The Good, The Dead & The Lawless (Book 2): The Hell That Follows

by Archer, Angelique

  Johnny B. gawked blankly at Grady’s bodyless head, the mouth still open in a sinister snarl. He turned to Kennedy, then continued firing into the crowd.

  When they had thinned out the creatures, Kennedy signaled for them to go into the open apartment. They cleared the entrance, living room, and kitchen quickly, finding only a few straggling zombies left within. Clustered in front of a closed door, they repeatedly smacked their mottled fists against it, unaware of the team’s presence.

  “Hey, assholes,” Johnny B. called out and pulled out his knife.

  Colin looked at him quizzically. “What are you doing?”

  Johnny B. didn’t respond and shoved past them, a dark scowl on his face. When he reached the first zombie, he yanked its head back toward him, a fistful of its greasy, limp hair in his hands. He sliced the knife across its scalp, tossing the chunk of hair and skin aside, then sank the blade into the floundering creature’s temple.

  When there was only one zombie left, he shoved it to the ground, straddled it, and brought the blade down into its chest. It tried to grab him, arms flailing around as it growled, teeth clicking together, oblivious to any pain. Johnny B. dragged the blade down the torso, sawing through its rib cage like a gutted fish, until it stopped just above its pelvis. He gave a howl of anger and withdrew the knife.

  Kennedy walked to Johnny B.’s side and aimed at the zombie’s head. A second later, the back of its skull splattered in tiny fragments on the white floor.

  The door tentatively opened until Brett’s face was in full view. He flung the door wide and ran to Colin, hugging him tightly.

  “It’s my fault,” he murmured.

  Colin squeezed him, his eyes meeting Kennedy’s. “It’s okay, lad. It’s going to be okay.”

  Johnny B. stood and swayed as though he was in a drunken stupor, exhaustion overtaking his body.

  Kennedy went to him, and the two embraced.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Johnny B. whispered.

  Shaking her head, she swallowed hard. “Me neither.”

  Suddenly, she pushed away from him and fired at the front door.

  A zombie’s body thumped on the floor.

  “Let’s go!” she shouted.

  When they got to the hallway, the undead were already marching toward them from the stairwell, coming in a few at a time.

  “Gunfire must have drawn more,” Brett said, worriedly looking from one end of the hallway to the other to figure out how they’d escape.

  “Get to the elevator!” Kennedy directed. “J.B., you got your crowbar?”

  The large man took it out from the back of his belt and used it to crack open a zombie’s skull in his path.

  Brett gasped, muzzle flash, smoke, and the deafening cracks of a volley of gunfire overwhelming his senses.

  “The elevators don’t work! There’s no power!” he yelled urgently.

  Without turning back to him, Kennedy kept aiming and firing her weapon. “No need. We’re climbing down!”

  Brett watched Johnny B. jam the end of the crowbar between the two doors of the closed elevator and begin prying them apart. The doors gradually opened, and Johnny B. bellowed for them to start going down.

  “Help him,” Colin told Kennedy, nudging Brett toward the open doors. “We’ll take care of them.”

  She took one last shot and then holstered her gun. After tying the rope around the metal rails and brackets, she crouched down and took the rope in her hands.

  “Try to hook your feet into the grooves along the brackets,” she instructed Brett. When she saw his terrified eyes darting back and forth from the dark elevator shaft to the encroaching zombies, she added, “Just follow what I do.”

  Johnny B. looked over his shoulder once he could no longer see Brett. “Go ahead. I’ve gotta close the fucking doors,” he said to Colin.

  The Scotsman frowned. Zombies were still pouring in from the stairwell.

  “You sure?”

  Johnny B. nodded. “I’ll be right behind you, so don’t climb down like a pussy.”

  Colin took hold of the rope and peered down into the elevator shaft. He could barely see Kennedy. Brett’s curly head bobbed up and down as he disappeared a bit further. Colin sat back on his heels and started rappelling down, feeling as though he would have an easier time scaling Mount Everest naked than escaping through an elevator shaft with zombies at both ends.

