After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution

by Hately, Warren

  “Vegas, no,” she moaned.

  Lilianna retrieved the fire ax Vegas had traded for the Colt .45.

  “We ain’t got no choice,” he told her.

  Lila tightened her grip, trying to familiarize herself with the weight of the deadly fire ax knowing within seconds she’d need to use it. Her eyes adjusted to the orange light now pouring in, and in front of them, the dissolving shadows revealed what she’d feared – twenty or more Furies circling the quartet of survivors emblazoned by the outside light. The ravenous, feral undead hunters surrounded them like a slow-moving weather system made of teeth and daggered claws, and inadvertent breaths from the numerous dead lungs sent ghastly plumes into the air around them as Vegas moved to the edge of their perimeter and fired a headshot at one of the intruders between him and Mercy’s Jeep.

  “Vegas!”

  Lilianna knew she had to stop him, while almost furious at herself at the same time. Her principles risked their survival, but if she abandoned them now, Lilianna felt she might as well give up and let herself be killed and cursed back into life as just another of the monsters threatening around them.

  And she was angry because she also didn’t want to die.

  Vegas fired again as Lilianna went to follow, and the second Fury shot clean through one eye was one fatality too much for the neighboring Dead. By silent accord, the most agile of the Furies charged in from all directions and Lilianna had to come about with the ax – and only just in time – to deflect a gruesomely-wounded teenager. The ax bit into the teen’s shoulder and he flailed away, throwing himself at the other male survivor by dint of proximity.

  The teen’s new victim, with a red beard and complexion that only now made him obviously the brother of their other female companion, already knelt, furiously rooting among the bodies even as more Furies piled atop him. Incredibly, the man barely defended himself, retaining hold of the useless AR15 instead as he gave a yell of delight and pulled a full magazine from the harness of the corpse beneath him. He rammed the ammunition into place, ignored the teeth clamping onto his cheek, his leg, and one arm, twisting around on his back to blow out the brains of the nearest Fury standing over him. His sister wrestled with another Fury, shrieking uselessly as it and then two more of their attackers pinned her to the carpet of dead. Her brother grunted, pulled his gun free once more, and the weapon accidentally discharged and he shot his sister through the head.

  The look on the man’s face was as horrific as anything else before it. And he simply surrendered backwards at his tragic mistake and let the remaining Furies pull him back to the concrete and then apart.

  Lilianna flailed blindly with the ax, the air thick with attackers, and blood exploded rankly in her face again as she heard the ethanol lit and Vegas’ booming roar, “Everyone get back!”

  He hadn’t realized everyone wasn’t as many as it used to be.

  Lilianna fell to a knee, got back up again instantly, and chopped the closest Fury in the leg hard enough to break its thigh bone. Without a solid femur to keep it upright, the enraged monster collapsed atop another corpse with its eyes still blinking open. Lila ducked yet more hands raking at her head and swung the ax in a wide arc as she tried to close the space to Vegas, guided only by the roar of his pilfered .45. Hands clutched at her feet and one of her shoes came off, then Lila tripped backwards over her newly-dead survivor companion as well as the twin Furies feasting on him. Her hand clasped the AR15’s barrel as she crabwalked desperately backwards, one of the Furies hissing right in her face. But Lila took the gun with her, felt Vegas pull her to her feet by one hand even as a woman with blackened eyes sunk her teeth into his other forearm.

  Lila thunked the ax into the woman’s head one-handed and jerked the rifle into her other elbow, dropping the ax, not knowing Vegas held onto it too, freeing himself of the dead Fury’s jaws as they desperately stepped back-to-back. Lila kicked out at the clutching hands. Vegas chopped at the ground with the ax. The Colt boomed its final round and a head exploded. Lilianna got the rifle in a feasible grip. The muzzle coughed fire and the closest Fury staggered away with meat blasted from its throat and shoulder, and Vegas kicked away another Fury which leapt out of the darkness at them both.

