by SP Durnin
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Was it good for you too?” Kat replied breathily. She was covered in sweat, causing her blue hair to cling to her face and neck, but seemed to recover a bit. “Damn. That sucked.”
He nodded against her hair. “We’ll have Barker take a look at it once we get back. The shard cauterized blood and flesh on its way through, so you’re not bleeding all that much. We’ll need to clean it more each day to keep it from getting infected.”
“Sounds like a party.” She hugged him quickly. “Help me up now, hero.”
Once they were vertical, O’Connor stuffed everything back in his pack as Kat leaned against the Hummer and had a look around. “What do you think?”
“Well for one, We’re never going to hear the end of it from Rae.” She lightly kicked the side of the Humvee with her boot. “Alright. Ride’s trashed, so we can’t outrun the fire. No protection from the odd zombie that’s sure to be about—what with the all the noise and giant cloud from that barbecue from Hell—because our ride is trashed.”
“I’m only carrying four full magazines for the Hammer, a tanto knife, and my crowbar.”
“Two here for my Glock.” After pulling the weapon from her thigh holster, Kat patted various small containers on the belt around her waist. “Other than that? My sword, four throwing knives, the grappling hook in my boot, and a winning personality. So. We can’t run, and we aren’t packing enough for a fight with any number of maggot-heads. Where does that leave us?”
Jake frowned and pointed over the undercarriage at a nearby building. “Let’s check that out.”
The structure turned out to be the clubhouse for the golf course. They’d approached from the leeward side away from the nearing flames, and found themselves at the rear service entrance. He was about to try the door when Kat glanced around the corner of the building.
“Problems.”
“Dead problems?”
Kat nodded and backed away from the corner. “Looks like left-overs from the southern horde.”
“Shit.”
She moved to the door and examined the mechanism. “This might take a minute.”
“Locked?”
“Locked.”
“Fuck it.” Jake took a hearty swing with his brain-basher and the door’s window shattered. “Let’s go.”
The pair raced through a short hallway into what seemed to be the club’s dining room and bar.
“Holy shit!” Kat reached down and pulled a golf club from the bag under a nearby table. The driver had a cover on it that looked like a Wookie from Star Wars. “I have no words.”
Jake trotted on, leading them around the bar and through a set of swinging doors into the kitchen. He could see flames dancing outside the window high on the wall, next to the deep-fryer.
“Here!” He grabbed a wand-like knife sharpener from its hook on the wall and hustled Kat into the kitchen’s large walk-in freezer. O’Connor passed her a glow-stick from his tac-vest, which Cho cracked and shook to life and he pulled the heavy door shut. In the weak illumination of the chem-light, she saw him jam the sharpener down through the handle mechanism, effectively making it impossible to open the handle from outside.
The glow stick revealed their hiding place had once been used as a shelter. A pile of table cloths and cloth napkins lay in one corner at the rear, next to a four-foot pallet of plastic bottles. Since there’d been no power, someone had emptied the freezer’s racks of perishable frozen food and replaced them with dry stocks from the kitchen. Pasta, rice, beans, some dried fruit. Not a lot, but it was enough to feed one person for a few weeks at least.
Kat looked around. “So… We’re stuck in a big box, with zombies outside, in the path of a wildfire.”
“Even if they found us—and if we keep quiet they won’t—the dead can’t get in. Not through that door.” Jake dropped his pack and lowered his aching body to the freezer floor. “This thing is insulated steel. If it can keep things cold, it should be enough to keep us from burning up once the fire gets here.”
“But it’s not airtight, is it? What about the smoke?”
“There’s a pallet of water at the back wall there. We’ll wet our shirts, and tie them over our mouths as air filters. They should be enough.” O’Connor looked thoughtfully up at her in the dim light. “Um. My shirt anyway. Nice as you look in it, I don’t think that purple bra of yours will be much good.”
She joined him on the floor, still favoring her left arm. “Oh sure. You say this now. Later you’ll be begging me to take it off.”
“Let me see your neck again.” The bleeding had all but stopped, and he changed her bandage after a liberal application of more Betadine. “Good?”
