Well Fed - 05 (57 page)

“Sick,” Gus repeated weakly, turning his head in the direction of the doorway.

Jesus
, Collie fumed.
Give it a fucking break
.

Then it hit her. Gus wasn’t sick at all.

Wallace’s bullet struck home with spectacular results, and after plugging the first target on the minigun, he trained his sights on the next dingbat with balls enough to try to use the weapon. People scurried along the line, and he recognized a few of the faces crouched and fidgeting as the ones with guns opened up on the closing front. The trouble with handing a civvie a military-grade weapon is that they could be trained—even trained well—but until they were in a combat situation in which the enemy was returning fire and their friends were dying around them, you couldn’t depend on their morale holding up.

It was Wallace’s intention to break them.

He lined up the second target, a guy with a shaven scalp marveling over the dead man at his feet with no head. Wallace placed the red dot of his scope over the chest of the man, relaxed, realizing he didn’t have to exhale, and squeezed the trigger.

Boom
.

Brass ejected to Wallace’s right as the bullet tore a hole through the road savage’s chest, jerking the man off the flatbed as if he’d been hooked from behind.

Two.
Wallace took aim at one along the sandbag line.
There.
One hairy putz was waving his rifle back and forth, emptying his magazine into the horde. Wallace let that one live. A woman, her hair in a ponytail reaching her waist, remained steady under pressure. Wallace smoothly lined her up and fired, punching a bullet through her shoulder blades and lifting her up and over the sandbags.

Three
.

That shot caused a ripple effect. The minions next to the woman started freaking out, screaming, and other heads along the defensive measure took stock of the kill. Wallace drew a bead on one guy near the end of the sandbags, still unaware of anything amiss in all the noise… and squeezed.

The impact smashed the shooter away from the wall and into the legs of a nearby companion.

That shot
really
stirred them up—like kicking an anthill. The cutthroats started looking around, not paying attention to the zombies crawling over the recently, more permanently dead. A furry fuck of a man started bawling orders, even stepping up to the wall while directing the last guy on the flatbed to grab the mini.

Wallace aimed at the leader, intending to pop that noise-making cherry and truly invoke chaos.

A surge of mind-shattering hunger lanced through Wallace then, causing him to look away from the scope and claw the earth, raking up fallen leaves.
Hunger.
It erupted from his core and drove hooks of craving into his brain, demanding sustenance. It practically commanded his limbs into abandoning his position to wade down into that scrimmage and dig into whatever was breathing. Daylight became a stinging whiteout, a buzzing field of static, and he shied away from it. In the darkness, he summoned Collie, seeking shelter in her laugh, strength in her smile, but a rising hiss like leaves skittering across asphalt flooded his ears, shredding all memories, all sound.

Wallace placed his forehead to the ground and popped his jaws. He chewed into the earth and spat out foliage and dirt. The urge to feed receded, but only for a moment… then a second wave of hunger hammered into his core, splintering and almost breaking his resolve. Wallace gasped, realizing his heart wasn’t beating anymore, and in its place, a black hole was revolving voraciously, sucking on his mind. Wallace dug in, refusing to leave, actually whimpering under the mental pressure, feeling the steel plates of his conscience and his resolve buckling, warping.

Tentacles, slick and black, wormed out of the whirling cavity where his heart once resided, and Wallace knew if they reached his mind, he would cease to be. He needed a distraction.

So he gnashed into the nearest thing to him, biting off the index finger of his left hand, and when that went down, he chewed off his middle finger.

“Aim your fuckin’ shots!” Shovel roared at his panicked forces, dividing his attention between the zombies and the sniper picking them off one at a time. “Shoot the head! If you can’t get the head, shoot the legs
then
the head.”

“There’s a sniper!” someone shouted back, and as one, every head turned toward Shovel. Some of the new folks staying close to the ground bolted, and Shovel whirled and gunned them down. After dispensing that punishment, he aimed at the recruits, promising a similar fate for anyone else who broke away.

“Get on that mini!” Shovel barked at the third man on the flatbed, who cowered on the other side. A silver-headed Nolan moved on him, grabbing the guy by the back of his uniform and throwing his unwilling ass onto the platform.

