Well Fed - 05 (39 page)

“All right, cocksucker, all right,” that same voice yelled. “You want to dig in? You ain’t gettin’ the chance. We
want
you now. We want you
bad
.”

Collie didn’t like the smug, evil delight in those words. She peeked around the corner and blinked in disbelief.

The gang had moved a wide, SWAT-style tactical shield into the middle of the hall, the kind that would easily protect anyone crouching behind its sheet-metal hide. Bullet-resistant Plexiglas covered the eye slot near the top, revealing gang members already gathering behind the portable barrier, preparing to lift and move it toward her position.

It rested around twenty feet from her position, meant to end the current stalemate.

She glanced around her surroundings, seeing nothing of help. The ceiling was flawless, solid. The windows of the play pen had been boarded too much to escape through. The one at the end of the hallway wasn’t damaged enough, and though she’d entertained the notion earlier, busting out that way wasn’t something that appealed to her.

Scuffling and angry shouts came from the hall. They were coming, lifting that monstrous shield and moving forward, stepping over bodies as needed.

Creeping closer.

Collie swapped out her magazine for a full one, worked the slide, and hugged the wall. The doorknob captured her attention.

The lock—it was still intact.

The tactical shield’s scarred surface came into view as she slammed her door shut and locked it. She jammed the Sig Sauer through the cut slot––which was conveniently higher than the besiegers’ portable wall––and unloaded a punishing rate of fire.

The shield crashed down.

Heads jerked back.

A torso got blown backward.

People screamed.

A shotgun blast bit a chunk out of the door, and Collie shied away for a second, but then she continued firing into whoever was behind the shield.

A green, dimpled ball rattled through the slot, pitched almost perfectly. It bounced off her chest before dropping to the stained floor.

Collie’s eyes widened.

Grenade.

Rattling about her boots.

She sprang into the bathroom as the weapon detonated, shredding the outer door and scorching the walls in a huff of released fury. Collie rebounded off a tiled countertop and crashed into a pink porcelain toilet, her ears ringing as if a pair of cymbals had been smashed inside them.
The fuck they get one of those?
her dazed mind questioned. A dazed Collie tried to rise but slumped alongside the toilet, legs not quite willing to do her bidding. Her senses tried to equalize, and she met the terrified expression of Jimbo peeking over the lip of the bathtub.

“You okay?” she asked weakly.

Jimbo lifted his face above the rim, squeaked, “I shit the tub,” and dropped back down, leaving a pair of bugged-out eyes showing.

Men charged into the room, as big as mountains, amazing Collie that so many could fit into the small motel bathroom. Their voices reached her like angry hunting horns blaring over empty plains. Hands grabbed her and hoisted her up, slammed her into the counter and plied her back over the edge, her pelvis thrusting forward. They pinned her arms against a shattered mirror as faces hot with hate loomed in close. Someone cocked a mallet of a fist and struck her tempered abs. Pain flared from the point of impact, but she kept the air in her lungs. Another punch—and that one hurt—kept her off balance. Voices thundered overhead, like gods swearing at mortals daring to fly. Another fist struck her gut, followed by a granite right to her face.

One of them grabbed her balaclava and pulled it from her sweating face, and the room went quiet.

“It’s a fuckin’
woman
,” one man wearing a hunter’s hat finally whispered in amazement.

“A woman,” another echoed, disbelieving she could have gotten so far, done so much damage.

“A fuckin’
butch
of a bitch,” deemed the puncher. His voice was the one from the hallway. Puncher grabbed at her breasts. “She’s got ’em hidden, but they’re there.”

Hands pawed over her chest. Collie allowed them, regaining her marbles.

“The fuck you do, huh? Strap them down or something?” Puncher asked as he prodded. Two others held her arms while another eagerly watched over their shoulders.

“You got him?” a female asked from the hall.

“The cocksucker’s a
she
!” the one on the right bellowed triumphantly.

“A
she
?” the woman voiced in disbelief. A couple of curious faces appeared between the gathering shoulders before being blotted out.

“Face is all fucked, but everything else seems okay,” Puncher muttered. His hand latched onto the fabric around her waist. “Check out what’s below the border here. See if this butch shaves.”

