Bitten (17 page)

FOUR BLOCKS FROM THE AIR Force base the
midnight blue pickup truck blew a tire and screeched to a halt. Barnes hopped out and grabbed the jack out of the back toolbox. Everyone waited patiently as he jacked up the truck and began to put on the spare.

“Come on man, I’m telling you, just jack another vehicle. There are tons of abandoned cars all around.” Ulysses folded his arms impatiently and tapped
his foot.

“
I’ve grown attached to this one,” Barnes said with a laugh. “Besides, the keys were already in it. Having the actual keys makes a big difference in… you know… getting it to work.”

“There’s just one problem with your line of reasoning,” Noble informed.

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” asked Barnes, pausing to look up at his pal.

“We’re sitting ducks
out here in the middle of Zombiville. You might want to hurry it up.”

“I would, but somebody keeps yammering on and interrupting me.”

Motioning with his chin toward Noble, Zanato asked, “Why don’t you just have the big one hotwire a different car?”

“Say again?” Noble snapped. “Just because I’m black you think that my childhood afterschool hobby was a bit of grand theft auto? Listen up, you racist prick, the only grand theft auto I ever messed around
with was on Barnes’ PS3.”

Zanato threw up his hands and said, “I give up.”

“Well can you hotwire a car or not?” Jennifer asked impatiently.

“No.” Noble
said in disappointment. He folded his arms and huffed.

“You act all gan
gsta’ but you’re just a big ole teddy bear, aren’t you?” Jennifer punched Ulysses in the arm and smiled.

“A big sexy teddy bear,” grumbled Noble.

“Take it easy on the big guy,” Barnes chuckled as he unfastened the lug nuts with the tire iron. “It’s not the lack of street smarts that’s bothering him. It’s his lack of technical skills.”

“Hey, I got plenty of skills!” Noble thrust his hips and did a little erotic dance, mock humping the
thin air. Jennifer liked it and laughed, like a true coquette, but Zanato merely rolled his eyes and looked annoyed as usual.

Barnes
paused and looked up at Noble. “Your ability to please imaginary women aside, I think I recall something about a toaster burning down your first apartment.”

“That toaster was on the fritz for a month. That
totally wasn’t my fault.”

“The electric can opener?”

“Three words: Made in China.”

“What about
the electronic garage door?”

“Defective.
”

“It ate your mountain bike for Pete’s sake!”

“I’m telling you man, they were all defective. Every single one of them contraptions.”

“Even the barbeque?”

Both men broke into laughter.

“What about the barbeque?” Zanato asked, regaining interest in the conversation.

Laughing as he spoke, Barnes relayed the story. “This genius over here thought that the burgers and franks would get done faster by squirting a little bit of lighter fluid on the coals. Of course the meat goes up in flames instantly, but the best part is, the flames leap across the grill and catch his uniform on fire.” Barnes wiped the tears from his eyes, and continued. “Mind you, we’re at the general’s fiftieth birthday party, so this spectacle is drawing a lot of unwanted attention.”

“Then what happened?”
Jennifer asked with utmost interest.

“The flames were already crawling up his back. So like a circus clown, he decides it would be a novel idea to shove his flaming uniform into the barbeque and close the lid.”

Noble took over the story, adding, “That’s when the general sees the smoke shooting out of either end of the barbeque, and informs, ‘I think you may be over-cooking the frankfurters there, boys.’”

Noble wiped the t
ears of laughter from his face. “Of course, by this time everyone is looking over to see what the ruckus is about only to spot Ulysses’ jacket sleeve hanging out the other end of the barbeque.”

“They never let it down, did they?”

Barnes slapped his friend on the back. “Can you blame them?”

Rrroooar!

Everyone whipped around to see a massive mountain lion standing in the middle of the road, licking its chops, and eyeing them with a half-starved look.

“Holy shit! That’s a lion,” Zanato stated bluntly.

“Is it? Is it, really?” Noble asked sarcastically.

“But there aren’t any mountain lions this far east,” Jennifer informed.

“Maybe it escaped from the zoo,” Zanato said, taking a wild guess.

