As Tanner neared the bottom of the ladder, he saw thick blood-filled arteries growing away from the creature, snaking their way through every seam and fissure of the silo like the roots of a poplar tree. He wondered if they might have found their way into the surrounding soil, perhaps explaining why the ground had become so lifeless and dry.
His eyes settled on the Mare’s Leg lying atop the beast. It was perhaps fifteen feet away and looked like it might already have been partially absorbed into the wet living mass. Better to leave it than risk getting stuck himself.
He turned his attention to the saddlebags. Samantha’s flashlight had fallen in such a way that it perfectly illuminated the sack. He smiled, pleased that it would be such an easy throw. Some things were just meant to be.
“Horseshoes and hand grenades,” he muttered, swinging the hammer back and lobbing it underhand.
It landed with a wet thud, three feet shy of the saddlebags.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” he growled.
This was a case of one and done. He’d had his chance and blown it. There was only one thing left to do.
Tanner sprang from the ladder, landing on the blob of dark flesh. The surface was firmer than he expected, but it had a wet tackiness to it, as if coated in molasses. The entire creature heaved up and down as it took a breath, and Tanner stretched his arms out for balance. As he carefully navigated across the sticky mass, creatures began separating from its edges, each an abomination of heads, arms, and legs stitched together in arbitrary and unnatural shapes.
He had to hurry.
With a renewed sense of urgency, Tanner scooped up the hammer, stepped closer to the saddlebags, and smashed it down. Glass crunched within, and a moment later, the entire sack burst into bright orange flames.
Mission accomplished.
Unwilling to let the Mare’s Leg go without a fight, he leaned over and gave it a firm tug.
It didn’t budge. He had a better chance of freeing Excalibur.
Using the hammer as a flaming cudgel, he turned and began swinging it side to side as he made his way back to the ladder. Bones cracked and flesh burned as the newly formed creatures fell away. As he neared the ladder, a piercing scream filled the air.
Mama Bear had begun to feel the sting of the burning napalm, and she didn’t like it one bit. Tanner blindly lobbed the hammer behind him and leaped up onto the ladder. Something pawed at his foot, but with a quick shake, he managed to pull free and start his ascent.
Far above him, Samantha had reached the top of the shaft. The thunder of heavy feet shook the ladder, and she saw several large shapes lumbering down the tubular hallway. She had gone as high as she could and stretched a hand up toward the partially open launch doors.
No good. They remained two feet above her head. She considered jumping for them but couldn’t quite shake the image of plummeting past Tanner, him shaking his head in disappointment.
With nowhere to go, she curled up on the ladder and began silently praying that the creatures might not see her. Her prayers were answered as they thundered past on their way down the circling ramp. The scream from below seemed to speed their advance, and before long, they were out of sight. Unfortunately, the shriek also drew more creatures from the control room, some large and scary, others no bigger than herself. Each was the stuff of nightmares. Fortunately, not a single one paused to study a tiny figure clinging to the ladder. Instead, their sole focus seemed to be to return to their creator.
She felt the ladder shudder under Tanner’s weight as he drew closer.
“The hallway,” she whispered, “it’s clear.”
Tanner eyed the circular walkway still lit by the orange glow of the burning shoggoth. She was right. It was clear, but there was no telling how long it would remain that way. A dozen creatures had spilled past him on his climb, and there could be many more coming.
He gestured to the open doors overhead.
“We better go out that way.”
She reached up to show him that it wasn’t possible.
“Too high.”
“Stand on my shoulders, and I’ll push you up.”
She carefully placed her feet on his shoulders, and he began climbing higher, raising her into the air. Like a varsity cheerleader, she reached up and grabbed the edge of one of the doors. He gave her one last boost, and she swung a leg up to pull herself out.
Darkness had taken hold, and Samantha sat on the cold ground, feeling like a prisoner who had just escaped Alcatraz.
She was clear. Now for Tanner.
