Redeye (The Wonderland Cycle Book 2)

by Michael Shean

  They shouldered carefully through the double doors and onto the grocery floor. On the other end of the store were the front doors, which were on the right side of the front of the store. On the opposite side, at the front left corner, was the breach. “Keep your head down,” Violet said as they began to proceed down the nearest aisle toward the front of the store. “The Eye only knows if they’ve heard that fucker running his mouth.”

  “Yeah, well.” Bobbi shook her head, duck-walking her way along behind Violet. “Makes me wish I had drilled that fucker with more than a nerve crusher.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry to kill people.” Violet shook her head. “You seem like a nice girl. Like the Eye must have been. I could see it in your eyes when you talked about your friend – you haven’t done it before. Don’t make it a habit.”

  “Says the lady with the head museum downstairs.” Bobbi took a deep breath. “All right, so where do we go after this?”

  “I have a truck not far from here,” Violet said as they neared the front of the aisle, past a few moldering, rusted-through cans of Tinkle Treats. “We’ll go to where the Eye is camped from there. If there’s anything to be done with you, she’ll be able to tell.”

  As they came to the mouth of the aisle, they saw what they had dreaded. Coming into the breach were a knot of ferals, their lean forms lurching like the damned. Forget the corpse-machines of the Yathi. If there were any kind of cannibal zombies in the world, these would be it. Only problem was that they weren’t dead, and they sure as shit weren’t mindless.

  “I heard him come in here,” said one voice, ragged and deep like some demonic bull. “Heard him screamin’.”

  “You got good ears, then,” said another voice, this one high and thin. “I didn’t. Dickless screams about anything anyway, screams more than a bitch before you stick her.”

  “Sometimes like one after you do,” Bull said. He made a nasty sound that might have been a chuckle. “Wish that girl the Saint gave us wasn’t already dead. She had a good pussy. Nice and firm.”

  “Hairy like a goddamned cat, though,” said Shrill.

  “That’s okay,” said Bull, “I eat cat too. They taste the same with enough fire on ‘em.” He laughed again, and this time Shrill joined in. Bobbi shivered.

  “Shit.” Violet’s voice dropped very low, almost a whisper. “Come on, let’s go ahead. Hopefully we won’t hit those two assholes getting to the door.”

  “What about the shutters,” Bobbi asked.

  “You let me worry about those.”

  “At least you didn’t fuck this one before we cooked her, dead or no,” Shrill was saying. Their voices were passing by them down the left side; they must be going down the aisle. Good luck. “Only thing I want fulla cream when I bite into it’s a goddamned donut.”

  “Yeah, well, you lucky I don’t fuck you again, you shit. They don’t call me ‘splitter’ for nothin’!”

  “Don’t I fuckin’ know it,” Shrill muttered. His voice trailed off.

  They two women crept quietly toward the mouth of the aisle, Bobbi with her crusher and Violet with Diana’s gun in her hand. Once they reached it, Violet peeked her head out, looked one way and then the other. She waited a moment, then she gestured for Bobbi to follow her, but she didn’t go straight for the door. Instead she crouched down low and duck-walked out to the checkout counters, slouching along the nearest one. Bobbi looked both ways again, just to make sure, before she followed. The graying tile of the floor bore many stains, more than a few of the splotches being what looked like blood long dried. Bobbi made her way across to the checkout lane next to Violet.

  “All right,” Bobbi mouthed, “what now?”

  Violet gestured with the end of Diana’s pistol to the returns and information counter set in the front of the store. There was a low door there, only as high as a man’s waist, and it was open. As she gestured, the light spilling through the breach glinted off the pistol’s gleaming skin; Bobbi winced as it flashed in her eyes and had to brace herself against the counter to keep from falling over. Though she kept herself upright, however, her medical bag bumped softly against the plastic of the checkout lane.

  You shit, Bobbi growled at herself. Stupid, clumsy shit! Both women crouched there for a moment, frozen as they were— and then they heard something that put a bolt of fear through Bobbi’s heart that she could not ignore.

