by D V Wolfe
“Uh,” I said as he began walking towards me. “Thanks for coming to help,” I said. Then I remembered. “And you should delete your voicemails.”
“My voicemails?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Your mailbox is full. I tried reaching you and I couldn’t leave a message.” It was lame. I was playing on the hope that he wouldn’t look, he’d just empty his mailbox and he’d never listen to the message I had left for him.
“Huh,” Gabe said, pulling out his phone and looking at it. “I never got any calls from you.”
A realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Somehow, I’d managed to get their voicemails but never reach any of them. I thought they’d been too mad to even talk to me. Something had been at work, either blocking me or blocking them. “Was the storm still…” I started to ask, looking back up the road.
Gabe looked behind him. “Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like that. But it’s calm here.”
I nodded. “We think this is the eye of some kind of protection spell that surrounds the area with a supposedly unpassable storm. Hilda says that Mastick, the chief asshole that deposed Sister Smile is probably using someone powerful that he can control to create the protective barrier.” I noticed a tear in his leather jacket. “You must have had a rough go of it on your bike.”
“Eh, wasn’t too bad.”
“Hey lovebirds,” Stacks called. “Wrap it up and get in the car!” I turned and gave him the finger.
“To be continued,” Gabe said, glaring at Stacks over my shoulder.
“Yeah…” I said. “I’m...just so glad you’re here.”
Gabe smiled and chucked me under the chin. “Me too."
25
I climbed in the backseat of Rosetta’s Cadillac with Stacks and we flipped a u-turn.
“I still can’t believe you shot at me,” Stacks grumbled.
“I still can’t believe you missed,” Tags said.
I sighed. “It’s Rosetta’s gun. There’s something wrong with the sights.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the sights on that gun,” Rosetta barked. “Now the person shooting it? That’s a tougher call.” I didn’t care. I bathed in her annoyance. It was music to my ears.
I wanted to say so many things to the three of them, but now that they were here in front of me, the words wouldn’t come. I’d just have to show them what I meant and keep them alive. I jumped out and opened the gate and then followed the Caddie around the back of the warehouse to park next to Lucy. The Jeep followed and then Gabe on his Triumph.
“It’s getting kind of crowded back here,” Gabe said, taking off his helmet and looking around at the other three vehicles stashed behind the warehouse.
“Well if we’re not totally fucked, maybe we won’t have to be here that long,” I said. Rosetta was passing behind me and I felt the hard smack to the back of my head. I grinned at Gabe and he winked.
“Alright,” Rosetta said, taking charge as usual. She snatched a stack of paper out of Vince’s hand and spread it out on the long trunk of her Cadillac. “What have we got.”
Vince, Mick, and I walked the rest of them through what had happened earlier that morning. I filled them in on Noah and I’s reconnaissance trip from the night before and then we walked them through the situation on the map.
“Mastick, the new leader, had Noah and Joel taken into a trailer over here,” I said, pointing to the area on the map. I looked around at them.
“Ok,” Rosetta said. “So we have three hostages to retrieve.”
“Four,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me. “Festus.”
Rosetta rolled her eyes. “Fine, four hostages to retrieve…So,” she said, turning back to the rest of us. “We need to split up…”
I shook my head. “No more splitting up. That’s how the other three were captured.”
Rosetta was starting to get really cranky now. “Fine Bane, what do you suggest?”
“A frontal assault,” I said. “We draw them out to the road, take them down, and then march in and get back the people we lost. All of us, together.”
Stacks shrugged. “If you guys tried the ‘two teams from different directions’ attack before, they might be expecting it again and only half their force will be waiting at the front entrance. A full-frontal assault might work.”
I looked around. “Anyone else have any better ideas?”
“Besides not doing it?” Mick asked. We all turned to look at him. He raised his hands. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t. Bane just asked if anyone had any better ideas.”
We pooled our gear and luckily Mick and Vince had brought their flamethrowers, leaving us with three total, for the seven of us. I took mine off and got Stacks strapped into it.
“It’s easy,” I said. “You just point and burn.”
“Jesus,” Stacks said, hitting the trigger. “If I trip, I’m going to roast my nuts.”
“Well watch your step,” I said. “And don’t get too close to the rest of us.”
I turned to look at everyone else. Rosetta had on a pink fanny pack that she was stuffing shotgun shells into for Big Joe who was slung over her shoulder by his strap. I decided to wait to tell her about the fate of my purple fanny pack she’d given me. Tags had his uzi with clips tucked in both back pockets and one in the front. Mick and Vince both had their flamethrowers strapped on. Vince had his short-butted rifle and Mick had a .45. I turned to look at Gabe who had a Steyr SSG rifle strapped to his back. He also had a couple of M67 hand grenades he was hooking onto a utility belt that carried his ammo.
“Someone went to the Black Friday sale at the military surplus store,” I said.
Gabe grinned. “More or less.”
I re-holstered my machete and picked up my sawed off. I shoved Rosetta’s .45 into the top of my jeans at the small of my back and my gaze met hers.
“I want my gun back,” she growled.
“Can I play with it until the battle is over?” I asked.
