Keep Your Crowbar Handy

by SP Durnin

  Mike smiled and made his way upstairs again, for which Jake was very grateful. He'd been fighting the urge to strangle the son of a bitch.

  "You know, that guy has to be why some animals eat their young," Kat said. "They're trying to keep the asshole chromosome out of the gene pool."

  She and Jake headed down to the Rumble Room. They passed through the machine shop Foster had turned the first level into and entered the thirty-by-thirty expanse. Two-inch thick Olympic mats covered the floor and the far wall was lined with mirrors. A variety of weapons, from kendo swords to knives to billy clubs hung on racks, but they weren't using any of those today. Today was all hand-to-hand.

  "Don't worry. I promise I won't hurt you. Much." Kat gave him her crazy raised eyebrow, after tossing her towel and water bottle to the floor.

  Jake chuckled and pulled his shirt off over his head.

  They stretched briefly, centering themselves, then bowed to one another and took up fighting stances. Kat enjoyed fluid movements, techniques that combined redirection of force, along with swift, knife-sharp strikes, gymnast-level vaults, and kicks that seemed to defy natural laws. Like gravity. A lifetime of practicing both aikido and kung fu had provided her a natural grace, along with a sense of balance second to none.

  While Kat was a stinging whip, Jake was the razor fist. He'd taken half a dozen different martial arts, at one time or another, since the age of thirteen. Most recently, he'd studied Krav Maga for two years, during his time with the SAS. He'd learned to do brutal, painful things to people. How to break bones almost effortlessly. How to internally rip flesh, crush throats, and drive someone's nose into their brain with his bare hands.

  They squared off moving slowly, circling, looking for holes in the other's defenses. Feet gliding over the mat, hands never still, weaving patterns, changing in preparation of deadly games.

  "So how are you and Allen doing?" Jake asked.

  "We decided to cool it."

  He blinked. "What?"

  She shot forward with a series of blurring open-handed strikes, aiming for his throat and eyes. He blocked each one and answered with back-hands and elbows, which she avoided by dancing out of the way. As she did, Kat dropped low and swept his legs. Jake rolled across the mat and came to his feet, guard up.

  "That's my point," She said, sweetly.

  He nodded. "I can't believe it. What happened?"

  "We just didn't have much to talk about," Kat admitted. "Sex is nice, but we really had nothing else in common."

  She advanced again and he ducked her flying hatchet kick, moving to the outside.

  "Damn, Kat. I'm sorry." A wry expression moved over his face. "You know, I realized Al could be a little flaky, but I didn't know he was an idiot."

  "How so?" Kat asked.

  "Personally? I'd have found something to talk about."

  He was a little distracted as he moved left and switched his guard, so he didn't catch what his subconscious caused his mouth to say.

  She smiled dazzlingly. "I'll keep that in mind." Then he had to block her knife-edged chop that would've broken his collarbone. Jake caught Kat's arm as she followed through (just an inch or two more than she should have,) spun to the outside, extended his inner leg, and tossed her from her feet, using a classic hip throw.

  Instead of tumbling over the padded floor, she hit the ground palm first and in a display of great agility, cartwheeled twice before coming back to her feet, half-way across the room.

  "That one's mine," he said, gliding to the right.

  "Not bad," she admitted, mirroring his move. "You've improved. It's become really hard to read your body language since we've started these sessions. And why do you say that, by the way?"

  "I was a little disappointed when we met up at Bueno Dave's, when you and Al hit it off. Luckily, your evil plan was to have Laurel lurking in the wings."

  Kat grinned mischievously. "That was fun. How are the two of you getting along? Any nocturnal gymnastics?"

  Jake avoided her roundhouse kick and circled again. "Um. No."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "It just... well, it never seems like the right time," he answered.

