A spray of red blood was illuminated by the dashboard’s glowing lights. The blood came from Hector’s shoulder.
Someone had shot at them and hit Hector, their driver. The tires shrieked and burned smoke that couldn’t be seen in the dark. In all the chaos, Hector cried out and jammed on the gas pedal, and the Jeep lurched forward, right toward the wrecked semi.
Logan saw the semi coming to meet them at an alarming rate. He braced himself against the seat in front of him.
At the last possible second, before they plowed into the blockade, Gunner grabbed the wheel and yanked it to the right. The Jeep skirted the wreckage, but a sound of popping shots came from beneath them. For a moment, Logan thought someone had rattled off machine gun fire at the Jeep’s undercarriage. Then the realization of what had happened dawned on him: they had gone right over the glass and nails and spikes. The Jeep’s large tires were no match for all of that.
They were now driving on four flats, the vehicle bumbling up and down, up and down. Another gunshot. This one hit the hood and sparked violent yellowish light in the darkness.
“I got it! I got it!” Hector was saying, strained, shoving Gunner’s hands off the wheel.
He cut it to the left. Sparks flew as the Jeep scraped along more derelict cars. One of the headlights went out. Logan, every muscle tensed and his heart nearly beating out of his chest, saw the narrow passageway Hector was aiming for. There was just no way the Jeep would fit—
A sound like a train crash. The Jeep seemed to compress slightly, as sheets of the body’s metal ripped off.
Logan grunted hard. He felt like he was on the world’s roughest rollercoaster, at the apex of a big hill and looking down, as his lap bar came up, and nothing secured him to the seat anymore.
“Woooo!” Gunner shouted, beating the dashboard. “Great driving, Hec!”
They made it past the blockade. In front of them was an open, curving road. In the glow of the one headlight, the grass wavered in the cold wind. A church sat up ahead, its steeple as sharp and foreboding as a monster’s tooth. In the parking lot were a dozen cars in varying states of decay.
“No sweat,” Hector said, still strained.
Somehow, he managed to get about a mile up the road on the flats, the rims gliding over the asphalt like a drunken figure skater, leaving the blocked intersection behind. Then he slowed the car down and pulled into a copse of trees. Not the best cover, but the Jeep wouldn’t make it much longer. Plus it was loud as hell.
“You’re hit,” Brad said. “Fuck.”
“I’m all right. I’m all right,” Hector protested.
He looked cautiously down at his chest. Logan and Brad leaned forward from the backseat, also looking cautiously, afraid of why they might see. Hector’s shirt beneath his leather jacket was red with blood.
Gunner brought out a knife and cut at the sleeve as Hector gritted his teeth. The fabric ripped, and the wound was out in the open for all to see. A puff of reddish pink skin bloomed from Hector’s shoulder.
“They got you,” Gunner said. “Not too bad. But they got you.”
“Hurts like a motherfucker,” Hector said, and his Hispanic accent grew thicker as the pain and realization settled in.
“What the hell,” Logan said. “Now what? We’re in bandit country, the Jeep’s done for, and our driver’s shot.”
“And if they have supplies,” Brad added, “they’re sure not giving them up without a fight.”
“That’s why we’ll take them,” Gunner answered. “The supplies and the carbuncles.”
This surprised Logan more than anything else; how Gunner could remain so confident, he didn’t know. He came to the conclusion that Gunner was a madman.
I guess you have to be a madman to survive in this wasteland, he thought.
Logan wasn’t worried about supplies. All he wanted—same as Brad—was revenge against Joe Millard for what he’d done to Regina. Though he also wanted to survive and to get back to the Falls to his wife.
The Jeep idled loudly. With his left hand, Hector reached for the key in the ignition and turned the engine off, but left the radio and other electronics on.
Gunner scanned the radio now, but they heard no voices, just static.
“We’re in deep shit, huh, man?” Hector said. He pronounced ‘man’ as ‘mane’.
“Aren’t we always?” Gunner replied. “Nothing new. We’ll be fine.”