  He noticed that Johnny B. was now inside the shaft standing on the tiny platform, trying to squeeze the elevator doors closed. His hands were splayed on either side of the two doors, and Colin could see the muscles in his arms and back tensing as he tugged them back together. There was only a little space between the doors, two feet at most, but it would be enough for the zombies to fit through and tumble down after them, like lemmings following each other off the edge of a cliff.

  Suddenly, Colin saw a hideous face appear in the opening, and before either of them could react, the zombie opened its mouth and sank its teeth into Johnny B.’s hand.

  Johnny B. stared in shock at the zombie as it shook its head back and forth like a dog, chewing at his hand.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  He blinked once, then ripped his hand away from it, taking a gun from his holster and shooting it in the head.

  He pulled his hand back disbelievingly; a huge chunk of the top of his hand was gone, and the thin bones beneath were now exposed.

  Clenching his fist, he looked back at the doors.

  They weren’t going to close.

  Something had to be done, or they were all going to die.

  And he was fucked anyways.

  He heard Colin climbing back up toward him.

  “Don’t,” he said quietly. Johnny B. took one look down the shaft, almost reminiscently. “Take care of her, Colin.”

  Colin froze, hearing Johnny B. call him by his actual name and not an insult for the first time.

  Then Johnny B. wedged his body through the open space back into the hallway and started firing into the encroaching horde.

  He would not let them past.

  True to form, he made head shot after head shot with mechanical precision.

  When he ran out of ammo, he pulled out his knife and began stabbing them. Eventually, the knife lodged into one skull and got stuck, and he didn’t have time to wrench it back out.

  Dozens of them approached, eagerly snapping their jaws. He had no gun, no knife, nothing but his bare hands.

  He would hold them back.

  He would not let them past.

  He looked back one last time at the elevator, then extended his arms and ran into the group of them.

  They latched onto his arms and legs as soon as he collided with them, like an infestation of ticks on a stray dog.

  Their teeth ripped into his skin, and he felt the sharp tips dig so deep they scraped against his bones.

  His feet slid back, their sheer numbers shoving him closer to the open elevator shaft.

  He had to buy the others time.

  He could not let the zombies past. He would not.

  Screaming in rage, his body rigid, he braced himself and pressed forward, inch by precious inch.

  They tore at his neck, at his face, biting his ears, his lips, his cheeks, eclipsing every part of his body until he was almost completely obscured by them.

  He felt his energy draining, but he looked up, mustering the last of his strength for just a little more time.

  He would hold them back.

  He would not let them past.

  A cascade of gunfire popped below Colin like unexpected fireworks, and in the muzzle flash, he could see Kennedy firing into the zombies at the bottom of the shaft. Like shooting fish in a barrel, he recalled Johnny B. saying. Even as their rotting comrades fell around them, the others still standing reached up for the living with groping hands, unfazed by their fallen brethren.

  After she’d cleared the way for them, Colin finally landed atop the small hill of bodies, his feet sinking
into their stinking, mushy flesh.

  “Where’s J.B.?” Kennedy asked, urgently looking behind him, waiting for Johnny B. to appear.

  Colin’s stomach knotted, as though he’d just hit the first drop on a sickeningly tall roller coaster.

  “Kennedy,” he began, placing his hands on both of her shoulders. “I don’t know how to say this…”

  Her face paled, and she shook her head, her hands covering her mouth in disbelief.

  He went to hold her, but she struggled against him.

  Just as she broke free, something heavy clattered through the elevator shaft, spiraling downward in the metal abyss.

  Kennedy stepped back in trepidation, then screamed when the body of Johnny B. hit the pile of corpses with a loud thud, landing so forcefully that his neck snapped immediately upon impact.

  There was hardly any skin left on his body.

