Several Zapheads circled around the right side of the cottage, closing in on Kara. A few walked directly into the flames, the fire relishing the grease in their bodies.
But most of them were more interested in the humans surrounding the cottage than the flames that had drawn them from the woods.
A husky, balding male Zaphead crept up behind Meredith, dressed in a filthy blue mechanic’s uniform with a pocket label that said “Bobby.” Mackie rushed over and sank the blade of his knife into the Zaphead’s left eyeball, applying sufficient force to puncture the brain.
Before he could remove the blade from the Bobby Zap’s skull, another was on him, clawing and biting. This one was female, small and light, but her ferocity more than compensated for the height and weight disadvantage. She moved like a mongoose, sleek and feral.
“Hold on!” Meredith swerved behind the Zaphead and wrapped her arms around its waist, attempting to pull it free from Mackie. Twenty feet away, Kara struggled with a pair of Zapheads—two older females, one who looked disturbingly like her.
“I can handle this one.” Mackie elbowed his attacker in the nose, eliciting a moist crunch of cartilage. “Help Kara.”
He should have taken her weapon but Krider was keeping a close eye on him. At least she’d finally begun defending herself, unlike poor Sayles. She dropped to one knee and squeezed off two shots, freeing Kara, who crawled toward a panel van parked in the street near the cottage.
The old man on the slope had finally earned some attention of his own from a pair of Zapheads—one a middle-aged male, the other a small female child—and he scurried from them down the slope on all fours. The activity sent the two Zapheads into attack mode, triggering whatever kill instincts they harbored in their mutated brains.
Several more Zapheads walked wide-eyed into the inferno of the burning cottage, as if they somehow knew peace and contentment was waiting for them on the other side of the flames.
So many of them. Well over three dozen, at least. Some older ones were among them now, probably townies from Pecks Mill. A few carried heavy sticks they’d collected from the forest. There was no coordinated attack on their part, just a raging focus on the humans that were mowing them down.
One moved toward Kara, and then it stopped, lifting its nose as if it had caught an appealing scent.
It turned toward Mackie’s backpack.
Sabbath.
Mackie ran over to the Zaphead and launched a kick into its solar plexus. It landed hard on its back, and then Mackie was on it, his knee pinning it to the ground and his knife punching through its trachea. This had been somebody’s son, brother, father...but now it was just a beast that needed to be taken down.
Kara was on her feet now, swinging wildly at the Zapheads chasing her. The Zapheads responded to her aggression with hostility of their own and they swarmed her like fire ants on honey.
As she screamed, Meredith eyed down the barrel of her weapon, but taking a shot was too risky.
Mackie scooped up the backpack and swung his arms through the shoulder straps. He raced to the mob tearing at Kara’s clothes and flesh and, with a series of fast, economical movements, drove the knife into the necks and backs of her attackers.
Krider’s training finally serves a purpose.
Kara crawled from the mass of writhing, dying bodies, blood soaking her torn clothing. Mackie pulled her to her feet and checked her wounds. Nothing fatal, but she needed some serious first aid.
“Glad you didn’t kill me now?” he asked.
“The jury’s still out.”
“Looks like Herrera and Krider are working their way back to the student union.”
“They’ve got it fortified now. They could hold off a thousand Zapheads, as long as the ammo held out.”
“Meredith won’t leave us,” Mackie said.
“I wouldn’t count on it. Her chances are better with Krider than us.”
Mackie eyed the tableau around them, a seemingly endless stream of Zapheads staggering out of the dark trees. The fire found fresh fuel in the cottage, probably from an oil heater, and a pillar of smoke and flames billowed up with a monstrous whoosh.
“What’s the plan? Hole up in that van until this is over?”
“Without guns, we won’t make it anyway.”
He looked into her eyes and saw determination, fear, and defiance. “You want to stick with Krider, too? Knowing what they’ll do to you?”
“Beats getting ripped to shreds,” Kara said.