“How far to the FEMA camp?” Logan asked.
“About a mile, mile and a half. Not far,” Gunner replied. He clicked the radio off and grumbled something, then reached under his seat and brought out a red first aid kit. “This is gonna hurt like hell, Hec, but we need you in decent shape if we’re gonna get out of here alive.”
Hector nodded solemnly.
Gunner opened the kit and took out a small bottle of peroxide. “Wipe up that blood for me, Brad,” he said.
Brad hesitated.
“ASAP, man! They’re gonna be looking for us. Town ain’t that big,” Gunner said.
Brad took a clean cloth from the kit and began sopping up the blood around the wound. In a matter of seconds, the whiteness of the cloth was pink and dripping. Hector bit his lip, trying not to scream.
“Good enough,” Gunner said. He looked at Hector. “Tell me about your wife again, man. I can’t remember.”
Hector cocked his head. “Huh?”
“Your wife. What was she like? I can’t remember. Where’d you meet her?” Gunner was twisting the lid off the peroxide.
“I met her at a farmer’s market. My abuelo used to have a stand where he sold fresh—”
Gunner doused the wound with the peroxide. It made a fizzling sound. Bubbles foamed all around the wound.
“OW! WHAT THE FUCK?” Hector said, jerking away.
“Shut it, you big sissy,” Gunner said. “Let it sit a minute, then we’ll get you taped up. We’ll worry about that slug when we get back to the compound.”
“You tricked me, man. Not cool,” Hector said.
“All’s fair in war, Hec.”
Logan was looking around the trees. The dark was so thick he could hardly make out the trunk standing just a dozen or so feet away from him. On his mind were monsters. Sure, the majority of them may have been blasted away by the bombs, but that didn’t mean much. Not really. Their anatomy was a mystery. No scientists had published academic journals on their genetic makeup, their reproduction cycles, their vital needs. Nothing like that. For all they knew, the tremors from the blasts could’ve hatched a score of eggs, like those of the spider-things Logan had seen dropping from the aquatic behemoth in downtown Cleveland.
He saw nothing out there, but that didn’t mean much, either. The creatures were trained in the art of stealth like no other predator belonging to Earth.
Gunner wrapped Hector’s arm with gauze. Already, it was bleeding again.
“You can shoot with your left, can’t you?” he asked Hector.
“I can try.”
“Good.” Gunner met Logan’s eyes. “We gotta stay frosty. We don’t know what they’re packing, but I’m sure it isn’t in our favor.”
Hector spoke up once they were out of the Jeep. He talked in a barely audible whisper. “Now would be the perfect time to get the hell out of here and start going back home.”
“No way,” Logan said, and Gunner smiled at this.
“I’m with the big guy on this one, Hec. Not without the supplies,” he said. “You’re a strong cabrón. You’ll make it.”
“Watch who you’re calling ‘cabrón,’ cabrón!” Hec replied.
Logan cocked his head inquisitively.
“I’m pretty sure it means ‘dumbass’,” Brad added, which both men ignored.
Not far off, they heard a car trundling down the road, and saw headlights sweeping the forest. All of them hunkered down behind trees as the beams passed over them. The Jeep wasn’t visible. The trees created a pretty decent cover, but still, there was a chance, Logan thought. He expected
the car to stop, the doors to open, and the shooting to begin.
He held his breath, waiting.
But the car just went on down the road, passing the church that Logan had seen on their way into the town’s limits.
“That’s a long way to walk back on foot,” Brad said.
“Exactly. So let’s kill the carbuncle scum and get a new ride. Might as well,” Gunner said.
22
Left Behind
They moved amongst the shadows, like stalking monsters themselves. The town was utterly empty. The carbuncles, as Gunner called them, were not great in numbers, and Logan thought that was something in their favor. In the movies, when the world ended, it seemed everyone became a road bandit, a rapist, a cannibal, or a cold-blooded murderer. Perhaps there just wasn’t enough people left on Earth for that now.
