by Tim Curran
“Piss on that,” the first voice said. “We’re transmitting, but they’re not receiving. Stupid pricks are jamming the secure channel, too.”
“I knew this would happen.”
Ruby Sue was grinning at the exchange.
It was somehow satisfying to see the military hamstrung by the situation, too. If Johnny was right, they had created it, so let them suffer along with the rest. It was only fair, wasn’t it?
She crept towards the front of the truck, bare inches now from the dead soldier. She looked down at the raw meat of his face glistening in the moonlight. It didn’t bother her; nothing seemed to bother her anymore. There was something lying by his side. Something dark and shiny. She touched it. Metal.
Jesus, it was his rifle. His M-16.
Carefully, she picked it up.
She’d never fired one before. It was remarkably light, fitted with a bayonet. The barrel was short and ribbed, the magazine jutting from beneath banana-shaped. She stuck her Colt in the other pocket of her jean jacket. The soldiers were standing up now, approaching a door which read EXIT in glowing red letters.
Breathing hard now, more out of fear and apprehension than any exertion, she moved soundlessly to the front of the pump truck. She aimed at the silhouettes, no easy task with her sprained left wrist. They were still arguing as to whether they should go into the building proper or escape out the back way.
“I got a better idea,” she said under her breath.
She pulled the trigger.
The M-16 came alive in her hands, the bullets going everywhere but where she’d aimed them. The rocking motion of the rifle sent knives of pain into her damaged wrist. But then, in a split second, beyond pain, she had the rifle under control, pressing the stock into her shoulder where it rode easily. Shell casings rained in the air.
The soldiers instinctively went down low, but not fast enough.
They were clumsy in their spaceman suits.
She hit two of them and then a third as he opened fire in her direction, taking out his aggression and terror on the windshield of the pump truck. He screamed as bullets ripped through his face shield. The last soldier tried to scramble away, but she shot his legs out from under him. He screamed and started shooting in every direction.
By then, she was on the other side of the vehicle.
She drew a bead on the solder’s head and let go with another burst. He went down face-first.
She waited then.
She could hear one or two of them moaning, whimpering, begging for help.
Here comes your fucking help.
She walked over to them, nearly slipping on all the brass scattered over the floor. She couldn’t see their faces in the hoods, but she could see that there was no way they could get to their rifles. And that was the most important thing.
One of the soldiers held bloody, gloved hands out to her.
She swatted them away with the barrel of her 16. “Welcome to the jungle,” she told him and rammed the bayonet into his chest continually until he quit writhing and screeching and her arms were sore and his blood was spattered over her in a fine, coppery mist.
She took the man’s rifle and slung it over her shoulder.
He had some sort of ammo pouch with him. In it were three smooth-bodied grenades and two others shaped like blunt cylinders. She shouldered the sack, stuffed her pistols in there and some more magazines for the M-16s. It was heavy by then and bulging, but she was ready for war.
She stepped into the corridor on the other side of the fire door.
It was empty.
Too bad. She liked using her new rifle. Liked the way it put out the rounds. She wished Joe were here, though. For many reasons, of course, but mainly because he’d been in the service and he knew how to load these things.
She supposed she’d figure it out, though.
The walls were cement block painted an ugly piss yellow. She went through the first doorway she found and into a bank of offices. Fluorescents were on overhead. A few of them, anyway.
The rabids had been through here.
There was no doubt of that. Desks were overturned, computers shattered into plastic shards, phones ripped from walls. The floor was littered with papers and file folders.
She found a cell phone, but all she got was static on it.
She moved to the end and around a corner. More of the same. A framed sepia photo of the municipal building, probably taken back in the 1920s or ‘30s was shattered on the floor. It looked like somebody had vomited on it. The only constant was the smell of urine, as if the rabids had gone through here and then marked their territory like dogs.
Nothing else except the woman.
She was sitting in a swivel chair up against a bank of file cabinets. She was naked save for a pair of orange knee-high socks. There was a bullet hole in her forehead, a few of them in fact. Congealed brains and blood trailed down her face onto her chest. There was a rose tattoo on her left breast. Her legs were spread wide, her cold sex on grisly display.
Ruby Sue looked at her for a long time. “There’s no dignity in death in this fucking town, sister,” she told the corpse.
What she was most perplexed by was the woman’s position in the chair. It wasn’t the position in which someone would sit in a chair—her ass was down low, almost hanging off the seat, her back had slid nearly to the bottom of the backrest, head slumped forward. Maybe she had been killed and slid down like that, but it didn’t fit: Why were there no bullet holes in the chair? In the file cabinets behind her?
No, she’d been killed somewhere else and put there.
But why? And by who?
And then Ruby Sue saw the dried patches of clear material around the woman’s vagina and thighs. She’d been laid out in the chair like that so her body could be screwed. That’s what it was.
And although Ruby Sue had gone deep cold inside now, she still found it sickening.
And that’s when she heard them coming up behind her.
She wheeled around with the 16, but never even squeezed off a shot.