  The burning ethanol cast a growing brilliance on their last-ditch stand yet made it clear neither of them were at a safe distance as the flames licked up and over and across the dead and mangled bodies and then leapt like some kind of angel to the source of the fuel at the upturned Jeep’s rear tanks.

  Lilianna pushed Vegas in front of her, and both of them towards the exit.

  The licking flames roared louder, and then the noise was cancelled by a barrage of gunfire just outside the loading bay. Lila added to the inexplicable clamor as she gunned down two of the nearest Furies as they whirled to block her and Vegas’ escape, and another of the monsters hurrying in at her from outside exploded in clods of meat instead, dead enough that they could run past its one-armed, headless corpse as it fell to its knees and they raced outside.

  Denny Greerson and a half-dozen men and women almost didn’t understand it when Lila and Vegas yelled, “Get down!” at the same time.

  Then the Jeep in the warehouse behind them exploded.

  *

  LILIANNA HIT SOMETHING on the way down or else it hit her, because she sat up dazed and confused and with a trickle of blood running down the middle of her face. She lifted distracted fingertips to the blood, tracing it up to her scalp, wincing, and looking across to where Vegas curled up against the bottom of the loading bay.

  Someone was crying. The tears were punctuated by several more gunshots. A silken gray smoke haze clung to everything, filling Lila’s watering eyes as she managed upright. The sobs came from a woman, but the ringing in Lilianna’s ears didn’t admit much else.

  Denny Greerson materialized out of the fog hauling the crying trooper, a woman who’d taken a chunk of metal shrapnel to one knee. He rested her against the scorched landing as flames licked out within the theater’s interior casting hellish light on ever more moving figures.

  Lila glanced back at Vegas who still wasn’t moving.

  “There’s more in there,” she said and raised her voice beyond her own muffled shock. “Greerson? There’s –”

  “I know,” he said. “Shut up.”

  He didn’t say it meanly, too busy checking around on the others in his crew. Two troopers scuttled across to help Vegas. Another two troopers held rifles to ward their six. A third trooper, actually just a female Administration officer in a polo shirt, fired a burst from an AR15 into something else moving out of sight. Lilianna flinched, but that was all.

  The ethanol burning crackled, at which point Lila’s defeat became total, listening to the low howling noises starting to come as Mercy was roasted alive inside the upturned Jeep. Lila didn’t even have the energy to clutch her own face as she registered the dead certainty that now truly nothing else could be done for the doomed girl. Yet more nearby sobbing revealed itself as the serving woman Janice, clutched from behind by Vic, and Mercy’s shrill and frantic screams the source of the older woman’s anguish piled on top of everything else she’d seen.

  “Mercy, no,” Lila softly murmured.

  “Not much mercy here,” Greerson snarled in misunderstanding. He clicked his fingers to the men with Vegas as they sat him up. “More ethanol barrels. Bring ‘em here before they catch fire anyway. In the depot. Go.”

  Then he looked back at Lilianna, trying to crack a smile as he strode back to her, carefully picking his way between the debris which included scorched body parts. Then he offered her a hand up. She hadn’t realized she was on her knees again and now Lilianna took the chance to return shakily to her feet. She nodded her thanks. The Safety Chief then put a hand on her shoulder and massaged it.

  “You OK, princess?”

  Lila jerked her shoulder from his grasp, and Greerson’s nice guy routine faltered at the look she offered. Reconstituting himself with a more official glare, he wa
s about to speak when Vegas cut over him adding insult to injury.

  “She doesn’t like it when we call her ‘princess’,” he said with a grin.

  And Lila really didn’t. She turned her epic scowl on Vegas too and felt whatever battlefield affection for him wither like someone had salted the ground.

  The noise of the fuel drums getting carried towards them filled the awkward silence, and Lilianna walked off a pace, nodding to the other survivors, and then continued past the twenty-or-more recently slaughtered Furies littering the lot.