  “Hey there, hey there,” came the voice of Bull calling down the aisle behind them and to the left. “I hear someone want to get fucked in the ass.” The way he said ‘ass’, horrible and singsong like some overgrown child, made the hair stand up on Bobbi’s neck and her heart beat triple-time. She dialed up the crusher to three-quarter power, and when Violet gestured for her to move on toward the information counter, she only hesitated a moment.

  “I hear you sneaking around my place, Heron Wales,” said Violet, who drew herself into a full, proud stance; head up, shoulders back, her spine hardened with the iron of command. Bobbi looked over her shoulder a moment as she made it to the door in the counter and made to slip through it. Ugly as she might be, and however crazy, Violet made a hell of a priestess. “What are you doing trespassing in the hall of the Eye?”

  Bobbi opened the door as narrowly as possible to admit her, and then closed it behind her almost all the way; she watched through the narrow crack as Violet stood there waiting. Out of the aisle came two shapes, one tall and gaunt, the other maybe as tall as she was. It was hard to get a glimpse of the smaller one given the angle, but it looked as though the small man was carrying a fire axe. Both men were dressed in tattered civilian clothes, and both of them wore ragged balaclavas. The tall one, Bobbi noted, had cut a hole in the top to admit a crest of limp, greasy black hair.

  “Sorry to bother you, Saint,” said the tall man, whom Bobbi had known a moment ago as Bull; Heron Wales carried a combat shotgun, usable but in bad repair, and when he smiled he had the same filed teeth that Violet did. “Me an’ Willy done heard Dickless screamin’, had to go look.”

  “Your friend trespassed in the Shrine,” said Violet, her voice a peal of thunder now. “Eating heathen flesh, no less. You know what the penalty is for that.”

  Heron’s eyes squinted a bit. “You killed ‘im?”

  “No,” spat Violet, “but I should have. I know he can’t help but be curious. He’s knocked out in the back.”

  Heron made another face. “That doesn’t make me happy, Saint,” he said. His grimace was like the twitchings of rats in a sack, something ugly trying to get out but being held back by the thinnest wall of rotten burlap. If Violet pushed him too hard, Bobbi knew that this was going to get ugly.

  But Violet knew how to handle them, or so it seemed. “I’m sorry to hear it, Heron,” she said. “But I don’t have many rules, and he broke one. He’s lucky that he’s not right in the head – if it had been one of your boys, I’d have drilled him.” She lifted her hand, showing him Diana’s gun. “You know the Eye doesn’t tolerate people fucking around with the steeleyes.”

  “No.” This time it was Willy who talked. “Look, we just heard him hollerin’ and wanted to look-see. We didn’t mean to bother the Eye or nothin’.” Unlike his taller partner, Willy wouldn’t look at Diana; he looked straight ahead at the front of the store – right at the counter. Bobbi shrank away a bit in reflex to that deference. She did not want to be seen by the likes of them.

  “That’s just fine,” said Violet, whose tone changed when she talked to Willy. She could be as beneficent as she was harsh, the whistling quality of her breathing not softening the corners of her voice. “The Eye appreciates it, you know that, even if you’ve taken to eating the flesh of man.” She looked up at Heron then, who was looking back at her in defiance.

  “That’s no way to talk to him, Saint,” said Heron. The twitching of his lips grew worse; Bobbi was reminded of downed electrical cable and the danger that they implied. She glanced down at the nerve crusher, made sure the charging dial was where she’d set it.
“You need to—” And then he fell silent. Bobbi looked up again, and her blood froze. Willy was staring at her, or at least the crack through which she looked. His fingers were flexing on the handle of his axe. His eyes were wide, and his nostrils flexed as if he’d scented some good thing in the air.

  “Willy,” said Violet, in a careful tone that suggested that something very bad was about to happen, “what is it?”

  “There’s a girl over there,” said the little man, in a voice that was equal parts awed and hungry. Bobbi’s heart skipped a beat as she watched him; his face was set, as if he were suffering some extreme strain. Whatever faith these men had abandoned, it looked as if Willy was still unwilling to tempt the wrath of the Eye. For the moment.

