Dave opened the door and checked the way to find it clear. The staccato sound of intermittent gunfire echoed up through the narrow corridor, doubling and tripling until it sounded like a full-blown war down there.
Dave stepped through the door and Audrey followed, closing it gently behind her.
They descended the steps together and headed toward the second floor with a look of grim determination on their faces.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Inside the stairwell, Calvin Summerville stepped around the bloody remains of a man who now looked more like hamburger than human. He couldn’t help but grin. His plan to release the carriers had gone better than he could have anticipated, especially considering that the beasts could have easily turned on him. But these creatures were attracted to motion and noise, and Gideon’s men were anything but subtle.
Calvin had to give it to Mother Nature; not since the dinosaurs had Earth seen a predator as vicious and single-purposed as this new species of human. Like it or not, you had to respect that kind of efficiency.
Leaving the bloody mess behind him, Calvin climbed the steps quickly. He carried two pistols in each of his back pockets, a rifle slung over his back and a gun in each hand. His front pockets held six bloody magazines, all stuffed with the collected rounds that had been left in the dead guard’s firearms.
Calvin stood at the door leading to the second floor of Gideon’s base of operations, listening to the sounds drifting up from the floor below. As he did, an old memory bubbled up from his subconscious, something he hadn’t thought about in years.
Suddenly he was thirteen again, cowering in front of his father, a man with an iron will and an equally unyielding worldview. Glenn’s Summerville’s favorite conservative news channel blared in the background as one of the talking heads shouted down a shy man in a tweed suit and a bowtie.
“What happened to you?” Glenn asked. His face was hard as stone, but his eyes...they were somehow harder.
When Calvin looked into those eyes, he saw only black pits. “Nothing.”
“Your nose is bleeding.”
“I fell,” Calvin said, averting his eyes. He kicked himself mentally for that mistake. It was a tell that his father knew all too well, something Calvin always did when he lied.
“Bullshit,” Glenn said. “You’re lying.”
Calvin attempted to walk around his father to the bathroom where he could clean up in peace.
Glenn placed a hand on Calvin’s chest, holding him in place. “You go when I excuse you, understood?”
Calvin nodded.
“Answer me.”
“Yes, s-s-sir.”
Glenn frowned. “Don’t stutter, boy. Makes you look like a pussy.”
“Sorry.”
“And don’t apologize. You don’t ever apologize to anybody.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now tell me what happened.”
Glenn explained it all to his father. How he and Billy Henderson had had words at the beginning of the baseball game. How Billy had thrown a bad pitch and how that ball had caught Calvin square in the thigh. The pitch had some heat on it, and Billy was known to throw ninety-mile-per-hour fastballs. This had been one of those pitches, a real stinger, leaving behind what would inevitably become a softball-sized bruise.
Calvin charged the mound, fists flew, and Calvin took a solid right-hook to the nose. And that’s where it ended.
As Calvin told the story, hot tears stung his eyes, and no matter how hard he tried to stop them an errant tear streamed down his face. It was only one, but Calvin knew it was enough.
Glenn drew back a hand and slapped Calvin hard across the mouth.
Calvin recoiled. Blood ran anew from his nose, dripping onto the kitchen floor. Calvin knew his poor mother would have to clean that up later. And by God she’d better not leave a fucking drop behind, or else Glenn would go berserk.
“No crying,” Glenn said. “Crying’s for girls and fags. Are you either one of those things?”
Calvin shook his head vigorously. “No, sir.” He wiped away the blood from his nose onto his sleeve.
“Did Billy Henderson throw that bad pitch on purpose?” Glenn asked.
Calvin shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Billy Henderson can put a baseball in a mailbox from fifty yards away. So, you tell me, Calvin, if Billy Henderson walloped you with a pitch from sixty feet away, then do you think it was a mistake?”
“I guess not,” Calvin replied.
Glenn nodded. “I agree. And that’s exactly what he should have done.”
