“We’ll form a chain,” McGuigan decided. Teamwork got them across, and Cole could only watch in disappointment. He had been hoping they would slip, and half drown. It wasn’t a very Christian-like attitude, then again, the longer he spent around Hamilton, the less Christian he became.
The group went on with Cole leading, once more the scattergun at the ready. The tunnel ran for only another mile and during that mile they encountered more obstacles but nothing more dangerous than the river. When they finally emerged into the real Rad Lands, it was after midnight. The moon was hidden behind the clouds and yet its light filtered through enough to cast shadows, thousands of them, all crooked and deep enough to hide any number of zombies.
For several minutes, the six of them stood in a bunch just within the tunnel, staring out, fully expecting an onslaught of Dead-eyes. None came and by degrees they relaxed, but only to a point. They were on the edge of the real Rad Lands. There were no paths here and no maps. The maps from the old days were useless. The land had been warped by hundred mega-ton bombs. Rivers had dried up and marshlands had become deserts. Where there had been rolling hills, there were now canyons cutting deep into the scorched earth. Even fewer buildings were standing, and those that were could not last much longer.
Cole pointed to the largest building in sight; it was a black rectangle, six stories tall. “Maybe we’ll see something from up there.” They were a half mile away and from that distance the building didn’t look all that frightening. It was another story when they got up close. The building leaned out toward them, looking as though a stiff wind might drop it on their heads.
“Nope,” Hamilton said, turning away.
“Are you ever going to stop being a pussy?” Cole asked in a quiet voice. The wind had picked up and something was swinging back and forth, making a high screech that went up and down. It had an eerie, begging quality that made Cole think that maybe it was calling to the Dead-eyes.
Hamilton turned and grinned at Cole. “I’m not a pussy, I’m just smart enough to know that is a death trap. You go up there if you want. I’m staying down here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Corrina said. She went up to where the marble facade had crumbled away and rapped her knuckles hard on an exposed girder. It clanked softly and she shook her hand from the pain. “It’s solid.” Hamilton sniffed at this. He then sneered as McGuigan followed Cole and Corrina inside.
Sergeant Phillips looked around at the darkness and decided that he didn’t like being out in the open. “I’m going, too.” Brunker followed him and Hamilton came last, muttering under his breath.
“What are we walking on?” he asked as they pushed through the rusting front doors of the building and found themselves in a lobby with high, twenty-foot ceilings. He bent and scooped up what he took for black sand. It was in fact all that remained of the roughly 20,000 square feet of glass that had once covered the building. Hamilton was just straightening up when he saw a footprint in the sand. A print made by a bare foot.
“Cole…” he started to say as his eyes tracked the prints toward what had been a dentist’s office. There was someone standing in the doorway: bent and twisted, and so black that at first Hamilton thought he was seeing the shadow of a person. Then it let out a low-throated growl and charged. Behind it came more, many more.
Chapter 27
Hamilton fired his scattergun into the chest of the charging creature, knocking it off its feet. The gun went off with a thundering boom and a stab of flame which lit the room for just a blink, long enough for them to see a crowd of the beasts crawling over each other to get through the door.
The Dead-eye that Hamilton had shot sprung up a second later and bore down on Corrina, who screamed and threw herself backward, using her gun as a very poor shield instead of a weapon. Cole shot over her, exploding the thing’s head. He jacked a new shell into the chamber as three guns went off at once with a new flash. Phillips, Brunker and McGuigan had fired at the same creature and all three hit it straight in the chest, making a crater where its heart had been. It flew back into the rest and was trampled.
“Aim for the head!” Cole cried, as he leveled the scattergun and fired. Black brains sprayed outward along with hunks of oily scalp. Two more guns went off as Cole jacked in a new shell—two shots down, three to go, to take on who knew how many Dead-eyes. He was bringing up his weapon again when a scream cut through the explosions and the echoes of explosions ringing in his head. Corrina’s scream was long and muffled.
“Cooooole!”
