Sandwich was not able to duck in time. The chainsaw boomerang cut through his midsection, through the back of the gunner seat, and flew off into the woods. His upper body hit the roof next to Horatio and Greggy. Blood gushed out of his mouth, coating his fluffy mutton chops.
The boomerang returned to its thrower in the distance. Horatio tried to pinpoint the attacker’s position, but it was too far away to see with the naked eye. He tried to look through his sniper scope, but Sandwich coughed blood onto the lens, his last act before he bled out. Wiping the lens with his uniform as quickly as possible, Horatio returned the scope to his eye, but could no longer see the buzzing weapon.
The bus continued up the road, all of the men in combat positions. The Hamburglar ran to the front of the bus, and shoved Greggy into the blood-smeared gunner seat beside them. Greggy took the machinegun’s handles and pointed them at the distance, clueless to where he needed to shoot.
Captain Richards climbed onto the roof to order Horatio to take the enemy out, but the sharp-shooter was already on it. Richards gave him the order anyway, so that it seemed as if he was being useful.
Horatio saw the attacker on the next throw. It was a wolf woman, standing on the roof of the Outpost. After throwing the chainsaw boomerang, she ducked down to keep her position hidden.
“It’s one of the Bitches!” Horatio said.
Richards lowered himself flat to the roof when he heard the word Bitches. “So that’s what happened to the Outpost. It was overtaken out by those hairy whores.”
The chainsaw boomerang came at them again, this time it went for the front of the bus. Hamburglar drew both of his swords to defend his men, but the bus was swerving to the right and the boomerang missed completely.
Down below, Poppy, the mutant with the red beret cheered behind the wheel of the bus. He took a swig of his beer to celebrate outmaneuvering the wolf girl’s attack. While he was taking the chug and straightening out the vehicle, he didn’t realize the buzzing weapon as it made its return back to its thrower. The boomerang cut through one of the bus’s side windows, severed both of Poppy’s right arms, crashed through the front windshield, and sawed across the hood of the bus.
Poppy was shrieking as the bus rumbled to a stop, his beer pouring out onto the floor from one of his severed hands. Lockjaw, the mutant with the yellow horns, jumped to his friend and tried to stop the bleeding, fountains of gore splashing him in the face.
Horatio was in the zone. He was steady, the leg on his back straightening out like the tail of a creeping iguana. His rifle pointed at the spot where the wolf woman had ducked. He waited for the boomerang to return to her. As it became smaller and smaller, buzzing up to the top of the roof, Horatio saw the woman poke up to catch it.
He fired, hitting her in the chest. She flew backward, her floppy ears dancing as she fell, blood spraying a line of droplets into the air. Her boomerang bounced off the edge of the building and dropped silently to the ground.
“Got her!” Horatio said.
Captain Richards felt safe enough to get up from his lying position. “Good work.”
He brushed off his uniform.
“How many more do you think are there?” Greggy asked the Captain.
“Two more, at most,” he said. “I heard that the soldiers out here had captured a few Bitches some time ago. We were supposed to bring them back to our headquarters, but that’s when the Outpost went silent.”
“You think they got free and overpowered all the men?” Greggy asked. “Just the three of them versus an entire army?”
“Never underestimate a single one of those bitches,” Richards said. “Some of them are as strong as a hundred men.”
Greggy shook his head in disbelief.
Tomahawk opened the hood of the bus to discover the top half of the engine had been shredded. Smoke sizzled into his face.
“Fuck,” Tomahawk yelled, punching the grill of the vehicle with his enormous third arm.
Lockjaw and Sun—a mutant with spiked shoulder pads and dark black skin—pulled Poppy from the bus. The wounded man was barely conscious. His arms were wrapped tightly with leather tourniquets. The bleeding had stopped and the man would likely pull through, but he was still in shock. They had nothing to dull the pain.
“We have to walk the rest of the way,” said Captain Richards to his men. “Take only your weapons and ammunition. Leave everything else behind.”
