“Thanks for the trivia,” I interrupted. “You ought to get a job with the History Channel. What I need to know, does this work?”
Eric chuffed as if I had offended him. “No point if it doesn’t. That’s like dating a girl who won’t give head.”
I lifted the machine gun from the crate. The finish was oily and cool. I cradled it under my left arm and wrapped my right hand around the pistol grip. I appreciated the familiar weight and potential for mass carnage.
Its heft and smell took me far away, to my service in the Third Infantry Division. The last time I held a machine gun, it was the day I became a vampire. Second by second, the gun grew heavier until its weight threatened to pull me to the floor. Remaining upright took great effort. The room dissolved into the dust of war-torn Iraq. The cacophony of battle filled my ears: explosions; the zippered bursts of automatic fire; the chaos of radio chatter; confused shouts; the cries and sobbing of the Iraqis.
Something cracked inside my headset and I realized it was the snapping of fingers. Eric stood before me, his thumb snapping against his index finger. “You okay?”
The machine gun practically fell from my arms, but once I set the butt on the floor, the gun’s weight returned to normal. The noise of war faded like a dying radio signal.
“Sorry, I was getting a little wistful for my days working for Uncle Sugar.”
“The rate of fire is 1,100 rounds a minute,” Eric said proudly. “When this bitch talks, people listen.”
I did quick arithmetic in my head. “That’s about eighteen rounds a second. Burns quite a lot of ammo.”
Eric waved to the crates and olive green metal cans on the opposite wall. “No problem. I can sell it to you by the ton.”
I went through the logistics. Machine-gun ammo comes in belts of fifty. Four belts in a standard ammo can. That’s two hundred rounds. Weighed around sixteen pounds, if I remember. It’s not the weight but the convenience. How would I carry that much ammo and feed it through the machine gun? For all that trouble I’d only get about twelve seconds of shooting time. Plus, I’d be spraying bullets all over the hills.
I set the machine gun back in its box. “Too complicated. Do you have anything simpler? More basic? Yet a little exotic?”
Time was passing, and I wanted to be ready by nightfall.
Eric turned from me, frowning and disappointed at losing this sale. He tapped along boxes and bundles on a shelf beside us. “Simple. Basic. Exotic.”
He yanked a bundle in a grimy cloth. He unwrapped a stubby antique double-barreled gun. “It’s a Pedersoli Kodiak elephant gun I bought at a police auction. In mint condition, it’ll be worth eleven grand. As you can see, the previous owners—crack dealers—weren’t interested in the gun’s pedigree.”
Eric ran his hand over the cut-down stock, the wood gouged and scratched. The metal work was pitted and rusted from the twin triggers to the truncated barrels. The twin muzzles still had hacksaw scratches.
Eric broke open the stock and showed the enormous chambers. “Ten-gauge.”
A 10-gauge elephant gun? “Got ammo?”
“Of course.”
Perfect. “I’ll take it.”
CHAPTER 53
I left Eric’s place. Cavagnolo had to get his own ride home.
Jolie appeared behind me on her big BMW. We stopped in a little clearing along the river to discuss our plans to attack the zombies.
I handed her the Dan Wesson pistol. She accepted it with only a simple thanks. While I studied the topographical map, she played with the gun, disassembling it into a pile of shiny pieces, then in a blur of fingers had it back together again. She loaded the magazines and after slapping one into the Dan Wesson, dropped the extras into a leather fanny pack.
She said, “In case you wondered how the zombies snatched Phaedra from her uncle’s place, I found a bunch of footprints behind the little cottage.”
“How’d they get past Cavagnolo’s dogs?”
Jolie pulled a plastic ground beef wrapper and a prescription bottle of Ambien. “It’s a miracle the little poochies didn’t get poisoned.”
“Told you the zombies were clever.”
I sketched the layout of the zombie lair and we drew up our plan.
We’d get into position on her BMW, which could cover all but the worst terrain in a hurry. I’d dismount and she would draw the zombies away from me.