  Then she was coming at him. Jake sent a jab her way, trying to slow her charge, but she passed under it. He managed to avoid the vertical punch she threw at his chin, but never saw the choke hold that followed, as Kat wrapped her arm across and over the back of his neck to come up under his Adam's apple. She jumped, locked her legs around his ribcage, and leaned backwards, taking them to the floor. He was able to break the hold before they hit so he ended up on top, but she managed to immobilize one of his arms with a joint lock. Then Kat's legs began squeezing his ribs. No matter what he tried, he couldn't get a good breath, and he sure as hell wasn't having any luck getting free.

  He quickly approached the point of passing out, so he used a trick he'd learned from a brown haired, sexy, crass, and outspoken Major named Molly Beck. At twenty-nine, Molly was in charge of most of the hand-to-hand training courses for her unit, and she'd made his life in Merry Old England a living hell for the first two months. Everything the brick did that required guns, knives, dirt, pain, sweat, sleep deprivation, or any smelly combination thereof, he was required to do right along with them, per her request. After two months of abuse under Molly's watchful eye, he met the physical requirements for a special op journalist consultant and obtained the government's certification to document live action operations.

  That night she'd taken his bruised, aching body into account, so they'd only spent most of the night 'Screwing like lemmings' as she put it. Earlier that evening, somewhere between the eighth and ninth shot of Bushmills, things got a little jumbled. What had started with her betting him the next round against the number of push-ups they could each do, ended with them tearing at each other like animals in the shower of her loft.

  When he'd posed the question of why the next morning, as they lay tangled in the sheets and each other, Molly simply said, "Wot? The girls din't like you back 'ome, then? Their bloody loss mate..."

  She also taught him a little trick when it came to fighting opponents of the fairer sex. He resisted, right up to the point where Molly asked if he were stupid enough to believe that all terrorists were men. It didn't sound like such a bad idea when she put it like that.

  The secret was, just like a man's testicles, a woman's breasts were sensitive. So, just as men instinctively protected their dangly bits...

  With unconsciousness looming, Jake used his free hand to grasp Kat's breast and roughly pinched her nipple through her cut-off tee.

  The problem was she didn't react quite the way he'd expected. Yes, she gasped in surprise. Yes, she loosened her lock on his arm. Yes, her legs did release their suffocating grip on Jake's torso which allowed him to breathe again.

  What he didn't expect was for Kat to throw her head back, her eyes to flutter shut, and a lusty moan to force its way from her throat. Jake froze in place as she writhed beneath him, mouth wide in a soundless cry. When her eyes opened, she grabbed him by the back of his neck with one hand and pulled him down into a kiss.

  At one time, he thought her to be a runner up when it came to passion, that Laurel had a lock on the throne. The truth was, beneath all the witty quips and one-liners, Kat was a whole new level of heat that rivaled the surface of the sun.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck as her thighs slid over his hips, drawing him closer, and she began to make small animal noises under her breath. Her lips were wild, devouring. He was already getting lost in the kiss, so he tried to focus on getting his hand off her boob. She had them locked together so tightly, however, that all he really managed to do was, well... feel her up. Kat shivered and her hips pressed against his groin confirming that: A-he was male and B-he was getting pretty damn aroused despite his convictions.

  Jake was running pretty low in the resistance department by now, but even so he realized toying with her feelings would be a bad idea. They were all trapped together an
d emotions were running a little higher than normal. The end of the world would definitely be an acceptable argument to have as much wild sex as was humanly possible if you wanted to be honest about it...

  The problem was that the two of them were friends. You can't put your back up against someone, fight beside them, trust them with your life, and not develop some kind of bond. He was unsure as to what he thought of Kat. She had a great—if somewhat sarcastic—sense of humor and a quick, analytical mind when the situation called for it. Thanks to her martial arts training, she had proven more than capable of being able to take care of herself. She was gorgeous, that went without saying, even after nearly a month without salon-level maintenance, and her hair was growing out into its natural black, which made her look like one of those butt-kicking Anime girls. While that made her extremely appealing, it also told him he'd spent too much of his life watching Anime.