Samantha flopped onto her belly and extended an arm down into the hole.
“Quick!” she urged, shaking her hand. “Grab hold!”
Tanner eyed the tiny hand reaching for him. There was no way she could possibly pull him up, and if he tried to climb her like a rope, they would both surely fall to their deaths. As with many things in his life, it was a simple matter of mass.
“Sorry, kiddo. You’ll never be able to do it.”
“Sure, I can. Come on!”
“I’ll have to go out the way we came in.”
She immediately shuffled around and began lowering her legs back into the silo.
“No, Sam!” he said, pushing her back up.
“How many times do we have to go through this?” she said, her voice both angry and tearful. “I’m not leaving you.”
Tanner’s head turned as two more figures approached from the control room. Going that way was bound to be ugly, but he didn’t see another option.
He slipped the derringer from his pocket and looked up at Samantha.
“Wait for me outside.”
“But—”
“No buts. Just go.”
As Tanner shifted closer to the railing, Samantha hollered, “Wait! I’ve got an idea.”
“What kind of idea?”
“Just stay put! I’ll be right back.”
“Sam!”
It was too late. She had already disappeared.
All the shouting back and forth had drawn the attention of the two disfigured men coming from the control room. One was lanky and lean, with a single arm protruding from the center of his chest. The multi-segmented limb had two elbows, making it longer than even those of Michael Phelps. The other man was as short and thick as Thorin Oakenshield, only instead of a dwarven beard, he had a second mouth opening in his neck.
Both men rushed to the railing and reached for Tanner.
Hanging onto the ladder with one hand, Tanner leaned around and fired the derringer. The shot hit Thorin in the center of his beefy chest. He shuddered but didn’t fall. Instead, he opened his lower mouth and coughed out a spray of the sticky yellow paste. The substance splashed across Tanner’s face, and he immediately felt sluggish and disoriented, the world wavering from side to side.
Deciding that it was better to be beaten by two angry mutants than fall a hundred yards onto a flaming pile of flesh, he stuffed the derringer back into his pocket and flopped over the railing.
As Tanner wiped the paste from this face, Thorin took the opportunity to kick him in the ribs. The blow was solid, but not bone breaking. Phelps, however, was more determined, wailing on him with his elongated appendage. Despite the man’s gangly appearance, his arm hit with the power of a baseball bat, and Tanner covered his head to avoid being knocked unconscious.
When the men finally tired, Tanner rolled to his feet and drove a thick shoulder into Phelps’s chest. Tall as he was, Phelps didn’t weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds, and once again, it became a matter of mass as he stumbled back, tripped, and landed on his backside a few feet from the railing.
Thorin closed in from behind and bear hugged Tanner around the waist. Unable to break free, Tanner stomped on the man’s instep, scraping his shin on the way down. When the would-be dwarf didn’t release him, he repeated the action over and over, the entire walkway shaking under his thunderous stomps. Having finally had enough, Thorin shoved him away and bent over to nurse his injured foot.
Following the rule that a man with a bullet hole is always less dangerous than one without, Tanner turned his attention to Phelps. The lanky man had managed to get back to his feet but remained a bit wobbly from the shoulder bump. Seeing his opportunity, Tanner bent at the waist and drove him back toward the pit. Phelps reached out with his oversized arm and hooked the railing even as his body toppled over.
Before Tanner could finish the job, Thorin hit him with a short, painful strike to one of his kidneys. Not wanting a matching blow to the other one, Tanner wheeled around and fired an elbow strike to the man’s head. Bone met bone, and Thorin stumbled sideways, his hands outstretched like he’d had one too many.
Tanner hit him again, this time with a hook from the opposite side. Teeth broke, and Thorin’s head rocked back. Grabbing him by the hair, Tanner pulled his face down into a knee strike. The blow was so violent that a bloody plug of Thorin’s hair pulled loose from his scalp. Desperate not to get hit again, he reached for Tanner’s leg. Despite the man’s girth, his strength was no match for that of Tanner’s. The knee came up again, pounding his jaw closed to sever the tip of his tongue.