The rifle was snatched from her grip and sent spinning across the office. Two naked men—rabids—stood before her. They were giggling, drool running down their chins. Their yellow glaring eyes were swimming with a ghastly hunger.
They tried to speak and succeeded only in making morbid gurgling sounds like bad plumbing.
She did not panic.
This was no place for someone who couldn’t keep their head. The two of them held her by the arms now and with their huge, erect penises pressing against her like missiles, there was no doubt what they had in mind. They’d rape her. Then kill her. Then keep raping her until there was nothing left.
The M-16 she had around her shoulder was stripped free now.
But not the ammo pouch. There was still hope.
Use your head, outsmart them.
They threw her roughly atop a desk.
So much for foreplay.
One rabid held her head down by the hair, brushing his frigid, damp penis against her face. The other began ripping her pants off. He didn’t bother with niceties like zippers and buttons. He yanked them down with savage force, the button popping and sailing away. He tore everything away.
And Ruby Sue, despite the almost phobic horror that trembled in her, did not fight. If she fought, she knew, they’d hold her arms down and she couldn’t have that.
Her pouch was still at her side, the strap wedged around her shoulder. They didn’t seem to be concerned about that.
They were pawing her with their contaminated fingers.
That shouldn’t have mattered, but it didn’t.
The man holding her down leaned in close, a slimy grin stitched across his bloodless lips. A thread of germ-rich drool broke across her face like a spider web. It was cold and gelatinous like old snot, but its touch made her skin feel hot. Waves of nausea rolled through her. She needed badly to vomit, to scream, but since she wasn’t about to lose control like that, she did nothing.<
br />
She steeled herself, internalized it all.
The rabid leered at her with a lewd, degenerate mockery of carnal need.
She laid there motionless, her right hand inching slowly to the pouch.
He pushed her legs apart with the hands of a man who’d just handled frozen meat.
Her fingers brushed the pouch.
His breath was rancid, his penis hard against her thigh.
Her fingers slipped into the pouch.
She felt his cock press against her sex.
He started to giggle. A wet, horrible sound. The laughter of the criminally insane.
Her hand closed around the butt of the Browning .380.
The head of his penis found where it had to go.
It slid roughly into her and she gasped.
With a quick, economical motion, she brought out the Browning and shot him in the face. His nose exploded in a spray of blood and he fell back, screaming and clawing at the air in front of him.
The other rabid went into instant action.
He literally pulled Ruby Sue off the desk by her hair and tossed her through the air. She tumbled across another desk, taking the blotter and lamp with her. Her knees cracked the desk and her head cracked the floor. The Browning slid away.
The rabid came right at her.
He kicked her in the belly with enough force to knock the wind out of her. He aimed another for her face, but she darted back quick enough so it only caught her shoulder, flipping her over on her back.
But she still had the pouch.
The rabids came on.
The one with the hole in his face knocked the other out of the way, lurching forward, baying like a hound, spraying blood from his mouth.
She brought out the Colt Python.
It was heavy in her hand. She pulled the trigger and it went off like a cannon, the recoil almost throwing the weapon from her hand. It blew another hole in the rabid, this one right in the center of his chest. He flew back, dead before he hit the floor.
The other one came on and she shot him in the throat, the side of his neck pulverized. He went down, dying, but refusing to go quietly. His fingers wriggled in the air.
Ruby Sue pulled herself up, pressing her wrist against her side. Her right hand, the one that had held the Colt, was numb from the recoil. She slid the weapon back in her pack and retrieved the Browning.
The rabid with the gored throat was up on his knees, head hanging to one side, blood gushing from the ruptured tissues. She put another round in his head and he went down and stayed down.
She went to her knees, vomiting, then began to cry.
But not for long. She found her pants, hitched them up the best she could and found her M-16. The spare one she couldn’t seem to find and didn’t want to take the time. She could hear gunfire again, the poppings of automatics. Sounded like it was both outside and inside the building. She could smell smoke and not just the acrid stink of her own cordite.
Was the fire that close?
She ducked back into the hallway and someone came running at her.
At her and past her.
It was hard to tell whether it was a woman or a man.
Just a figure completely engulfed in flames, stumbling up the corridor, bounding off the walls, making some high-pitched whining sound. The smell of cremated flesh was sickening. The figure made it to the fire door and actually tried to work the handle futilely before dropping into a smoking, roasted heap.
The fire didn’t do that.
The soldiers had flamethrowers.
32
They were moving up the stairs to the third floor.
Johnny was leading the way in a low crouch. The stairwell was like being inside a black box. They could see the lights from below and some illumination from the bend in the stairs above, but that was it.
“We should’ve taken the elevator,” Lou said.
“Sure,” Johnny said, “and get trapped between floors? That would be great. Might take maintenance awhile to reach us.”
He kept going.
He was figuring that if they were extremely lucky, they might make the roof. He knew where the doorway was. It would be locked, but that wouldn’t be a problem. When he was sixteen he’d worked here mopping floors and cleaning the shitters. He was pretty certain everything would still be pretty much the same.
That was, if they could make it there.
