Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King

by Blackmore, Keith C.

  “Collie,” Gus whispered, scanning that impenetrable screen of tar just beyond the box, feeling his throat click as he swallowed. “Listen.… This might’ve been a bad idea.”

  He glanced back at the EV, its headlights pointed towards the deeper parts of the garage. Shit. He should’ve scouted out the rest of the garage, made certain he knew where he was going, and what he was doing. But he didn’t. At the time, he was ready to die, ready to go down underneath a mass of twisting, writhing limbs and biting mouths. Firing or swinging or just plain swearing all the while.

  With every passing second, he realized just how wrong he was.

  Again, he glanced at the EV. Ten steps and he’d be there. Ten seconds and he’d be driving off, picking up speed, and trying to outdistance what was coming. The nagging intensity of his foot was cut off by the energy thrumming in his calves.

  A spike in volume yanked his attention back to the tunnel mouth. Gus stared into that sunless space beyond the bunker. His chest ached. He braced his rifle hard enough against his shoulder to make it hurt.

  He waited for the storm.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And then, as though a curtain had suddenly lifted, the automated tunnel lights blinked on and there they were. A monstrous collage of faces, hundreds strong, popping into sight in near-perfect unison. A fire-hydrant gush of torsos, chugging arms, and sprinting legs that all seemed to shift into an even higher gear of frenetic energy upon the horde smelling him. That livid, emaciated line of insanity charged forward, hundreds of eyes bright with rage and jaws stretched wide—and they thundered towards the subterranean endzone that was the wide-open bunker.

  The screaming had long since peaked, yet feral shrieks of pure, wicked glee punched through the unvarying roar, spiking the air.

  Against instinct, against every fiber of his worn-out body urging—begging—him to haul ass out of there…

  Gus stepped out from the corner and fired.

  38

  A murderous spray of gunfire cut across the charging zombies.

  Chests erupted. Heads blasted apart. Chunks blew out of necks. Shoulders shredded in a blink before the line of star fire whipped across faces and violently removed them. The air became a carbonated mist of blood as the first rank collapsed, instantly tripping up the second and third ranks.

  A huge wedge formed in the middle of that tsunami of savagery then, as if God himself took a whack at it with the back of a shovel.

  The wings of the mob, however, sped onward, homing in on their target.

  So Gus alternated left and right and hosed them down as well.

  The ST1X had no recoil. No kick. Tracer fire erupted from the muzzle in an unending Morse code of death. Spent casings shat straight down Gus’s left leg in a heavy patter, rather than to the side like some of the other guns he’d fired. ‘Course, this was the first time he’d gotten his hands on an automatic weapon. A military-grade automatic weapon.

  And like a firefighter wielding a high-pressure hose, he whipped that thunder stick to the right, wiping out a dozen or so figures with it in mere seconds. Then he raked it across the floundering middle, then toward the left wing.

  Gus was smiling. Hunched over with his cheek plastered against the gun, he didn’t even have to aim, the mindless were so thick. The ST1X churned out an astonishing stream of light that ripped the forward ranks apart, and those that followed were immediately hosed down as well. The gun was a death rattle. A white-hot butcher’s knife slicing knobs of undead butter. And all the while he was shooting, at the tail-end of his unchecked astonishment at the level of destruction he alone was causing, he wondered how—seriously—how the hell did he not get his meat mittens on one of these things in the first place? He could hold off a goddamn army of the undead with one of these guns. He could mow down entire hordes of the screamers. He could—

  The gun ceased firing.

  That single, near continuous laser-beam stream of heavy-metal demolition stopped without warning, and something clicked against Gus’s cheek, startling him like a thumb jammed into his ball sack.

  He lowered the weapon and saw it was empty.

  Goddamn empty!

  Sixty—maybe even a hundred rounds gone in less than fifteen seconds.

  “The fuck?” Gus blurted, and realized right then and there where he was. What he was doing.

  Fifty meters out, and less than half to where the blast doors shut, the mindless kept right on charging.

