“Never mind her,” Kara said, evidently wanting to carry out her charade of being attracted to Artiss. “I need a real man to take care of me when we get back to campus. And it looks like there’s only one man who can handle that job.”
Artiss actually snickered, torn between wanting to buy the bullshit and acknowledging that he was being fucked with, and then his eyes widened at something he spotted behind Mackie.
“What the hell is this? You assholes trying to burn down what’s left of the world?” Herrera emerged from the dark forest, Sayles skulking behind him.
Artiss’ demeanor shifted to wide-eyed reverence, flames reflecting crazily in his pupils. “Herrera...I need you to listen to me.”
Herrera leveled his assault rifle at Artiss. “You better put that rifle down quick.”
“No, just listen—”
“Drop that shit now, pendejo. And Mackie, if you even so much as blink, you’re going to be Swiss cheese with taco sauce.”
Artiss pointed his rifle’s barrel away from Mackie and Jason, aimed the barrel skyward, held it out to the side. “Okay, okay, man.”
“On the ground.”
Artiss let the rifle fall. “Okay, listen, I’m one of you.”
Herrera cackled. “Seem a little pale for that.”
Mackie considered making a run for it. The dark woods were maybe fifty feet away, and if the gods were smiling, he’d get there with only a couple of minor wounds. But the others would be left at the mercy of a pissed-off psycho.
Damn it, when did you sign up for superhero duties?
“Herrera, there’s something I want to tell you,” Artiss said. “You’re gonna like this.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“Herrera, don’t trust him,” Mackie said.
“A gringo of words instead of action now? If Krider wasn’t hot for you, you’d be dead already,” Herrera said with a smirk. He eyed Artiss’ wounds. “Hell happened to you, man?”
“Kicking ass,” Artiss said, talking too fast again. “You and me, we can run this place together. You can call all the shots. I’ll do whatever you say. Let’s kill the guys, keep the girls.”
“I already have the girls.” Herrera gave a lewd waggle of his tongue in Kara’s direction.
“I’m talking a power play, Herrera.”
Sayles chuckled while Herrera gave a comical gape with his mouth open, as if trying to figure out the punch line of a bad joke. He took his first close look at Jason, realized the kid was a new face, and gave a little shake of his head.
“Some party,” Herrera said. “You steal a weapon and run off, try to burn down what’s left of the fucking world, wake up every Zaphead in hillbilly country, and now you got a deal for me?”
“No, Herrera—”
“What kind of shit are you talkin’? Mackie, what kind of shit is he talkin’?”
“He’s screwing with you, Herrera, he—”
“You shut the hell up!” Artiss screamed, his hands balled into fists. “Herrera, you’re the man. You need to be in charge. Let me help you.”
The savage cunning, the wolf-like intensity and hunger that Mackie had seen so many times in Herrera’s features...it was gone now, replaced with a mask of mirth that seemed so foreign on Herrera’s face. The house was fully engulfed now, crackling and hissing like a napalm waterfall. Herrera looked perfectly at home in the flickering light of the twenty-foot-high torch, as if he were Satan himself and had just walked out of hell’s gate for a little R and R.
“I don’t understand what the hell you’re trying to tell me, pendejo. But if you can entertain me for a second, you get to draw another breath or two. Ever since we lost television, I’m in stupidity withdrawals.”
“Look...you were with a cartel, am I right? Am I right?”
Mackie dared to edge two steps closer to Artiss. He put his hands on his hips, as if waiting for an outcome, and the movement put his right hand inches from the kitchen knife in his back pocket. Sayles noticed but seemed more interested in Meredith, who hung just at the edge of the firelight.
“Cartels, they deal in human trafficking...so this is gonna make sense to you,” Artiss blubbered. “We have all these women here on campus. When we find other survivors, we can pimp the women out for food, medicine, services, hell, pretty soon we live like kings.”
“You don’t know shit about cartels,” Herrera said. “This isn’t a fucking episode of Breaking Bad.”
“And what about Krider?” Sayles asked. If a coup was afoot, Sayles seemed to be out of the loop.
