57
Big Bob and the others opened up fully automatic on Moses, a hail of gunfire lapping up everything in sight out in the courtyard. Ricky Keys stood rooted in place, dumbfounded, confused by the whole thing.
He’d not been informed that they were to terminate Moses, even though that was pretty damn obvious now. He and Hendrix stood side-by-side, watching the bullets whack into the ballistic glass that quicksilvered, and threw off friction sparks that showered Moses.
Moses covered his head and hooked a leg and slid as if he was trying to steal an invisible second base. The bullets kicked up all around him, but he rolled over and used the metal briefcase for leverage and juked hard to his left, disappearing from sight.
Moses skidded around a rusted biohazard bin that he used for cover. He looked up and spotted one of Longmen’s men, an owl-faced piker in black combat gear aiming an assault rifle in Moses’s direction. He glanced swiftly left and then right. Too much open ground to freedom.
“Give yourself up!” the man shouted at Moses.
Moses didn’t respond. Instead, he watched the man trot forward. He was twenty feet from Moses when a great plume of dust erupted in front of him as some spastic form rose out of a hole in the ground. A burst of grime and grit and then whatever it was that had emerged from the earth divested Longman’s man of an arm. A single thought crept into Moses’s head as he watched the stump where an arm once hung shoot great gouts of red into the air. Hell was coming. Thresher!
The man was dragged screaming from sight into a spider hole, his shrieks sputtering then falling silent as a Thresher appeared out of the hole … then another, then four more, just like those yellow and black bees that Moses had seen come from the ground in his front yard when he was a child. The weird little ones that lived in the soil and nipped at him when he mowed the grass. “Shit bees” his Uncle Avery had called them.
More Thresher appeared, crouching and shielding their eyes from the dying light. Shadows appeared, then gave way to Longman’s men. Big Bob and Ricky Keys and Hendrix and the rest. A brief little existential instant ensued, men and Thresher staring at each other. The moment passed and Longmen’s followers opened fire.
The empty-headed life-enders, Moses thought to himself. They’d walked right into the trap he’d set! Making a ruckus the entire trip, they’d caught the ear and nose of every flesh-eater within five square miles, and now they were here and ready to party. He prayed only that the bedlam would buy him enough time to hide in the surrounding scrub and then figure out a way to use the briefcase as a bargaining chip with Longman. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was something.
A charge of smoky light billowed past his head, the kinetic trails from the rounds fired by those coming for him as Moses straightened from his hands and knees to two legs. He dropped Ricky Keys’s blast kit and darted forward and dove behind a fallen sentry light, spotting the man who’d fired on him. The man changed out a magazine on his gun and a pod of Thresher were on him in a flash as he died in a flurry of spastic limbs and jabbering, distended jaws.
All around the screams of the dead and the dying and the braying of the Thresher reverberated as Moses searched for a way out. He’d seen the Thresher before. He knew they possessed a trait that was much prized in football circles in the years before. “The burst.” That initial jolt of speed that allowed them to overcome all but the fastest runners. He saw one of the things pounce on a man next to Hendrix, its lips pulling back to reveal mottled gums filled with cleat-like teeth. The bear trap of teeth ratcheted down and tore flesh raggedly, as the man screamed, bucking to get free as another creature helped finish him off.
Moses watched the man die and then saw one of the women washed in someone else’s gore, trapped between six Thresher, suicide herself with a gunshot to her ear, her head flapping sideways with a thump like a hammer hitting a wall.
The young man next to her, similarly cornered, shot a Thresher and then pulled it down over him like a blanket to hide before the other devils sniffed him out and grabbed him up and tore him in half like a movie ticket.
It wasn’t at all like the things in the movies. The horror flicks where bites and scratches from the undead lead to brutal, eternal life. Not here. If the Thresher caught you they wouldn’t just kill you. They’d eat you. Gobble you up with their maggot mouths while you were still alive, finishing every last morsel, no chance or possibility for cinematic resurrection.
Big Bob Pope was caught up in the fray and killing as well, but had no plans to go quietly. He hip-fired his guns (including the bulky M-60), rounds hitting Thresher mid-sprint, mushrooming marble white skin, splitting open green and purple crisscrossed veins as he pulped anything that moved.