  Then there was Laurel. He thought her attraction was based on his genetic predisposition for redheads, being an Irishman and all. He enjoyed her company and was beyond frustrated at the lack of time alone with her. Whenever Nichole entered the room, all her walls went up, and Laurel found some reason to be elsewhere. Granted, his ex caused him to want to be somewhere else too. Anywhere else. He didn't want Nichole to come between them, but Laurel didn't seem willing to confront the bubble-headed stripper. If she would just take some initiative. It was probably the end of the world. If there was ever a time to put the pedal down and toss your hang-ups to the wind this was definitely it, but she kept idling in neutral.

  Kat didn't seem to have that particular problem.

  She rolled them towards the wall and ended up astride him in the classic position. Jake slid his hands up over her lower back, then traced the lines of her ribs below the edge of the cut off shirt. She took his wrists, attempting to pull them upwards under her shirt, but he clasped them against her sides and gently pushed her back until she knelt over him.

  "Kat," he managed to croak out through a desert dry throat, "I, uh...I think we should stop."

  "I thought you said the two of you hadn't slept together?" She ran her hands over his chest, but he had his second wind now and his conscience was screaming at him. Loudly.

  "We haven't. But that doesn't mean I'm going to with anyone else because of that fact." Jake attempted to put his thoughts in order. "If I were that kind of guy, we'd both be naked already. If things had gone differently, and I'd never met Laurel, well... I wouldn't hesitate for a second. But she and I are involved. I think. And you're my friend. I trust you the same way I trust Al."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's an image I didn't need."

  He blushed. "You know what I mean. If we had sex, I'd call it quits with Laurel, and your friendship would definitely be crippled if not destroyed altogether. Would you really want that?"

  Kat remained poised over him silently. She was saved from answering by Foster's voice crackling out of the intercom on the wall. George had installed one in his office, one in the common area, and another in the Rumble Room when the safe house was first used by Black Ops teams in the 1980s. He said it saved a lot of time, not having to trot up and down all those stairs.

  "O'Connor? You and that girl, who's probably kickin' yer ass right now, should get up here. There's somethin' you're gonna wanna see out front."

  After hesitating for a moment, Kat reached up and hit the button on the squawk box. "Hey, George. We're on the way."

  She released the button and sat back on his thighs as he sat up, then put her arms over his shoulders.

  "Damn it." She leaned her forehead to his.

  "If I were a lesser man..." Jake shrugged.

  She kissed him again briefly, then they helped each other to their feet and headed back upstairs. Kat took consolation in the fact that he'd regret not taking advantage of the situation.

  * * *

  Maggie, Kat, Laurel, and Jake were all gathered in George's office, watching the CCTV monitor. The camera on the front of the building showed a horde of infected, slowly shuffling past their haven, moving east.

  There were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Jake had a flash of The Who concert he'd attended in Glasgow with Molly. The walking horrors on the screen reminded him of the British crowd, eighty thousand strong, that had cheered their hearts out as Roger and the boys brought the house down with every song. The dead were packed almost shoulder-to-shoulder, surging and flowing between the buildings, as they left gory evidence of their passing. Bloody scraps of cloth from shirts torn on the jagged glass in the shattered display windows of storefronts. Streaks of congealed blood, pus, and other bodily fluids on vehicles and lampposts. Smears of skin and tissue on brickwork where shoulders, arms, and even skulls scraped along their surfaces. They showed wounds of every kind. Cuts, stabbings, bullet holes. Quite a few even wore the blades of their victims still protruding from their unfeeling flesh. Some of them had no eyes. Others had no face. They were missing jaws and throats, missing hands, sometimes entire limbs. Many looked like hollowed out puppets where all but ribs, pelvis, and spine had been consumed, leaving only primitive, anonymous stick-figures.

  Their group had been insulated as they'd sheltered in George's safe house, even though they all experienced moments of cabin fever. Every single person currently within their haven had seen the death and horror, but shy of the initial day of the outbreak, only Jake, Foster, and Allen had come into contact with the creatures.