Calvin’s face became a mask of surprise. Confused, he could only stare at his father as more blood dripped from his nose. His face throbbed. His eyes would probably be blackened by tomorrow. “W-w-what?”
“Billy’s dad and me went to high school together. He’s a stand-up guy, a real patriot. He’s teaching his boy right, the way I’m trying to teach you. Seems none of it’s sticking with you, though.”
Calvin couldn’t formulate a reply. All he could do was wipe the blood from his nose and stare at the man who created him with the sole purpose of subsequently destroying him.
Glenn shook his head. He looked at his son for a very long time, the way a man might look at his car after a collision rendered it a total loss. At that moment, Calvin suspected that if his father could have traded him for Billy Henderson, he would have done so without a second thought.
“I’ve tried so hard with you, son,” Glenn said, that look of disappointment clear and present on his face. “But I don’t know if there’s any hope for you in the world. You’re like the son of some faggot couple, all coddled and touchy-feely. Is that what you are, son? You some kind of homo?”
“No, Dad, I’m not a homo,” Calvin said. “Honest.”
Glenn stared at Calvin, shaking his head in disgust. “Go clean yourself up,” he said, motioning toward the bathroom. “And while you’re in there you take a good look at yourself in that mirror so you can see what you’ve become.”
Calvin did as he was told. He could still remember the splotches of blood on the bone-white bathroom sink. It was on that day that Calvin decided two critical things.
He would prove that his father that he wasn’t a disappointment.
Then he would kill him.
As it turned out, he hadn’t been able to kill Glenn Summerville, but he had proven the old man wrong.
So very, very wrong.
Calvin opened the door and stepped onto the second floor of Gideon’s compound.
He still had some proving left to do.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Balancing Jesse on one shoulder, Torbin led the group down the stairs and toward the basement. The other two men followed behind them loaded up with rifles, pistols, knives and whatever else they could swipe from Gideon’s weapons supply closet. Armed to the gills, they carried themselves with an over-confident swagger; as if they were walking weapons of mass destruction.
To Jessie, they were punk-ass little bitches with their noses buried so deep up Gideon’s ass that they could see out his throat. They reminded Jessie of that old Looney Tunes cartoon he’d watched as a kid; the one with the bulldog, Spike, and the shit-talking ankle-biter that followed him around kissing his ass.
Sycophant…that was the word for it. Jessie remembered learning that word in an English class he blew off in his second (and final) year of high school. He’d always had an interest in language and books, and he sometimes wondered if he could have made something out of himself had he given it half a chance. But the son of a janitor never got the respect that the other kids did, and once he’d started down the road of petty theft and smoking weed, there weren’t many other avenues left open.
His mind wandered as he considered this while he struggled to place one foot in front of the other to descend the four flights of stairs leading to the basement. Each step brought more blood from his gaping wounds, so much now that he was leaving bloody footprints in his wake. At least
he wasn’t in quite so much pain now, but that had to be shock.
He figured that also meant he was dying faster than he’d hoped.
But he’d resigned himself to that fate when he’d offered to help Dave and Audrey. Besides, he’d knew he’d rather be dead than to serve one more fucking minute under a man who would murder children for fun.
Jessie pushed through the pain, leaning against Torbin for balance as he struggled to keep up. The last thing he needed was for them to decide to leave him behind because he was too slow. If that happened, he doubted he could make it down the remaining flights of stairs on his own.
And if he died on the steps, then that would ruin Plan B.
So he kept up, gritting his teeth through the biting pain in his gut as they passed the second floor, then on to the first-floor landing. Jessie took a deep breath as he watched the door for the first floor pass by. One more flight and they’d be there, one more flight and he could stop this exercise in self-flagellation.
They continued their descent, now past the first floor and down toward the basement.
“Fucking gross,” one of the men behind Jessie said as they encountered the bloody remains strewn halfway up the steps. Jessie suddenly remembered the guy’s name. Carson.