  It wasn’t planned, but her exit led Lilianna unerringly towards where her friend Montana lay, twisted in her final repose. A bullet had collapsed her friend’s skull above one eye, but the look on her face that remained was nothing like her innocent, well-meaning roommate. One of the girl’s slender breasts was exposed by her torn shirt, blood sticking the fabric to her side. Lila gently knelt, considered how best to farewell Montana, then finally tugged her shirt closed for modesty if nothing else.

  The problem with the aftermath was knowing every one of them was innocent, at least in life. She could’ve driven herself mad with grieving thoughts at that point, but a raised hand caught her eye and it was like someone hooked her up to a car battery as she saw Beau grinning and jogging towards her down the access road.

  Chapter 2

  TOM MARCHED THROUGH the last of the onlookers. Many were clearly now getting the message that standing around gawking at whatever the fuck’d happened to the Council meeting they wisely chose not to attend wasn’t necessarily their safest plan for the night. The handful of people coming the wrong way towards him took one look at Tom, his grim-set demeanor, the look of violence on his face, and maybe the Ak47 he clutched in one arm, and then hesitated, despite the pull of gravity from the unknown disaster back at the dinner theater in the street beyond.

  “You don’t want to go up there,” he said to several he passed. “Get in your homes. Lock it down. There’s Furies on the loose.”

  He groaned at a man just now coming out the closest tenement with what appeared to be two young children and a teenager still in their dressing gowns and homemade leather moccasins, and the father got that message too. He turned his children around, and heckled at an older woman coming out the building after him, and after that, more and more people jogged past them from the direction of the theater. Other survivors, clear now of the first disaster, realized simply escaping the Council building wasn’t enough to guarantee they’d see out the night. And the looks on those faces were additional warning lights for those other few spectators still determined to approach. Tom bawled a few more choice expletives, then twisted the rifle’s strap around one of his forearms as he started in a jog as well.

  A bunch of motherfucking people were going to die.

  *

  IT WAS ALMOST impossible, but Tom kept valiantly trying to push thoughts of his son out of his mind. The damned boy was the whole reason for any of this – for almost everything that’d ever happened, Lucas, and his sister as well – but collapsing into that tectonic abyss of panic, hopelessness and despair wouldn’t accomplish anything, regardless of whether there was anything to be “accomplished” at all. Tom was on overdrive, skull pounding with adrenal fatigue, eyes literally bloodshot with rage as he checked the hunting knife was back safe in its sheath, and then he increased the pace and angled away down the next side street.

  He skirted The Mile as the Curfew bells rang out early and then kept on ringing. It was weirdly surreal, as he turned into the next block, the street so close to the Fury attack and yet completely deserted, the bells pealing out overhead, and the sense of a storm moments before the rain breaks down from the heavens.

  The peace didn’t last long. Tom heard and then glanced back at a man running noisily through the cross street behind him, and after the slapping footfalls receded, a sprinting Fury clad in trooper’s garb hurtled after the man.

  Tom kept jogging.

  A terrified older man stepped cautiously from the lee of some nearby shelters and looked like he had a question, but Tom barked at him instead.

  “Where’s the ethanol plant from here?”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said. “What was all the shooting –”

  “Get back inside,” Tom glowered. “There’s Furies.”

  Their noisy exchanged conjured several more worried faces from nearby doors and shanty tents set up crowding the fenced front yards of the next few buildings, and Tom repeated his question to anyone who’d listen. At last, a young guy with a shaved head pointed him to the next side street and offered vague but accurate instructions. Tom nodded his thanks, ignored the fast-coming questions, and put on even more pace.

  He couldn’t sustain a run for long, but it got him clear of several more blocks. He breathlessly motioned the small knots of Citizens in the street to get into hiding, but he followed the landmarks in the direction of Brown Town. Within minutes, his pace slowed to his customary fast stalk as he headed stubbornly in the direction of the wire-fenced ethanol plant.