He turned, feeling as though time was drawing out. It felt like forever as he dragged his gun through the sluggish air to line up a shot on a gibbering, screeching hell beast with scaly black flesh and wet black eyes. The monster had come charging from a realtor office that took up most of the first floor of the building. It was coming in a dead sprint and he only had a millisecond to line up the shot and fire.
The blast struck it a trifle low and the bottom half of its face disappeared, which only slowed it down for a second.
It stumbled and came on again, now targeting Cole with the burning hatred that had driven it to madness. Although it had the strength of three men, it was small, wiry and light. Cole sidestepped its rushing attack and smashed it in the back of the head with the butt of the scattergun as it passed. It went sprawling face first.
More gunshots erupted. Cole picked Corrina up and screamed into her face at full volume. “Check that door! See if it’s safe in there.”
She was sent stumbling towards a set of double doors that were shut tight. She was supposed to see if it was safe in there, but what if it wasn’t? What if there were more of the monsters inside waiting for someone to do something stupid like open the door? Fear stopped her hand just inches away from the knob. Tell him it’s locked, a voice whispered inside her.
It was such a brilliant idea that she spun to tell Cole the bad news. What she saw made the idea seem not smart at all. The lobby was being flooded by the creatures. The men were slowly pulling back, firing until their weapons went dry and then tossing them aside. Now the door looked like the only sanctuary they had left. As best she could with one hand, she readied her big scattergun and then pulled open the door.
A frightening uneven darkness greeted her. Then Hamilton and McGuigan fired in quick succession, strobing the interior of the office enough for her to see that if they went in, they’d be trapped there. The three floors above the office had collapsed down on it, burying desks and cubicles and old computers beneath tons of rubble. Only the reception area was untouched and there was very little to it beyond a long, dusty old desk, a pair of couches and a small tree in a wicker basket that was surprisingly still alive and green.
Corrina darted inside and ran past the desk and halfway up the hill of rubble that went up at an angle into the center of the building. There was something of a tunnel that only a person of her size would be able to wiggle through. “It’s clear, Cole!” she screamed, running back down the hill and toward the fight, which was still going hot and heavy. “In here! Come on!” She waved to them, afraid to leave the safety of the office. Brunker broke first, hobbling towards Corrina, his face frozen in terror, his eyes unblinking glass balls. He ran past her and stopped at the mountain of rubble with his mouth hanging open.
“What the hell?” he cried. “We gotta get outta here! Sarge! There’s no way out. We gotta find another way.” But it was too late. Sergeant Phillips was in the doorway, facing out while he reloaded. McGuigan ran past him, white-faced and sweating. Like Brunker he ran to the mound and stared at it in disbelief. Cole and Hamilton were slowly retreating in the face of the fiends.
Corrina grabbed McGuigan and turned him around. “Get the door!” she screamed. “You gotta shut it, just wait until Cole gets in.”
He went to the door and fought against the desire to shut it right away. “Get in here! Cole, damn it, get in here for goodness sakes!” He and Hamilton walked backward into the room, firing in turn, holding back the beasts wi
th waves of lead. The second they were through, McGuigan slammed the door shut and hurled himself against it.
Sergeant Phillips did as well, still trying to load his scattergun with shaking hands. “How many were there?” he asked. “Fifty? Were there fifty, you think?”
Before Hamilton could answer, the doors were attacked with a tremendous crash. Both Cole and Hamilton put their backs to it too. “Gimme your guns, girl,” Hamilton said, holding out his hand.
“Hell no! I can shoot. I…”
“Cole, tell her we need the gun more than…”
A crack appeared in the door above Cole’s head. A second later a black scaly hand smashed through the wood. He ducked down as it reached inside and groped blindly for him. “Forget the guns! Get the desk. McGuigan, Brunker get it over here.”
Corrina danced out of the way as the desk was thrown down and dragged towards the doors just as more cracks and more holes opened up. The doors were coming to pieces. Cole and Hamilton jumped out of the way as the others heaved the desk in front of the doors. It bought them an extra thirty seconds.