“She’s not that bad,” Righty declared with an eager hiss.

“Goddamn
nose
is bit off,” Lefty pointed out in disdain, as if their prize had been spoiled somehow.

“Don’t have to look at her face anyhow.”

The force on her arms diminished just a fraction, and Collie relaxed. She’d already recovered enough to evaluate the situation. Puncher squashed his pelvis against hers, close enough that she could smell morning breath and felt his anger being channeled into lust.

Enough of
this
shit.

She hiked her right leg, and Puncher immediately cupped her ass cheek, misreading the cue as being submissive. He was too preoccupied with pulling at her combat fatigues, pissed by the fact they weren’t ripping.

Collie drove her right boot heel into the nearest knee, which belong to Righty. She hit the joint from the side, mashing the bones in a direction they weren’t meant to bend. Righty yelped like a kicked dog and released her. He flung her arm away as if it was on fire and limped a step before falling into the open doorway. The scream startled Puncher and Lefty. Collie flashed forward, smashing her freed open palm into Puncher’s nose, flattening cartilage with sledgehammer force, driving the man back, his nostrils already gushing. He flipped over the low rim of the tub, ripping down a shower curtain as he went. Lefty’s eyes fluttered wide with horror before Collie’s hand pistoned into his face. Three short, vicious explosions cracked into his nose with smart-bomb accuracy, softening his grip until he released her and sat down drunkenly on the toilet seat. A man screamed a warning from the hallway, struggling to pull Righty out of the way. Another goon tried to enter. He reached out and latched on to her right shoulder. Collie wrapped her arm around the attacking limb, locking up the man’s elbow hard enough to hear and feel bone splinter and bend. He yowled like a man catching his fingers in a car door. She punched him twice, face and balls, and he sagged. Collie released him and crushed his chest with a front kick, sending him pinwheeling backward into the hall, his broken arm waving like a rag, until the wall stopped his momentum.

In the tub, Puncher crawled back into the fight, nose and lower lips coated in blood blacker than crude oil. Collie grabbed the back of his head, simultaneously motoring her knee into his face. The delicate facial bones squished, and Puncher dropped into the tub alongside a squealing Jimbo.

A man stood just outside the doorway, pointing a twelve gauge.

Collie ducked as the gun went off, feeling hot shot shred away a layer of cloth and skin. She bounced over Righty, writhing on the threshold, and zeroed in on shotgun guy outside the bathroom. Shotgun saw her coming and withdrew in fright as if she was the living plague. He swatted her shoulder with the barrel of his weapon, but Collie was on him, grabbing his testicles and twisting as if she’d gotten ahold of fat party snappers. Paralyzed, Shotgun collapsed.

Knife. Flashing.
Left.

The woman stabbed a hunter’s blade toward Collie, aiming for ribs or a kidney. Collie swept her arm outward while moving toward the docile Shotgun, knocking the weapon aside. Collie followed through, her striking arm slowed by coming into contact with the wall. Still, when her punch connected, it was more than enough to almost twist the female’s head off her shoulders. The knife attacker went down, and another man roared into the room. Collie hooked an arm under one of his, twisted, and hip-tossed him toward the open pit. He screamed as his ass landed on the edge, not quite enough to tip him over.

A quick boot to the head solved that.

He went over like a drunken freighter being sucked down by the Atlantic, fingers clawing at the carpet, then the edge, before disappearing. Then he began to truly sing.

Collie spun around, crouched over and scanning for others.

One final man stood in the hallway, beneath several smoldering air fresheners, looking as if he’d downed an entire milkshake of “holy fuck” and discovered it not at all to his liking. He held a cheap survival knife and could tell he was overmatched. Wavering between fleeing or fighting, he backed up against the opposite door.

Dirty hands grabbed his face, and fingers hooked into his eyes and mouth, clawing a scream from their victim. Blood burst from an eye socket, dark in the dismal light.

Collie snatched up a fallen shotgun, pumped it, and stepped into the corridor while shrieks and curses erupted from the pit behind her. The tactical shield lay against a wall, pushed aside after the grenade had gone off. Seeing the coast clear, she turned and whipped the wooden stock into the last gang member’s unprepared gut. The blow crippled him, and he fell to the floor, slipping free of the hands clawing his face.

