Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) (17 page)

Both girls then leaned on opposite sides of their cart, arched their backs, and stuck “da booties” out

Jake turned quickly away from the provocatively posing women to pick up another meat slicer, and kept a tight rein on exactly where his eyes settled. Turning his pants into a pup-tent placed quite high on his Things One Must Not Do list at that particular moment.

Besides.

One wardrobe malfunction per day was his limit.

* * *

After cramming six of Rae’s eight requested meat slicers into their carts along with the generators, Jake, Kat, and Bee made for Costco’s front door. In the end, they hadn’t managed to brainstorm a way to remove—or transport—the pair of large, walk-in freezer doors in the deli. That would earn Jake a verbal lashing from their group’s buxom brunette, but she’d just have to make do with steel plate from Mooney’s construction stores.

What in the blue-hell did she want them for anyway?
O’Connor wondered as he used his shopping cart to push the door open.

After muscling his knock-wheeled basket through, Jake managed to hold the grimy portal open until both women had maneuvered their own carts outside. They briskly trotted towards the Troll, eager to get loaded, get gone, and get back to Langley with their loot. That was in no small due way to the family, still close together in death, back inside the store. While his odd group had seen their share of mutilated bodies, and would without a doubt carry memories of horror and loss until their dying days.

It didn’t seem as if Jake had been affected by their gruesome find, but that was only because he was almost numb to the horror of it all now. After being savagely beaten by the Purifiers, nearly bleeding to death—thanks to the same group of psycho’s number two man sticking a German RAD dagger deep into his left— shoulder—and having to kill a zombiefied member of their group—Karen Parker—he’d been a physical and emotional wreck. At the time, Kat had been amazed he’d managed to stay vertical while they finally killed Poole and the rest of his little band of murderous malcontents, then flee the oncoming horde of creatures into a nearby transformer yard. That had been enough to traumatize anyone, but Laurel’s spectacular death—when she blew the Nazis’ clubhouse to smithereens and burned it to the ground—had been too much. The unruly-haired writer’s already-brutalized psyche couldn’t take another blow like that, and had finally shut down.

Just before his heart had stopped.

When that happened, Cho had gone into a panic. She’d long ago accepted that Jacob O’Connor was the real deal. An honest-to-goodness hero in the best sense of the word. Perhaps not the biggest, even though he was a hair over six feet tall and two hundred and twenty pounds of cabled muscle. Maybe not the baddest—but only madmen had no fear the hungry dead, and fear them he did—even though he’d fought them hand-to-hand and beaten the nasty things into oblivion with his crowbar. He was however, courageous, selfless, honest, and brave, and Cho wanted him desperately.

But he was a
hero.

That terrified her. Kat was well aware that heroes didn’t get to live to a ripe old age, then pass into the afterlife peacefully surrounded by their friends, family, and loved ones. They led short, violent, pain-filled lives, which usually came to untimely and—more often than not—bloody endings. She all but knew that was what the fates had in store for Jake and railed against it daily, mentally begging them to spare him. For the vengeful sky-beasts to relent and release their claim to him. For them give him over to her, so the two of them could find a measure of peace, if only for a little while. Cho had even promised the gods she’d make the journey with him into death, when the time came. She’d sworn to commit seppuku—Japanese ritual suicide—and follow him to the Pearly Gates. Or down to the underworld, if that’s where he went.

Heaven wouldn’t be paradise without him anyway.

O’Connor and Kat began hefting their supplies into the rear of the Humvee leaving Beatrix to stand watch, slowly turning in a complete circle as she kept an eye out for any sign of movement. Bee was a bit of a bubble-head—like Kat if truth be told—but her uncle had trained her well.

