That owl had no idea how close it had come to getting blasted. This kind of shit is tense. Even when you spend a lot of time in the country at night, sometimes normal animals can sound really odd. I had almost shot a regular old coyote once on a hunt because it had sounded like it was speaking in a foreign language.
We reached a barbed wire fence, but it was so floppy and loose that it really wasn’t much of a fence at all. Even our shortest Hunters made it over without getting snagged. Boone started giving hand signals. This was where the teams parted ways. His guys went toward the house. I took point for my team as we headed for the barn.
It was me, Milo, Trip, and Holly now. Earl would join us when he felt like it. I’d worked with these Hunters so many times that we were damned near telepathic with each other. We walked through the pitch-black, stepping carefully, because there was a lot of old wood scattered everywhere. There were piles of ancient garbage, empty paint cans, and scattered tools rusted beyond recognizability. We followed a fence line and stayed low until we got close to our target. The barn was huge, easily big enough to park a couple of combines inside, but it had a slight lean to it. The beams looked soft and were coated in patches of moss like a cancerous growth.
There was a big sliding door, but the rollers were probably rusted solid. Luckily, it was stuck open enough that even I would be able to get through without making too much noise. That was a fortunate break. I’m a big dude anyway, but covered in armor and mag pouches, I’m downright thick.
I peered through the gap, but even with the night vision, all I could see was more old junk piles and dust particles floating between them. I signaled for my team to stop and wait for Boone’s signal. I clicked my radio twice to let the other team know we were in position. There wasn’t anything new from Earl. The Groffs were in an elevated position with precision rifles, but they’d stay quiet unless there was something they needed to warn us about.
Boone clicked three times. They were going in.
I signaled for Trip to follow me, and he passed that on. As soon as it popped off, everybody would go to hyper-speed face shooting, but until then we’d proceed quietly for as long as we could. I moved into the barn.
My team was smooth, practiced, and we went quick, even in the dark. As each of us swept in, we covered a sector. I went right with Abomination shouldered. Trip came in behind me and went straight ahead with his LWRC .45 subgun up. Then Holly with her shorty 300 Blackout, and then Milo with his JP mini-Cazador hooked left. In normal life I’m kind of a clumsy giant but put a gun in my hand and I turn into a tactical ballerina and these guys were my choreographed backup dancers. The idea of Milo in a tutu made me giggle.
It was a big open space, but it was filled with old cars, farm equipment, and piles of assorted junk. The floor was hard-packed dirt. It stank like moldy decaying hay. My eyes immediately started to itch. This was going to be hell on my allergies. I should’ve put my gas mask on.
We moved through the trash, heads on a swivel, checking up and down too, because the things we routinely had to deal with had no problem hanging from ceilings or popping up through floors.
“This is Earl,” he whispered in all our ears. “There’s something talking in the back of the barn.”
We were in the very front of the barn. I looked to my teammates, confirmed they were ready, and we headed for the rear of the building. It was getting really hard not to bump into anything though. The interior was a hoarder’s delight. There were a bunch of rickety shelves close together here, and they were so full that the aisles between them made for a snug fit. There were cardboard boxes melting into squishy mush on the floor, spilling their contents of rusting nuts and bolts. I got spiderwebs all over my face. I bet this place was full of brown recluses and black widows.
There was a loft above us and ladders leading up. Normally I would’ve cleared the high ground before proceeding, but there was no way we’d make it up there without alerting whatever it was that was waiting ahead of us. I pointed it out to Holly. She lifted her gun to cover the loft and watch our backs as the rest of us moved forward.
Then we heard what Earl had gotten through the cracks in the walls. The voice was raspy and barely audible. “Who sent you?”
“I already told you!” That was Sonya, and she sounded like she was in distress. “I got a call. I was told to come here because you wanted to buy the Ward.”
“Do you think I’m a fool? You brought that weapon here to destroy me.” Even though the voice was quiet, I recognized the accent. You don’t spend as much time around the Shacklefords as I have without being able to recognize an old-school Southern accent real fast. “Who sent you against me, child?”