“Nobody make any sudden movements,” Barnes ordered as he slowly unsnapped his holster
and slid out his Glock 17 nine-millimeter handgun. “Everybody, get behind me alongside the truck.” Barnes motioned for the others to fall in line behind him. They slowly inched over to the truck and crouched down. That’s when they heard the jingle jangle of metal spurs clanking down the road.

Craning their heads over the bed of the truck, they saw the cowboy step out into the street with the mountain lion. Jennifer
couldn’t figure out which one seemed to be more surprised, the cowboy at running smack dab into a mountain lion, or the mountain lion, for running smack dab into a cowboy.

It looked as if the
guy had stepped right out of a Western. He wore a long tan duster jacket, a cowboy hat, and snakeskin boots with star-spiked spurs.

“See, I told you there was a cowboy,” whispered Zanato.

“
Shhh
—!” Jennifer replied, holding her finger up to her lips.

The mountain lion yowled and then roared with the true ferocity of a mighty panther. The cowboy pushed his jacket back to reve
al the Colt Single Action Army—otherwise known as “The Peacemaker”—sitting snugly in its holster at his hip. Sliding his right leg back and lowering his hip, the cowboy held his hand above the white ivory grip of the revolver and waited for the lion to make its move.

With an ear piercing growl the giant puma leapt into the air. In a split
second the cowboy had the gun out and began palming the hammer. Shot after shot rang out in rapid concession. Whimpering, the mountain lion crashed down at the cowboy’s feet. Although it was down, it still breathed heavily and whined in pain. The gunslinger, whose eyes were blotted out by the dark shadow cast by the brim of his hat, put the barrel of his gun against the panther’s skull and pulled the trigger.

Jennifer screamed, not only because the lo
ud concussive blast, but also because she didn’t like the idea of an innocent animal being put down like that.

Before anyone could speak out, a dozen zombies had appeared in the street. The cowboy opened the revolver’s chamber and dumped out the spent shells.
Reloading it, he took out one bullet at a time from his ammunition belt and casually fed them into the spinning chamber of the revolver. With a whir, he spun the revolver’s chamber and flicked it shut. It locked into place with a metallic clack.

Barnes and Noble both pulled back the slides of their Glocks, and got themselves ready for close range combat. Not waiting for the Walkers to get too close, Barnes and Noble began taking out the monsters with carefully aimed head shots.

The cowboy finished loading and looked up from under the brim of his hat. Standing no more than two feet in front of him was a hungry looking dead-head. Its jaws opened revealing gooey strands of saliva. The cowboy raised the Peacemaker and fired it point blank in between the dead-head’s eyes. The back of its skull exploded and it toppled over. Spinning around the cowboy took out three other Walkers that were slowly creeping up behind him.

The noise of gunfire only seemed to
attract more of the creatures, so Barnes whistled a high pitch hoot to get everyone’s attention. Once he had their eyes on him, he motioned for them to follow him. They ran across the street and ducked into an abandoned Starbucks. Once they were inside, Jennifer let down the blinds.

Zanato, still panting from the mad dash to get out of the street, asked, “Wait, where’s the cowboy?”

Peeking through the blinds, the group watched the cowboy throw off his duster jacket. Underneath were two P90 personal defense weapons strapped to his body. It was the gun that ate Uzis for breakfast.

“Badass,” Barnes said
, peaking through the blinds.

Walkers closed in on all sides of the cowboy. With the P90s outstretched, he squeezed the triggers and let loose a chain of fire which could have sawed down a forest. After his clips ran dry, he stepped over the piles of bodies, went over and picked up his jacket,
brushed it off and slipped it back on. With that the cowboy straightened his hat, then headed up the street and disappeared around the corner. The few remaining zombies with any animation left in them, drug their legless torsos up the street and crawled after him, but the cowboy was already long gone.

Noble turned and looked at everyone who watched in
dumbfounded amazement. Stunned expressions were frozen onto all of their faces. Noble shook his head, blinked hard, and thumbing over his shoulder, he asked, “Who
is
that guy?”

Rachael flew out of the doors of the church and into the dark of night when, all of a sudden, she heard the sound of a dozen guns cocking. Stopping dead in her tracks she looked up with wide eyes to see Hank and half a dozen of his men armed to the teeth and pointing every available weapon they had at her.

“Drop them weapons,” Hank ordered. “They don’t belong to you.”