During his yearly, three-week long visits to see his brother each year in San Francisco, George Foster had been sure to show his niece how to handle herself at an early age. Against his sister-in-law’s shrieks of protest, George had bought her a .22 rifle, taught her how to use it properly and safely, and shown her not a few dirty tricks when it came to self-defense. Because if his instruction, Beatrix had been the skinny seventh-grader who’d kicked the snot out of a would-be bully three years her senior, and nearly twice her size. A few years later, she’d been a big hit at prom in her white, tea-length ball gown—which showed off her newly developed cleavage and slim waist—and thick-soled combat boots. Six months later, she placed third of her age group nationally in the US Competitive Shooting challenge, which earned her a full scholarship to Wright State. Bee had been approached by numerous military recruiters, all nearly drooling with eagerness over the thought of her signing up for active duty and then eventually transitioning into one sniper program or another shortly thereafter. With a straight face, she’d told them she’d only enlist if she were allowed to wear the female ensign dresses from
Star Trek
. She asked to have it in writing too.

That caused many a hopeful recruiter to not bother her further.

Bee held her weapon with confidence, index finger next to the trigger—but
not on it
—as she swept the immediate area. Save for a few stray dogs moving past on the next block down and the odd piece of stray paper blowing across the surface of the parking lot, there was very little to be seen. She still kept a careful eye out though. Kat and Jake had told them all about the fast-movers they’d encountered during their escape from Penny’s former group, and the thought of ghouls capable of sprinting over short distances scared the living crap out of her. Normal zombies were bad enough, but runners? If Beatrix were given the choice, she wouldn’t set foot outside the Screamin’ Mimi until they were safe and sound in good ol’ Cal-ih-forn-i-ay. The others needed her though, so—as Uncle George said—she ‘gutted up.’

Despite the shaky feeling in her knees.

O’Connor and Cho wrestled the last meat slicer into the Hummer’s bed and he quickly hefted the tailgate. Kat dashed around to the rear passenger door, leapt inside, crawled over the seat into the bed, and shot the double bolts closed, securing the rear against dead entry once more. That done, the ninja-girl opened the Hummer’s turret hatch, climbed onto the roof, and waved her arms over her head while looking at the distant fire truck where Elle lay in wait. The trio saw their blonde sergeant quickly make her way across the hoses, leap from the edge of the high bed, and begin to run in their direction. As she approached at flank speed, Elle was frantically motioning for them to get in the vehicle.

“Something’s wrong. Everybody mount up.” Jake hopped behind the wheel and began charging the glow-plug.

Cho dropped back into the cab, shutting the hatch again as she did so and took the navi-guesser seat. “Gee, I wonder what it is this time. Para-military douche-bags? Members of a vegetarian doomsday prepper cult? A pack of sex-crazed lycanthropes with the clap living in an abandoned hospital?”

Beatrix leaned forward between the seats, causing the left side of her bosom to brush against Jake’s bicep. “Where did the last come from?”

“I’ve always had a good imagination.” Kat smiled tightly but kept her eyes on the trotting blonde soldier.

Elle arrived slightly out of breath after running with her heavy rifle. “You guys are never going to believe this! I was using the Long-Arm to scan the area near the hospital and I saw—”

“Horny werewolves?” Kat perked up, surprised she’d actually called it right.

“What? No! Jesus Christ. Sometimes I honestly think you’ve fried your brain with all the blue hair dye.” Elle secured the rifle in the rear and reached for her carbine. “There’s a goddamn sign painted on the hospital!”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The quartet had approached the Craig General Hospital cautiously, leaving their Humvee and Elle four blocks back—in front of Hall-Halsell Elementary School—so as not to alert the numerous, mobile corpses clustered about the main entrance. After cutting through half-a-dozen backyards sans contact with anything rotten and drooling, O’Connor had pried the backdoor of a house facing North Forman Street open so they could take a breather. The home was in decent condition, all things considered. A bit dusty, and it smelled a little stale after being closed up for months, but there were no zombies inside, so Jake, Kat, and Beatrix were willing to overlook the need for some Febreze.

Once they’d cleared the house, the trio clustered near one of the windows that faced the hospital and took a good look at their objective.

