Well Fed - 05 (55 page)

Marrying his wife in the bowels of Whitecap. Gathering up the remnants of humanity for Pine Cove.

To here.

All that was coming to an end.

Wallace thought about the past week, specifically after having dropped Gus and the other survivors off at Pine Cove. He and Collie had retreated to their cabin hideaway and completely missed the invasion force. They’d had other things going on at the time. Collie had gone into intervention mode and locked both of them inside until one of two things happened: he turned for good, or he got out of his self-defeating funk and thoughts of suicide.

Wallace didn’t turn.

And he convinced Collie about giving up on his well-thought-out, self-exiting plans. Or at least thought he convinced her (his wife was far more intelligent than he). She also convinced him that she still needed his transforming carcass (his words, not hers) every moment of the day. As long as he still functioned. She needed him.

And as long as she still needed him, he’d
delay
his exit plan… for as long as he was mentally able to delay it.

Wallace smiled then, remembering the softer tones she used when conveying her feelings for him, even in his altered state.
Collie
, he mused. Ever the paladin. Always the motivator. She’d worked her sorcerous magic over him, and Wallace had to admit that over the past few days, he hadn’t felt any of the cursed urges belonging to the undead. He certainly hadn’t gone as far as that one instance with Gus.

Halfway through the previous night, however, things had changed… for the worse. He constantly stretched his jaws, popping his eardrums. When Collie asked him what was wrong, he’d reported the stiffening of his joints but seemed fine otherwise. He didn’t tell her that the smell of her skin was borderline intoxicating, stimulating a powerful urge to bite. He wanted to perhaps start on her neck—just lean over, chomp down, and rip out great bloody mouthfuls, working his way up that strong curve to the berries of her earlobes and…

Wallace shook himself violently, popped his jaws again, and took ten seconds to focus. Once he’d recovered, he took stock of his ammunition and stacked the extra magazines next to the spot where he’d be lying down. The rifle didn’t have a bipod, but that wasn’t a big problem. He’d manage. The German rifle used a 5.56 cartridge and had a maximum range of around seven hundred meters, or the length of about six football fields and change. All good. The mouth of Whitecap’s entry tunnel was easily inside that range, and he didn’t think he’d be shooting that far. The trailers, small office building, and vehicles were all within three hundred meters, and there wasn’t a breeze in the least.

He located the selector switch just above the grip and thumbed it to single fire with an ominous click. Having done all that, he climbed to his feet and stepped back, to a tree where he’d hidden the pressure mine he’d discovered on the way up the hill. Land mines had been banned well before the turn of the century, but in the defense of Whitecap, against the threat of being overrun by dead things, the base commanders ordered several improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to be placed in the woods surrounding Whitecap.

The one Wallace had found, affectionately called a
beanbag
and about the size of a small sofa cushion, was a no-brainer to set up. One switch activated the device, then all it took was someone to step on and step off to detonate. Wallace recognized the coded, black-ink lettering of GAZ PLO and knew the weapon contained a sizeable amount of liquid explosive—more than enough to do the job.

There was no way on God’s green earth he was going to leave to his wife to do that job. No way was she going to come back and find him staggering about, brainless with an insatiable appetite. No fucking way.

He placed the beanbag on the dead foliage of the hill, on a small rise suspiciously molded to fit his very plan. He leaned over the explosive and activated it, and when a red light chirped, he paused before lowering himself onto the device, centering it under his abdomen. Wallace lay there, aware of the deadly ordnance nestling at his core, eyes darting left and right, and didn’t dare move off the device.

He counted to five, shrugged mentally, and pulled his rifle into his arms, resting it on the small rise. His back was arched a bit uncomfortably, but what the hell. He was protected, had a relatively clear field of fire, and discovered he was in a wrath-of-God kinda mood.

The scope fitted his eye, and he peered through, scanning left and right until he arrived at the point in the fence where he expected Collie to make her insertion.

Then he panned a little to the left and spotted four targets.

A mild convulsion overtook him, followed by that familiar, insatiable craving welling up in his gullet and brain like bad gas. He suppressed it with effort. After winning that little battle, he realized that if he’d shaken too much, enough to take pressure off the beanbag, well… game over.