Rachael did as she was told. Although she healed well enough, she suspected that she could still be killed. If she was put down like a zombie, a bullet to the head, she was pretty sure that would terminate her. With Hank riled up, she didn’t want to give him any such opportunity.
“None of this had to happen, you know? If you had let me leave when I asked you—”

“You bleeding witch! Keep your
lies to yourself.” Hank interrupted with a snarl. “You cursed us all to ruin!”

Rachael reprimanded him with a “Tsk, tsk!” and shot him a sharp glance. “Is that anyway to talk to your wife?”

The other men shot sideways glances at Hank and she could tell that having the truth revealed of what he really was lost him favor in the eyes of godly men. Hank quickly shifted the attention back onto her. “Don’t listen to this witch’s lies! She’s just trying to turn us against each other. If you let her catch your ear, she’ll deceive every last one of you like the fork tongued Devil himself. Do not forget, you are men of God!”

“Bravo,” Rachael said, clapping her hands in jest. “The Reverend douche-bag couldn’t have preached it better himself.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me about Reverend Campbell,” Hank said as sobs overtook him. “He was like a brother to me. He took me in and cared for me when nobody else would. I loved him! And you ruined everything he stood for. All the good he did.”

“Good?!” Rachael balked, her gut churning in revulsion
as if it was full of worms. “Campbell was a psychopath and his wife was a sociopathic vampire who fed off of his madness. The only good that came out of all this carnage is the welcome knowledge that those two lunatics will be rotting in hell for an eternity.”

“Silence your wicked tongue, witch!
God so help me, I’ll take off your head if it’s the last thing I do in this life.”

So much for her plan of not setting him off, she thought. The fuse was already lit.
Hank pulled the trigger and the blast exploded into her chest. Rachael flew backward and landed on her ass. She remained upright, dazed from the brunt of the gunshot. Hank walked up to her and, full of rage, kicked her squarely in the middle of her chest wound with his boot. She fell onto her back and gasped for air. But all that remained of her lungs was a large gaping hole in the center of her chest.

Hank’s beet red face stood over her and his eyes drilled into her with all the hate he could muster. His cheeks shook with rage and the veins in his neck were as taught as tightly strung piano cords.
“Though shall not suffer a witch to live,” he said, aiming the gun at her gut. Hank fired off another round. Then another. And another. Rachael’s body jerked violently with each blast until it was practically severed in two. By the time Hank stopped firing only the twine of her vertebrae tethered her torso to her legs.

“Get up from that,” Hank snarled. Still filled with
a deep seeded hatred he spat on her mutilated body.

As
Hank turned and walked back toward his posse of men he noticed their eyes grow large with a fearful shock.

“What in blazes are you all looking at?”

Hank spun back around in time to see Rachael rise up to her feet. No traces of the gory wound remained. “I don’t believe it.” Hank screamed, raising his shotgun. “Why won’t you fucking die?!”

Shots tore into Rachael’s flesh, shredding it. She cringed, but just as soon as she absorbed the brunt of the blast her body already had
begun to heal itself. She concentrated on healing and it seemed to speed up the progress. The harder she concentrated the faster her body mended itself.

“Noooo!” Hank screamed, clicking the trigger of his fully emptied shotgun. He threw the gun at the ground and reached out his hand and demanded a weapon. His men merely looked frightened and
confused, and in their uncertainty their superstitious fears prevailed, and several of them backed away in protest. “Cowards!” Hank snapped. “You godless, good for nothing cowards!”

“Give it up,” Rachael said. “You’ve already tortured me. Brutalized me. Humiliated me. You treated me like
dirt for no other reason than I didn’t believe share your beliefs. Killing me now won’t save your sorry soul—assuming you even have a soul. But if there is any amount of good left in you, any shred of human decency, I’m begging you—please, do the right thing.”

Hank snatched one of his men’s weapons out of his hands and cocked the gun.
“The right thing to do,” retorted Hank, “Is end your miserable existence. You’re an abomination.”

Hank trudged up to Rachael and put the barrel of the gun squarely against hear forehead. She stared at him with a scorn hotter than annealed steel.