There were zombies in the parking lot. Lots of them. Not thousands—like the pod they’d encountered while assaulting the Purifiers—but enough to make them all nervous about being discovered. The things shambled about the grounds outside, seemingly drawn there by some stimuli the survivors couldn’t identify offhand, occasionally bumping into (and off of) the thick safety glass windows that ringed the main entrance. The entire exterior of the hospital was smeared with a mixture of nasty, up to a level of about seven or eight feet high along the walls. Blood and other noxious body fluids, bits of flesh scraped along the rough cinder-block, even occasional limbs lay forgotten on the ground from a few of the more ragged looking creatures.

The sign was what held their attention though.

Jake assumed it had been made from bed sheets roughly stitched together two-high and three wide, because it wafted slightly in the weak breeze outside. The banner read simply,
Alone! Alive! Help!

“Well. That’s pretty straightforward.” Bee tilted her head and looked over Kat’s shoulder.

Jake continued to scan the hospital with his binoculars. “It gets the point across.”

“I guess so.” Kat leaned against the bedroom wall and toyed with the hilt of her sword. “Do you think whoever ‘Alone!’ is, is still ‘Alive’ in there?”

A wry expression grew on Jake’s face and he passed her the binoculars. “Uh, yeah. You could say that. Take a look at the fifth floor window. The one that’s broken out, up by the nearest corner.”

Kat raised the glasses to her eyes and zeroed in on the spot he pointed out. O’Connor witnessed her surprise when she saw a slim, scruffy looking man in perhaps his late-fifties, wearing hospital scrubs, standing in the gap.

“Holy crap! There’s a guy right there!” She exclaimed, and focused the optics a bit. The man seemed to be yelling at the dead below. “What the heck is he doing?”

“If the spot under that window is any indication, I’d say he’s using the toilet.”

Not taking her eyes from the lone man, Kat asked, “What? Why would he do that? Wouldn’t there be plenty of bathrooms
in there?”

“Remember inside the Costco?” Jake snorted.

As Cho watched, the man abruptly turned around, ‘dropped trou’, hung his rear end out over the windowsill, and—

“Ugh! Jeez!” She quickly passed the glasses back to Jake. He raised them again as she shuddered. “Gross! Who’d think doing something like that is good idea?”

“Well, our disgusting friend over there’s been alone for who knows how long. It could’ve affected his mind in all kinds of fun ways.” The binoculars lowered to track something as it fell and laughed quietly in appreciation. “Good aim though. Hit one square in the pie-hole, right as it looked up, too. That’s talent right there.”

Kat gagged.

“The whole tendency for toilet humor has gotta be a guy thing.” Bee told her.

Jake sniffed.
He’d
thought it was funny. “Fine. Since you two are busy critiquing my material, here’s the plan...”

* * *

Jake and Beatrix crouched behind an abandoned garage across from Craig General’s emergency room entrance. They’d doubled back a block before quickly scurrying over the road to provide themselves a bit of distance, hence less chance of attracting unwanted (read:
any
) ghoulish attention, and quietly worked their way north again though overgrown yards. Foster’s niece had complained under her breath the whole way, positive they were both going to contract Lyme Disease from ticks hiding in the tall brush, but managed to keep up without making any undue noise.

Jake wished once again for different companions. He was pretty sure Obi-Wan Kenobi never had to put up with this kind of crap. Except from Jar-Jar, and look how that turned out. That stupid twit all but created the Galactic Empire, for God’s sake.

“You should’ve brought Kat along instead,” Bee whispered for the twelfth time.

“She’s better at driving the Hummer than you or Elle, so she’s the bait this time.” Jake checked the magazine on his M-4 again. Yup. Still full. “She might even be better than I am behind the wheel. Stop whining.”

“I’m not whining,” Bee whined. “I just hate Nature! It’s bad enough we have to camp out in the Mimi half the time, now I have to crawl through a jungle too?”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“Says you! I’ve got burrs in my
hair!
” She used a hand to shake one of her green ponytails at him. “This is unacceptable. You totally suck as a tour guide.”