Wallace stretched open his jaws, longing to bite into something
… anything
. The feeling quivered along his spine and thrummed into his facial muscles like wires dangerously close to overloading.

C’mon, baby girl
, he projected mentally.

Daddy doesn’t have much time left.

Wild grass and flowers sagged with melting frost as Collie descended the hill and made her way to the tree line. She stayed low, utilizing the ample foliage, scanning ahead and staying aware of the chain fence on her left. Bushes scratched at her camouflaged jacket, but she ignored them. Behind the coils of razor wire, fencing, and gaps in the buildings, vehicles, and containers, people moved with purpose. All seemed well that morning, which suited Collie’s purpose.

She approached the gaps in the mesh fence and collapsed onto the frigid earth. She peeked through the underbrush and spied a pickup with three masked, civvie gunmen in the back. They were watching the area where Collie intended to make her insertion.
Nothing is ever easy
, she thought as she looked around. There wasn’t anything she could do, not with a band of open territory filled with razor wire.

She blinked and noticed a lump that interested her greatly. A dead black bear lay tangled in the coils of razor wire. The animal had gotten painfully caught and had probably been gunned down. No one had bothered to pull it out of the wire. It lay across the loops, about twenty feet away from the gap in the fence. Collie wasn’t complaining.

The unmistakable rattle of gunfire interrupted her thoughts, coming from the direction of the mountain and freezing her. The civvies in the pickup heard it as well. The three in the box turned away, listening to the clatter, before one slapped the roof. The engine started up, and in ten seconds, the gap was left unguarded. The pickup sped off around the corner of an unhooked trailer and disappeared from sight, but Collie sensed the industrial demeanor of the camp had just changed.

She got to her feet and bounded through the brush, emerging and aiming for the dead bear. Being suddenly in the open felt threatening. The animal had been a beast, about nine feet long, and died across the inner and outer coils of razor wire. Collie used its great size as a stepping stone, bounded over the defensive measure, recovered, and chugged onward to the gash in the fence. In seconds, her feet slapped concrete, and she ran toward the nearest trailer. Shouts and the roar of engines ruined the peace.

Once she reached the trailer’s door, she yanked it open.

The burst of gunfire jerked Shovel out of his morning funk and pulled him to the picture window. Giovanni appeared next to him. Outside, people had dropped what they were doing and looked in wonder toward Whitecap. Figures spilled from the tunnel mouth, running and firing in uncoordinated bursts, and generally pissing Shovel off.

“Goddamn fuckin’ idiots,” he grumbled and reached for his submachine gun, hanging from a wall peg. “Didn’t we fuckin’ drill for this?”

“We did,” Giovanni said in an equally offended tone.

“And there they are, blasting like a bunch of fuckin’ five-year-olds playing cowboys, clogging up that tunnel. They’ll sure as shit be the ones clearing that mess up.”

Shovel turned away from the window and moved toward the door. “C’mon, then. Let’s get to that minigun before one of our retards accidentally mows us all down.”

The zombies lumbered into a bullet storm.

Slick Pick’s people sprayed instead of aiming. The flashlight beams jumped and jiggled, like spotlights coming unhinged because of an earthquake. Rarely did anyone focus on a head, and any training Slick Pick’s crew had was quickly forgotten.

“The
heads
, goddammit… Shoot the fuckin’
heads
!” Slick Pick screamed over the sky-splitting jackhammering of the German rifles. Unbreathing chests got stitched up in explosive patterns, flinging corpses back into the surge of bodies pushing forward. Arms exploded off shoulders. Faces burst apart with startled jumps. One zombie, an emaciated kid with upturned eyes, actually
charged
the firing line. A lengthy burst of gunfire destroyed the corpse’s legs in an inky spray. The kid fell but continued crawling until someone emptied a magazine into its head, bouncing the figure off the floor as if it had landed on a snare drum. The living were so terrified and focused on the shifting rows of undead that they missed the masses oozing around the backhoe.