“Oh God,” Kara screamed, pointing into the forest. “Something’s coming.”
Sayles and Herrera turned. Whether Kara had created the distraction on purpose or not, Mackie saw an opening. He pulled the kitchen knife from his jeans pocket and went to work.
Artiss must have heard a whisper of wind. He turned just in time to see the dancing blade lit with fire. Mackie plunged the knife just below Artiss’ sternum.
Artiss’ eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, a bubble of blood popping on his lower lip.
“I told you this was coming,” Mackie whispered in his ear.
22.
“Who’s there?” Herrera bellowed.
The old man stumbled out of the shadowed edge of the forest, wheezing and reaching out with one filthy hand. His clothes were expensive but soiled and torn, and the few remaining hairs on his mostly naked pate danced at wild angles in the breeze.
“Zap,” Sayles shouted at Herrera, raising his weapon but hesitant to pull the trigger. “Put him down.”
“No,” the old man croaked. “I’m one of...a human.”
Herrera said, “Come sneaking up on me like that is not so smart.”
“I told you I heard something,” Kara said.
“They’re coming,” the old man said. “Behind me.”
Mackie lowered Artiss to the ground, removed the knife with a wet sloosh. Artiss pawed at Mackie’s face with limp fingers, desperately trying to suck air but only whistling. Mackie raised the kitchen knife and punched it through Artiss’ chest again—one, two, three, four times.
By the second time, Artiss had gone completely still. A sick tide rolled through Mackie, bringing a pleasure that he’d nearly forgotten. Sure, he’d always told himself he only killed because he had to, but didn’t he really enjoy it?
Wasn’t the kick better than pills?
Better than sex?
Better than love?
A boot crashed into his side, jarring his ribs.
He fell from atop Artiss and—mindful of Sabbath in his backpack—shifted so that he landed on his left side rather than his back.
He was baking in the airless, blast-furnace heat wafting from the burning cottage, Artiss’ blood soaking his shirt.
“Nice job, asshole.” Herrera stood over him. “What was he talking about?”
“He cracked,” Mackie said, figuring it would end now. But at least he’d shut up Artiss. “Had this crazy scheme to get rid of Krider.”
“I’d kill you now, but I want Krider to hear this straight from your lips.”
“If we’re lucky enough to make it back to the student union.”
Herrera’s dark eyes narrowed. Kara, Meredith, and Jason moved closer to the crumbling cottage, to stay within the glow of the diminishing blaze. Sayles helped the old man stagger to the rest of the group, none of them wanting to run into Zapheads in the dark. McRae was gone, probably seizing the opportunity to save his own ass.
“How many Zaps?” Sayles asked the man.
The old man bent forward, his hands clamped to his knees. “I tried...I tried to...keep them in...”
“Anybody gonna start making any sense around here?” Herrera shouted. He gave the old man a shove and sent him crashing to his ass. “Start talkin’, abuelo.”
It’s going to happen again, Mackie thought as he tried to stand, the pain from Herrera’s boot searing his ribs. Just like Benny in the dining hall. And this old guy, Mackie h
ad never even laid eyes on him before. He looked like he’d been through the spin cycle of a cement mixer.
“I’m sorry,” the old man rasped. “I tried...but the fire...they’re headed this way.”
“Everybody talkin’ in riddles up in here,” Herrera said. “Time to cut some of the white noise.”
He dropped his rifle’s barrel down at an angle. The bullets would shred the old man’s face and chest once Herrera squeezed the trigger.
Another distraction...just another few seconds when Herrera isn’t looking. A chance to grab one of the guns on the ground and mow the piece of shit down...another kill, another high. And this one will carry no moral shades of gray.
And the only cost is one old man’s life.
Mackie unshouldered the backpack, lowered it gently to the ground, and scooped up the fallen kitchen knife in the same motion. He held the knife in front of him, tip forward, and charged Herrera.
Sayles called out a warning, but he made no move to stop Mackie. Herrera swung his rifle in Mackie’s direction.
No chance he’d clear the distance before Herrera fired.
Stupid.
Not the way this was supposed to end.