“Nobody,” Sonya cried out. “Wait! Don’t kill me, please!”
I carefully moved around the edge of an old cattle trailer until I could see the conversation. I noticed Sonya first, and she was still wearing the face of the cherubic bubbly blonde girl from next door. Only now she was hanging upside down, five feet from the ground. Her ankles were bound with a thick rope, which had been tied to a ceiling beam.
Then I saw what Sonya was talking to.
The creature’s back was toward me. It was naked and shaped like a man, but way too skinny. Not just emaciated but dehydrated to the point that all the moisture had been sucked out of the tissues, until all that was left had the consistency of jerky. Bones were visible through gaps in the leathery skin. It was like a body that had been left out in the desert sun to blacken and shrivel, only it was moving around just fine.
I turned back to Trip and mouthed the word undead.
Trip shrugged, like what was he supposed to do with that? Undead was a big catch-all term with a wide variety of capabilities.
I spread my hands like beats me, because I had absolutely no idea what kind it was. It didn’t feel like a vampire. It was obviously intelligent, but that could still be a bunch of things. If it was a revenant we’d be able to put it down with a few bullets and go home. If it was something like a lich, we were in deep shit. So we’d just have to proceed with caution. I peered back around the trailer.
“Last chance, child. Who sent you to kill me?”
“I told you nobody! I mean, somebody sent me, but not to kill you. They told me you were going to give me five million bucks in cash for the stone.”
“I live in a barn because I have to hide from Hunters. I have to pay degenerates to steal bodies from funeral homes to continue my work,” the thing snapped. “Does it look like I’ve got that kind of money?”
“I thought maybe you were laying low.” Sonya was quiet for a moment. The only noise was the creak of the rope holding her up. “Okay, so obviously there’s been a big misunderstanding here. How about you let me free, I’ll take the stone away, and get it out of here? Your secret’s safe with me, Mr. Phipps.”
“That’s Colonel Phipps to you.”
Earl must have caught that exchange. “Aw, hell. It’s Buford Phipps.” And from the way Earl said that, it was bad news. If Earl had covered this particular undead asshole during Newbie training, it must have been on a day I’d fallen asleep during class. I looked back at Trip but he didn’t seem to know either. “Give me one minute to change, then distract him. I’ll take Phipps. You free the girl and run.”
That was not good. That sounded like Earl was going to wolf out on us. He had the control to force a change whenever he wanted, but he rarely did it this far from the full moon, and only if we were dealing with something crazy dangerous. Shit had just gotten real.
The abnormally gaunt form of Phipps was walking around Sonya. He didn’t look like much more than an awkwardly thin zombie, but Earl wouldn’t risk transforming around other Hunters unless it was absolutely necessary. Phipps was appraising Sonya like she was a hanging side of beef. I could see the profile of his face now. There were patches of skin and hair stuck to it, but most of it was bone. It turns out a skull can still look hungry.
“It’s too late for your conniving ways now, girl. You
got spirit world blood in you. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a feast like that. I’m going to bleed you slow, because spirit blood has so very many uses in my work. Then I’m going to eat you alive, piece by piece. It’ll hurt more than you can imagine. Or you can tell me who sent you, and I can put you out of your misery quick and clean, no suffering. I promise.”
The undead monstrosity didn’t sound particularly trustworthy as he said that either.
“I don’t know. I swear!”
“That’s fine. I’ll ask again after I eat your hands. We’ve got all the time in the world.” He grabbed her wrist and tugged. Sonya shouted and thrashed. She hit him with her free hand, and from the solid noise it made, even hanging upside down, Sonya packed a right like a heavyweight boxer, but it did nothing to the monster. The rope creaked as he dragged her over to his mouth. Phipp’s jaw hinged open. The jerky skin stretched. The mouth got bigger and bigger until it could have fit Sonya’s whole arm inside.