“Don’t try any stunts like running them down,” I said. “The zombies catch on quick and they’ll sacrifice one of their own to set you up. Don’t be shy about using the pistol.”
“I’m not shy about anything,” Jolie replied.
We spent the rest of the afternoon going through our shopping list. Afterward, we returned to the clearing and got ready as we waited for night to fall.
I tested the number of a cheapie cell phone I’d bought in a convenience store. It worked. I opened the phone case, removed the vibrating mechanism, and in its place attached an electronic fuse. I called the number and a red LED on the fuse illuminated. I turned the phone off—hell of a time to get a wrong number—and inserted the blasting cap into the fuse. I extended a talon and poked a deep hole into a stick of dynamite. I inserted the blasting cap into the hole and wrapped the cell phone tight against the dynamite with electrical tape. I taped the second stick of dynamite to the first.
After loading all the guns, I tucked my pistol into its holster and slipped spare magazines into the pockets of my cargo pants. I dropped a flare gun, flares, and the cell phone bomb into one pocket of the vest and dumped the 10-gauge cartridges into the other pockets.
The sun sank below the western hills and the long fingers of night reached across the valley. I sat cross-legged while Jolie stretched out and propped herself on her elbows.
I said, “Assuming the raid goes off okay…”
“There’s no assuming, Felix. Not after what you and I have been through.” She meant Carmen. “We get in and destroy.”
“I was getting at your partner, Nguyen. When we get done, what about him? I think he’s going to make a stink about not coming along.”
“Notice that he didn’t protest too hard about me bracing him.”
“I thought you were pulling rank.”
“I got no rank on him. He reports directly for the Araneum.” Jolie cocked a thumb to the sky. “The very top.”
“As?”
“As a snitch. Plus he’s a fake.”
“Fake?” I asked.
“Yeah. A real poser. He likes wearing the leathers and talking smack but he can’t ride a motorcycle worth a shit.”
“He looks tough.”
“In a vampire way but he doesn’t have what it takes to be an enforcer. Few will stick their necks out like you have to, to be one of us.”
“Would you have done it?” I was referring to the stake and the skinning knife.
“I don’t know.”
“You mean it depends?”
“No. It means I don’t want to talk about it.” Jolie plucked a stalk of grass and stuck it between her teeth. “I didn’t like getting tapped for this job, Felix.”
“I wouldn’t of, either.”
“There’s a lot the Araneum didn’t tell you.”
“About what?”
Jolie’s aura shrank to a simmer of worry.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Is it about the zombies?”
“No. The Araneum is in the dark about them.”
“So it’s about Phaedra?”
Jolie didn’t say anything, which meant yes.
We kept quiet for a long time. Jolie took off her jacket and began a series of katas, her legs and arms becoming a whirlwind of kicking and punching.
I made coffee over a Sterno stove, enough for Jolie and myself. I added blood. I didn’t need the caffeine or the nourishment—I was plenty jacked up on adrenaline—but the snack grounded me and softened my too-sharp senses so that I relaxed and became more aware.
>
At 1:00 A.M. Phaedra put her jacket back on and clicked the fanny pack around her waist. I did a final check of my equipment. She put on her helmet and started the BMW. I climbed on the rear seat and we rode two up from the clearing.
The Jeep remained on San Diego Avenue where I had abandoned it. Dust and scratches covered the windows and the dented body. The zombie I’d thrown aside was gone. When Jolie and I passed the cemetery, I asked her to turn off the motorcycle’s lights.
A half mile from Ghoul Mountain, we veered off the main road to approach Deadman’s Gulch from the northeast. The BMW crossed the gullies as nimble as a mountain lion.
We paused on a rise that overlooked Hennison’s house. Light glowed from the cracks around plywood sheets nailed over the broken windows. The gasoline tank—a military surplus water buffalo—was on a metal stand next to the garage on the eastern side of the house.
“Step one,” she said. We were here.
I got off the bike. Jolie turned the fanny pack to the front to get better access at her pistol and magazines.