The old man crawled away from a few approaching Zapheads. He was heading for the guns that Mackie had thrown out the cottage door earlier. Herrera and Krider had retreated to a service road that led back to the main campus, Herrera spraying wildly but Krider being judicious with each shot. Krider paused to change the clip in his handgun, neither of them paying much attention to Mackie now.
He’d have to beat the old man to the guns, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The weapons were, however, dangerously close to the flames.
Still. He’d never have a better opportunity.
Just before the old man reached the guns, three Zapheads swarmed him. A child Zaphead tugged playfully at his pants leg while an adult hovered, trailing the old man’s movements in a way that suggested either predatory instinct or child-like curiosity. Another mutant crawled on him, pulling a charred, steaming timber from the edge of the fire and striking the old man across the arm.
“Now!” Mackie shouted at Meredith.
She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.
She lifted the assault rifle and aimed it at Krider.
The old man squealed in agony as the Zapheads tore at his face and hands. Herrera turned just as the Zaphead with the timber brought it crashing down onto the old man’s skull, terminating his cries. Herrera spied Meredith taking aim, and he touched Krider on the shoulder and pointed.
Mackie watched as Meredith slowly curled her finger around the trigger.
She has enough control over her emotions to resist the impulse to yank the trigger, which surely would’ve compromised her aim.
Her drill sergeant did good.
But instead of the sharp crack of gunpowder exploding, Mackie heard only a series of empty clicks.
No.
Meredith’s face fell. She looked at the rifle in her hands as if she wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, she was holding.
Herrera smiled. Krider’s face remained impassive.
Meredith cursed as Herrera lifted his rifle. Mackie would take just as many rounds as Meredith.
Her mistake had just killed them both.
Though he would’ve made that same mistake himself if she hadn’t beaten him to it.
And then, KU-WHOOOOSH.
A flaming metal cylinder exploded through the cottage roof and streaked into the sky like a rocket.
The hot water heater.
Mackie had heard of them over-pressurizing and shooting skyward, punching through floors and roofs.
Just one more absurdity to add to the long string of them he’d experienced in After.
The heater continued sailing higher...higher...like a rocket until its upward momentum ceased, and it began plummeting back toward the cottage.
Herrera cried out, “Shit!”, and he and Krider ran away from the cottage, but they made it only a short distance before the heater crashed back through the ceiling. There was a loud whump, followed immediately by the sound of shattering glass.
Frayed ropes of flames showered outward from the cottage.
24.
Mackie tackled Meredith and pushed her as far from the flaming rain as he could before losing his balance and sending them both crashing to the ground. The blast of heat was more uncomfortable than the worst Tampa summer, but Mackie and Meredith were just far enough from the flames’ reach to avoid a serious burn.
Kara knelt several feet away, her arms clamped protectively over her head as hellish debris dropped down.
Krider and Herrera, however, hadn’t distanced th
emselves far enough from the explosion. They rolled on the ground, screaming, fire dancing on their clothing.
The Zapheads that had mutilated the old man shuffled languidly as flames consumed their entire bodies. They had taken the brunt of the explosion, but if they felt any pain they gave no indication of it. They moved in a slow, dreamy daze as the flames peeled away their clothing and the flesh beneath it, as if they’d been waiting for a new sun to take them home. A sparkle-eyed child Zaphead staggered three steps, a shard of wooden two-by-four protruding from her head, bowels leaking from a gash in her belly, before she pitched forward without a sound.
After Herrera had extinguished most of the flames on his body, he looked toward Mackie and the others with a searing rage that easily matched the fire’s intensity.
The arrogance, the calculating predation...it was all burned away now, replaced with the raw anger beneath.
As if the explosion was something that Mackie, Meredith, and Kara had planned, a method devised to wound and humiliate a force of nature that could never have conceived of vulnerability.