  Colin had never heard her scream before, and it cut him to his core. She ran to Johnny B.’s body and collapsed to her knees, cradling her friend in her arms.

  Brett, standing off to the side, knelt down and openly wept.

  Colin heard something else in the elevator shaft, and he grabbed Kennedy and tried to pull her away, but she fought him, continuing to run back to Johnny B., unsuccessfully attempting to drag his body out of the shaft.

  Zombies started hitting the bottom rapidly, except unlike Johnny B., they crawled forward on badly broken limbs toward them, even in their mangled state, unable to think of anything besides satiating their hunger.

  Colin stopped fighting Kennedy and picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder and sprinting to the truck. She protested against him and pounded his back with her fists, her face dirty and streaked with tears.

  Opening the driver’s side door, he tossed her in and ran around to the other side.

  “Brett!” he yelled, banging on the roof of the truck. The boy was still staring at Johnny B., oblivious to the zombies pulling themselves toward him. “Get in the bloody truck already!”

  Once Brett shook himself from his reverie and hopped into the back of the truck, Colin jumped in the cab beside Kennedy as she gunned the engine and pulled away.

  Colin looked back one final time at the Marine’s motionless body sprawled over the pile of corpses inside the elevator shaft.

  In the end, the man who had started as a pesky thorn in Colin’s side became the one who gave the ultimate sacrifice to save the rest of them.

  Thank you.

  Moments later, they burst out of the abandoned parking garage, the place that would forever mark Johnny B.’s tomb.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Stewart stood on top of the train, loosely holding the spear in his hands. He was so bored.

  Jeremy was on duty with him, diligent as always, busily putting down rotters at the rear of the train.

  Show-off, he thought sullenly.

  But Stewart didn’t mind letting him do the work. It was bad enough Kennedy forced him to do this. Why couldn’t he be inside, warm with the rest of the passengers?

  He scanned the forest, then shifted his gaze to the front of the train.

  And that’s when he saw them.

  Stewart smiled broadly, knowing what he had always known, that he’d come back.

  About damned time.

  It struck him then, all of a sudden. He was sick and tired of his miserable life, being surrounded by people he didn’t care about, being told what to do, being given the short end of the stick every single time, being married to a woman he realized he despised...

  It wasn’t until he’d met Cade that he knew he deserved something better, something where he felt like a man and not an insect under his wife’s shoe.

  He started walking toward Jeremy, holding the spear tightly now, the same big smile plastered across his face.

  Seated in the worn chair inside the locomotive, Tucker spooned another bite of kidney beans into his mouth. It was just about all they had left, but as he chewed them, he closed his eyes and pretended it was a juicy New York strip sirloin instead. Someone suddenly hollered on the roof of the train above him, and Tucker jumped, inadvertently throwing the plate into the air, and, as if in slow motion, watching the beans fly off it and onto the metal floor below.

  Tucker grumbled a bit, muttering and chastising the scouts above him under his breath, before kneeling down and wiping up the plate of beans with an oily rag he normally used for repairs.

  He sat back on his heels and rested for a moment. With a sigh, he reminded himself that the scouts were just doing their job, thinning out any groups of zombies that tried to surround the train.

  But while he puttered about cleaning the mess, he missed the group of ten men approaching the front of the locomotive outside.

  Nor did he see that they were heavily armed.

  And most importantly, had he not been on his hands and knees on the floor, he would have recognized the man in the front.

  By the time he stood again, it was too late.

  Tucker had just set the plate, smashed beans, and oily rag on the chair when he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head. When he hit the floor, everything around him turned to darkness.

  Jeremy yanked his spear out of another zombie’s head and turned to face Stewart.

  “What’s up, man? All clear on your end?” Jeremy asked good-naturedly, not seeming to mind that he’d been doing all the work.

  “Yeah, they all seem to be going over to your end,” Stewart replied, blocking Jeremy’s view of the front of the train.