  Gus nearly ripped his fingernails off as he grabbed onto the emptied magazine, whereupon he immediately flung the casing away. Only to realize he didn’t have any fresh spares—just fresh guns.

  He dropped the first ST1X battle rifle and snatched up a second one. It was already primed, so he pressed it to his shoulder and started firing. And light, praise Jesus, pure and holy light, spat forth and ripped the undead multiple new assholes north and south of the border. That destructive onslaught clotheslined the attackers, dividing them. The charge fragmented then, as those in the rear tripped or stumbled over the dead. Instead of a single solid mass, streamers of flailing, clawing, undead sprinted towards him.

  Gus unloaded, whipping the gun back and forth, decimating any Moe getting too damn close.

  And ran out of ammunition in ten seconds.

  Christ almighty! Gus mentally swore and chucked the second weapon. How the sweet fuck was he supposed to kill zombies when—

  The overhead lights lit up a full stadium’s worth of undead as they blasted past the raised doors of the bunker. Very much aware of how fast they were rushing him, and very much eager to pick up the last remaining ST1X, Gus grabbed for the weapon.

  His outstretched hand—his fucking fingertips, in fact—inadvertently knocked the gun a good five feet away from him. It clattered across concrete, well out of reach, and presented him with a choice. A crystal-clear choice.

  He could either go for the weapon… and continue his bloody spraying down of the rapidly advancing mindless.

  Or… he could turn and run for the nearest EV.

  In the maddening din of his nearing attackers, Gus never even considered it a question.

  He went for the gun.

  And in his own frenzied haste, he fumbled in picking up the weapon. Through the open door of the booth, Gus glimpsed figures storming past the window therein. And if the mindless were noisy before, they were deafening now.

  With a distressed whimper, he snatched up the firearm, didn’t get a good grip on it, but that didn’t matter. He had the gun. Now, all he needed was cover. He whirled and lunged for the nearby doorway of the security booth.

  Where the frame smacked the weapon out of his hand.

  That sudden freeing of the gun jerked his head around in time to see the contrary piece of plastic and metal skitter along the floor.

  In his peripheral vision, outlines continued blurring past the window of the booth. He could hear their feet rattling off the floor, getting closer.

  Inside the booth, Gus spotted a keypad next to the door. He slapped his palm down on a red button, right below a green one. The booth’s door slid shut just as a torso appeared in the gap, just as dozens of fingers scrambled to stop the closure. The door closed anyway, momentarily muting the screams from beyond—a second before the hammering began. A furious taiko drum set where the musicians had loaded-up on performance-enhancing drugs and were swinging for distance.

  Gus thumbed an additional knob and a message flashed across a small screen, notifying him that the door was locked. Sighing relief, he backed away from the rattling surface and flinched at the startling pounding on the booth’s window. Dozens of mindless were there. Men. Women. Teenagers. All banging the glass surface with skin-splitting force, letting the living know they knew he was in there. The clear pane trembled under the assault, and Gus pushed himself up against a table shoved against the opposite wall. Office organizers spilled pens and paperclips onto the floor. He ignored the mess, his attention fixated on those savage,
wide-eyed faces.

  Some pressed their cheeks against the glass, stretching pallid skin. Others flattened their foreheads. Others faceplanted the clear surface and smashed out their remaining teeth in bursts of bloody spit. Noses squashed in red spurts. One woman reared back in superhero style and punched the glass, breaking her knuckles in a rain burst of dark matter.

  But she kept on punching, heedless of the ruination of her hand.

  Mindless.

  No other description really applied. Or mattered.

  And despite their breaking bones and bursting skin, they kept on smashing at the door.

  The scent, he realized. The urine covering him drove them gluebag crazy. They could probably smell him right now, right down to his dewy dingleberries.