A bullet hole magically appeared in the wall in a puff of dust, and Collie whirled around.

Crouching was Lefty, partially recovered, aiming a Sig Sauer he’d picked up from the floor. He fired again, and the bullet passed close enough that the wind made her blink. She fired the shotgun from the hip, ejector spitting a blue casing off to the side. The blast yanked Lefty from his crouch and splattered him across the pink of the porcelain toilet. He oozed into the gap between tub and shitter and stayed there.

Collie whirled toward Righty, still on the floor.

His hands came up to protect his face. “Don’t kill––”

But Collie did anyway.

When the sound of the second shot died away, replaced by the screaming from the pit and the retching of Jimbo in the tub, Collie checked on the other fallen gang members.

Then she wrestled with the bars sealing the door across the hall, pulled them back, and freed a wary group of men and women in their twenties or older, who appeared to have been starved, beaten, and broken—all except one tall, balding fellow who looked both menacing and grateful. Collie noted that blood covered his fingernails.

“You folks okay?” she asked him as faces peeked around his frame.

“We are now.”

“What’s your name?”

That momentarily dispelled the cold wrath from his face, and he looked her in the eye. “Phil.”

“Watch these two for me, will ya, Phil?” she gestured toward the one guy still holding his nuts and the woman sitting up and test-flexing her jaw.

“We will,” and the wrath returned like thunderheads smothering the sun. Collie wasn’t a hundred percent sold on old Phil just yet, so she kept the shotgun handy until she tramped across the red bathroom floor and picked up her sidearm. Holstering the weapon, she shot warning glances at the two surviving members and walked down the hall, checking every open door and clearing every possible nook and cranny while, behind her, the screaming lessened. Bodies of the ones she’d killed earlier lay on the carpet, bled out and staring in some cases.

She reached the stairwell leading to the ground floor in time to hear a door slamming and to smell a breath of fresh air. Collie eased back, taking a low position and aiming at the space where a head and torso would appear below. Footsteps charged the stairs and took them two at a time.

The guy had a bald head and a thick but ratty beard. Gus.

He spun on the landing, saw the pointed shotgun, and immediately ducked.

“Relax, relax,” Collie called out, lowering her weapon.

“Christ,” a visibly shaken Gus panted and leaned against a wall for support. He glared at her before settling down, struggling to catch his breath. Collie smiled back, feeling a twitch of something she probably shouldn’t, and switched her thoughts to Wallace’s whereabouts.

“You kill them all?” Gus asked.

“Only the ones who tried to kill me.”

“Yeah? How many was that?”

“Almost all, I figure. You see any on your way in?”

“No.”

“Where’s Wallace?”

“He’s comin’. Sent me on ahead. His legs…” Gus shook his head doubtfully. “He’s havin’ trouble. I know he is.”

I know he is too.
She knew full well her man was hiding much more about his day-to-day self than she could scry. She knew where it was all going, knew there wasn’t anything any of them could do, but God as her witness, she couldn’t consider a future without Ollie by her side or at her back.

She peered up and down the corridor.

“Stinks,” Gus said.

“Yeah. You won’t believe what they––”

A blast of shrieks and curses erupted from the direction of the freed prisoners. Figures cluttered the entrance to the play pen. The ends of a ladder lay on the carpeted floor, just between feet and ankles.

An uneasy chord shivered within Collie.

They
wouldn’t
.

But they just might…

“The fuck’s that?” Gus asked, but Collie was already double-timing it toward the collection of people, hopping over carcasses. The women and men fearfully parted for her, all in all, about a dozen. Collie turned the corner in time to see five other men releasing a pair of ankles. No other gang member was in sight.

They’d been fed to the pit.

The men stood back, dirty and hairy, with hollowed cheeks and with hooded eyes watching her reaction. Collie regarded each of them in turn and said nothing, knowing full well whatever they did, they did as a final retribution for whatever physical and mental pain had been inflicted upon them all. The pit thrashed and boiled, and one unlucky gang guy was trying to hoist himself up on the far-off perch Jimbo, peeking out from the bathroom, had once occupied. When Collie met his eyes, he quietly handed over her balaclava, which she took in a fist.