The building, he knew, was crawling with rabids and soldiers now. It was like some sort of war and they were trapped in-between. If the rabids didn’t get them, the soldiers would.
He could hear gunfire. It was closer all the time.
Just because Terra and his boys had gotten wiped out, that didn’t mean shit, he knew. The troops would keep coming and coming. They wouldn’t stop until they’d mopped up the entire town.
Nobody had commented on the necklace of trophies Terra was sporting.
That was probably a good thing, Johnny figured. He’d seen guys mutilate cadavers in the war. It was a very solemn thing to them, symbolic of their ferocity perhaps.
Truth was, it was also the act of a damaged mind.
And Terra? He was damaged, all right.
At the top of the steps, Johnny paused.
It was quiet, but he knew there were people up here. Maybe human, maybe not.
His fatigue shirt plastered to his back with sweat, he slipped out into the corridor. It was dimly lit like those below. In either direction were doorways. Some open. Some closed.
The others followed him up.
Their footfalls were very loud, echoing in the stillness.
“Well, what took you, partner?”
That voice…
They turned and Rawley was standing in the doorway of an office. He had an M-16 rifle pointed in their direction, a big shit-eating grin on his piggish features. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost his hat and had his shirt nearly torn off. His face was bruised, crusted with fingers of old blood.
Lou saw him, his jaw dropped. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Back at you, buddy.”
Terra had his weapon on him. “Who’s this greaseball?” he wanted to know.
“Just call him Greaseball, everyone does,” Lou informed him with a very straight face.
Rawley was pretty much as they remembered him—save that he looked like some pissed-off mongrel had chewed him up and shit him back out again. He still had the same crooked smile, the same unreadable eyes.
“Hate to break up the fun and games,” he said, “but you may have noticed that I have a rifle here in my hands and if you don’t drop your artillery, well, shit, in about five seconds you’ll be deader than Jesus.”
“If we stand around bullshitting much longer, we’ll all be dead,” Johnny said.
Terra laughed that high giggle again. “I ain’t about to drop my weapon. You’re either with us or I kill your redneck ass right here.”
Rawley nodded. “Could be. But first, how do I know you aren’t infected?”
“How do we know you aren’t?” Lisa managed.
“Morning, cutie-pie,” Rawley said, bowing slightly. “Hate to be the one to say it, but you look like three-day old dog shit.”
“Go…fuck yourself.”
Rawley laughed. “That’s my girl.”
“We’re going to the roof, Texas. We’re gonna make a stand,” Lou explained to him very calmly. “You’re either in or you’re out. Make your choice. We’re not fucking around here, okay? You can pretend you’re Jim-fucking-Bowie or some shit. That ought to make you happy. Now move or fucking die.”
Rawley did not move. He kept his gun leveled on them.
Lisa let out a grating moan and collapsed.
Lou pulled her to her feet with his good arm, pretty much using up what remained of his strength. “She’s okay,” he said to them, to Johnny in particular. “She needs a rest. We all need a rest.”
“All right, Rawley,” Johnny said with a look in his eye like maybe he had the urge to
play a little fast-pitch with the man’s testicles. He had his rifle on Rawley now. “What’s it gonna be?”
Rawley shrugged. “You Yankees certainly are a violent bunch. Must be the climate.” He lowered his sixteen. “Of course, I’ll join you. I was only playing a bit, relieving the tension.”
Terra glared at him. “I came real close to relieving your brains all over the wall, motherfucker.”
“Don’t say?” Rawley acted like this was very interesting. “Where’s your Buck Roger’s helmet, soldier boy?”
“I shoved it up my ass to keep it warm.”
Rawley was still grinning.
“Let’s go,” Johnny said and started down the hall.
Terra turned his back on Rawley for just a second. Then he came around real quick with the barrel of his rifle, slashing the bayonet across Rawley’s face. Rawley screamed and dropped his weapon.
His face was splashed with blood.
He had barely hit the ground when Terra started jabbing him viciously with the bayonet—in the belly, the ribs, the throat, the balls, the ass. Anywhere that was soft and unguarded, the bayonet got him. Pretty soon Rawley was curled into a frayed red ball, the floor wet with his fluids.
Neither Lou nor Johnny intervened.
They just looked at each other and made a mutual decision to let the man die.The world—Cut River, at least—had been thrown back into the Stone Age. Atrocity was nothing new. Barbarism was the norm. Why fight it? Besides they were too damn tired to save the ass of some Texican peckerwood who would have fed them to the dogs the first chance he got.
Terra stooped down next to Rawley’s cooling body.
“What’re you doing?” Johnny asked him, though he well knew.
Terra laughed, thinking it was all pretty funny. He slid a K-Bar knife from its sheath and slit off Rawley’s left ear. Then, in no hurry whatsoever, he carefully threaded it onto his necklace. He had an even ten now. He seemed happy.
“Just a hobby,” he said when he saw Lou staring at him.
Lou nodded dumbly, nervously. “Yeah, you should see my football cards. Mint.”
And then there was the sound of feet coming up the stairs. Many of them.
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