  “Makes sense. They’re following us after all. I guess it’s only natural they’d show up at the back.” Jeremy gouged a zombie through the eye, freezing it in place until he withdrew the spear. “Want to help me get these last ones? Then go on in and take a break. I know it takes a while to get used to the cold out here.” He leaned forward to stab another zombie.

  Stewart should have felt guilty, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached out and casually pushed Jeremy off the edge.

  His arms flailed as he fell to the ground, unprepared for the fall. There was an odd snapping sound when he landed, followed by a shriek of pain.

  As soon as he hit the dirt, the zombies shifted their attention to Jeremy and slowly began staggering toward him.

  “Stewart! Help me!” he cried out. Unable to stand, Jeremy scurried backward on his hands, dragging his injured leg as best as he could. He was petrified, knowing there was no escape, that he’d never be able to move fast enough to get away from the zombies.

  Stewart didn’t wait to see what happened to him. Maybe he’d survive; maybe he wouldn’t. He turned around and climbed down the ladder.

  He had no intention of telling anyone what he’d seen coming for them.

  By the time he got to his room, Stewart had already forgotten Jeremy Higby ever existed.

  Lydia was sitting on her cot reading, and she glanced up at him accusatorily when he walked in. “Aren’t you supposed to be on sentry duty?”

  People started screaming in the hallway, and Stewart poked his head out of his room, eager to see what was happening.

  Eager to see one person in particular.

  Several armed men were dragging passengers from their cabins, herding them somewhere else on the train.

  Lydia yanked him backward, slamming the door hurriedly, her eyes panicked. “Is it rotters?”

  Stewart rolled his eyes. “No, Lydia, it isn’t rotters. Someone’s taking over the train.” He smiled to himself, knowing who it was.

  Since Cade left, Stewart had felt a void open up inside of him. He missed the conversations, the brief reprieve from his harping, demeaning wife.

  Someone pounded on their door. “Open up.”

  Lydia backed up against the window. When she saw Stewart reach for the doorknob, she blurted out fearfully, “Don’t open it!”

  Stewart looked over his shoulder at her, adrenaline pumping through his veins, his chest heaving.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
he growled at her. He turned the handle and held up his hands when he came face to face with a rifle.

  Stewart felt a momentary sense of dread when he noticed the Hispanic man’s finger poised to squeeze the trigger.

  “Wait!” someone shouted from down the hall.

  Stewart relaxed, instantly recognizing the voice.

  “My old drinking buddy,” Cade Foster announced as he strode up to the cabin. “Don’t shoot him, Camacho. I know him.”

  Lifting his chin defiantly at the man in front of him, Stewart turned to Cade and grinned. “About fucking time. I knew you’d come back.”

  “Of course,” Cade replied, shaking his hand and waving his pistol around. “I’m just taking what’s mine.” He peered past Stewart into his cabin, seeing Lydia hunkering in the corner. “That your woman?”

  Stewart sighed and nodded.

  “Want to help us out?” Cade asked.

  Immediately, Stewart’s expression brightened. Cade wanted his help.

  “We’re… gathering… people up. Taking them up to the first car behind the locomotive.” Cade took a gun from his belt and handed it to him. “Find me Haven. And shoot the men,” he said simply.

  Taking the firearm from him very slowly, Stewart stared at him in confusion.

  With a chuckle, Cade began to walk away. “You heard me.”

  Heavy footsteps sounded further down the car. Stewart swiveled and saw a man rushing past the cabins, holding his child in his arms, his wife running in front of him.

  They were trying to escape.

  Stewart jerked his head back in Cade’s direction and noticed that both Cade and the man with him, Camacho, were gone.

  Without another thought, Stewart turned and lifted his gun, pulling the trigger.

  The man collapsed to the floor, a large red stain growing on the back of his shirt. He’d fallen on top of the child he was carrying, and his wife shrieked in horror as she fell to her knees and scooped up her motionless baby while begging her husband to get back up.

  Holy shit.