Kat nodded and leaned against him. “We’re not getting out of this one, are we.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact.
“We’ll have to wait for fire to burn past, but the others will find us.” Jake offered the circle of his arms and Cho settled closer. He honestly didn’t know if they’d live through the next few hours, but if not? The he wanted the feeling of her skin against his own to be the last thing he knew in this world. “We’ve survived worse, haven’t we?”
“Wow! Look at you, being all optimistic and stuff.”
He chuckled. “I’m trying something new.”
“I like it,” Kat told him. “Well… What now?”
“Could always play twenty questions…”
“Ooo! Me first!” Kat’s eyes lit up in the gloom. “Okay, this’ll be a good one. What movie star tops your ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ bucket list?”
“Are you serious?”
“Duh!” Kat gave him her ‘Don’t be stupid’ look. “I’ll make it easy for you. Since I’m basically dating a real-world version of his character from the movie Doom, I’ll go with Carl Urban.”
Jake was skeptical. “Really?”
“You’ve never noticed the resemblance? I did right off the bat, Mr. Hottie McHotterson. And it’s your turn.”
“It’s so treadmill geeky.” He shook his head. “Tell you what. You get three guesses.”
“Yvonne Craig, circa 1967?”
“While Batgirl is a good guess, no.” O’Connor let his head loll back against the steel. “Did you know she studied ballet?”
“Sandra Bullock in that Demolition Man flick?”
“Sexy and kick-ass. Warmer, but no. Last guess.”
Cho’s brows drew together in concentration and Jake could almost see steam coming out of her ears in the low light. Then a beatific smile grew on her face. “Princess Leia in the infamous gold bikini, from Return of the Jedi.”
“That’s a classic,” he admitted. “But no.”
“Who then?”
“Claudia Black, from that sci-fi show Farscape. God, I thought her character Aeryn Sun was so hot. Crazy, but hot.” He smiled and hugged her again. “Reminds me of someone I know.”
Kat pulled him closer. “Kiss-ass. Flattery will get you laid, every time.”
-CHAPTER FIFTEEN-
Foster stood in the clubhouse, totally exhausted.
The deep, barrel chest and muscular arms riding over George’s (slightly increasing) waistline still gave him the look of a man half his age, but there was a fatigued slouch in his shoulders. He half-sat on the ash covered prep table, and wishing he’d never heard the word “zombie.”
The last thirty-six hours had been brutal. Prepping for the horde’s arrival, and then turning thousands walking corpses into just corpses, had been fun for him. The plan had worked perfectly. After the nearest fires had burned themselves out, George, Rae, and Bee in the Mimi, Allan in his rolling buzz-saw, and Close’s soldiers in Al’s modified dump trucks, had dealt with the several thousand creatures who’d avoided being converted into charcoal. There were a few stragglers here and there, but nothing Garth’s salvage teams couldn’t handle normally. So the Screamin’ Mimi had gone looking for her missing crew members.
The last signal they’d
received from the tracker in Jake’s tac-vest had registered the missing pair’s position in the middle of the southern firestorm. Ryan, along with his lieutenant Heather, led a team of Sergeant Major Close’s engineers west, where they managed to cut off the flow of natural gas in the Trans-Pecos pipeline, so over the course of the next day, the flames had burned themselves out. After that, there was no stopping O’Connor and Cho’s friends from going to find them.
When they’d located what remained of the golf course clubhouse, George had ignored the younger folks’ worried looks to one-another. Yes, the grounds all around it were ash. Yes, the place looked like it had been used for target practice by a WWII flamethrower team. And yes, half of it had collapsed in the heat of the passing inferno. But the old man knew how resourceful O’Connor was, and how sneaky Cho was. If anyone could’ve found a way to survive something like that, it was those two. Close had a dozen marines along to handle security while George, his niece, Rae, Allan, Maggie, and Henry Sampson, had entered the wreckage. Everything inside—if not burned to a crisp—was covered in a thick film from the soot and smoke. Tables in the restaurant were kindling, bottles of liquor (and the bar itself) were melted into blackened puddles on the floor, and even the industrial kitchen fixtures were warped visibly.
