by Mike Staton
It’d make it, ever so slightly, better if she managed to free her hands and fell down to the ground.
Kat closed her eyes and let her head sink forward as she heard the door latch behind her click as someone twisted the knob.
It creaked gently as baritone opened it. Kat relaxed against her restraints.
“Huh,” Baritone grunted. “You can stop pretendin’ to be asleep.”
Kat chose not to respond. She focused on listening to the man behind her. His muffled footsteps, heavy enough to sound through the carpet, announced his approach.
A large, calloused hand closed tight on her wrist and spun her roughly to face him.
The sudden and abrupt movement sent jolts of pain through her already tortured arms. She let out a cry of pain and barely remained atop the stool. She came to a stop, panting and barely holding back tears once more.
She stared at Hall. He looked slightly different without his helmet on, but she recognized him the moment she saw him. His blocky, strong, clean-shaven jaw attached to an equally square and flat face. His high and tight added to the impression that his head was composed of nothing more than right angles. His nose looked as though it’d been broken at least once, if not several times.
He let go of her wrist and let his hand drift down her arm. Never before had she felt so glad to have full length sleeves.
His hand parted from her arm at the elbow and touched her cheek. She flinched away from his touch and staggered as the stool shifted underneath her.
“What?” Hall grunted at her. “Don’t like my touch? Certainly seemed to enjoy smashing your hand against me.”
Kat brought her gaze back to his. She stared right back into his dark, brown, eyes. “Damned right I did. Pity your buddy stopped the party early.”
She’d been prepared to crush one of his three trachea when a truck hit her. The final moments of that fight, flashbang and everything, flashed through her mind’s eye.
Anger flashed through his dark eyes as he leaned in closer to her. “Turn about’s fair play.”
His hand slammed between her legs, roughly stroking against her womanhood through her jeans. Kat let out a gasp and jerked away from him.
“Huh uh, where you goin’?” Hall dropped the metal canteen from his other hand and lashed out to grab her ass.
Kat squirmed and jerked away from him once more.
“You know you like this.” Hall leaned closer to her as his hand squeezed her ass tight.
Kat rocked forward and slammed the crown of her head against the bridge of his nose. Hall staggered back as his nose exploded with blood. His hands shot to his face as he staggered back and fell to a knee. He blinked a few times as blood seeped through his hand. It drizzled down onto the brown carpet and his olive drab t-shirt.
“Fuck you,” Kat gasped out. She wished her voice didn’t sound so husky.
Hall held his nose with one hand and closed his free hand around the canteen he’d dropped. Hall flicked the canteen lid open with a quick twist of his thumb. “You’re gonna regret that.”
“Ain’t nothin’ you can do to me tha’d—“
He rose and lashed the contents out and into her face, cutting her words short. The cold water was a harsh slap that ripped her breath away. He flicked his wrist again and splashed her once more before spinning to walk away. “This ain’t over.”
Kat shook the water off her face and pressed her face against her hoodie covered arm. She shivered as the water soaked into her clothes and silently stared daggers into Hall’s back as he walked away. At least he left the electric lantern he’d brought with him.
Hall slammed the door behind him and Kat sank, despite the protest of her arms, in her restraints. She let her eyes close and fought the tears back, embracing the rage and hate born for the man who’d just left the room. He’d grabbed her in ways she’d not let anyone touch her and his touch lingered well past his departure.
She listened to his receding steps. She lifted her head and rose on her bare tip-toes. The stomping footsteps paused and the creak of the door leading out of the basement opened.
“Th’fuck happened to you?”
“Bitch didn’t appreciate the water I offered,” Hall snapped in response.
The door slammed shut cutting off whatever other conversation occurred.
* * *
Percival’s foot slammed against the door right next to the knob. The door popped open with a crack of wood and whine of bent metal. He swept the room with his M16 before storming into the building. He moved a few steps forward.
“Despite a locked door, Mister Polz, this is not the location of your quarry,” Andrina whispered from somewhere deeper in the building. “They will be where I am not.”