Herrera lifted his rifle and Mackie pulled Meredith to her feet, shoved her to the left in an effort to put the burning cottage between her and Herrera’s rifle. “Run!”
Mackie hoped he would hear the same empty clicks from Herrera’s gun that he heard from Meredith’s, but deep down he knew there was no chance of that happening.
Herrera’s rifle rattled in his hand, but Mackie didn’t feel the sharp burn of rounds tearing into his body.
Herrera was hurt and pissed and his aim was shit right now, but that wouldn’t last. Especially firing an automatic.
Mackie clutched at Meredith’s shirt and pulled her along, shouting “Go, go, go” at Kara, who crawled toward the street, instinctively keeping low. Mackie eyed the tangled pile of burning corpses where his Glock lay, but he couldn’t risk it.
As they hurried around the burning cottage, keeping a wide berth of the flames, bullets zinged all around them, even as more Zapheads came out of the forest to join the party. The fresh swarm cut Krider and Herrera off from the campus, meaning they’d have to fight their way through.
Mackie ducked and kept running, dodging between abandoned and dead cars before reaching the campus commons, the pounding of his heartbeat competing with the sound of Sabbath’s frantic yowling in his eardrums.
We’re going to make it.
As they ran across lawn, they passed a few other Zapheads ambling toward the fire, but none of them appeared hostile. Dr. Lehman and Rebecca appeared on the commons, heading in the direction of the smoke. They spotted Mackie, Kara, and Meredith, and changed course.
Dr. Lehman said, “What’s happening? We heard the explosion.”
“We have to go,” Mackie said. “Now. Where’s Desiree and the others?”
“Desiree is in the dorm with Allie,” Rebecca said. “I don’t know where—”
“Dr. Lehman, do you still have a key to your office?”
“Well, yes, I—”
“Go there. All of you. Don’t come out until I come get you.” There was no time to look for Todd and Emma.
“Mackie, what’s going on?” Dr. Lehman asked. “How did that fire start? And what happened on Faculty Hill?”
“I’ll tell you about it later. But right now I need you all to go to that office and stay there. They won’t know to look for you there.”
“Who won’t?”
“Please, Dr. Lehman. There’s no time right now. I need you to do this.”
“Where are you going?” Meredith asked Mackie.
“To get Allie. And Desiree.”
“Let me help,” Kara said.
“No,” Mackie said. “Desiree and I—”
“You need an extra set of hands,” Kara said. “And somebody to have your back. Please. Let me help.”
Mackie hated to admit she was right. If he tried to fly solo here, others would pay with their lives.
“Okay,” Mackie said. “Meredith, keep them safe ‘til I come for you.”
Meredith nodded, even though she had no weapons. “I’ll look for McRae. He can help, too.”
“I’m not so sure about McRae.”
“Krider left these people unprotected. He must know something we don’t.”
“Or else he was fine with all of them getting killed.” As the group reflected somberly on that notion, Mackie said to Kara, “Let’s go.”
Mackie and Kara raced toward Linvale Dormitory. “Mackie, we can’t do it,” Kara said. “Even with Desiree’s help, we won’t be able to carry Allie to Dr. Lehman’s office before Krider gets here.”
“No. We’ll hide Allie somewhere else. Desiree can stay with her. I wish we could just leave her in that dorm, but Krider would know where to find her.”
“What are we going to do?”
Mackie’s lungs still ached from the smoke. “I know there’s more guns somewhere here on campus. Maybe in the student union, since that’s pretty much where Krider and Herrera set up camp. They’ll probably search there for us soon. Maybe you could create a diversion to keep them away from there, give me a chance to sneak in and look.”
“Just me?” She smirked to hide her fear. “Without a weapon? That can’t fail.”
None of Mackie’s plans up to this point had ended well, that was true enough. He thought of that hackneyed old chestnut of philosophy: “Man plans and God laughs.”
It should’ve been amended to: “Mackie plans and God laughs. And then kicks Mackie’s ass.”