Kara and Meredith shouted, and then a familiar voice rang out above the others.
Loud, commanding, infuriatingly familiar.
“Enough,” Krider said. The raspy bark was authoritative enough to stop Mackie’s forward momentum and turn Herrera’s head.
He stood at the slope above the cottages, a 9mm pistol in one hand pointed at the ground. The ribbons of fire painted his figure in shimmering bands of yellow, red, and black, and Mackie realized he’d been wrong in casting Herrera as Satan. All others were no more than lesser demons in a land where Krider ruled.
There was a moment of deep silence, with only the muted cracking of the conflagration in the night. The dark hills around them watched with wary eyes, ancient Appalachian stones waiting for the next cataclysm.
And then the blackness exploded around them, ebony silhouettes separating from deep shadows and shambling forward.
For a horrifying moment, Mackie thought that Krider had somehow summoned them, drawn the Zapheads from hell to do his bidding, a rabid, mindless army at his command.
But Krider swung his pistol and fired at a lean, glittering-eyed man ten feet to his left. The Zaphead’s skull burst like a rotten melon, and the gunshot propelled the others into action.
“Take ‘em out,” Herrera bellowed, releasing a burst from his automatic weapon. Half a dozen of the silent figures fell, but more emerged to take their place.
Mackie flung away his knife—he wasn’t planning on any hand-to-hand combat given these bad odds—and cast about for Artiss’ gun. But Meredith already had it, and she fumbled with the mechanisms as if unfamiliar with its operations.
So much for U.S. military training.
A heavyset female landed on Jason’s back. The kid screamed and flailed, but as husky as he was, there was too much weight bearing down on him, and just as both Mackie and Kara moved in to help, he stumbled sideways and toppled into the remnants of the burning cottage, the Zaphead still attached.
Jason and the Zaphead ricocheted from the flame-covered wall to the ground, ravaged timbers falling around them. Fire jumped from the wood, blazed through the clothing Jason and the Zaphead wore, and traveled with them to the ground.
They became a shifting mass of flames and dark smoke, their hair sparking like Roman candles on the Fourth of the July.
Jason’s screams were pure animalistic torment, the pain and fire having wiped away any recognizable traces of the scared, lost, grieving sixteen-year-old Mackie had met in the woods.
The Zaphead, however, made no sounds. Just continued to claw at that piece of skull she’d hooked into.
Kara let out a sick, agonized moan. She stood by herself, defenseless.
Herrera stopped firing long enough to watch the struggle. There was amusement in his eyes, dancing with the flames reflected in them.
He had never seen Jason Hartsoe before, but seeing him burn was no more distressing than watching a television commercial with a gecko selling car insurance.
Jason was somehow still alive, his shrieks serving as musical score to the chaos around them. Mackie’s heart twisted with each high note. Somebody needed to put the kid out of his misery.
Good luck finding any human compassion in this bunch.
Krider meticulously aimed and fired, sweeping the perimeter around him. Herrera got busy again, as gleeful as a drunken redneck at a carnival shooting game, spraying the edge of the forest as if he were trimming trees. Meredith had retreated with her weapon, on the far side of the cottage and away from the horror. That left Sayles.
If Herrera had been entertained by Jason’s torment, Sayles was on the opposite end of the emotional wheel. Yet he couldn’t look away, his eyes bright with the immolation of the cottage and the two roasting, wriggling masses of hot grease and bone.
And these are the people the government sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder those wars never ended.
But those wars were kindergarten bratfests next to this Zaphead infestation. This was the mother of all wars.
“Put him down,” Mackie yelled.
“I don’t...I can’t,” Sayles said, his voice raw from smoke and shock.
Mackie strode to him, reached for Sayles’ assault rifle. The hot barrel of Krider’s 9mm pressed against his temple.
“Nope,” Krider said. “Uh-Uh.”
Mackie and Krider shared a hard look. Then something shifted in Krider’s features and he lowered the 9mm from Mackie’s temple.
Krider hurried over to the two burning bodies, shielding his face against the heat. Jason still emitted animal sounds, but the screaming had turned to vapor.
