Green Ice: A Deadly High (20 page)

“Hello?
Anybody in there?” Nobody replied and Mancini took a brief glance back at Trey, standing by the gas pumps.

He sensed a flash of movement
, emerging from the dark gas station. Mancini instinctively recoiled, bracing himself for an oncoming attack. A man with a wild mop of curly black hair and a blood encrusted, scowling face lurched towards Mancini from the doorway. His torn, gray colored shirt was also streaked with blood and his bulging eyes resembled dark, ebony pools.

“Watch out,” Trey yelled.

“Shit,” Mancini hissed, raising his handgun. He fired a shot, which caught the onrushing man in the side of his neck. The round skimmed through flesh and soft tissue, leaving a bloody fissure in its wake. The infected guy jerked sideways but continued his rapid approach.

Mancini knew the shot would have taken the guy down if he’d been in a normal state but the infection, caused by the mysterious green crystals supplied the host with almost super human capabilities. He fired another shot but the infected guy bundled into him as his finger squeezed the trigger. The round cut through the attackers guts but wasn’t enough to stop his forward momentum. The blood soaked man hit Mancini with the full force of his body weight. Mancini felt the breath leave his body as he lost his balance and toppled over
backwards. He lost his grip on the firearm and it clattered away from him across the concrete ground. The infected guy landed on top of him, snarling and growling like a rabid dog. 

Trey
shouted something Mancini didn’t hear, he was too busy trying to keep the infected guy’s snaffling jaws away from his face. He jammed the heel of his hand beneath the man’s chin, lifting his head as far away from his face as his strength would muster.

The infected guy tore at Mancini’s clothing with his hands as he scrabbled on top of his intended prey.
Mancini grabbed the man’s hair with his free hand and wrenched his head in a sideways motion. The man’s teeth clattered together, producing an
audible clicking sound. Mancini gripped the bottom of his attacker’s chin and the top of his hair. He rapidly jerked the man’s skull around in a half circle motion and heard the crunching noise of vertebrae and spinal column cracking.

The man jerked then became limp but his eyes still remained open. Mancini pushed the infected guy’s body off of him and shimm
ied across the concrete, away from the blood soaked creature to his left. He glanced around for his gun and saw it beside the gas station wall. Mancini scooped up the firearm and aimed the barrel at the man lying on the ground a few yards from him.

Trey tentatively approached the gas station, moving out of Mancini’s line of fire.

“You okay, man?” he called out.

“Never better,” Mancini croaked,
then fired a shot into the infected guy’s head. Blood splattered in a surge onto the concrete, as the man’s head jerked sideways.

Trey
stopped in his tracks, his face white and his mouth gaping open. He glanced back at the Thunderbird to check Leticia and Jorge weren’t under any kind of attack.

Mancini hauled himself to his feet, aiming his handgun at the open gas station door. He briefly glanced back to Trey. “
I guess you were right, Trey. It looks like gas is free at this station today.”

Trey nodded. “I guess,” he muttered.
“Are you still going inside there?” He nodded towards the gas station door.

Mancini turned his head back towards the building. “Do we need anything?”

Trey shrugged.

“Let’s get back in the car,” Mancini sighed. He started to walk across the forecourt but stopped when he heard his cell phone ring.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Mancini plucked his phone from his pocket and studied the number on the screen. The call was from a previous number dialed but with no name. He hurried alongside the Thunderbird and thrust the cell phone at Jorge in the backseat.

“Is this
Luiz calling?” he barked.

Jorge stared at him with a shocked expression before he looked at the phone screen.

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Then answer the
fucking call.” Mancini tossed Jorge the phone. “And speak in English.”

Jorge caught the phone and fumbled it between his hands before he pressed the
receive call
button.

“Hello…
Luiz?”

Mancini heard the tinny sound of somebody yelling on the line. Jorge
screwed his face up and held the phone away from his head.

“What’s he saying?” Mancini hissed.

Jorge glanced at the cell phone then back towards Mancini. “I don’t think it is Luiz but he says he is trapped inside the house.” He shrugged and shook his head.

“Is he still in La Paz? Get the address,” Mancini barked.

Jorge moved the phone closer to his mouth and spoke in Spanish but Mancini decided to let it pass. The situation on the caller’s end obviously wasn’t going well.

“Who
’s after him?” Mancini asked. “Is it the cops?”

Jorge lifted a palm, indicating for Mancini to cease with his questions while he tried to listen to the hysterical caller.
Mancini growled in frustration. Jorge talked for a few more seconds then he heard a bleeping sound from the phone. He studied the screen for a second.

“He’s gone. The call was cut.”

“Who was it and what did he say?” Mancini snapped, leaning into the car interior.

Jorge handed Mancini the cell phone. “The line was bad and the guy was shouting a lot, which made it difficult to understand what he was saying but I got the general idea he was surrounded in the house by infected people.”

“Who was he and why’d he have Luiz’s phone?”

Jorge wiped sweat from his face. “He said he was Fernando Logrono, the cartel boss that
Luiz went to visit, to try and do business with.”

“And you believe it was him?”

Jorge nodded. “I guess. He said the whole place has gone to hell down there.”

“He’s still in his place in La Paz?”

Jorge nodded.

“And there are no cops there?”

“Not from what he said. The cops would probably leave him to be mauled to death, even if he called them, anyhow.”

“Okay, did he tell you the address, Jorge?”

Jorge nodded. “He did. I explained who I was and Senor Logrono wants us to come and save him.”