Rosetta huffed. “Just don’t lose it.”
I looked around. We were a walking accident waiting to happen.
We hustled down the road, Gabe moved off to find a sniper’s perch to pick off as many as he could before we got there. Mick, Vince, Stacks, and I were definitely the ground troops. Rosetta had a little more range and all of us were in fear of getting hit by Tags’ uzi. We slowed our steps when we approached the blood-smeared school bus. I stuck my head in through the side door that had been forced open and looked around. The bus was empty and there was a big bloody smear and scratches next to the steps leading up into the bus. It was as if they had hauled someone out and they’d dug their fingers into the wall, trying to stop themselves from being yanked off the bus. The bus had tapped the back fender of the nearest Town Car and Vince and I climbed over the trunk to get to the other side of the bus. Stacks and Mick crept down the other side as we moved past the rest of the fleet, deeper into the trailer park. When we drew level with the first couple of trailers, movement caught my eye and I pulled the .45 out of the back of my jeans. A big guy wearing a bloody t-shirt moved out from between the trailers, turned, and saw us. There was the crack of a shot and his head snapped back before he crumpled to the ground. I swung around to look behind us and saw Gabe, lying prone on top of the school bus.
The sound of the shot must have alerted the rest of the tribe. The sound of doors banging open around the trailer park and confused shouting mixed with something that sounded horribly like the guttural growls of some kind of huge animal filled the air. The first shots that zinged by us were from automatics. They must have gone out for more firepower after our early morning attack on them. I didn’t want to think too hard about why and how the school bus was there. It was the same reason I didn’t want to think about where the bodies of the fallen cannibals we’d killed this morning currently were.
A couple of quick shots from Gabe knocked out two of the guys with automatic weapons. The third guy turned his weapon on Gabe and we could hear the shots
ripping into the frame of the bus and shattering the windows. Vince and I ducked, feeling the broken glass raining down on our backs. Then we were surrounded. Cannibals who didn’t rank getting a gun to fight with flung themselves on us with knives, what looked like baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire and god-knew-what-else. Vince kept a lot of them at bay with the flamethrower and I blasted a hole through them with the sawed-off. At this range, the shot ripped into them and had them crumpling to the ground. I was watching their eyes. This group seemed like the normal amount of crazy for this cannibal tribe. They didn’t have the black eyes I’d seen this morning. I turned and saw Stacks and Mick making similar progress on their side with their flamethrowers. There was a shotgun blast behind me and I spun around to see Rosetta take the head off of a guy who’d been about to stab Tags with what looked like a boning knife, while he reloaded. Tags covered Rosetta while she reloaded, spraying a line of guys who had just arrived at the party, raising guns of their own. We’d made a pretty decent-sized hole in the horde of cannibals coming at us.
“Really? You all couldn’t handle this on your own?” Rosetta scoffed, firing a shot off at a woman that was charging at her, swinging what looked like an open bear trap over her head.
“It helps when it’s seven people rather than three on this side,” I yelled. “And there were more of them.”
The last of the cannibals rushing us fell under a final shot from my sawed off and we all paused to listen. It was quiet.
“Was...was that it?” Stacks asked, his voice cautiously hopeful.
“Can’t be,” I muttered. “We didn’t take that many down this morning.”
The park was silent, except for a low whistle as the breeze wound its way through the aluminum-sided trailers.
An unearthly howl broke the stillness. It wasn’t high like a werewolf’s howl, it was low and desperate and hungry. Several more howls immediately joined it.
“Reload,” I shouted and the clicks and cracks of clips being changed out and empty shells hitting the ground to be replaced with full ones filled the air. The earth below us started to shake, shifting all the parked cars. And the bus. I looked up to see Gabe starting to topple off the side of the bus.
I jumped on top of the trunk of the closest Town Car and tried to keep my footing as I ran to try to help Gabe get down. I was still two car lengths away when he lost his grip and slid off the side of the bus roof which was now tipped at a forty-five-degree angle. He fell out of sight and I ran around one of the Town Cars that was starting to tip, trying to get to him. If he was hurt, he might not make it out from under the bus before it toppled over on him. I searched the ground, I could hear the others yelling for us but it was quiet compared to the pounding of my heart. Where was he?
A tuft of wild hair was moving slowly behind the last Town Car, next to the bus. I dove over the trunk and landed on the ground next to him.
“I’m ok,” Gabe wheezed. “Just got the air knocked out of me.” I helped him to his feet and he grabbed his rifle. I grabbed his hand and we ran around the Town Car just as the bus came crashing down on it. We hit the ditch right next to the entryway. I looked up and saw the rest of the crew were safely out of the way of falling cars. They were huddled in the middle of the open area with the trailers in front of them and the cars behind them, sandwiched up against the RVs.
“Fuck,” Gabe said. I turned to look at him. He was looking down at his rifle. The barrel was bent. “Well this is useless,” He said, setting the stock down in the ditch and leaning it against the embankment. He pulled his Glock from the small of his back.
“That’s not enough cover,” I said, looking at his gun. I pulled the .45 out from the back of my jeans. “.45 or sawed-off?” I asked, holding them up. The ground shuddering beneath us had stopped, but the growls and howling were getting louder.