With blood now oozing from his chest, mouth, and nose, Thorin wheeled about and stumbled toward the ramp leading down. Retreat was evidently the better part of valor, even for misshapen mutants.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tanner growled, sweeping his feet out from under him.
As Thorin crashed to the floor, Tanner kicked him under the chin. The blow knocked him unconscious, but that didn’t deter Tanner from putting a boot to his head. After a few powerful stomps, the man’s skull cracked, and a large pool of blood spilled out.
One down.
He wheeled around, looking for Phelps. The lanky man had hooked a leg over the railing and was doing his best to get back into the fight. Tanner leaped toward him, cocking his arm as he flew through the air. The Superman-style punch that followed was so incredibly powerful that it not only broke the man’s jaw and cheekbone, it snapped his neck.
Phelps’s elongated arm went slack, and he fell back into the burning pit with a pitiful whimper.
Tanner looked left and right. The ramp down and hallway back into the control room were both clear, but he could hear the distant pounding of more footsteps approaching.
“Tanner!” a sharp voice called from above.
He looked up to find Samantha staring down through the launch doors, a coiled-up rope in one hand.
“Darlin’,” he said with a nod.
“I see they haven’t killed you yet.”
“You kidding? I’m not even warmed up.”
She tossed down one end of the rope.
“Grab hold, and we’ll pull you out.”
“We?”
Before she could answer, Major stuck his nose down into the hole and let out a little snort.
Tanner smiled. Good old Samantha. The only question that remained was whether or not he could actually fit through the hole. Despite her playful ribbing, she hadn’t been wrong, a good slathering of butter really would have been helpful.
He looked around for anything that might work, his eyes settling on the pool of blood surrounding Thorin’s head.
“When in Rome,” he muttered, hustling over to him.
He slipped off his shirt and sopped up some of the warm blood. As he smeared it across his chest, back, and stomach, he heard Samantha exclaim, “Gross, and double gross.”
When he was sufficiently coated, Tanner hurried back to the rope and grabbed hold with both hands. As he did, a veritable army of creatures came into view. Most were thundering up the ramp, but a few were coming from the control room.
“Now, Sam!” he shouted, leaping over the railing and swinging out into the open silo like Tarzan on his trusty vine.
Slowly but surely, he felt himself being pulled higher into the air. Creatures rushed to the railing, leaning over as far as they dared in an attempt to reach him.
None could.
When Tanner came to the open doors, he slipped one shoulder through and then the other. The horse continued to plod ahead, indifferent to Tanner’s suffering as flesh was scraped away by the edge of the silo doors. The bloody lubricant helped, but only so much, and by the time he was out, there were several deep scratches running down his chest and shoulder blades.
“Ow,” he said, rolling onto his back.
Samantha hurried over. “You look awful.”
“What did you expect? I was just given birth to by a missile silo.”
She pointed to his hand. “What’s that?”
He sat up to find a thick yellow tooth protruding from between his knuckles.
“A little something shorty gave me to remember him by,” he said, wriggling it out and flicking it down into the hole.
Samantha’s face twisted with disgust. “I think I’ve changed my mind about us doing this for a living. Monster hunting is nasty work.”
“That, darlin’, is what we in the business call an understatement.”
Tanner pushed himself to his feet, but the remnants of the sedative paste left him wobbling from side to side.
Samantha stepped closer and hooked her arms around his waist.
“You okay?”
He wrapped his arms around her and waited for the world to steady.
“The things a father has to do to get a hug these days.”
She eyed the blood smeared across his chest and stomach. Part of her wanted to pull away, but part of her didn’t. And that, she thought, said more than words ever could. She and Tanner were family, father and daughter in every sense of the word, even if he did look like a Viking returning from battle.