“Who’s shooting at us?” a woman screamed.

“Never you mind that!” Shovel yelled back. “I’ll take care of that. You take care of
them
!”

Shovel stepped up to his people crouching behind the sandbags, ignoring the bleeding dead littering the cement.

“Stop spraying your fuckin’ shots! Aim and shoot! Aim and
shoot
! Do it, you goddamn dummies!”

To show what he meant, Shovel shouldered his machine gun and blew the heads off three zombies not twenty feet away. One of them wore a combat helmet, and the metallic
twang
of the ricochet sizzled heavenward. That caught his minions’ attention. Shovel lined up the face of the undead soldier and put a decisive bullet through it, dropping the undead in a heap.

“
Like that
!” Shovel waved his weapon as he retreated. “Do it like
that
!”

Lesson learned, they took to it in earnest, and a cutting hail of lead slashed into the advancing front, decimating the corpses. Chests and heads exploded violently, sending bodies earthward. Some skulls backed up on their shoulders while others had their midsections shredded to grisly ribbons.

“That’s it! Do it!
Do it
!” Shovel encouraged them, shifting his attention to the land and hills beyond the trailers, searching for that sniper…

And very much hoping he’d get his hands on him.

Wallace came to with a deep-throated humming in his ears. The second thing he noticed were the oozing stumps on his left hand.
Jesus.
The thought buzzed through his head along with that incessant mechanical whine filling the air. Wallace swallowed, feeling a lump sink into his gullet. He forced that ugly sensation from his mind and regarded Whitecap as hot recognition flashed through him.

Dragon fire was flashing from the minigun’s rotating barrels, shredding Whitecap’s zombies in a dazzling display of destruction, its one-note song blaring through the valley and mountains.

Appalled at the swath of devastation, Wallace fumbled for his rifle.

The wall stopped Collie from backing up farther, and she readied herself to dive and flip the mattress Gus had been sleeping on once Sick started firing.

However, the masked man standing behind Maggie surprised Collie. He slammed Maggie’s head into the closed door, and the doctor crumpled from sight. Then, holding a pistol on Collie, he nimbly pulled himself into the trailer, daylight framing him.

Then he advanced without so much as a creak.

“Sick,” Gus muttered repeatedly, introducing the newcomer. “Sick.”

“I know, babe,” Collie whispered.

That quieted Gus.

Sick approached them, and when he reached Collie’s rifle, he kicked it back toward the open door as if clearing the dirt from a batter’s box. He did the same for her sidearm. That completed, he walked toward them and stopped within ten feet of Gus. While gunfire crackled outside the trailer, the masked man sized Collie up. She studied him in turn, noting the dark combat fatigues. He wore a black mask, like herself, but in this pack of apocalyptic wasteland hellpups, a balaclava meant nothing.

Sick, however, carried himself a little differently.

He’s had training.

All thoughts sped from her mind then as Sick struck a duelist’s pose and aimed his pistol at Gus.

Collie licked her lips, willing the man to come a little closer, thinking of the combat knife in her shin sheath. A little less space was all she needed to end him.

But Sick surprised her again.

With machine-gun fire intensifying beyond the metal walls, he relinquished his aimed pistol and tossed it far away, back toward the daylight filling the open doorway.

Amazed, Collie relaxed just a fraction more. “The hell you up to?” she asked in wary puzzlement.

Sick didn’t reply. Instead, he reached down and slipped out his Bowie knife, revealing it inch by gleaming inch, the sparse light transforming the blade into something sorcerous, frightening. He turned it one way and then the other, making sure Collie saw it, before dropping back into a fighter’s stance, flipping the weapon to an underhand grip.

Collie met Gus’s drugged gaze for a second.

A knife fight is the last thing you want to get into.

He remembered the conversation, evident in his fearful expression. And that was true, Collie knew from experience, but as God above was her witness, evil radiated off this masked freak like heat from a furnace. Little bastard drew his knife as though he was in a porno. Lord only knew how many people he’d killed with that blade, and no doubt Sick got off on it. He was a certified crazy, Collie realized, one of the few who had probably rejoiced when civilization collapsed.