Jake was completely unaffected by her plight. “I’ll give you a refund when we get back to Langley. Now keep quiet. Here come the others.”

As the two of them watched, the Troll careened around the corner of West Clyde and Foreman. Kat spared them a dirty look as she sped the Hummer by. She was fully aware of O’Connor and Bee’s location, because they’d discussed it hastily when Jake told the women his plan to reach the hospital.

Basically, Elle and Cho would provide a distraction with the Humvee, drawing the dead to the north and east. That would allow Jake and Bee to enter unobserved, wrangle the scrub-wearing survivor into leaving, and make for the ER entrance on the western side below the helipad. Kat would keep the zombies occupied to give her friends thirty minutes exactly, then circle back to pick them up before heading out. She’d been rather upset about not going along with Jake to keep an him out of trouble, and firmly informed him that his decision would bring about dire consequences.

O’Connor had scowled and told her not to break a nail on the steering wheel, which earned him a dangerous narrow-eyed gaze from the pretty Asian. She’d left in an angry huff swearing revenge. He just
knew
the comment had been a bad idea at the time, but neglected to keep his mouth shut. Foolishly. There would be some groveling in his immediate future if Jake wanted to keep
the peace.

But that would have to wait. The dead had already oriented on their Hummer. The mean, green, zombie-pulping machine began rolling past the crowd, drawing them off and up the street, away from the hospital. Elle stood in the vehicle’s turret, taking carefully timed aim at the crowd as it followed slowly in their wake and dropping two out of every three shots. She didn’t make a kill with every trigger pull, but did a damn sight better than Jake could himself with the Long-Arm. Quite a few of the ghouls jaws ceased their endless clacking as the bulky rifle sent steel-jacketed last rites through their skulls. A few rounds even sailed on to fell second rotting victims behind her initial targets, which pleased the blonde sergeant to the extreme, and she began trying to time her shots for multiple knock-downs.

When Cho finally turned east, Jake hit the button on his watch starting the thirty minute countdown. The kinetic driven Seiko had been a graduation gift from his now deceased father prior to heading overseas and, since the timepiece powered itself off the movements of his body, never had to be wound. Unless he didn’t wear it for a few days that is.

Glancing towards the hospital, O’Connor saw only “draggers” remained. The ones that either couldn’t stand due to injury like a broken leg, or lacked legs altogether. There were only a handful of them however, and they could be easily avoided even at a brisk walk. He rose and, motioning for Bee to follow, began moving at an easy trot across the street towards the western ER entrance.

Bee kept trying to look everywhere at once. “Are you sure about this?”

“Relax, the plan worked like a charm.” Jake assured her as they sped over the sidewalk and onto the lawn. “The mobile ones are all staggering after Kat and Elle.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be any inside, right?” Bee nearly tripped as they jumped a small, three-foot retaining wall that separated ‘Smoking Section’ from the rest of the grounds.

“Doubtful. If there were, I’m certain the guy in there would be kibble by now.” Jake walked around the corner of the building as she recovered and hurried to follow. “Besides, even if... Shit.”

Bee leaned around his shoulder and saw a small pod of the creatures milling around under the drop-off cover in front of the ER doorway.

“I told you so! Didn’t I tell you so?”

“Later! Run for the truck!” O’Connor took off once she got moving to cover her rear.

An ambulance was parked halfway under the drop-off, its driver’s side and rear doors hanging open. There were old but definitive splatters of long-dried blood on both the outside—where the rain had failed to wash it away—and interior, but that didn’t matter to Jake. Whatever horrors had transpired within the vehicle, were long done. He wanted it for one thing, and one thing only.

“Climb on top!”

“We’ll be trapped!” Bee moved to obey his direction even as Jake felled the closest ghoul at about twenty yards, splattering the things brains all over the creature behind it with a lucky shot from his rifle as he ran.