Now for step two. Jolie would distract the zombies while I planted the bomb to topple the gas tank into the house.
Step three. Get into the house. Find Dr. Hennison. He was in poor shape the last I’d seen him. He might have used some of his black science to keep alive. This time I’d make sure he’s dead.
Step four. Detonate the bomb, drop the gas tank, and burn the house to ash.
Step five. Destroy any remaining zombies.
Step six. Maybe the hardest part of the plan. Escape and confront the Araneum about Phaedra.
Jolie adjusted her helmet and slugged my arm for good luck. She crept down the rise on the BMW, the engine rumbling in the darkness. Unless the zombies had gone deaf, they knew we were here.
I searched for zombies but until they moved, they remained inconspicuous against the texture of the night. I walked down the hill with the elephant gun loaded and ready.
A hundred feet away, a human shape walked from beside a juniper bush. Another shape moved. Then another. Within a minute, I had six zombies advancing, two carrying lumber studs fashioned into clubs.
I leveled the elephant gun. They sensed the threat and kept their distance.
Instead of approaching, I hustled from them. The zombies followed and bunched up one behind the other. I lowered the elephant gun and fired both barrels.
The gun roared, the muzzle blasts brilliant as lightning, the recoil like a kick against my shoulder.
The large slugs plowed through all of them in an explosion of slime. They collapsed in a heap of black mush.
I made for the gas tank. I broke open the elephant gun. The ejected spent cartridges tumbled free with a whoop and loops of smoke. I reloaded and snapped the gun closed.
Sheets of plywood fell from the windows along the back of the house. Zombies lunged through the openings toward me, Kimberly leading the charge.
I scrambled for my target, the gas tank.
My senses pinged. Something was wrong. Their attack was too obvious.
A shape darkened the stars over the roof. Then another. A sharpened pole shaved alongside me and ripped my vest. The two zombies got ready to spring from the roof.
I fired the elephant gun. Once. Twice. The blasts engulfed the zombies and they plopped into the ground, their guts streaming behind them.
I ran and reloaded the elephant gun. A first wave of zombies tromped over their fallen comrades.
Jolie BMW’s roared through the darkness. She zoomed alongside the zombies, close enough that they turned toward her. She stood on the motorcycle pegs, leveled her pistol in her left hand, and blasted away.
Zombie heads exploded like rotten cantaloupes.
She fishtailed through the dirt, leaving the surviving zombies a disorganized mob, not certain whether to go after her or me.
I fired the elephant gun, reloaded at vampire speed, fired again, and again and again.
I had fired so fast that the spent cartridges were still looping smoke in the air when I stopped. The blasts echoed in my ears.
Jolie circled for another strafing attack, and in the wake of her high-speed pass, she left zombies in squirming piles.
I proceeded to the gas tank and fastened the bomb to the bottom of a leg closest to the garage. The bomb would sever the leg and the weight of the gas tank should drop the tank through the garage and into the bottom floor.
I turned on the cell phone. The screen flashed.
I went to the porch. Jolie waited, having ditched her motorcycle and helmet.
Guns at the ready, we entered the lab. Shelves and equipment littered the floor. Discarded heads and empty canisters lay in puddles of oily liquid. The heads rested on their cheeks, the lifeless eyes clouded and empty, the skin gray and gummy.
Jolie kept her .45 pointed at the heads. “Where is everybody else?”
“I don’t know.” I put my hand on the floor and kept still. I felt the tremble of bodies moving below. Hennison?
We went through the top floor room by room but no zombies or the doc. Jolie stood with me on the landing to the bottom floor.
Below us, a coil of tubing and cable unraveled down the stairs. The tubes and cable went through crude holes punched in the walls. A light shone from a wide door in the middle of the hall.
“Seems too quiet down there,” Jolie said. “It’s a trap. One wrong move and we’re zombie chow.”
“Who goes first?” I asked.
“I’ll do it.” Jolie tensed her legs to leap.