The stink of the obliterated corpse nearly made Jessie vomit, but he forced it back down again as he gripped the handrail tightly and carefully placed his feet to avoid slipping in the puddles of congealing blood.
Past the mangled remains, at the bottom of the steps, they stopped at the door and waited. The following pair of men slipped out and around Jessie, clutching pistols and small but powerful penlights to see in the dark. They looked like kids on Christmas with their new toys.
Jessie felt the stairs swirl and tilt around him as he struggled to keep himself focused. All he wanted to do was sleep, but there’d be time enough for that later. All the time in the universe, in fact.
“Look alive down here,” the man on the right said, his hip placed against the door’s panic bar. He had a stupid-looking Mad Max mohawk haircut that Jessie wanted to tear out by the roots. “These prisoners are considered armed and dangerous. Shoot to kill.”
Jessie rolled his eyes. What a bunch of assholes, he thought.
“What about him?” Torbin asked, nodding his head toward Jessie.
“It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it ain’t been real fun,” Mohawk replied. He pointed his handgun at Jessie.
But Jessie already had his pistol in hand, pointed at Torbin. He pulled the trigger, sending lead into Torbin’s soft organs. There it bounced around until it ricocheted off Torbin’s spine and exited through his belly button, embedding itself in the concrete wall.
Torbin toppled to the floor, and Jessie fell with him just as Mohawk got off a single shot. The bullet struck Jessie in the shoulder opposite the one the creature had gnawed on. As he went down, he took a shot at Mohawk in return. Through sheer luck the bullet caught him in the throat, traveling through the bottom of Mohawk’s skull and exiting through the top of his head. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Jessie struck the floor hard. Hot agony roared through his gut, the pain now in competition with his newly ruined shoulder, courtesy of Mohawk’s bullet. The world faded out as white stars filled Jessie’s vision.
He expected Carson to pull the trigger, but that bullet never came. Instead, the kid just stood there, staring at Mohawk’s bleeding corpse, a pistol clutched in his hand and hanging impotently at his side.
Jessie blinked hard, forcing the world back into focus again. Down here in the dark depths of the building he could see barely more than shadows, but it was enough. By the time Carson came to his senses, Jessie had already put three slugs in the kid’s gut, sending him to the floor in a lifeless heap.
So much for the Rambo shit.
Torbin moaned from beside him in the darkness.
Jessie put a bullet in his head for his trouble.
The stairwell went deathly quiet. All Jessie could hear was the ringing in his ears from the gunfire within the crowded space at the bottom of the stairs. Acrid smoke from spent gunpowder burned his nose; beneath it, the odor of warm blood persisted. This time Jessie did throw up. He turned his head and expelled a slimy string of bile from his ruined stomach. It looked dark in the dim light. A lot of blood.
He felt cold. His feet were numb. He was tired. Never before had he wanted to sleep so badly.
But he had work to do still. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Jessie remembered that poem from English class.
Promises to keep. He’d kept few promises in his life up to now, but that was about to change. Come hell or high water, he’d see this one through.
Fighting the urge to close his eyes and drift off into the eternal abyss, Jessie forced himself up to his knees. The room tilted and whirled like an amusement park ride, sending him back down to the floor again. Hot agony roared through his body, forcing him back into the land of the conscious.
Everything hurt. It hurt so fucking bad.
Miles to go before I sleep.
Jessie got himself back to his knees and waited for the room to stop moving. When it did, he pulled himself to his feet using the door’s panic bar as an anchor.
After a few moments, he could stand on his own again. He pushed the door open. It seemed to weigh a thousand pounds now, but he put all his weight against it and barged through. He stumbled until he hit the opposite wall of the hallway, stopping cold. He used it for balance as he took deep breaths, working through the pain.
He put a hand in his pocket.
The grenade was still there.
Grinning, he took a step forward.