The men obeyed. Tomahawk strapped dual one-handed sledgehammers to his waist and draped a belt of ammo for his rifle over his shoulder. Horatio filled his cargo pants with bullets. Lockjaw and Sun were armed with shotguns and knives. Greggy carried his submachine gun under his arm so that nobody would notice his hands were shaking.
“Shouldn’t we bury him?” Greggy asked the Captain.
He pointed up at the blood leaking down from the roof of the bus.
Richards looked up. “We’ll have to take care of Sandwich later.”
Once he was ready, Richards said, “Move out!”
But Hamburglar, Horatio, and Tomahawk were already a dozen yards into the distance, on their way to the Outpost.
Down the road, Horatio could see a group of soldiers running toward them. They moved quickly, as if they were desperate to reach them for safety.
“Looks like those Bitches didn’t get all of our boys,” said Tomahawk, wiping crumbs from his crusty blond mustache.
As the men came closer, Horatio noticed something strange about them. They were ripped apart as if they had been wounded by gunfire or grazed by chainsaws.
“Are they okay?” Horatio asked.
Once Horatio saw the long metal worms coiling out of their flesh, he knew what was wrong. These men were rabid, like the bear. The three Outlanders stopped in their tracks. They watched carefully as the rabid mutants charged forward, carrying axes and two-by-fours.
“What are they doing?” Tomahawk said.
“Trying to kill us,” Horatio said.
The sharp-shooter put his gun to his chest and aimed the barrel at the closest attacker. He fired. The man’s left shoulder was tossed back a bit but he continued running at them.
“Call that a shot?” Tomahawk criticized.
“I hit him in the chest!” Horatio said. “He should have at least went down.”
Horatio fired again. The mutant was hit but it hardly fazed him.
“That one was in his heart,” Horatio said. “He should be dead.”
Tomahawk saw it, too. The man should’ve been killed by that hit. Blood was gushing out of the crazed man’s chest, but he kept moving.
Hamburglar raced forward at the infected mutants. He had given his men time to kill the attackers at a distance, but his patience had run out. He charged with his head pointing forward, his hands crossed on the handles of his katana. As he reached the first row of men, Hamburglar drew both swords and decapitated four of them. Two on his right, two on his left, two for each sword. He re-sheathed his swords as the bodies stood there, blood and metal worms shooting out of their necks. The other mutants tumbled into their backs as the Hamburglar walked sideways around the bodies, ready for another attack.
Once the four corpses finally hit the ground, two more mutants with mouths full of worms lunged at Hamburglar. With one swipe, they were missing the tops of their skulls. One of them went down, but the other was still standing, shrieking, worms coiling in his soup bowl of a head. He swiped at the Hamburglar with a hatchet, but the samurai cut his arm off, then his face off, then his legs off, before he could get within range.
The other infected mutants went after Tomahawk as he fired his rifle at them. He hit several of them in the midsection but they wouldn’t go down, so he drew his two sledgehammers and lowered them through two of their skulls. Gore and chunks of bone exploded beneath the weight of the steel mallets.
Horatio looked back to see dozens of other infected mutants coming in from the mountains of rubble surrounding the road, swarming the other soldiers on all sides. Greggy and th
e two carrying Poppy ran as fast as they could to catch up, while Captain Richards fired at the mob with his four repeaters. Soon there were nearly a hundred infected men on the road, their heads squirming with metal worms like medusas.
Then there was gunfire coming from the top of the bus. Horatio peeked through his scope to see Sandwich was still alive. Although he was just half a man, he had climbed back up into the gun turret. Worms crawled through the dead man’s flesh as he fired at his brother soldiers.
A storm of bullets hit Sun in the back of his legs and he went down. Lockjaw kept moving without his fallen friend, knowing that he couldn’t possibly carry another wounded man. Sun cried out for help as he crawled across the ground, one of his legs dangling by a meaty thread. Not even Captain Richards attempted to help him. He leapt over the wounded man and ran forward to catch up to the others.