  “A girl.” Heron looked to where Bobbi hid and smiled widely; his teeth were a mess of yellow-brown spikes. His voice had grown loud. “You’re holding out on us, Saint. I knew you had to have more than just that one bitch in here, that tank crashed out like it was.” From behind them, more shapes emerged out of the aisles; eager faces swam out of the darkness, ghoulish and excited by the prospect of new flesh. Heron knew the right words to summon them. “Come on out here, honey.”

  Anxiety flooded Bobbi’s body, but she did not rise. Violet stiffened further. “That’s enough, Heron,” she practically growled. “We’re going to see the Eye. She’s a messenger, you understand me? A prophet.”

  “The Eye doesn’t have prophets,” Heron sneered. Willy stared straight ahead again, as if looking toward Bobbi’s position had been causing him physical pain. Lines of tension spread throughout his haggard face, and his knuckles were white on the handle of his axe.

  “First time for everything,” Violet said. “New god, new experiences. Don’t fuck with me on this.” For all her bravado, however, Bobbi knew that if whatever gambit she was playing didn’t work out, they were both fucked. There were too many; Diana’s gun didn’t have enough bullets for them all and Bobbi’s crusher didn’t have nearly enough charge. It would be just her kind of karma to be doomed now by having saved herself from Diana earlier.

  Heron was buying it. “All right,” he said, “Fine. But we’re still hungry. She doesn’t need her arms or legs to give the message, right?”

  “She doesn’t get touched.” Violet’s voice was made of lead. “Period.”

  Bobbi couldn’t let her stand out there alone anymore. Violet was going to get killed, and it was going to be because of her, and crazy as fuck or not the feral “priestess” was trying to help her out. “Enough,” she said, and she rose slowly behind the service counter. “I’m right here.”

  “We-ell-ell now….” Heron’s expression twisted into a mask of horrible delight, a shark scenting blood in the water. From behind the balaclava his dark eyes glittered as he swept his gaze over Bobbi’s torso. “Nice and smooth, pale…ooh. Big tits, too. You’re beautiful, girlie.” He looked to Violet. “I see why you wanted to give her to the Eye. You’re definitely going to give her to us, though.” His tongue, pocked with sores, dragged lewdly over his thin lips. He was practically drooling. “She’s just too tasty to waste.”

  “You’ll have to kill me first.” Violet’s voice was still hard, but even Bobbi heard the waver in it now. No doubt an experienced predator like Heron knew what was coming now.

  “I got no problem with that. Willy!” Heron began to unshoulder his shotgun, and his smaller partner snapped out of his trance. He stared at Bobbi, his eyes glazed, and he unlimbered his axe.

  And then—as these things often do— everything happened at once. Bobbi acted first, which upon reflection, would surprise her. She fired the crusher at Willy, who was struck in the face; he went down, his balaclava erupting into flame, his horrible grin vanished beneath the convulsions that wracked his body. Meanwhile Violet opened up on Heron, and there was no chance of missing – she pumped two rounds in his gut and he went down howling. “Fuck you, you motherfuckers,” she shouted, dashing back and firing again into the crowd of ferals that were surging forward; they fell back, cursing and spitting, and Violet used the time to throw herself backward across the checkout counter in the direction of the breach. “Let’s go,” she shouted Bobbi’s way, but she didn’t stop to look over shoulder as she sprinted toward freedom.

  But Bobbi didn’t need the invitation. As Violet shot into the crowd she had already burst through the door of the customer service counter and was coming out to do the same thing. The two of them hurtled toward the open breach while the fiends came back, howling as they came after. As they neared the shattered wall of the grocery, the roar of gunfire pealed from behind them; Bobbi got a face full of shattered masonry. Pain lanced through her face; she staggered, blood running into her eye, but she did not stop. She could not stop now, even if she wanted to – the dwindling light of the afternoon shone down from overhead, and the lizard nerves in her brain drove her legs like piston. Escape was all she thought about in this moment, escape and freedom from the madness, or at the very least a reprieve.

  By the time they were halfway across the parking lot, however, it was clear that they were running out of energy and speed. Bobbi’s leg was screaming again; it had remembered the jolt it had gotten from the nerve crusher, and now the muscles were trembling as if it had happened all over again. Her face burned as well, and she felt blood running down the side of it. Her eye was swelling shut and her lungs burned with the fires of exertion. Violet was hardly in any shape to be running around all over the place, either. As they charged toward the edge of the parking lot, the skinny ghoul of a woman in the lead and behind her a wave of hooting monsters, Bobbi wondered if this was going to be the end for her.