  They'd gone to retrieve a few items from the top of George's now abandoned tenement and come face-to-face with five dead, hungry, hungry hippies.

  Seeing that Foster had secured the entrances and the lot gate, there was really no way for any of the creatures to gain entry to the building. The three had been relaxed and fairly nonchalant as they trooped up to the eighth floor. Their attitudes had changed abruptly however, when George opened the stairwell door and five pairs of milky yellow eyes turned to focus on them from halfway down the hall.

  Four double taps and one swing of a crowbar turned the five fans of cannabis into true deadheads. After retrieving a sack full of old spark plugs, a small camp shower, and an old calvary saber (all of which Jake found pretty useless at the time), the three men hurried back down to the hidden entrance and sealed the immense plate behind them again.

  Even so, nothing could have prepared them for the exodus of rotting hunger, slowly making its way past their refuge.

  Laurel and Maggie had been on the roof when the gristly procession approached, so the sounds of uncountable feet and falling objects had alerted them during their sunbathing. When the two peeked over the roof's rim, they experienced a moment of soul-chilling fear, before quickly grabbing their clothing and silently creeping through the roof's access door together. Evidently Foster had received an eyeful when they rushed into his office, because he kept glancing at the two and chuckling every so often.

  "We need to stay out of sight until those things move on. We'll need to keep everyone off the roof for now too. If one of us got spotted..." Jake said, quietly.

  George nodded. "Not ta worry. Already secured the door. Got the key in my pocket. Unless some idiot takes some C4 to it, no one's getting up there fer a while."

  Over the course of the next hour, the girls found reasons to excuse themselves from the room, and Jake couldn't blame them. What was passing in front of the camera was awful beyond description. Laurel went to help with the group dinner and Maggie headed to check on the solitary Karen. Only Kat remained and when Jake called for Leo to bring Allen into the office, she went upstairs for a shower.

  Leo Santos was a seventeen-year-old wiry boy with an affinity for old horror films, books, and anything involving swords. He lived with his stepfather after his mother left them both for a lawyer in Ashville last year, but the two hadn't been close. George had seen him on the street, hacking his way east with a machete, killing the odd zombie here and there, and George bellowed at him from the door of the empty apartment building to get his scrawny ass ins
ide, before it was bitten off.

  Jake liked the kid. Leo reminded him of how he and Allen were in high school. Kind of geeky, more interested in girls than football—though Allen was the only one who had any success with them at the time—and generally a nice guy. He was built like a fencer, with muscled wrists and knowledge of edged weaponry that rivaled Kat's.

  Jake's friend paled visibly when he saw what was on the screen and sat down in the only other office chair Foster had. The procession continued for another fifteen minutes before finally petering out. Here and there, stray creatures continued to pass on the street. Some of them lost interest in the journey altogether and began to scatter through the neighborhood, into buildings or down alleyways. Many even turned and started back the way they came, eventually moving again into the city center to mill endlessly among the empty skyscrapers.

  Foster cracked his neck both ways, then took a healthy swig of his coffee. They sat around the table full of maps and printed satellite images, watching the monitors for a while.

  "What do you know Chief?" Jake leaned against the table and crossed his arms.

  His stomach fell at George's expression. It reminded him of the one his first martial arts instructor, Frank O'Brian, displayed when he hadn't been practicing his katas enough.

  Frank had been an excellent teacher, even though Jake hadn't seen him for almost ten years. Some idiot had crossed the line in a minivan and hit him head on when he was out one day on his Harley. Jake was overseas when it happened and hadn't been able to go to the funeral. He'd gone to Frank's grave sometimes. Before the dead rose that was.

  Foster pulled a bottle of Jameson's from his desk drawer, poured some into his mug, then tossed the bottle to Jake. Allen declined with a headshake when his friend offered him a drink, so Jake uncorked it for a big pull himself. If George's expression was any indication, the news was bad.

  "The news is bad." Foster settled back in his chair.