“I love you,” she said, without looking up at him.
It was the first time Tanner could remember Samantha saying the words to him, and his eyes clouded with tears.
“I love you too, Sam,” he said, his voice breaking slightly.
“You’re not going to cry, are you?”
He swallowed hard. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She smiled and leaned against him.
“Maybe just a little.”
Chapter 20
Mason hadn’t even brought the tractor trailer to a stop in the parking lot of the Presbyterian Church before a dozen armed men hurried toward it, including McCabe, Toshiro, and Willis. He offered a friendly wave out the window, hoping to avoid a misunderstanding.
Beebie and Bowie climbed down from one side of the cab while Mason hopped down from the other.
“Marshal Raines,” McCabe said, hurrying forward to shake his hand. “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Any luck finding that lady friend of yours?”
“Working on it.”
McCabe eyed the truck. “What do you have in there?”
“Come see.”
Mason stepped around and opened the rear doors of the rig. Given the time of night, it was too dark to see the crates clearly, so he clicked on his flashlight and climbed inside.
He picked up one of CornerShots and turned so that McCabe and his men could see it.
“State-of-the-art weaponry, must be nearly a hundred units. Automatic shotguns, sniper rifles, submachine guns, and these babies.” He patted the CornerShot. “All brand new, and all with plenty of ammunition.”
McCabe pulled himself up into the trailer and poked around in a few of the open crates.
“Whew-wee. There’s enough firepower in here to start a war.”
“Or overthrow a dictator.”
McCabe’s eyes flashed toward him. “You brought these for us?”
“You said if you had the means, you’d take down Laroche.” He motioned to the crates. “This is what I call means.”
McCabe rubbed his chin, thinking.
“No offense, but what’s in it for you?”
“Beebie and I are going to free the women held in Laroche’s jail.”
“We are?” blurted Beebie. “All of them?”
Mason nodded. “All of them.”
“A rescue mission like that would require getting inside quickly, before they have time to start shooting hostages.” McCabe picked up one of the MP7s. “Even with these weapons, we’d have to fight our way in. With as many men as Laroche has, it could take an hour, maybe two. By then, the women would all be long dead, or wish they were.”
Still standing down on the asphalt, Willis extended his arms up toward McCabe.
“Let me see it, boss.”
McCabe looked to Mason for his approval.
“Go ahead,” he said, figuring that to men like Willis, a truck filled with high-tech armament was about as exciting as one filled with Wonka Bars would be to children.
McCabe handed it down, and the other men immediately began pestering Willis for their turn to check it out.
“Lots more where that came from,” Mason said, passing down a couple of AA-12s with the hope that it might help push the needle from excitement over to frenzy.
“I salute you for wanting to free the women,” said McCabe, “but I don’t see how this plays out. Not without most of them, and us, getting killed in the process.”
“Every mission starts with people willing to execute it. The rest we can figure out. Right now, I just need for you to say that you’ll lend a hand.”
McCabe slowly turned in place, taking in the enormity of the haul.
“You did manage to steal an arsenal. I’ll give you that.”
Beebie chimed in saying, “Marshal Raines is very good at this sort of thing.” He touched his injured shoulder. “Believe me, I know.”
McCabe hopped down from the trailer.
“That may be, but right now, we have our own problem, one that won’t wait.”
“What kind of problem?” Mason said, climbing down.
“A band of those damn infected beasts are running down anything that moves. It’s become darn near impossible to get supplies out to those in need.”
Mason wondered if the infected were the same ones he and Beebie had seen on the highway.
“When did they get here?”
“Earlier today. They set up a base camp of sorts at the motel, and more keep rolling in. Must be forty or fifty of them by now.” He turned his head and spat. “I hate to say it, but Laroche is the only one strong enough to push them out. If we attack him now, we’ll be sealing our own fate.”
The Survivalist (Solemn Duty) Page 23
