as well as the way Vegas slowly curled up his nose as if she was maybe too young or somehow beneath him, curdled Lilianna’s passion like only a good dose of shame could.

  “We can reach them over here,” Lila muttered and moved on.

  Vegas grabbed her wrist like maybe for a moment she’d misread the whole thing completely – but when Lila turned and met his eyes, he only looked mistrustful and fierce.

  “And then what?”

  Lila didn’t have an answer, so he spoke again.

  “Why’re we doin’ this for them?” he snarled. “Fuckin’ slave mentality. You playin’ me, girl. I only came in here ‘cause I couldn’t let you go in alone.”

  It didn’t seem appropriate for Lilianna to blush, but she did it anyway, even though she knew Vegas didn’t mean it as a compliment. But also true was the slightest playful downbeat smile he used to deliver it.

  “We still have to rescue Mercy.”

  “Mercy,” Vegas sighed. “Some chick I didn’t even know till ten minutes ago.”

  “Same as me though, right?”