  Bobbi pulled herself up on one arm. Her leg was numb now, and it wasn’t getting any better. “My leg isn’t working,” she said through gritted teeth; pain lanced through her face and shoulder. She reached out and found her crusher, but the charge light was flashing red. No juice. Little ammo. How many were there, the ferals that rushed across the blacktop toward them? Fifteen? Twenty? Violet’s shooting brought one down, then another – still they came, undaunted, and Bobbi knew that was all for them. “Better save two of those rounds for the both of us, or at least one for me. You go.”

  This was how it was going to end. Bobbi felt something new, hot and liquid on her face – tears, she realized, not blood. The madmen were coming toward them as if in slow motion, moving through the water that reality had suddenly become— and she could see them, every detail and line, as if they were high-definition images conjured into being from some heavenly holographic projector above. Here came the death scene, she knew. The end of her movie. The end of Violet’s. She wondered if it was going to hurt. She wondered where Tom was. She wished he was here to save her again, or at least to hold her hand.

  Violet was shouting something— Bobbi didn’t know what— and then the sky pealed with thunder. It’d be about right for there to be a storm just as she died, Bobbi thought. A storm, hail, rain…

  And then the ferals began to fall.

  A shadow passed over her from the opposite side of Violet, a shadow that might have been a mountain had it not been running on two legs. As if in a dream, the monstrous form of Marcus Scalli came thundering past her and toward the waiting throng. He carried his rifle, but there was something wrong with it; the silencer was gone, leaving a flanged nub that spewed fire like a broken gas main as he threw down a curtain of death before him. Bobbi watched them die as they ran; Scalli skidded to a stop just a few feet beyond her, planting himself as he cut them down, as they fell away one direction or another. It took frighteningly little time to mow down a body of people in motion, especially if they were packed so close together as they were. In what felt like but a moment they were alone before a hedge of tangled, bloody bodies.

  “Come on, girl.” Another voice, this one behind her; a hand reached down to take her arm and start to lift her. The voice, she realized, was Harry Mason. “On your feet. We need to get out of here.”

  Bobbi sho
uld have been frightened. Diana’s words were not forgotten, even after all that happened in the moment. But instead of fear she only felt a great exhaustion fall around her shoulders. “My leg went out,” she heard herself say, but she didn’t look up at him. She was busy looking at Scalli, who walked among the fallen ferals putting bullets in whoever wasn’t already dead. He was mechanical as he dispatched the dying. Thorough. In that moment she knew that what Mason had told her before was true; he had been trained by some kind of military, though one for whom ruthlessness seemed to be part of standard methodology.

  She was very aware in this moment how little she actually knew about the people she was supposed to call her allies, less even than the hidden monsters that she had set out into the Old City to destroy. Mason’s hand left her arm and came back down with a dermal patch which he slapped against her neck. The warm, rosy waves of endorphin analogue rippled through her body, killing the pain, blissfully disconnecting her from the rest of her body. “Come on, girl,” he barked, and he pulled her to her feet. The drugs let her walk just fine, although to be truthful she could walk on bloody stumps and not give a shit with that kind of juice. It was like riding around in a machine. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Aye aye, Cap’n,” said Bobbi, easing herself slowly to her feet. Her leg wobbled a bit, but it held. She looked at Mason; he’d been seeing some action himself, from the way his face was chewed up. There were cuts on his lip and over his eye, caked with dried blood, and a massive bruise covered much of the left side of his face. “Jesus,” Bobbi tittered dreamily, “You look terrible.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll talk about that later.” Mason turned back to Violet, who was looking at the three of them with new wariness in her eyes. “Who’s this?”

  “That’s Violet.” Bobbi cleared her throat, trying to force some focus. “She saved my life.”

  “What happened to Diana?”

  Bobbi and Violet looked at one another. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she couldn’t help the flippant tone the endorphin rush put in her voice. “She tried to kill me. She was…” She fell silent then, and looked at Scalli. His expression hardened. She’d tell him more later on.