He was somewhere beyond pain now, the flames having scorched his nerve endings to ash.
Krider fired a round into Jason’s skull. The Zaphead was still alive, but barely moving, a low rattle vibrating in her throat. Krider didn’t bother wasting a round on her.
“Satisfied?” Krider said to Mackie.
Herrera’s assault rifle fell silent, and he shouted, “All clear.”
“Get over here,” Krider ordered Meredith and Kara.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Kara asked Meredith.
Meredith shook her head, and Mackie wondered if she’d been hoping the Zaps would take care of their Krider-and-Herrera problem.
Those demonic shits have nine lives, anyway.
That reminded Mackie of Sabbath, and he found her squirming and mewling inside the backpack.
“Better not be a gun in there,” Krider warned.
“You were lucky there weren’t more Zaps,” Mackie said. “Next time you might need me.”
“I’m not sure I can trust you yet.”
Mackie gave an obvious and hard glance at Herrera, who was making a recon of the forest’s edge. “Can you trust anybody?”
The reddish halo from the house fire had shrunk to a circle of around fifty yards, but the first light of dawn was seeping into the sky. The little band closed ranks, peering into the forest for more Zapheads. Bodies lay scattered in the weeds and shrubs, one gaunt woman tangled upright in a forsythia bush. Doctors, lawyers, school kids, mothers, all their differences had zeroed out now.
A righteous massacre.
But how did Mackie know? He judged Zapheads through the lens of his own humanity, which was suspect at best. These mutants murdered without motive, and did that make them any worse than Mackie, who had killed with motives he’d bent to his own ends?
And if Zapheads were less than human, what did it say about his obsession with Allie, or the thing that Allie had become?
And then the second wave of Zapheads hit, as if the arrival of dawn had heralded their new era.
23.
“Better give me a weapon,” Mackie said to Krider.
“And get a bullet in the back? How about this? You get me out of this alive,
and then we’ll talk deals.”
Mackie scooped up the kitchen knife and wiped Artiss’s blood on the leg of his trousers. “I’ll take my chances with the Zaps.”
These Zapheads were more discernible than the initial batch of attackers, as the morning sun pinked the high ridges to the east. Many were younger than those on campus, some of them pre-adolescents, their soundless approach made all the more creepy for it. Their eyes glinted and they clawed the air in front of them as if wanting to tear apart the fabric of the world.
“Come on, Sayles,” Meredith shouted, aiming and firing, dropping a Zaphead on the lawn. “Shoot.”
Sayles pointed his weapon at the swarm of Zapheads. The barrel trembled as the man hesitated, likely overwhelmed by the horrifying tribe of silent, mutant children. A teen girl with Asian features and stringy black hair reached him, pushing the muzzle out of her face and grabbing his throat. Although she was barely half his size, she pulled him to the ground and pounded on him with her small fists.
Before Mackie could help him, a kid who couldn’t have been more than ten grabbed Mackie by the leg, nearly tripping him. Teeth sank into his flesh just above his boot, and Mackie plunged the knife down into the mutant’s back. The kid held on tight, warm blood soaking Mackie’s sock as he tried to kick free.
A shot rang out from nearby and the kid collapsed into a heap. Meredith gave Mackie a nod, a thread of smoke curling from the tip of her rifle.
By the time Mackie stepped free of the warm corpse, Sayles was still and silent, his attacker’s hands clenched around his throat, the skin of his face a faint shade of blue.
“Get off him,” Mackie said, stomping the Asian’s spine. Something cracked like a dry stick and the Zaphead’s legs went limp, but her hands maintained their tight grip. By the time Mackie slit the mutant’s throat, Sayles was staring with bugged, glassy eyes at the heavens above.
You didn’t have what it takes to make it in After. You were too human.
Around him shots rattled like popcorn, with Krider, Meredith, and Herrera knocking down Zapheads nearly as fast as they emerged from the forest. The old man huddled sobbing on the ground, and a number of Zapheads walked past him down the slope. They didn’t seem to be aware of him.
Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) Page 15