He had promises to keep, after all.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Calvin stepped through the door and onto the second floor, pistols clutched tightly in each hand. A calming feeling came over him, covering him like a warm blanket. He liked when this happened, so much so that it had become an addiction over the last several years.
The room opened before him, revealing shelving units topping out at around six feet tall. Small boxes containing nuts, bolts, screws, nails, and washers sat on the shelves, the boxes unopened and the contents rusting silently. Cold, gray concrete made up the floor beneath his feet. A large oil stain blotted the floor like a birthmark in front of him. Here, many of the windows remained intact; those that weren’t had been covered in plastic to keep out the worst of the weather.
He thought of Rand. That memory stabbed him like a knife in the gut. Calvin had never cared much for people, but Rand…he was different. The bond they’d shared was special, something Glenn would never have approved of. His father couldn’t understand anything outside of his own angry obsessions and insatiable need to be in charge. Glenn Summerville only ever loved himself.
And if he was still alive, then that’s all he had left now.
Calvin’s rage began to quicken. Gideon, that son of a bitch. He’d taken away the only thing that Calvin ever truly loved, and for that, Calvin vowed to kill him in the worst possible way. But vengeance never came easy. Gideon would put up a fight. That was fair, but vengeance was due. That was fair too.
Just as sure he knew these things, Calvin also knew that Dave Porter would come for his own vengeance.
Fair’s fair.
Shoving the thoughts of Porter’s revenge and the memory of Rand to the side, Calvin took a step forward.
Sharp claws tapping on the hard concrete echoed off the walls.
Calvin turned to his right as one of the white carriers charged, its red eyes determined, its lips peeled back to reveal rows of fang-like teeth. It crossed the distance between them quickly, so fast that Calvin barely had the pistol raised before the thing was almost on him.
He pulled the trigger twice. The pistol coughed as both slugs found a home in the creature’s thick chest. It went down hard, slamming its face off the ha
rd floor, shattering its teeth and nose as it came to rest in a growing pool of blood.
Calvin stared at the corpse, noticing the remnants of an elastic band around its waist.
Underpants.
If he’d had any doubt that this creature was the next generation of carrier, its disintegrating Hanes put those doubts to rest. Humanity as Calvin had known it was gone and this hulking beast before him was the next generation. The next level of killer to roam the planet.
But the fate of man and society didn’t matter much to Calvin anymore.
He had a man to kill.
Calvin got himself moving, heading deeper into the warehouse as the evening sun’s rays lit the way.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dave and Audrey stepped through the doorway and onto the second floor of Gideon’s warehouse of horrors. Immediately past the door, they discovered a prone form lying on the floor off to their right. Catching it out of the corner of his eye, Dave pivoted on his heels quickly, leveling the pistol on the body. It remained motionless, lying in a deep pool of coagulated blood with two visible exit wounds in its back.
The sound of sporadic gunfire drifted up through the floor, nearly indiscernible after traveling through the thick layer of corrugated steel and concrete beneath their feet. Dave knew they didn’t have much time left to find Gideon; it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the creatures finished their business and headed upstairs for seconds. The corpse on the floor beside them was proof enough of that.
Gripping the rifle tightly, Dave motioned with a silent nod of his head toward the aisle that led between a grid of massive shelving units. It looked like an enormous Plinko board laid flat. It occurred to Dave as the scene stretched out before him that he felt very much like a game pawn.
Stepping silently and carefully, they headed deeper into the warehouse, down that aisle between the shelves, guns in hand and rounds parked in the chamber. They kept close to the shelves, walking in single file, eyeing ahead and behind. Dave’s heart thudded steadily in his chest as adrenaline coursed through his veins. Not enough to make him jittery, but enough to set his senses on fire, a hyperawareness that seemed almost animal-like. It occurred to him that to hunt an animal; maybe one needed to become an animal.
The Badlands Trilogy (Novella 2): Vengeance in the Badlands Page 11