“I want three shooters,” Cole yelled over the pounding and howling of the dead. “Sergeant Phillips, Ham and myself. You other three are in charge of reloading. No! Shut up, Brunker! You have your Riker. Use it in case of emergency. Corrina, let’s have your guns.”
She had yet to fire any of her weapons, and didn’t think she would be much use with them, but still it made her sick to hand them over. She gave a scattergun to Cole and one to the sergeant, who had been a little nice to her. Hamilton grabbed the scattergun from Phillip’s reluctant hands and checked the load.
“We should get those couches, too,” he said. The words had just left his mouth when there was a tremendous Crack! The door was partially torn off its hinges and the Dead-eyes poured through the sagging gap. Three guns went off at once and blasted the first zombie back into the rest.
Cole pumped the gun, sending an empty shell casing flying into Hamilton’s face. “Call your shots! McGuigan help with those couches, damn it!” It took all of fifteen seconds for the two men to hurl a couch into the opening. It took five seconds for it to be thrown back, slamming Sergeant Phillips in the chest and knocking him down.
By then all three shooters were onto their second gun. Corrina worked to reload for Cole. Normally, she had nimble fingers; normally she had light to see by, and normally she wasn’t steps away from a howling horde of beasts. In the strobes of light that pulsed with each blast, the horde seemed endless. Although this was only an illusion, it sapped her courage and her hands began to shake faster than the strobes.
She dropped more shells than she put in the gun and gave it back with only four shots, which of course Cole went through even faster, so that when he snatched the next weapon it only had three shells in it. As bad as that was, McGuigan would scramble for every shell he dropped and was giving the guns back with only two rounds in them. Worse still was Brunker. He had forgotten what he was supposed to be doing and was busy wrestling with his end of the couch, trying to force back twenty or thirty Dead-eyes with it.
This left Sergeant Phillips loading his own weapons and his rate of fire dropped off quickly—too quickly. He couldn’t keep up and the horde pushed into the room, throwing the couch back onto Brunker who fell with the couch landing directly on top of him. Black bodies followed the back end of the couch into the room. They poured over the desk. Cole fired three rounds and swept it clear as the Dead-eyes fell in piles. Then he was out of ammo. Sergeant Phillips got off one shot, jacked back the forestock, aimed and dry-fired at a black-eyed beast with ragged claws and a mouthful of diseased broken teeth.
One of its claws latched onto the barrel of the scattergun while the other reached for Phillips. With a strangled cry, he fell, digging for the Riker Ten at his hip. He was too slow and the beast was on him in a black blur, its claws tearing at his rags, its mouth darting in for his throat. Somehow, he managed to get one hand under the thing’s chin and held it back, squeezing its throat with all his might. Its scales tore from its flesh and black blood dripped into his face.
Pinned as he was up against the couch, he couldn’t slide the gun up and out; he had to give up going for the Riker and instead grabbed the thing’s bare shoulder. It took everything he had to hold the monster off of him. “Shoot it! Shoot it!” he wailed.
Like a cowboy in a western movie, Cole drew his Riker in a blur and fired at an angle, afraid that if he fired straight down the bullet would go through the zombie and into Phillips.
He hit enough of the thing’s brain to drop it in place, right on Sergeant Phillips. Black blood gushered up from the hole in its head, poured down its neck and into the sergeant’s face. “Fuck!” he screamed and did a manic shimmying dance to get out from beneath the thing. While this was going on, Cole unloaded the Riker Ten into the creatures. He was so close that eleven of thirteen shots struck home and the black bodies fell in piles half his height.
When he stepped back to reload, Hamilton took his place and his Riker roared out seven times before Cole yelled for him to stop. “We need a few alive!” But it was too late. In the silence that followed, nothing moved in the dark lobby beyond the heaped-up corpses.
“Water,” Sergeant Phillips whispered, breaking the silence. He had finally freed himself and now he stood with his arms out, blood dripping off him. He started spitting. “Please, it’s in my mouth.”