And there were bodies. Outside, at the rear of the building. In the short hallway to the rear entrance. In the restaurant. All charred black and withered by the awful fire’s heat. Foster had expected more within. There had been quite a few dead still walking the area after the first annual Pecos Flambé, but only a dozen or so made it into the clubhouse before their rotten brains cooked away.
The couple they found just outside the freezer door, the pair that looked as if they’d been holding one-another as the flames consumed their tender flesh, were the ones that would haunt him for the rest of his days.
It had been a bad end for them. Allan all but had a breakdown when their greying fixer used the suppressor on his M4 rifle to shift the bodies slightly and, to their horror, found the flame-seared remains of what looked like a tank top.
One with a Kamikaze symbol, drawn in red Sharpie marker.
George took the cigar from between his teeth and scrubbed a gritty hand over his face with a sigh.
It’s times like this, he thought, that I seriously consider retirement.
Taking a last look at the bodies, the he turned and made his way back to the service door.
Once outside, the afternoon sunshine—even amid the lingering reek of charred flesh and burnt sage brush—was brighter than George remembered. Ignoring the way his every step kicked up small, puffy clouds of ash, he made his way across the blasted surface of the golf course to the husk of Rae’s Humvee. The buxom woman walked round-and-round her once awesome machine, cursing quietly and occasionally stopping to inspect various areas of its exterior.
“You still at it here?” Foster asked.
Norris’s face was bitter. “It’s a total loss. The frame is cracked in three places, the interior is literally toast, both axles are warped, and I don’t even want to talk about the engine or transmission.”
“Don’t worry about it, hot-stuff.” Foster used one hand on her hip to turn Rae from the hulk. “I’ll see if Close will part with a new one for ya’. We did just save him, his men, an the whole a’ Pecos, after all, so I don’t think he’ll have a problem doin’ that. If ya’ want, I’ll even give ya’ a hand with the modifications. Once we make it west.”
Surprise and gratitude was evident on Rae’s face. “Why…thank you! Not to be bitchy, but I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“That mean you’d be up for a little slap-n-tickle later?”
“You are such a pig. But you’re my pig, so…”
Approaching the Mimi’s rear section, they found the others (including Doc Barker) clustered around her ramp. On the ramp, breathing in great lungfuls of oxygen from masks hooked to a pair of portable compression tanks, sat Jacob O’Connor and Katherine Brightfeather Cho.
They were both utterly filthy. Soot and ash had combined with copious amounts of sweat during their ordeal in the clubhouse walk-in, creating what amounted to a thin paste on every inch of exposed skin and leaving them looking like someone had dipped them both in a fresh mud-puddle. Their eyes were bloodshot and irritated from the smoke that leaked into the freezer as they huddled together, noses and mouths covered with strips torn from Jake’s last CBGB’s t-shirt. Kat was wearing the shirt’s remains, knot tied snuggly under her breasts to keep any “wardrobe malfunctions” from occurring. On her it looked rather stylish, but (after using the water-soaked strips as air filters) what was left would’ve only been enough to cover half of Jake’s upper body.
Foster took a seat to next to the younger man. “I distinctly recall telling ya’ ‘No fuck ups’, boy. You need ta’ work on yer’ memory retention skills.”
“First thing on my list.” Jake’s eyes were red-rimmed and still tearing as held the mask over his mouth and nose. “I take it your tracking beacon worked?”
Rae was sitting beside Cho, rubbing her shoulder-blade as the pretty Asian hacked into her own mask. The buxom woman passed her a wet cloth. “For a while. I’ll have to check, but I think the heat overloaded its transmitter. Or it may have been all the smoke. You’re lucky George had the intel-wonks at the NSA come up with those little toys, and that I managed to increase their transmission range. They’ve saved your butt a few times now.”
“You should know; I take back nearly all the bad things I’ve ever said about you.” Kat lowered her mask and gratefully wiped the soot from her face. “Gods below, I feel like I’ve been char-broiled.”
“Apt comparison really. I don’t know about you, but I could use about two more gallons of water and swimming pool full of ice cold Bactine.” Jake coughed wetly into his own mask, turned his head, and spat a large, brownish-yellow glob over the ramp’s edge. “Oh. Speaking of pains in the neck. How’s hers, Doc?”