“All right, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Mancini nodded. “But what’s the address in La Paz, Jorge?”

Jorge nervously smiled and wiped his face again with trembling hands. “I’ll tell you when we get closer to La Paz.”

“What? Don’t jerk me around, Jorge,” Mancini seethed. He took a backward step and leveled his handgun at Jorge’s head.

Leticia whimpered and tried to move out of the firing line, leaning forward in her seat. Jorge squirmed, blinking uncontrollably.

“If I tell you the address now, you no longer have any use for me and you’ll kill me anyhow. The address is my one bargaining chip. You keep me alive and I will lead you to the house in La Paz.”

Mancini mulled over Jorge’s words. It made no difference to him if Jorge lived or died but he needed to find out exactly where he was headed if he was going to get close to resolving the situation. He lowered the handgun and returned it to his waistband.

“All right, Jorge. You got yourself a deal but ‘
lead’
is a very strong word for somebody in your position. I prefer the term ‘
guide
,’ if you know what I mean.”

“Whatever, guys,” Trey said. “Can we continue this conversation while we’re on the road? I think we better skedaddle before we become lunch.”

Mancini spun around to face Trey and saw he pointed at the gas station. Several figures emerged from the open store door and from the mechanical workshop, standing across the forecourt to the right of the pumps. The blood encrusted figures resembled humans but their eyes told a different story. Ripped clothes, horrific flesh wounds on various parts of their bodies, combined with glaring, ebony eyeballs were enough evidence to indicate the whole bunch of people were infected. Mancini did a brief head count while he drew his firearm.

“Twenty-one,” he muttered. Too many
animated bodies to take on with a couple of small arms handguns.

The hunched, blood stained creatures emitted low grunts and moved slowly in different directions, as though they were stalking their prey before the all out assault.

“Trey, get that pump nozzle out of the gas tank,” Mancini hissed.

Trey gulped and nodded, edging his way to the side of his car.
Mancini raised his Heckler & Koch, aiming at the main body of the infected. They began to spread out and fan themselves into a horizontal line, closing the angles around the Thunderbird.

“Hurry it up, Trey,” Mancini growled.

The infected crowd trod forward, closer to the gas pumps.

Trey fumbled with the gas nozzle,
wrenching it from the tank and tossing it to the ground. He hurriedly jumped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. The roar of the Thunderbird’s muffler, echoing below the canopy above the gas pumps seemed to invigorate the infected crowd’s hostilities. They rushed at the car in a collective mass, shrieking, snarling and growling with their arms raised and fingers outstretched, resembling hooked claws. Their blood stained faces twisted and contorted in frenzy as they bore down on their prey.

Mancini leveled his handgun and fired off two shots, dropping the front runners of the onrushing feral crowd.
The gunfire boomed in a hollow echo beneath the canopy. Trey slammed the transmission into drive and began pulling away from the gas pumps.

“Come on, man,” he yelled to Mancini. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Mancini turned and jogged alongside the Thunderbird then rounded the trunk to approach the passenger door. He felt his left sleeve being violently tugged from behind and half swiveled around to see a scowling infected man, wearing the torn remains of a gray jog shirt grabbing at his arm. Mancini shrugged off his attacker’s grip and swung his right fist at the assailant’s face. The handgun barrel smashed onto the bridge of the infected guy’s nose, demolishing the soft tissue amidst a cloud of blood. The infected man rocked backward under the impact of the blow and Mancini twisted and ducked away from the grasping hands of the enclosing infected horde.

“Get in the fucking car, will you?” Trey bellowed. He was contemplating hitting the gas and leaving Mancini behind. They had a few more seconds before the Thunderbird was totally engulfed in a sea of gnashing teeth and flesh tearing hands.

Mancini fired two more shots, randomly into the crowd. He ran alongside the car, struggling to keep pace with the increasing speed.

“Jump, man,” Trey yelled.

Mancini leapt into the Thunderbird’s interior. His head burrowed into the passenger side foot well and his legs scrabbled for purchase, either side of the head rest. His trailing foot thumped against the side of Jorge’s head as he thrashed around in an attempt to regain an upright position. Trey stamped his foot on the gas pedal and the Thunderbird lurched forward at gathering speed.

Finger nails scraped against the sides of the car and along the trunk as Trey accelerated out of the garage forecourt.
He glanced down to his right to check Mancini was okay. Mancini struggled to clamber from the foot well and twisted to his left.

“Are we clear yet?” Mancini gasped.

Trey didn’t reply. He weaved between the infected stragglers at the rear of the crowd and glanced in his rear view mirror. The grimy, contaminated horde gave chase in the Thunderbird’s wake, sprinting across the concrete in pursuit.

“Shit!”
Trey yelled a fraction of a second before the car’s nose plowed into an infected woman, who leapt into the vehicle’s path.

The woman’s body slammed into the Thunderbird’s front grille and she rolled up the hood
, before smashing into the windshield. She tried to clamber up the side of the car but Trey accelerated harder. The infected woman lost her grip and tumbled onto the concrete ground, rolling over several times like a rag doll. 

“Fuck, no!”
Trey roared in frustration as he tried to see through the cracked windshield. “That fucking bitch has totaled my ride, man.” Trey didn’t dare stop to inspect the damage. He pulled out of the garage onto the road without slowing down or checking the lanes were clear. 

Mancini scrabbled himself around so he was able to sit upright in the passenger seat.
He was concerned about the severe knocking sound the engine made as they sped away from the garage.