Earl hadn’t gotten his requested sixty seconds yet, but I couldn’t let Phipps bite her limbs off. “Hey!”
Phipps spun toward me. My boss had asked for a distraction. Figuring that nothing was quite as distracting as a magazine full of silver buckshot to the face, I put the IR targeting laser on the monster’s skull and fired.
So did Milo. Half a second later so did Trip. The monster let go of Sonya and staggered back until he hit the wall. Multiple lasers danced across his body as sparks filled our night vision. Sonya was sent spinning back and forth like a punching bag that had just gotten violently kicked, and I just hoped that none of us plugged her by accident. Milo and Trip’s guns were suppressed, and quiet. Mine was the only one that was loud as hell.
We had probably pumped a pound of silver and lead through Phipps, but as the smoke cleared, he was still standing. Splintered bones immediately fused back together and the dangling bits of jerky sucked back into place. Our projectiles hadn’t accomplished shit.
Buford Phipps roared, “Kill the trespassers!”
Which caused all the many corpses buried in shallow graves around the farm to wake up. Hands erupted through the floor. Bodies that had been hidden on the loft flopped over the edge. Shelves of junk toppled over as the dead rose. Milo yelped as claws grabbed his boot.
The lead monster pointed one bony finger at me, the jawbone moved, and sanity-rending arcane words spilled out. He was casting a spell. Phipps was a lich!
But before he could finish the incantation and rip my soul out or turn me into a frog or some other awful fate, a hairy werewolf arm punched through the wall. Claws sank deep into Phipp’s rib cage, and Earl yanked the lich right through the planks and into the night.
Holly moved up, stubby carbine shouldered, nailing undead in their heads as they crawled toward us. Her gun was so quiet the impact of the bullets made more noise than the action. Skulls popped and the bodies went limp. From their sluggish movement, mummified appearance, and rotten clothing, these were old zombies, stashed here for who knew how long. But there was a lot of them. It was like the entire floor of the barn was moving all around us.
“Mundy might not have won the pool after all,” Holly said. “I had serial killer burial ground.”
“Great,” I shouted back. “I liked his better.”
Earl had the lich. We needed to rescue Sonya and get the hell out of here. But that was easier said than done, as the ground split open between me and her, and there was suddenly a sea of grasping hands and snapping teeth between us.
“Hang on, Sonya,” I said as I reloaded Abomination.
“What’s going on?” Sonya was still swinging back and forth and couldn’t see in the dark, so all she probably knew was that there had just been a lot of gunfire and chaos. “Is that you, Opie?”
Her getting my name wrong again made it awfully tempting to just shoot the rope holding her up so she’d fall on her head, but there was a zombie crawling out of the ground directly beneath her. “Can you climb up? There’s zombies under you.” Sonya bent at the waist, caught the rope, and with a couple quick tugs, propelled herself to the ceiling, where she grabbed the beam and hung there, far out of reach of the undead. The move was impressive. It must be nice to be half yokai. She’d probably be fine up there while the rest of us down here got devoured.
Milo stomped on the hand holding his boot until enough bones broke that the zombie had to let go. Then he stuck the muzzle of his carbine close to the lump of a rising head—Whump!—and pierced the skull. The experienced Hunter took one look around the barn, realized we were about to be swarmed, and said, “We’d better boogie!”
He was right. Our position was indefensible. “Sonya, can you get free?” A zombie lunged at me, coming seemingly out of nowhere through the dust, but I blew its head off. “We have to go—now!”
“The knot’s too good.” She had moved into a sitting position on the beam but was clearly struggling with the rope around her ankles. She was supernaturally athletic but good luck hopping out of here with her feet tied together. “I need something to cut it.”
Trip had that covered. He ripped the RMJ tomahawk from the sheath on his belt. At first I thought he was going to say catch and toss it to her, but instead he just hurled it. The hawk flipped end over end and the head got planted into the wood next to Sonya with a thunk. It hit so close that she flinched in surprise.