“Hold on. If it’s a trap, how about neither of us goes first?” I rolled a cart from the lab and pushed it down the stairs. The cart clattered a few steps, spilling surgical tools and bottles, then tumbled end over end. When it crashed against the bottom, a curtain of mist sprayed across the threshold.
The odor burned my nose like acid. My eyes watered.
Garlic oil.
Clever, that trap would harm no one but a vampire.
Five zombies leaped from around the corner and surrounded the cart. They banged on the metal cabinet like enraged baboons before realizing their mistake.
I got two with the elephant gun. Jolie finished the rest with her pistol. I whisked a tarp from the floor, covered my head and arms, and bounded down the stairs.
CHAPTER 54
I landed on top of the zombies, not levitating so I hit them with all my weight.
They collapsed beneath me and I sprang away. The fine mist of the lingering garlic oil stung my nose and eyes. I reached clean air before shedding the tarp. I searched my pocket for another couple of cartridges for the elephant gun. The pocket was empty. No problem, I had plenty of ammo. I searched another pocket. My fingers poked through. The pocket had been sliced open. I tapped the other pockets, anxiously searching for more ammo.
We were getting deeper into the lair and losing our advantages by the second. Jolie landed beside me.
I asked, “How are you fixed for bullets?”
“Down to half. Sure are a lot of these fuckers.”
I threw away the elephant gun, drew my .45, and went through the door in the hall.
Banks of lights clamped to the ceiling illuminated with a brightness and heat as intense as a summer sun. The dirty humid air smelled like a polluted swamp.
Rows of aquariums sat on metal shelves, containing human parts instead of tropical fish. At the bottom of one aquarium, bubbles spewed from a plastic clam, a tiny frogman trapped inside its pearly jaws. The bubbles frothed around livers, spleens, and kidneys.
Pairs of eyes bobbed in Mason jars. As we walked in, the eyes followed us as if they had nothing better to look at.
A naked and legless human torso lay pinned with cabinet-maker’s clamps against a picnic table perched at a slant with a car jack. Stitches held the arms to the shoulders. An assortment of feet sat alongside on a workbench as if they were shoes to try on for size.
The top of the head was open, the cap of skull hanging off to one side. Wires and smal
l colored cables were strung from the empty skull to a battery of cheap-looking electrical gizmos as if this were a kit from Popular Science.
As a vampire I’m an expert in corpses, dining regularly on the blood of the innocent and guilty, ripping the flesh off the bones of my enemies, etc. And having seen an alien hoodlum pull a prosthetic robotic eyeball from his head, in short, I’ve witnessed plenty of freaky ass, capital A-S-S, shit in my short undead existence.
But this house outside Morada, Colorado, took the cake. And the icing. And the creamy filling.
Jolie noted the bloody handprints smeared across the walls. “Hennison?”
“I hope so. If he’s lost this much blood, he’s close to biting the big one.”
Where were Reginald and Sonia? Maybe this was yet another trap?
Zombies dragged their feet on the floor above. Three, maybe four zombies gathered for another attack.
Jolie and I followed the streaks of blood to a second lab.
Another naked body lay on the table, feet and crotch toward us. It was a man, obviously. Tubes and wires draped from incisions in the arms, the legs, and the torso. Three ragged holes marred his chest, one by the sternum, the others closer to the left shoulder. Gunshot wounds.
The needles on the gauges of the adjacent pumps and electrical console twitched. A row of laptops presented black screens, and blinking power lights indicated sleep mode. This had to be the main reanimation lab, where Hennison created his zombies.
I kept my pistol ready and I advanced, my senses at maximum gain.
I stepped around the table to examine the face. As I got close to see over the chest, I discovered there was no head. The neck had been neatly sliced from the shoulders.
I started to ask myself who this man was when my foot dragged through a pile of clothes on the floor. Heavy shoes, black trousers, a white shirt and lab coat soaked with blood. Hennison’s clothes.
This corpse belonged to Hennison.
What happened to his head?
Jailbait Zombie Page 23