  Orange security lights and a few whiter globes showed the fifteen-foot fence around a two-story brick building with a hard metal external staircase and solar panels across its roofs. Street trees lining the footpath with their skeletal Fall arms hanging overhead had only survived the previous winter because they had so many structures built around them they couldn’t be spared. The back of the enclosed compound was fenced by tall neighboring brick walls, a newer, more recent metal workshop, and then a far row of distant wooden pickets that overlooked a narrow turnaround driveway big enough for trucks, crowded on one side by a huge array of metal tanks. A ladder climbed the outside of the cluster, and pipes traveled between it and the upper floor of the brick building. Electric lights hung from cables stretching overhead, though only a few worked.

  Tom strode across to the wooden shelters and shut-up trading stalls on the sidewalk. A woman with a young child, an old man with a walking stick, two pregnant teenage girls, and a heavyset black man armed with a nailed baseball bat watched him fiercely as he approached.

  Tom held the gun out level, away from himself, and nodded to the ethanol facility behind them after a second’s eye contact with the man with the bat.

  “Furies are on the loose,” he said. “Attacked the Council meeting. There’s a lot of people dead. You need to get somewhere secure. This ain’t it.”

  The black guy asked, “You going in there?” He gestured to their backdrop.

  “I am,” Tom said. “I wouldn’t encourage following.”

  “Good brick walls,” the old man with the cane said.

  “Like I said.” Tom voiced it like it was a threat. “Anyone in there?”

  “Working all the time, man,” the other bystander said. “Who knows?”

  “I was hoping you might,” Tom answered. He eyed the closest tree and tracked it back between the wooden shelters, moving across studying the shitty architecture and looking for a place where he could climb up without bringing down the whole lot. “Get to safety,” he said.

  He slung the rifle over his back, again checking the ammunition pack swinging from his side contained the requisite curved magazines for the foreign gun. Then he focused on climbing and not breaking his neck, stepping across onto the top of one of the wire fence poles, holding onto the strongest nearest branch and then jumping down on the other side.

  There was at least one electric light on in one of the building’s upper rooms. Tom held his breath a moment, listening to any disturbances and really only able to hear the disgruntled nearby residents debating what they were going to do and grumping about Tom’s clambering over the fence.

  So he advanced on the brick building.

  *

  THE RED-PAINTED staircase looked rusted and fucked, as likely to give him away as bear his weight all the way to the top. Tom held the Ak47 cautiously, and eased around the other side of the structure which fronted another gravel driveway churned with deep ruts full of inky water
. A solitary orange globe burned over the old front door. Sandbags framed the entrance.

  Tom continued in his circuit, checking upstairs windows and unable to see anything through the security-barbed, boarded-up ground floor panes. A more ordinary door nestled in the bricks just around the next turn, now at the rear of the property, and Tom gently tried it and screwed up his mouth realizing it was locked. If he kept going, he’d be around to the fire escape, and he let himself advance further that way only to check out across the lot to the edge of the big ethanol tanks and their appendages, and beyond them the metal shed of the workshop also showing light.

  The light flickered as Tom looked that way, then it flickered again, disturbed by a figure passing back and forth in front of the source. Taking one long last glance to make sure the rest of the internal courtyard was clear, Tom then skirted the back wooden fencing of the lot to reach the side wall of the workshop. A metallic tinkering noise rang out in the silence.

  The City’s bells had stopped.

  He’d nearly crept along the whole side wall before a man in overalls walked out of the workshop in front of him completely unaware Tom was there. Tom hesitated a moment, no real clear eye for strategy, and then stepped out and clubbed the man in the back of the head with the gun.

  “What the fuck?”

  The man clutched his bleeding skull and turned around drawing a revolver from inside his clothes. Tom’s eyes widened. He battered the man with the wooden rifle stock again. The pistol fell from the worker’s hand. Tom hoped that’d be it, but the sagging man pulled a nasty-looking knife from his belt and drove into him, and Tom had to quickly twist aside, batting third-time lucky to the side of the man’s head.

  The worker gave a grunt, turning about even as his eyes closed, and then when he hit the deck, those eyes flew open again and he fought to stand up even as Tom’s shadow crossed him and the Ak47 stock took him between the eyes.