Horatio aimed the rifle at Sandwich’s face and fired. The man’s bald head exploded. He was still alive up there, but half of his face was gone. He couldn’t see clearly and no longer had the motor skills to work the heavy machine gun.
Poppy had snapped out of his state of shock and was running with his own legs by the time they caught up with Horatio. Lockjaw looked back at his fallen brother, Sun, who screamed as the infected mutants came down on him. Horatio aimed his rifle and took out as many of them as he could, blowing off their heads as they came in. After seven of them were dead, Horatio ran toward the wounded man.
He passed Captain Richards on the way to Sun.
“We need to get to him,” Horatio said.
“Leave him.” Captain Richards didn’t stop running for a second.
“But he’s still alive,” Horatio said.
He continued on by himself. When he got to Sun, there were worms crawling across the ground toward him. Horatio smashed the worms with the butt of his gun, one by one. Then he picked Sun off the ground and carried him in the direction of the Outpost.
The swarm of men was enormous now, hundreds of them like a tidal wave rolling down the street at them. Even the Hamburglar seemed unnerved by the sight of their mass.
The bottom floor of the Outpost was also infested with rabid mutants as Tomahawk entered the building. He punched one of them across the room with his enormous third fist, then crushed one of their skulls between two colliding sledgehammers. Captain Richards was the next inside. Even though he was originally in the back of the group, he had caught up to his men and raced past them as they defended themselves against the attacking horde. Richards shot down two of the infected men as they came at Tomahawk, but Tomahawk was more annoyed than thankful.
When Horatio arrived at the gate that surrounded the building, he passed Sun off to Lockjaw, then shot down three of the mutants that were getting close. He closed the gate on the horde and chained it up, but he didn’t have a lock for it. He had to just knot it up the best he could. The fence wasn’t going to hold them for long, but at least it would slow them down.
On the way into the building, Horatio saw the chainsaw boomerang lying in the dirt a few yards away from the entrance. He picked it up by the handle and carried it into the Outpost, his fellow soldiers’ blood dripping down the side of his uniform.
Hamburglar was the last to enter, killing off as many of the crazed men as he could. Once they were all inside, Tomahawk and Lockjaw barricaded the door with supply crates, most of them filled with drums of gasoline.
“You sure that’s a wise idea?” Horatio asked Tomahawk, pointing at the gas in the crates.
“It’s a great idea,” Tomahawk responded, wiping blood out of his white afro. “They try to get in and they’ll explode.”
“And we’ll burn with them?” Horatio asked.
Tomahawk shrugged.
The bottom floor of the facility was a large warehouse space. High ceilings, boxes of supplies stacked in rows along the walls, forklifts, cold concrete floor. There weren’t any stairs leading to the upper levels. The wooden stairs were collapsed in a pile in the corner of the room. Somebody had cut them down with a chainsaw.
Horatio scoured the floor for long metal worms and crushed them with the butt of his gun. They were crawling out of the dead infected bodies and scattering in all directions across the room.
“Did any of them get into you?” Horatio asked Sun.
Sun shook his head as drool came out of his black rubbery lips. “Almost. They crawled into my wounds but I was able to pull them back out.”
Then Sun screamed as Lockjaw amputated his mangled leg with the chainsaw boomerang. The other leg was next.
“You can’t save either of them?” Captain Richards asked Lockjaw.
Lockjaw shrugged. “No idea. I’m not a fucking doctor.”
“But you’re our medic,” said Captain Richards.
“Medic? Like hell.” Lockjaw laughed, the yellow horns on his head bobbing up and down. “I have a few years experience as a veterinarian’s assistant, from back when I lived in McDonaldland. That’s why they made me a medic.”
“A vet?”
“All I know is that we’re not going to get him to a real doctor soon enough to save his legs. But with his mutation, maybe he’ll grow some new ones someday.”
Sitting next to Sun, Poppy began to laugh. “And maybe I’ll grow back some new arms, eh?”