“That won’t be necessary,” a deep baritone voice boomed. Suddenly the whole grounds lit up like Wrigley Field. The high beams of a train of car headlights circled around the entire premises blinded the small gathering. With all of Hank’s trigger happy gunfire nobody had heard the vehicles sneak up on them.

Rachael held up her hand to her eyes to block the light enough to try and see who it was.
Leaning against a white Chevy Denali, with twenty-two inchers and chrome spinners, was a tall black man.

“I
claim jurisdiction in this matter,” his deep masculine voice rattled.

Hank seemed to show the first signs of
real trepidation. There were always bigger fish in the sea. And sometimes a shark. Jamal Treslan was a shark. The proof of which ran down Hank’s face in the form of fresh beads of nervous sweat. “This ain’t none of your business, Treslan,” snarled Hank.

“Oh, I think you’ll find it is very much my business. You see, Hank, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I would check on how things were going with you church folk. As it turns out, we heard what sounded like World War III over here, and I felt the least I could do is offer my assistance. You know, it being trying times and all.”

“Like I was saying,” Hank reiterated, “I have everything under control.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Treslan said as he folded his hands behind his back and calmly walked toward where they stood. “But you see, as we arrived, to come to your aid, I happened to see something quite fascinating. I saw you unload six rounds into that young woman standing over there, and moments later she stood up again, without a scratch on her.
Doesn’t that strike you as, how shall I put it, miraculous?”

Wagging his finger at Rachael, Hank
shouted, “She’s a goddamn witch! That’s what she is.”

Jamal Treslan stopped and looked right at Hank with a glare so powerful it would have sent a fierce tiger cowering back into the jungle from whence it came.
“Now, Hank, you and I both know there are no such things as witches. So you best listen up, because I am only going to say this once. Whatever debt Campbell owed me in the past is now paid in full. I’m wiping the slate clean. But in return, this woman is coming with me.”

“Over my dead body!” Hank protested. Hank waved his hand and his men trained their guns on Treslan. Instantly the surrounding vehicles all clacked with the sound of car doors opening. Men carrying machine guns got out of the vehicles in sets of four
and five. Rachael estimated twenty, perhaps more.

“That can be arranged,” Treslan said without the slightest hint of distress.

“I heard they called you the Mad Doctor for a reason, but if you want this godforsaken cunt, then you’re madder than I thought. You’ll bring a curse worse than death upon your people!”

Treslan took off his jacket and approached Rachael.
“Death,” laughed Treslan. “What would you know of death? I suspect this young lady, on the other hand, knows quite a lot about death. She even knows how to escape it. And that’s a secret I want to learn.”

Jamal Treslan wrapped his jacket around Rachael’s shoulders
and escorted her back to his truck. She gladly went along with him. Besides, it wasn’t as if she exactly had any other choice.

“Just know this isn’t over!” Hank hollered at them. “I swear to Christ that I will
get my revenge.”

Rachael spun on her heel and lo
oked Hank straight in the eye, but she said nothing. Instead, she smiled a jeering grin, as if to say he wasn’t worth it. Turning back, she climbed silently into the white Chevy. Treslan shut the door behind her, like a gentleman, and then paused next to the passenger door. He snapped his fingers and all of his men raised their weapons.

Hank
knew he was outnumbered two to one. In defiance he spat on the ground and shouted, “I’ll see you in hell, Treslan!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Treslan replied with a suave grin. Treslan
turned to get into his truck and his men let loose a volley of unruly fire. The roaring gunfire mercilessly mowed down Hank and his men. Rachael watched with a sense of vindication as the bullets chopped them to smithereens.

A sinister smile broke out across Treslan’s face
as he watched Rachael enjoying the show and, brushing off his jacket, said apologetically, “Sorry about that. But I couldn’t have that redneck imbecile make good on his promise to kill you. You’re much too valuable.”

She didn’t care if this Treslan fellow was the Devil himself, she was thankful for the rescue
, and nodded in appreciation. She had been through hell and back again. She even had the ashes to prove it.

Once the
barrage of fire died down, the convoy of vehicles flicked off their lights, and one after another the small caravan pulled out of the parking area of the church. As they drove into the darkness of night, the church grounds became flooded with the carnivorous moans of the mindless living dead coming from all around. Treslan looked out the window at the swath of pale creatures lurching toward the church, and chuckled, “Like moths to a flame.”