Percival let out a series of curses.
“Hurt yourself?” Lieutenant Adams moved in behind him. She swept the room as well before she lowered her carbine.
“No. The dead’re here. Don’t ask how I know, the stench maybe, just… trust me.” Percival turned to face the exit to the room. It was an office building, with rows of cubicles, desks, and blank, dead computers. It reminded him of the accounting office he’d fled through when trying to save Evan.
“We should check it. Maybe they keep a cluster of zombies nearby just to throw people off.” Lieutenant Adams moved deeper into the office building.
“We’re wasting time,” Percival muttered. He didn’t offer any other protest as he couldn’t see any true fault to her words. It was simply the third building they’d searched and the sun’d already crept well past the midday point. He felt, knew, for certain that nothing living outside of the pair of them, were in the building.
He followed Lieutenant Adams as she stalked across the room, her carbine up and at the ready. Percival followed after her, his M16 pointed down at the floor. She moved to the door, checked it once, and swiftly kicked it open.
He wasn’t surprised to find locked doors in the office building. Not much of immediate value, food, water, medical supplies, could be scrounged from the place so it had probably been left untouched since the start of the apocalypse when it was abandoned.
The scavenger portion of his mind whispered the usefulness of the cubicle walls and how they could be used in reinforcing a checkpoint or simply to set up dormitories with semi-private rooms. He shushed that portion of his brain as he slid through the door after Lieutenant Adams. The door led to a short hallway that branched to a stairwell. Inspirational posters about teamwork decorated the walls. He closed his eyes as he caught up with Lieutenant Adams. He focused on listening to Andrina.
“We’re waiting for you, Mister Polz.” Andrina announced her presence by pounding on a door somewhere above them.
“If you want to find the zombies, they’re above us.” Percival tipped his head skyward.
Lieutenant Adams nodded. She moved away from the door at the end of the hall and backtracked to where he stood, by the stairwell.
“Ladies first.”
“You’re such the gentleman.” Lieutenant Adams moved ahead of him. She kept her carbine up as she climbed the stair.
Percival trailed after her, his M16 up and aimed to the side. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to accidentally shoot Lieutenant Adams in the back. The stairwell terminated in a door. The door rattled with a steady pounding of undead fists.
“No squealer, apparently,” Lieutenant Adams whispered back to him. She slid her carbine to rest on her backside and drew a long-bladed knife.
“They don’t utter a feeding moan without seeing someone. Even if their eyes are gone already. It’s… freaky.” Percival slung his M16 onto his back and pulled his sledgehammer out. “Quick and quiet like.”
Lieutenant Adams nodded, slid to the side of the door, and wrapped her fingers around the knob.
Percival moved up to the landing and hefted his sledgehammer.
“We smell your blood. Come join us. We’ll make it as quick as possible,” Andrina pleaded from the other side of the door.
&nb
sp; Lieutenant Adams held up her knife hand with three fingers raised. She silently counted. As she closed her fist around her knife’s hilt, she twisted the door knob and Percival gave it a swift kick.
The door popped open, knocking back several corpses. He took a step and swept his sledgehammer through the air. The crunch of bone and squish of brain permeated the air as he drove the first zombie down and cleared the way for Lieutenant Adams to get into the fray. She swept into the room after Percival.
Where he and his sledgehammer were brute force, she and her long knife were swift efficiency.
She swept the knife up. Outstretched fingers dropped to the floor. She pivoted under the offending limb, and severed tendons and connective muscle along the back of the zombie’s shoulder. The arm dropped limply to the creature’s side as it turned, clumsily to face her.
In the intervening half second, Lieutenant Adams ducked once more and came up with the vicious knife version of an uppercut. She drove the tip of her knife up under the jaw and angled backward. The zombie’s teeth clicked together and she whipped the knife back out to the side.
The inanimate corpse sloughed off her blade. Lieutenant Adams moved as a whirlwind of precise death toward the next zombie.