Whatever the case may be, Logan, Brad, Gunner, and Hector were still outnumbered. On top of that, Hector’s bandage was now dripping with blood, and he seemed to be having a hard time staying upright. They were handicapped.
Three more cars passed on the road. A score of flashlight beams could be seen back the way they’d come—bandits lurking through the forest, looking for some sign of them. It was only a matter of time before they’d find the Jeep empty and inoperable and put two and two together.
As they got closer to the middle of town, the spot known as the Circle, the breakdown of the town became much more apparent. Cars were scattered off to the sides of the road, seesawed in ditches. Blood spattered the windshields and doors, and there were bodies inside some of them. Logan tried not to look, but that was pretty much impossible. The helpless faces, the decomposing flesh, the seemingly papery texture of the dried blood… Even in the dark, they seemed to glow like ghosts.
This was nothing he hadn’t seen before. On the many expeditions he’d taken with Devin Johnson and the other hunters, they’d come across some pretty grisly scenes; so many, in fact, that he was all but desensitized to this type of violence. That didn’t mean he liked seeing it, though.
In the middle of the town circle, a church stood. Its steeple stretched high above the leafless trees. Logan remembered hearing a fact about Redwick, that it had more churches per square mile than any town in Ohio—something like that, at least. Already, unbeknownst to him, they’d passed six of them. This historic one in the middle of the Circle was the seventh.
“There it is,” Gunner said.
He had his arm around Hector’s waist, helping guide the poor guy, whose blood smeared on Gunner’s shirt. Gunner didn’t seem to mind. Logan came up on the other side and helped him bear Hector’s weight.
Hector started coughing. “I’m good, guys. I’m good. Let me sit a minute, catch my breath.”
“No way, homes,” Gunner said. “We gotta move.”
“Just give him a minute,” Logan said.
He spoke with a finality that made Gunner listen. The man nodded and detached himself from Hector. Together, the two leaders helped lower their injured driver and lean him against a tree in someone’s front yard.
The house was yellow. The front picture window was broken. A little way up the road, a broken Domino’s Pizza sign leaned into the sidewalk. There was a bakery called Kim’s Kitchen just past this, but that was the extent of how far Logan could see.
“What’s the play here?” Brad asked. “We go in spraying lead?”
“I wish it was that easy,” Gunner said. “We’ll have to be stealthy or we won’t be making it back to the Falls.”
Logan didn’t like the sound of that, but he knew that was the truth.
“Just leave me here,” Hector said. “I’ll get my energy back and I’ll get us a ride. You know I can hot-wire pretty much anything, long as the EMP left it alone. And this far from the blasts? I think we’ll be good.”
Gunner shook his head. “If we leave you here, you’ll pass out, man.”
“No, I’m good. I swear. I’m just slowing you down on foot.”
“He makes a good point,” Brad said. “Trust him. I want to get out of here and since you’re not letting us run, let’s get this shit over with.”
“I’m fine, man, I’m telling you. Give me a minute, and I’ll meet up with you there.” Hector pointed to the church.
Gunner bent at the knee, looked Hector square in the face. “All right, but if you aren’t there in twenty minutes, I will haunt you. Because we aren’t getting out of there alive without a ride.”
“We’ll see about that,” Logan said.
Gunner stood up. He smiled. “Like that attitude, Mr. Harper. Let’s hope your bite is bigger than your bark.” He looked back at Hector. “Good luck, friend. I’ll see you on the other side in twenty minutes.”
Hector saluted. “I’ll be there. You can count on it.”
Logan thought he seemed lucid enough, though he didn’t particularly like leaving his hands in the fate of an injured man.
It’s only a flesh wound. He’ll be fine. The pain has probably worn off by now. And he’s right, he was slowing us down.
Logan gripped the rifle and stared ahead at the Circle. It was lit up like a Christmas tree. A couple of football fields away from where he was, he could make out the moving shadows of people.
No, not ‘people’—enemies.
23
The Snake
The Circle looked like a prison in an old black and white movie. Moving spotlights sought out any abnormal movement. The sounds of voices, frantic and stern, reached Logan’s ears. The men were posted up on the far side of a bank, some three hundred yards away from the place they’d left Hector behind.