“I’d never take a woman’s sawed-off from her,” Gabe said.
“It’s Rosetta’s,” I said, handing over the .45 and pulling the clips out of my back pocket. “And the sights are off.”
There was the sound of bending metal and shouts ahead and another wave of cannibals came pouring out from deeper in the trailer park.
“It’ll have to do,” Gabe shouted as we climbed out of the ditch and took off towards the oncoming hoard. The three flamethrowers were going full blast and I wondered how much juice they had left. Tags opened up on a chorus line of the fuckers who were advancing on us, eyes crazed. The shots ripped into their exposed chests which had been branded with the smiley face, just like Mastick’s. They staggered from the shots but they didn’t fall.
“What the hell,” Tags said. I was close enough now to get a good look at them. These were the cannibals from this morning with the solid black eyes.
“We have to torch them,” Stacks shouted to him, “They’re still running on demon go-juice. Look at their eyes.”
Vince, Mick, and Stacks hit the demon-fueled cannibals with all they had while Rosetta, Tags, Gabe, and I kept putting more holes in them. The flames were the best deterrent. A few of the ones at the front were crumbling to the ground, screaming before going still. Vince’s flamethrower was the first one to go out. It sputtered and I saw the look of horror cross Vince’s face. The cannibals on his side began closing in on him. Mick moved to help keep them off him but then his flamethrower died. Stacks was doing his best to hold the line on the other side of the group closing in on us, but with one last sputtering burst, he was out of gas too. Teeth and knives and hands were grabbing at the three of them and no matter how much we shot at them, nothing was making a difference.
“Bane! Try to pull everyone back!” Gabe shouted. I glanced up at him and saw he was holding a grenade. I didn’t think. I grabbed Stacks and kicked the guy who had reached out for him in the stomach. The guy grabbed my leg and I pulled out the machete and hacked into his arm.
“Get back!” I barked at Stacks. I glanced around and saw Tags had pushed Rosetta behind him and was backing away, still spraying the oncoming cannibals with uzi fire, not making a dent in whatever madness they were riding. I holstered the sawed-off, grabbed Vince and Mick by the back of their belts, and yanked. They were each pulled back a half-step. They were shooting the cannibals in the head at point-blank. Pieces of skull and hair and brain were flying everywhere, but their teeth were still bared and their hands still held like vice-grips to their clothing.
“Move back!” I yelled at the two of them.
“Yeah,” Vince growled through gritted teeth as one of the cannibals sunk a stiletto knife into his thigh. “We’ll get right on that.” I hacked at the cannibal, making contact with its throat and taking its head off. Even headless, it’s hands still groped and stabbed at Vince.
“Gabe, this is as good as it’s gonna get!” I shouted. “Grenade!” I shouted at the crew. Vince, Mick, and I went down, pulling the cannibals attached to Vince and Mick down with us. When the grenade made contact with the ground and exploded, the force lifted us all up for a millisecond. Then we hit the ground and stinging pieces of shrapnel were biting into my left arm and back which had been exposed to the explosion site when I fell. I heard the RV with the barred windows in front of us, groaning on its axles and I looked up in time to see it fall over on three of the cannibals who had been knocked back by the blast. My muscles were spasming, too shocked to move. I kept trying, trying to get my legs cooperating so that I could stand up. I couldn’t hear. There was a high-pitched buzzing and muffled shouting. I looked around. Mick and Vince were bleeding but they were slowly opening their eyes and struggling like me to get their legs under them. I turned to see Tags curled around Rosetta, the back of his plaid shirt had been shredded by shrapnel and dark red stains were beginning to spread. Rosetta’s eyes were open and she was struggling in Tags arms to get free. Stacks had been the smartest of all of us. He was crawling out from under the Town Car next to us. He’d ditched the flamethrower and was now completely weaponless. I felt movement on the ground and turned to see the cannibals coming at
us again. I looked back at Stacks, his expression one of pure terror as he watched the oncoming horde. I threw him the sawed-off and the butt hit him in the jaw. He stared down at it and then grabbed it and fired it at the coming mob. I willed myself to my feet. I had to help. My muscles weren’t sure if they were still attached to anything. I picked up my machete and stumbled, waving a heavy arm through the horde as I felt them grab me and tear at my shirt, my hair, and my skin. If I could chop a few down, maybe the rest would have a chance to get out of here. Nothing was stopping these assholes. They found every wound from the last two days that I’d been ignoring. The stinging in my shoulder opened up and I felt something that felt horribly like teeth bite down on the open wound again. I swung my arm wildly and hacked at necks, arms, hands, anything I could, almost missing and hitting myself a couple of times. Hands were grabbing at my wrist holding the machete and I started kicking out. I could hear Gabe screaming at me from somewhere behind me. At least he was safe. I couldn’t see any of the others, I was being pulled down. I felt blades ripping into my skin and the machete was finally taken from me. Something hard hit me in the head and blood started dripping into my eyes, blurring my vision. It would be so fitting if I ended up getting killed by my own knife. I knew this was probably it. At least I’d gone down swinging.