Barker was finishing up checking where the hot shard had holed Cho through her trapezius. “It looks good, actually. For a deep-tissue puncture. You did an excellent job cleaning it earlier. Tell me, do you have prior experience treating wounds of this sort?”
The wry expression on O’Connor’s face as he pointed at the melted skin on his left shoulder where a German-made RAD dagger, and then Rae’s own blowtorch-hot blade, had been applied to his flesh pretty much said it all.
“Ah. Yes, that would explain it.” Barker frowned and pressed his hand to Kat’s forehead. “You’re running a slight temperature, Ms. Cho. It could be nothing, but once we get back to town I’d like to run a few tests. I doubt there’s any infection from your wound, but you’ve been exposed to a large amount of possibly toxic fumes from the fire. Let’s make sure it’s nothing that will come back to, if you’ll excuse the pun, ‘bite us in the ass’ later.”
Foster slapped the skinny man’s back, causing him to stumble. “See there? We’ll have you talkin’ like a real squid in no time flat, Doc.”
“I have been picking up a few things since meeting all of you,” Barker admitted, working his now-sore scapula. “I’m told the OR nurses find all the colorful additions to my vocabulary quite amusing. One even asked me if I’d like to ‘get smashed and bump-ugly.’ I’m thinking about taking her up on that offer after all this.”
“Stop there, please. Not an image I need bouncing around in my head.” Bee alternated between hugging Jake and Kat, jumping from one to the other almost in tears. “Let’s go find a drink or ten ourselves, and tell everybody the saviors of Pecos are alive and kicking!”
Jake’s reply was slightly muffled by his mask. “Hey! Cut that ‘savior’ shit out. We all fought to stop Hess and his army. We all just worked to snuff out a pair of stupidly large zombie hordes, too.”
“True.” Allan was still grinning there next to the blonde, Maggie, happy to have found their friends still drawing breath, if somewhat grungy. “But not all of us surv
ived being out in the open with thousands of zombies. That were on fire. Oh, and also a natural gas pipeline explosion. And the resulting wildfire. And—”
Jake waved his friend to silence. “Let’s just tell people we’re safe for now, and leave it at that. I’d say we all need about a week of rest, a couple good nights at Señorita Gita’s listening to Kat tear up the mic with Ted and the band, and then...”
He turned his head to Cho. She smiled, lowering her mask briefly to blow him a kiss.
“Then it’s the Pacific or bust.” Jake had more that had his fill of all the fun and games in South-bloody-Texas.
* * *
Ted Jackson, Sergeant Major Close, and Laurel’s red-headed twin were attempting to convince Jake to stay in Pecos, and the exhausted, much-abused, ex-journalist was ignoring them.
The problem was, he was simply too busy enjoying the feeling of Kat’s hands on his aching face to pay their impassioned pleas any mind. Nothing seemed to relieve his discomfort anymore, save some time with his head in her lap, with those strong, gentle fingers of hers whorling their way along his brow line.
“…so what do you say? Will you consider it?”
After being treated for smoke inhalation by the nursing staff, Barker wanted them to stay for forty-eight hour observation, just in case. The two needed the rest anyway, so O’Connor and Cho had been given a pair of rooms in the medical center. That hadn’t gone over well with the pretty Asian. She’d nearly thrown a fit when she’d learned they weren’t bunked the same room, and stated—quite loudly—that she ‘had no problem engaging in a repeat performance of the same pyrotechnic variety, which they’d just used to kill a fuck-ton of zombies,’ unless that was rectified. Needless to say, she and O’Connor now shared a hospital room on the third floor that looked out over the eastern wall.
Jake opened his eyes and gave Willow a sideways look. “Are you three still here? Why won’t you leave us alone? Our plan was to get here, find our friends—which we’ve done—and haul balls over the Rockies. We’ve delayed our trip for weeks, helped top-out your supplies and food stores, fought off an army of what amounts to slavers, stomped two huge hordes of zombies into the dirt, and you’re still not satisfied?”