“There’s a tomahawk by your hand, kid! Hurry up!”
“Nice throw,” I said as I used Abomination’s buttstock to brain a zombie that was reaching for Trip.
“Cheryl and I have been going to this ax-throwing place on date night,” Trip said. “It’s fun and practical.”
Sonya wrenched the hawk out of the beam and slashed at the ropes. Trip kept his blade sharp enough to shave with, so she cut right through. “Got it!” She flung the ropes away.
Now for an orderly, fighting retreat. “Head for the exit.” Holly and Milo crowded in next to us, and the four of us fought our way toward the door, shooting and moving.
Except then Phipps hurled Earl through the wall. Our werewolf crashed through several zombies, broke through two big support beams, and then bounced off a third. Decades of dust and owl poop rained from above. It was like our night vision turned to static as swirling dust filled the air. We were blind.
The already leaning barn shuddered. Earl’s body had broken the supports. The whole structure groaned.
The barn was going to fall on us.
I flipped up my goggles and turned on my light. That wasn’t much better. The choking dust was reflective. I could hardly see, hardly breathe. That crazy impact would’ve killed most things, but there was a flash of pale fur as Earl leapt up and rushed past me to get back into the fight. Werewolf Earl is terrifying. Even with some bones sticking out, he was fast as lightning, and I was super thankful that he had the self-control to not accidentally disembowel me on the way. He jumped out the hole his body had just made in the wall and went after the lich.
Sonya leapt from the beam to the loft. It was a good ten feet but she made it, and disappeared from sight.
Nails popped like gunshots. Boards splintered. “Run!” I screamed.
The suddenly awakened dead struggling up from below shoved over the shelves in front of us. More zombie hands burst through the ground, clawing. All they had to do was slow us up for a second and we were doomed. There was a mob rising ahead of us and more behind. We were still a few feet from the door when the back quarter of the barn came crashing down, crushing zombies beneath tons of wood and shingles. And it kept collapsing in sections, coming for us like a slow-motion train wreck.
We riddled the zombies ahead of us as we rushed for the door. Trip and Milo dove through the gap. I could barely see through the dust, but I knew Holly was right next to me.
“Where’s—” but before I could finish shouting for her, Sonya seemed to fall out of the sky. She landed and nailed a zombie right in the forehead with the tomahawk’s back spike. She ripped the spike out and congeale
d black ooze sprayed out of the hole like its head had been pressurized. “Go! Go!” I blasted zombies until Sonya and Holly were outside, then I hurried and squeezed through the door after them.
As soon as I was clear, Trip and Milo immediately began trying to force the rusted roller door shut, but a pile of dead flesh crashed against it. Several arms shot through the gap, and the only reason the barn didn’t barf out an army of zombies was because the stupid things were temporarily getting in each other’s way. It was five zombies trying to fit through a one-zombie hole.
But while we were plugging the hole, the barn was still falling down, and if the front fell over on us . . .
Holly yanked an incendiary grenade off her vest. I realized what she was trying to do, so I stepped back and immediately blasted a couple rounds of buckshot through the door. This close the buckshot pattern just chewed a single big hole through the wood. “Grenade!” Holly yanked the pin and shoved the grenade through the hole. The canister bounced across bare zombie feet. “Move!”
The rest of us didn’t need much encouragement. As soon as Trip and Milo let go, the door burst open and zombies piled out, but that only mattered for a second, because then they were all bathed in chemical fire. The whole front of the barn was consumed in a flash. The zombies were so dry they went up like kindling.
Fire leapt up the walls. Just as it reached the last remaining section of roof, the whole front of the barn collapsed. Heavy beams landed where we’d just been standing. The impact launched a cloud of choking dust outward.
I turned back and gunned down one of the burning zombies which had made it through. Milo head-shot the last one. Zombies don’t feel anything, but it never seems right to let something that was once a person wander around burning until it quits kicking.
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