The three of them laughed. It was funny because it was true. The one upside to their limb-growing disease was that they could always grow more arms and legs.
Captain Richards turned to Horatio. “We need to get to the upper levels. The other two wolf women could be anywhere.”
“You think they’re infected as well?” Horatio asked.
“I sure as hell hope not,” said the Captain. “Bitches are bad enough when they aren’t undead killing machines.”
Horatio nodded his head and looked out the window behind the Captain’s shoulder. The swarm of infested mutants was climbing the fence outside, ripping themselves through the razorwire rim, and gathering around the outside of the building. The windows were barred, but that wouldn’t stop them for long.
It was up to Tomahawk, Hamburglar, Greggy, and Horatio to figure out how to get to the upper floors. Richards decided he would stay behind, with Lockjaw and the wounded, because he was afraid of what might be lurking up there. Greggy wanted to stay behind as well, but Richards ordered him to go.
“We need to make a man out of you,” Richards said to Greggy. “Cowards make me sick.”
There was a freight elevator on the other side of the building, by the mountain of crates filled with rotting produce. It was the only way to the upper floors. Unfortunately, the control for the elevator had been disabled. A saw had cut the panel in half. The four of them looked up the elevator shaft, into the shadows.
“It can still be operated from the other floors,” Horatio said. “But somebody’s going to have to climb up there and bring it down.”
Horatio suggested the Lieutenant go.
Tomahawk shook his head. “I don’t do heights. Let’s send the wimp up there.”
Greggy stepped back. “But wolf women could be up there.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll cover you,” Tomahawk said.
“I don’t even know how I would climb up there,” Greggy cried. “There’s no ladder.”
The Hamburglar was sick of their whining and stepped forward to do it himself. He climbed the bricks, straight up toward the ceiling. The soldiers watched his black flowing cape as he disappeared into the darkness above.
During his teenage years, the Hamburglar always enjoyed the darkness. He liked to block out the ugly, hopeless real world to better see the magnificent imaginary world in his head. The world of art, music, and perfection. The world of the samurai.
For hours on end, the Hamburglar would sit in the darkness and explore his mind. He would imagine an army of noble warriors crossing green fields toward battle. He would imagine their perfectly crafted blades of iron and steel glimmering in the sunlight. He would imagine their fights as masterworks
of art and dance, their opponent’s blood as paintings across the landscape. This would inspire him to create. It would inspire him to write music on his piano.
His father recognized young Willem’s potential as a pianist. He was more inclined to encourage his piano playing than his sword-crafting hobby, so he pushed his son in the direction of music. He hired a piano tutor, one of the only music instructors in all of McDonaldland. Willem did not understand why this was necessary. He saw his music as flawless. He couldn’t possibly become any better than he already was.
The very first day he met with the piano instructor, the plump effeminate man had Willem play a song for him before even introducing himself. Willem wanted to play one of his own compositions, but the tutor urged him to play something classical. He played Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B Flat, which was a work he felt he had perfected, even though he believed the composition was flawed.
Willem hoped that after he witnessed his brilliance, the tutor would understand that there was nothing he could possibly teach him and would then leave him alone. But, halfway through the performance, Willem noticed the tutor shaking his head and groaning deeply. He stopped playing and stared at the instructor’s cringing face, his eyebrows raised high on his pale forehead.
“You know the piece well,” said the tutor, still shaking his head. “But I’ve never seen someone play it with such lack of passion.”
Willem continued to stare at him.
“You’re mechanical. You play like a robot.”
Willem continued to stare at him.
“What you are doing is hitting keys on an instrument. You are not truly playing music.”
Willem continued to stare at him.
“Here,” the tutor moved into the seat next to him, “I’ll show you how to play with your soul.”
Willem stomped up out of the seat and left the room. When he returned, he raised a half-made samurai sword above his head and cut the tutor’s fucking head off, then finished the rest of the song.
Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands Page 7