With dramatic grace, she reached down and unsheathed her knife, pointed it at her foe, and extended her left hand as a guard.

Gus moaned at her intentions, drawing her attention.

Collie winked at him.

And went forth to kill one nimble psycho.

As she walked toward him, Sick dropped back, smoothly switching up his stance while practice-punching the air. Collie performed no such theatrics. She’d been born loose and ready to fuck the enemy up.

From behind her extended hand and raised knife, Collie slipped into her own combative groove, aware of the walls.

“Let’s see what you got… boy,” she whispered.

Sick attacked, flashing forward with an adder’s speed. He flicked his Bowie out in an expert weave, slicing the space Collie had occupied only a microsecond earlier. She countered just as quickly, thrusting her hand toward his face while her knife stabbed for a backbone. Sick darted to the side and brought his knife hand down across Collie’s arm, slapping it away in a bruising connection. She responded in an instant, reading his intentions perfectly, and cracked an elbow across Sick’s jaw, driving him back. She pursued, stabbing for his gut once again and meaning to drive her steel into his heart, but Sick kicked out her knee in a crippling flash of pain, forcing the joint to buckle. Collie collapsed onto her back and caught her enemy’s descending knife in a knot of forearms, stopping the weapon not an inch below her throat.

There, they gazed into each other’s narrowed eyes, grunting and pressing.

She gripped a wrist and twisted it hard to snap it, but he rolled with the attack and tumbled away, toward Gus.

Collie scrambled to her feet, wincing at her knee, just as Sick sprang up like a twisted jack-in-the-box.

They circled each other for a moment, composing themselves, analyzing each other like doctors of a different, more sinister science. Their knives gleamed. Both breathed hard, chests heaving from the short but meaningful clash, but neither backed away.

Collie lunged, stabbing, turning it into a backhand slash, cutting cloth and air, punching with her free hand before initiating her own combination of thrusts, open-hand strikes, and slashes, jacking up the combat’s tempo. Sick evaded the knife, blocked or slapped away the more uncomfortable punches, and circled away from her before unexpectedly charging back in.

Collie didn’t retreat, and for mesmerizing seconds, they stood toe-to-toe, blades tinkling, hands and elbows blurring forward, blocking and striking with the rapid fury of a muffled snare drum. They ducked and weaved, probed and feinted before stabbing, all powered by quick intakes of air and short puffs of breath.

With an uncharacteristic bark, Sick retreated from two scything sweeps of Collie’s combat knife before stabbing for a heart. Collie swung out of the way like a door caught in a windstorm and smashed her palm into his cheek, snapping his head back. She slashed for his throat, but Sick blocked her arm in an evil display of speed.

They broke away from each other.

Machine guns continued to blaze outside.

Collie realized she was near the doorway. Somewhere behind her, at her feet, was a collection of firearms.

“Wishin’ you kept that Glock now, right?” Collie huffed, eyes fixed on her opponent.

Sick didn’t reply, his shoulders heaving. He stalked her, loose as a boxer, poised to strike if given the opportunity, whirling his knife in a defensive figure eight meant to frighten and hypnotize.

Collie didn’t go for that—didn’t go for the guns either.

She went for his throat.

He blocked the attack, but her forward momentum backed him up into a wall. They mashed together like similar pieces in different machines, grunting now, ferocious in their exchanges. He cut her above the eye. She slashed the outside of a thigh. He uppercut, zipping a deep kiss through mask and skin, licking her chin to the bone. She elbowed him hard to the head, three close-quarter strikes that squished his nose to one side. He got a free hand around the back of her neck and attempted to pull her down onto his knife tip, but she stopped the ascending Bowie with her forearm, the point deflecting off bone and parting cloth around her shoulder. He pushed off the wall, arms enveloping her, slashing her lower back as he went, lifting her off her feet and charging forward. Collie rained down a pair of punishing pommel strikes to his neck before slamming against the trailer wall. Her feet touched floor, and she stabbed for his throat again.

This time she got his shoulder.

Sick squealed at the impalement, frenzied, and unleashed everything he had left, all surging through the torpedo of his right arm—his knife arm.