  The mindless crowded the security booth, filling the window from left to right. There weren’t as many as before and Gus thanked Christ for that. At least he thinned out the herd a bit, before he took sanctuary within the checkpoint walls, which were a lot more resilient than he’d thought. Still, the sight of the mindless mere feet away from him, behind a partition of unknown material and thickness, did not lift Gus’s spirits. He wasn’t free—he was in a long box, on display, witnessing dead people smash the living shit out of themselves.

  That stopped him in his tracks.

  Gus watched the undead outside, thinking back to his own shooting spree. Could they be killed by shooting the body as well as the head? He’d had his chance to clarify that and missed it. He couldn’t see shit past the gore-stained glass. The mindless outside continued to inflict horrific injuries onto themselves, and they showed no signs of slowing down.

  “It’s like a fucking Black Friday sale out there,” Gus said under his breath.

  The glass was holding, but he didn’t know for how long. Once they got through, he’d be dead. The closest thing he had to a weapon was…

  He looked around the office area and spotted a large stapler next to a keyboard.

  The walls rumbled as he trudged into the back of the booth. More body armor but no weapons in sight. There were still a few magazines underneath the gunrack, but no guns to use.

  The booth’s windows seemed to shiver under the constant bombardment of faces and appendages. He’d be safe for a while, he figured, until…

  Well… shit.

  Until the masked sonsabitches that were chasing him arrived on scene.

  That Tom-fuckery, he thought, channeling his inner-Toby, would simply not do.

  But there was no way out of the box. There was only one door, and that had been shut.

  He sized up the walls, the floor, the ceiling…

  The square grid of an airduct stared back at him.

  39

  Gus stood on a chair to remove the six screws securing the grate, and then he pried the thing open. Before he could climb into the duct, he had to place the chair on a table to reach.

  “Seeya later, bitches,” he said before straightening up inside the duct. He faced a solid wall, so he turned around and met the shriveled gaze of a dead man staring right at him. Gus screamed. His shoulders rattled off the edges as if electrified, and he almost lost his balance on the chair. The dead guy remained the same, which allowed Gus to warily compose himself. A shot of anger bubbled up inside of him, and he almost punched the corpse.

  That’s when the screwdriver got his attention.

  Pushed to the hilt into the dead guy’s brain. Through his right eye.

  “Well… damn,” Gus whispered, examining the shrivelled corpse, and cringing at what had to have been a painful death. The drumming below reminded him of his own situation, so he pulled the body out of the ventilation duct and out of the way. It was awkward, and it took a minute, and it almost distracted him from the zombies hammering at the glass.

  In the end, the dead guy fell to the floor, thankfully missing the chair.

  The corpse landed with a thud, with those dry yolky whites staring at the ceiling. The dead guy’s mouth—caked in black—was locked in a grimace. Gus understood why. He hadn’t seen it when he was pulling the dead guy out of the vent, but when the body was on the floor… it was obvious.

  The guy’s lower left leg—the meat of his calf—had several bites taken out of it. Pant leg and all.

  Perhaps the mindless had gotten to him as he was hoisting himself up into the ductwork. Perhaps that first crackling bite had energized him enough to get above his attacker. And perhaps… just perhaps, the dead guy, realizing he was about to be a dead guy, had decided to end it on his terms.

  By sticking a screwdriver into his eye. Straight through the brain.

  “That is nasty,” Gus whispered in horrified awe.

  He pushed the chair back into position and climbed into the duct. He looked down the shaft and saw at the other end an opening glowing with soft light.

  Gus recreated the rest of the dead guy’s backstory. He was probably being pursued from the other end, crawled up and into the duct, got bitten, and realized, when he crawled over to this grate… he couldn’t open the damn thing from the inside of the shaft. Couldn’t unscrew the grill from his side.

  “Thanks buddy,” Gus said, knowing the other end had been left open.

  Sensing he had very little time remaining, he hoisted himself into the duct.

  The hardest part of getting in wasn’t taking the screws off the grill. It wasn’t pulling the grill down, either. It was pulling himself up into the narrow shaft. He finally pushed off on the seat of the chair, feeling it give under his toes and then crash to the floor.