Percival didn’t envy the living man who encountered her swift, sharp blade. As her first zombie hit the ground, he pivoted toward his second. He brought his sledgehammer up as it moved toward him in a staggering gait. He waited the half second it took for it to close enough to be in perfect range for him to rain his sledgehammer down. He brought the weapon down in a tight arc that slammed into the front of the zombie’s head. He carried through with his swing as though he were shooting to win the “Test Your Strength” game at a carnival. His hammer crunched through skin, bone, and brain matter. It caught, slightly, on the lower jaw as it ripped the zombie’s face clean off and drove body and missing face into the floor.
Percival twisted his hammer from beneath the zombie and drove a vicious stomp to the back of the thing’s neck. Just in case it’d somehow survived the massive trauma to its frontal cortex. He pivoted and caught sight of a zombie a couple of cubicles down.
“There will always be more of us.” Andrina jerked her head back. The bloody hole in her forehead from the sniper’s bullet cascaded crimson blood toward him.
The gore smacked into his shoulder. The same one he’d allowed to be bitten and condemn him to joining the force of undead. Something cracked in Percival. He let out a near animalistic growl and sprinted toward Andrina.
“You’re! Fucking! Dead!” He whipped the sledgehammer around in a low arc as the Andrina zombie turned away from him. The hammer’s head slammed into the rotting knee of the zombie and tore it free. The half limb tottered into the cubicle and under some long abandoned desk amidst a spray of gore as the zombie it had been attached to flopped to the ground.
He stomped quickly forward, crushing a gore spattered hand under his boot heel, and brought his sledgehammer up. “You don’t get to use her image.”
He brought the sledgehammer down hard. He missed his target, the bloody hole at the base of the skull where the sniper’s bullet had exited, and slammed the head of his hammer down on the back her neck. Rotted meat, bone, and sinew separated under the force of the impact and the head rocketed off into the dark on a dark geyser. The stump spewed fetid zombie chunks onto the floor.
Percival took several deep breaths, cooling his anger. Beneath him was a skinny, male, zombie with a protruding gut full of munched zombie bits. A spitter through and through.
He backed up a step, dragging his hammer through the gore. His forearm burned with the damage he’d redone to the existing injury there. He’d probably popped a stitch. He drove a stiff kick into the thing’s gut. It felt like kicking a bag of congealed gelatin.
He turned away. They’d need to find the head and dispose of it, but for now it wasn’t of any consequence. He moved back up the false hallway to the doorway.
He rounded the corner to find Lieutenant Adams straddling the final zombie, both knees on its arms. She jabbed her knife down to the side of its neck as it gnashed its teeth at her. With a swift rocking motion, she brought the blade down to the floor and crunched through connective tissues and bone. The zombie’s head rolled away.
Percival took it upon himself to swipe his sledgehammer, with his offhand to avoid further injuring his injured arm, through the air and splatter the snapping head across the carpet. He dragged the hammer out of the destroyed head and propped it against the closest cubicle wall.
He thrust his good arm down toward Lieutenant Adams. She grabbed it and let him haul her to her feet.
“You good?” She bent to wipe her knife off on the clothing of the last zombie. “Heard you yell.”
“Might’ve popped some stitches again, but I’m fine otherwise.” Percival looked over his shoulder toward the felled spitter. “Just felt like I ran into an old friend.”
“You good?”
It felt as though her gaze were drilling through her helmet and his and burrowing into his mind. “I’m good. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to put down a friend.”
Lieutenant Adams nodded. Her gaze dropped to her knife’s sheath as she slid her knife away. “Never gets easier.”
“Hopin’ we don’t have to do that to any more friends.” Percival hoisted his sledgehammer. “Have a head to find before we leave. Think this place is a bust.”
“I agree. And we’re short on time as is. Sun’ll be setting here soon.” Lieutenant Adams ripped a strip of clothing from the corpse at her feet. “No time to hunt down a snapping head.”