“We’re not going to be sticking around, now move! Get your weapon ready and cover me once you’re up so I don’t get my ass bitten off!” He slowed and kept plugging away at the approaching crowd as Bee clambered onto the vehicle’s roof. She had to use one of the doors as a ladder and accidentally kicked it away as she pulled her torso over the edge, sending it rebounding off the side of the ambulance to come back and smack her on the butt.

“Ow! Mother-fucking fucker!”

Jake would’ve laughed at how much she sounded like her Uncle George just then, but he was busy trying to stay alive. It took him four attempts to bring down the next creature, and the other eighteen or so closed on him as he sent it slumping to the asphalt. “Bee? I’m going to die here!” he called up. The rest of the things were getting really close.

“Oh, keep your panties on!” The fuming young woman stopped rubbing her bruised bottom and brought up her weapon. Bee flipped the fire selector to single shot and sighted on the pack. “Okay, ready!”

She began calmly double-tapping zombies as O’Connor turned, tossed his M4 up to clatter against her boots after he engaged its safety, put one foot on the tailgate, and all but jumped onto the roof. He transfer his forward momentum by using his arms to push his body vertical mid-leap, and rolled smoothly onto the roof like a traceur, vaulting over a wall.

Seeing prey escape seemingly pissed the creatures off. They began beating on the vehicle, leaving smears from their rotting fists against the sides and moaning at the tops of their rotten lungs with hunger. Jake once again thanked heaven the things couldn’t reason, and weren’t coordinated enough to climb anything but—occasionally—staircases. If they’d been agile enough to do so, the horrors would’ve been up on the roof with them.

As he caught his breath, Bee was still taking pot-shots into the crowd. In the small amount of time it took Jake to gain the roof, there were five fewer of the nasty things due to her ability with a rifle. She put a round through a zombie on the driver’s side as the writer got to his feet, splattering the ghoul’s cranium all over the landscape. That one had been an extremely overweight man in Bermuda shorts and a soiled Oklahoma Thunder jersey. One of the things eyes didn’t track correctly, and it was missing a large chunk of its neck. There was a good amount of flesh sloughing free of its biceps as well as it pounded against the unyielding metal in a feeble attempt to reach the pair of humans, wanting nothing but to sink graying teeth into warm, living flesh. Bee’s shot ended its miserable existence, and it fell (un)lifeless to the
pavement.

“Don’t bother with the rest!”

“Say what?” Bee plugged a ghoul through the brain-holder and took aim at another.

O’Connor squatted and sprang upward, hands latching onto the lip of the ER canopy. He pulled himself up and quickly reached down to her. Bee tossed their rifles up—after taking a final shot and ending yet another maggot-head’s quest for a meal—then jumped high. Their palms smacked together sharply, allowing him to pull the emerald-haired girl up over the edge from where he lay, and spin her away from the drop.

Not wanting to squash her with his weight, Jake rolled to put her on top and Bee knelt over him, hands still locked to his, panting noticeably.

“Well. That was kind of intense.”

O’Connor was working on catching his breath too. “Those smelly fucks can’t climb, and we know there’s no way up through the building or Mr. Survivor inside wouldn’t still be crapping on them, so we’re safe for now.”

“Brings all kinds of possibilities to mind, doesn’t it” She asked with a smile. “We’ve got about what, thirty minutes? It would be a little rushed, but...”

Jake realized she sat astride him in what was termed: The Classical Position. He could feel nicely-firm buttocks riding an appealingly slim waist—beneath a healthy pair of “lungs”—pressing over his groin and, being only human, his body responded sharply.

He started to panic.

George would kill you!
His back-brain yelled, not even the slightest bit helpful and also panicking.
Cho would kill you! Hell, Rae would kill you too, and she doesn’t even like talking with Bee! Defuse this now! I’m going to update our last will, in case you do anything stupid here...

“Um.” Yep. He had nothing.

Bee’s smile widened. “Relax, I’m just screwing with you.”