Brunker and Corrina took a few steps back, both afraid that he would turn into one of the creatures right in front of their eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, McGuigan dug out his water bottle. “Close your eyes. I have to get it off your face. Oh, gross. It’s in your nose.” It took two bottles of water to clean him off and then when he was mostly clean, everyone stood back and stared.
“Is he infected?” Hamilton asked, unable to hide the look of disgust curling his lip.
McGuigan looked to Cole to answer. Cole shrugged. “Maybe. It depends on all sorts of things. Have you had a semi-vax booster lately?”
Sergeant Phillips hadn’t ever had a booster of anything. He wasn’t exactly sure what a booster even was. “No, but I feel fine.” This was a pure lie. His insides were clenched steel and he was afraid that if he relaxed for even a second, he would puke in a great black rush of zombie juice.
“Then you’ll probably be fine,” Cole replied, also lying. According to his training, there was something called a “saturation point” where the body’s ability to fight off the invading Com-cells was overwhelmed by sheer volume, and Cole had never seen anyone that covered in zombie blood. He’d been sprayed a few times and even got some in his mouth once. But he had always washed as quickly as possible and gotten a booster afterwards. Altogether, he’d gotten five boosters in four years. He felt more or less immune at the moment.
“Probably?” Phillips looked stricken. “Just probably?”
“Stop your whining,” Hamilton snapped. “We are all probably gonna die out here. Don’t just stand there, pick up your gun and make sure it’s loaded. The same goes with all of you.” As the group started picking up dropped shells and loading scatterguns, Hamilton pulled Cole aside. “Maybe we got one,” he said, sneaking a glance back at Sergeant Phillips, who was trying to load a gun with wooden fingers.
At first, Cole didn’t understand what he meant, then when it dawned on him, he pulled the rags back across his face to hide his disgust. “We can’t use him like that. It’s cruel.”
“No, what’s cruel is us getting fuckin’ chomped to death! That was a fuckin’ close call, Cole. If there had been any more of them, we wouldn’t have made it. So, sorry if I’m not all Mister Caring like you, but I want to get out of this alive, and I plan to one way or another.”
He tried to push past Cole, but Cole grabbed his arm. “We can’t use him no matter what. When he turns, he’s still going to look like himself. Turner will bring in her lawyers again and we’ll be fucked. Besides, he may not turn. We’ll know in a couple of hours. Until then
, we button up.”
The tossed-aside guns were retrieved, ammo was passed around and soon the group was ready to move on. The only question was to where? Cole wanted to go up higher in the building so he could get a lay of the land and perhaps spot a horde—everyone shook their head and that included Corrina. She wanted to burrow into the rubble and hide. After seeing Dead-eyes in the city, she thought she was mentally prepared for what was coming; she was not. Not even close. These things had been demons and with their inhuman gibbering cries still ringing in her ears, she didn’t know if she could leave the little room.
“Corrina and I will go by ourselves,” Cole said. She started to shake her head, which he stopped with a hard glare. They crept from the office and into the bloody lobby, where the stairwell door sat open. Even compared to the dark interior of the building, the stairwell was a black unending pit.
“I-I-I can’t,” she whispered, once more holding her scattergun in front of her as if hiding behind it.
Taking her by the shoulders, he told her, “You can, and you have to. You aren’t safe alone with the others and you aren’t safe by yourself. Just follow me and keep the gun pointed outward. It’s not doing you any good pointed up at the ceiling.”
He stepped into the dark stairwell, moving with extreme caution. There was trash and debris covering the stairs. Bones as well, judging from the strangely musical clinking they made when he kicked them. Slowly their eyes got used to the intense dark and Corrina was able to see the vague outlines of Cole’s back as they went up and up. But that was about it.
In the end, the trip to the top was a waste of time. They gained the top floor and eased to the edge of the tilted building to look out. Nothing moved on the dark streets below. Cole scowled while Corrina breathed a sigh of relief. She had been silently dreading mounting the building only to look out and see the streets flooded with the dead, drawn by the gunshots.
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 27