They charged through the front door of Linvale and rocketed up the stairwell, taking the steps in groups of threes.
How long had it been since Mackie made his first trip up these stairs post-Zap?
Days. But it felt more like months.
What if the day came when he couldn’t remember climbing those stairs during happier times, when Allie was whole and healthy and Mackie had yet to take a life or a prescription narcotic and Lucas Krider’s name meant nothing to him?
What if the day came when Mackie could only remember Evans-Lawson in its current state, not as it used to be?
Live in the now. The same old bullshit that sounds good until you actually try to put it in play.
It didn’t apply here.
The past was the only safe place now.
Mackie and Kara burst into Allie’s room and Desiree shot up from her seat on the floor.
Allie was lying on the bed. Eyes wide and glittering like mad, as if the proximity of the other Zapheads had juiced her up. She thrashed on the bed, beating at the mattress.
“We have to go,” Mackie said to Desiree. “Help us carry her.”
Before Desiree could respond, the sound of gunfire drifted through the open window, and Herrera’s voice called out from below. “Better get your asses out here. Right the hell now.”
Mackie peered out the window through a crack in the shades. From where he stood, Mackie had a view of the center of campus. Herrera and Krider stood outside the student union. Todd and Emma knelt in front of them, heads and shoulders sagging.
“I don’t see you pronto, I’m gonna put bullets in your two friends here,” Herrera shouted.
Even at this distance, Mackie could see the burns covering Herrera’s arms and most of his face. Krider, who was looking across campus for Zapheads, bore large patches of raw, wet redness on his face as well.
They were both hurt, but still functional. Wounded animals that had been cornered and were eager to lash out.
Mackie sensed Desiree leaning over his shoulder. “Mackie, I don’t understand...why are they—”
“They’re hurt. And they want to kill us,” Mackie said, though he realized it explained nothing.
“We just can’t let Todd and Emma die,” Kara said.
He studied the two victims as closely as the distance would allow. He saw no fear, no comprehension of their predicament on their faces. Just that dull, dazed look with which he was all too familiar.
They were blitzed ou
t of their minds and had no idea what was about to happen to them.
Better that way.
“The only people I give a shit about are in this room and in Dr. Lehman’s office,” Mackie said. “What happens to those two...it’s not my concern.”
“Mackie!” Desiree backed away from him, her brown eyes wide with confusion and anger.
“Keep your voice down,” Mackie said.
“Mackie, we have to help them.”
“No,” he said. “They’re a couple of junkies. And I’m not putting their safety before Allie and everyone else.”
“You’re no better,” Kara said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“I said, ‘You’re no better.’ You’re a junkie, too. Who the hell are you to decide they’re not worth saving?”
“Not gonna wait much longer!” Herrera shouted. “I want Mackie and the blonde bitch out here now. Any of the rest of you know where they are, you’re gonna make it a lot worse for yourselves if you don’t come forward and start talkin’.”
“I’m going out there,” Kara said.
“Hell you are.”
“I’m not going to let anyone else die. And you can’t stop me.”
“That’s exactly what I’ll do,” Mackie said, grabbing her arm.
She shook free and moved toward the door.
“Kara, you’re a strong girl, and I know I’ve done a lot of damage to your life already...but you’re not walking out of here.”
“You gonna kill me, too?” Kara asked, her hand on the doorknob.
“No. But I’ll keep you here even if I have to hurt you. Because you’re risking Allie.”
She turned to face him, her fingers still loosely curled around the doorknob. “You’d really do that? To save your own ass and a sick girl that’s not going to get any better?”
“I’d do it for her. And for Dr. Lehman. For Rebecca and Desiree and Meredith.”
And then Mackie heard a voice call out, “I’m unarmed. Please don’t shoot.”
Oh God, no.
Mackie turned to the window and saw Dr. Lehman walking slowly toward Herrera and Krider, his arms up, palms facing out.
Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) Page 16