Logan peered around the corner, still clutching his rifle. A warring thought came to his mind. He wanted Jane here, wanted her comfort, her familiarity, but another part of him told him how bad of an idea that was. She was safe, for the moment, in the Falls, out of harm’s way. Still, what he wouldn’t give to be holding her hand.
As he peered around at his surroundings, he saw something that chilled his blood, turning the cells into crystal ice.
All around the Circle were trees, tall oaks that had held on to most of their leaves. From their leaves hung a strange kind of fruit.
Bodies.
No, that can’t be, he told himself.
But it was.
Dangling from a dozen ropes were the dead bodies of the people who had held this town before Worm and his bandits had taken it from them. Bloated, blackened faces. Lolling tongues.
Logan’s body went rigid. He didn’t think he could move; the shock rooted him to the very spot he stood, as if nails had been hammered through his boots.
One of the bodies turned. It was that of a woman who was maybe thirty years old—or, who had been—and the jacket on this corpse had ‘FEMA’ stenciled in big white letters across the back. That’s when Logan noticed the same jacket on the other bodies. People who had come to the town to help, reduced to nothing but tree decorations. There were so many of them.
From a thick, middle-most branch hung a man with three limbs…or so it seemed. The third limb, Logan saw, was actually a tentacle. This man had been in the throes of transformation. Of all the bodies hanging from the tree, he looked to have been the most abused. His shirt and pants were riddled with bullet holes. A dried pool of blood had long-congealed below him. Spray paint across his chest read ‘FREAK’. The white of the paint was streaked with red.
Logan felt like vomiting. He didn’t, though—couldn’t. He had to stay strong like Gunner, stay strong for Brad.
“Sick sons of bitches, huh?” Gunner said.
His voice caused Logan to shudder slightly.
His fear began to dissipate. It was replaced with anger. No one had the right to take an innocent life. No one. Yet these carbuncles, these warts, had done just that.
“Look ahead,” Brad said. He was pointing to the church.
Two big men carried even bigger boxes into the old building. They mounted the steps and disappeared.
“Supplies,”
Gunner said. “Jackpot. I’d bet a month’s worth of shower privileges that that’s where all the supplies are.”
Suddenly, from behind them, a barrage of gunfire erupted. The quiet world was filled with thunder, and from where they had left the Jeep behind, the woods lit up with the distant sparks of exploding muzzles.
Logan’s eyes widened. He thought of Hector. He thought of their way out.
“Relax,” Gunner said. “They probably found the Jeep and shot it up. Carbuncles aren’t too bright. Trust me.”
Distantly, Logan thought he heard screaming. Cries of agony. He chose not to believe the sounds, then thought of Devin, of how the man would’ve approached this situation. They’d been on enough missions together for Logan to have absorbed a bevy of the former soldier’s knowledge and tactics. Same went for Brad.
So Devin would do what?
Make a distraction. Throw the people guarding the supplies in the church off our scent. This inner voice sounded very much like Devin Johnson—so much so that it was almost eerie.
“A distraction,” Logan said, mostly to himself.
The gunfire continued. Whatever they were shooting at couldn’t have been the Jeep. No one was that dumb, no one made it this far with an intellect that low.
Gunner’s eyes lit up. “Good idea. A distraction’ll throw them off.” He cocked his head at Logan. “You serve, friend?” Talking about the military.
Logan shook his head. “Not when the world was normal.”
“Shit, was it ever normal?” Gunner replied.
Brad said, “Wise words right there,” and then smiled.
Logan somehow mustered up a smile of his own. How? He didn’t know. Smiling was the last thing on his mind, but he did it anyway.
It wasn’t easy. They moved like glaciers, but inch by inch, they made it closer to the church.
“See that gas tank, right there?” Gunner asked.
“You can’t be serious,” Brad said. “Shit doesn’t work like that in the real world. You can’t blow up a tank with a bullet.”
Decimated: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 3) Page 14