  Then he was lying in that rectangular box, his legs swinging.

  Dust as thick as white frosting coated the metal. With a groan, Gus realized just how tight the system was. He also realized he wouldn’t be able to pull up the grate behind him, since there was no way he was turning his ass around in such cramped quarters. Nor was he able to go far, as the ductwork had wire mesh placed inside the system, barring off portions to no doubt dissuade anyone from doing what he was about to do.

  The only grate that was free and open was the one the dead guy had accessed. Gus pulled his legs up and crawled through the passage, knocking his knees and elbows along the walls. He eventually stared down into a room that needed a little more than a bottle of sanitizer and a cloth rag to clean it up. Desks were upended. Computers were trashed. Paper and other office materials had been flung in every direction as if the world’s dirtiest battle royale had gone off right below him and the organizers left without cleaning up their shit.

  And, right in the middle of it all… was a stepladder.

  Lying on its side, leaving him with an eight-foot drop to freedom… of a sort.

  Gus sighed.

  With no room to maneuver, nothing to hold onto, and no cushion to stop his fall, he prepared himself for impact.

  “This is gonna… fuck,” he grimaced, not liking the next few seconds in the least. He stuck his head out and glanced around. The room itself might’ve been an office before an undead typhoon struck it. There were a few bookshelves but nothing else. To his right was an open door leading to a dark hallway. The faint light source turned out to be a single fluorescent bulb, tube-shaped, set into the wall above the door.

  Emergency lighting, or at least some sort of energy conservation measure. Nothing moved, so Gus edged forward, got one arm through, and then plopped onto his chest and got the other arm through.

  Then he was dangling from the shoulders.

  Then from the sternum.

  The ladder would be his not-so-friendly cushion.

  Gus edged forward, reaching for the ladder—when gravity grabbed him.

  He crashed headfirst and landed on his back, hyperextended at the waist. The impact stunned him, only for a few seconds, before the discomfort settled in. Still, armored as he was, no arms or legs were broken.

  Gus slowly got to his feet and kicked at the ladder.

  “Piece of shit,” he mumbled. “Do your job next time.”

  He eyed the door.
In the muted distance, the mindless continued to crash against the glass, wondering what he was doing. Gus examined the wall and figured a foot of concrete separated the two rooms. That was fine by him. It gave him time to find some clean clothes.

  The open door beckoned.

  Gus waded through the clutter and stopped upon the threshold. There was nothing around to use as a weapon—not even a broom. Nothing could be heard outside, and the way he was stinking, if there were mindless out there, they would have taken a run at him by now.

  Gus peeked into the corridor.

  And there was light.

  The moment he stuck his head outside, pale emergency lighting flickered to life, illuminating the edges of the hallway. The walls were a rich red-panel wood, the kind one might see in a fancy elevator, with a single brass rail on either side that gleamed under the light. A padded material of some kind covered the floor. The ceiling was something else, however—it mimicked the open night sky, its surface revealing the Milky Way in all its celestial beauty. And, as Gus watched, the emergency lights continued to brighten, revealing more of the hallway and its features.

  Without warning, the hall to the right dimmed, but the light to the left remained on. Gus took in that starry expanse, wondering just how deep they were underground. One thing was certain, Whitecap had power. Limited, perhaps, but it had power.

  Not wanting to walk along in the dark, Gus went left, keeping a shoulder to the wall. His footfalls were softened by whatever material padded the floor, but he kept glancing back, checking for pursuers. Either for the mindless or just regular Moes.

  Because they were different, he realized.

  One could be killed by just headshots, while the other could be killed just like a regular person. Why was a mystery. One he may never solve.

  As Gus made his way down the hall, he passed a wide glass door with the word “LIBRARY” etched across. He stopped and peered inside, and spotted numerous computer terminals, VR decks, and multimedia booths, as well as shelfing for a respectable collection of books. Penlights winked on and off around the librarian’s desk, but the place was otherwise empty.