“It’ll take only a few seconds and we owe it to other survivors not to leave a biting landmine behind.” Percival cradled his injured arm and flipped his sledgehammer to his shoulder. He certainly didn’t enjoy the image of a zombie head landmine.
“What can’t wait is possibly your arm. You’re going to have nerve damage at this rate.” Lieutenant Adams didn’t wait for him to offer her his arm. She just reached out and took his wrist.
She pushed the jacket out of the way to be able to see the bandages beneath. No additional red splotches had appeared. While the wound and muscles of his arm ached, it didn’t seem that he’d undone Kat’s careful work. “Looks good to me.”
“Told you I was fine.”
Lieutenant Adams grunted in response. She waved him off. “Go on back to the entrance. Figure out the next building to check. I’ll disarm the biting landmine.”
Percival let out a sigh. At this point, they were firing blind into the dark. “Sure.”
“Percival?”
“What?”
“We’ll find her.”
Chapter 24
Kat stared daggers at Corporal Peter Simon. He sat before her on a metal folding chair with a clipboard and pen in hand. He had a gentle face, muscled with hardly any fat on him, but all gentle curves and pleasantness. His tone even spoke to his pleasantness with a gentle friendliness that belied his actual intent.
He wore a full set of BDUs, complete with his name over his heart and a military cap on the floor next to the chair. The entire getup was shades of digital, army green camouflage. He was physically smaller than Hall, who stood by the door with tree trunks for arms folded over his chest and a scowl on his face. But, he exuded an air of authority that Hall didn’t possess.
The latter hadn’t bothered to change out of the shirt he’d worn during his previous encounter with Kat. The blood from his nose had set into a brown stain on the olive drab shirt. He gave her a sardonic smile when he noticed her gaze had drifted to him.
“Miss Holter.” Simon snapped his fingers, drawing her attention back to him. “How many people are you with?”
“My answer isn’t going to change.” Kat danced a little on her toes. The assholes had raised her restraints by just enough that she almost entirely dangled from the chain. Only the tips of her toes touched the stool beneath her. “Katherine Holter. Cadet Corporal. Two-two-four
, five-eight, three-eight-two-two.”
Simon folded one leg over the other and rested his clipboard on his lap. “Where are you from?”
Kat closed her eyes and shifted her feet slightly once more. “Katherin—“
The ice cold, splash of water ripped the words from her lips with the vicious efficiency of a skilled surgeon removing a tumor. She shivered as the cold water soaked through her layers and jerked on her chain. Her teeth chattered and she opened her eyes to glare at Simon.
Hall returned to his spot by the door. He set a small bucket down on the carpet and openly stared at her.
“Miss Ho—“
“C-c-cadet Corporal H-ho-Holter.” Kat cut him off. “Co…Cor… Corporal Simon, w-we could be far more… more civilized than this.”
“Your current predicament is a result of your open hostility toward us.” Simon took a deep breath, clearly meant to give the impression that he was calming himself. His facial expression plastered over his gentle jawline and sloping nose didn’t change. “What we need to know is who else might be out there with violent tendencies. I find it hard to believe that you’ve come here all on your own without any other friends.”
“M-m-my, my, my.” Kat stopped herself, swallowed and closed her eyes to focus on her words. The cold seeping into her made it difficult to get words out. “My friends are, are behind that giant wall of dead bodies. I’m sure you’ve seen them.”
“Then why did you not address them by name over the radio?” Simon lifted his clipboard.
“Don’t kn-know what you’re talking about,” Kat lied. “Did I have a-a-a radio when you dragged me here?”
Simon scratched something onto the notepad attached to his clipboard. “Miss Holter…”
“Seriously. Do not know what you’re talking about.” Kat looked past him to a sizeable set of shelves with an impressive array of snow globes on display. Were she telekinetic she’d waste no time dashing one, maybe two or twelve, over Simon’s clean-cut head and sending the rest at Hall.