Eddie locked his door when a charcoal palm slapped against it hard, scaring him to the brink of shitting himself. He stomped on the pedal and got the backhoe moving, but the armored truck hooked into a protrusion along the wall, twisted, and wouldn’t budge another inch. Eddie shrieked and lowered the bucket in a desperate effort to shake the chains loose from the supporting arms, but they’d been fixed too securely. Eddie himself had done the job.

Someone spotted a corpse crawling up the backhoe’s ladder and blasted it off with a lengthy burst.

“Out! Out, everyone out!” Slick Pick shouted above frantic reloading.

That sent everyone scurrying for the tunnel mouth, leaving the unleashed horde fumbling about in that cavernous darkness, crawling forth upon machine-gunned limbs, heads resting crookedly on necks half shorn away by bullets.

In the cab of the backhoe, a horrified Eddie saw the retreat and stomped on the gas pedal. The backhoe refused to do his bidding. He slammed the machine into its forward gear and plunged ahead. The bucket collected a writhing gaggle of doll-like limbs and torsos and drove them into the rear of the armored truck. The red and white whirling lights illuminated just enough to show the swell of bodies bursting in places, innards and bones sprouting in a viscous pulp. The zombies’ deceased expressions didn’t change even as the bucket mangled them. Eddie slapped the machine into reverse and backed up, ignoring how the fleshy clump fell.

But the rig could not free itself from its treacherous anchor.

Eddie’s hands trembled on the controls. He jerked his head around, whimpering at the rising flood of heads, shoulders, and reaching arms surrounding the rig. Unchecked fright streaked a light show up and down his spine, nearly paralyzing him. Sweat glazed his skin, soaking his clothing. Eddie knew he was in a bad position and didn’t want to become a fucked-up snack for the undead. He put the backhoe into drive and pushed forward again, the bucket heaving the zombies back. Tires squelched over a moist jam of skin and bones. The machine smashed into the truck, and Eddie reversed again, squashing a few zombie seeping into his retreating path. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the way partially clear.

“Fuckohfuckohhh
ohhhhhh
.”

Slick Pick and the others had run out on him. Eddie was alone and cooped up in the cab like a slab of beef in a display case.
Totally unacceptable.
He shrugged off the seat buckles and clawed at the straps, bending a couple of fingernails back. He gripped the door handle, eyeing zombies struggling around the bucket.

Now
.

Eddie threw open the door, swung himself outside, and hung off two rungs before jumping down. Moaning resonated off the tunnel walls, sounding like an off-key choir warming up. He ran, feeling fingers brush his neck. Eddie bolted for the tunnel entrance, not wanting to be eaten alive.

And in his hurry, he slipped in that chunky stew covering the ground. His face and chest slammed into a mat of crushed bodies. Particles got into his eyes and mouth, and a knob of something invaded an ear. He barked a note of spastic dread and pushed off from the ground in an adrenaline-spiked push-up, feet already moving at full power.

His hands slipped, and he fell again.

Eddie screamed as he struggled to regain his feet, his hands raking the offal of nightmares, close to puking from the smell alone.

A line of zombies piled onto him.

Eddie fell onto his chest, the undead weight pressing him down into that awful decomposing mud under his chin. He screamed and shoved a hand into the neck of a corpse that appeared to wear its dentures on its lips. No, it
had
no lips. Eddie freaked, kicked into what felt like a vat of putrefying fat. His boot came half off, and he struggled even more as more bodies swarmed him, pulling on his workwear, grabbing his face, dripping, smiling, moaning, all while the backhoe’s strobe lights whirled overhead like a psychedelic nightmare.

“
Don’t eat me! Don’t, no! NO, NO!
”

Rancid skin muffled Eddie’s cries then, and the zombies did exactly what he screamed for them not to do.

They ate him alive.

Collie double-timed it through three trailers, peering inside each and discovering stores of food and drink until she arrived at a single-story office house. People ran past her, heading for the ramp leading up to the tunnel entrance, weapons jiggling and clutched to their chests. That was fine with her. She went straight to the door and tried the knob.

Locked.

Collie didn’t like to be locked out.

She stepped back and kicked the door hard, hitting it just below the knob. The door flew open and bounced off the inside wall. Collie edged around the corner, leading with her rifle, and centered on a single woman dressed in a red sweater and jeans, her graying hair tied in a knot at the back of her head.