He emptied the M-60 then hoisted up a rifle and fired that out, re-magging the gun several times, dropping a dozen Thresher before his barrel ran dry. He felt like Custer at the Little Big Horn, like a flawed hero at the end of some Sam Peckinpah flick. A lone survivor gazing out on a mammoth gathering of crazed bastards as they came tumbling and fumbling up out of holes in the ground like fire-ants.
One of them grabbed a female member of the expedition and pulled her down into its hole. Her upper body appeared, seconds later.. She tried to belly-crawl away and then a taloned hand reached up and stuffed her back down and out of sight. The others, including Ricky Keys and a few of the less-ballsier men, panicked. He didn’t blame them. There were so goddamned many bad guys.
It was at that moment that it all became clear. Moses, Big Bob thought. The sonofabitch! He’d done it on purpose! He’d set them up! He’d brought them this way and allowed them to make a racket, all the while knowing that the Thresher could hear them. He kicked himself for not recognizing this earlier, but was satisfied with the thought that if he was going on to his final reward, he would do all that he could to take that black bastard with him.
Big Bob caught sight of Keys and beckoned to him, and Keys threw himself forward and collapsed before Big Bob, right next to Ricky’s explosives kit which had been dropped by Moses.
“Open it,” Big Bob said.
Ricky looked over, hyperventilating. “What?!”
“Your kit, man! Open it up and blow this place!” If they were going down, Big Bob thought, they’d take everyone within a thousand yards with them.
Ricky’s hands felt like they were made of stone as he fumbled with the kit, finally able to pry it open as Big Bob fired out his guns at the Thresher, some of whom were moving on all fours, long tongues slithering over saber-like teeth.
Big Bob’s gun rolled over, empty, as Ricky grabbed a wad of explosive latched to a coil of det cord and tossed it out amidst a pile of Thresher that were readying to finish the pair off. He groped for a hand controller and covered his head as he ducked and shrieked “BURNING!”. He clicked the controller BOOM!
When the dust cleared, the area in front of them resembled an abattoir, a zone littered with organs and entrails and steaming parts of mangled Thresher. They were in the clear for an instant and then more of the monsters appeared and Big Bob and Ricky backpedaled away from the beasts, falling on their asses, striking the ground, scrambling sideways.
Big Bob spotted one of his fallen comrades whose flesh had been sucked clean by the Thresher. He grabbed the dead man’s machine-pistol. When Ricky Keys screamed “LOOK OUT!”,Bob turned to see a Thresher’s mouth distend like a snake before its teeth took a hunk of his shoulder. He shoved the machine-pistol in the thing’s mouth and triggered it, as gore and brain jelly showered his face, stinging his eyes and spritzing his tongue with the nastiest, most fetid taste he’d ever experienced.
It was as if they’d kicked over a mighty hive, so many Thresher stumbled out into the half-light. All of them coming for Big Bob and Ricky. Where was Ricky? Big Bob looked around and Ricky was nowhere to be seen. The pain in his shoulder was immense as he levered himself up to confront the marauders, cutting the first few down before more lunged for him, his gun falling silent.
Big Bob held o
ut both hands, either in self pity or in some hope of fending off a porcine female Thresher with tadpole eyes who simply swallowed the hand whole. Just gnawed off all the digits with one big bite until the terrified man’s hand was pulpy and leaking red on the ground. Big Bob cried out, a moan, a mournful howl, and then they rolled over him like a pride of lions attacking a wounded animal.
Ricky Keys watched the things take down his former friend from the safety of a jacked utility van. He saw the Thresher bend over Big Bob, snatching pieces from him like a pack of looters.
Big Bob gurgled, wondering if he was still alive, praying for death. He thought he should be screaming or at the very least crying out, but it felt more like drowning. He’d nearly died in a lake when he was just a boy and this was exactly like that. The sensation of slipping silently into a well of minatory blackness as tiny objects prodded him. The clammy hands of the Thresher working through the soft flesh of his belly, his brain partially gassed, darkness creeping over everything like an extinguisher and then something, a shock, a pulse of electricity quickened his body before his life finally winked out like a blown candle.
Ricky Keys turned and spotted Hendrix who appeared to be the last man alive. Hendrix was waving and so Ricky ran to him only for his peripheral vision to fill with the sights and sounds of another litter of Thresher as they crashed in. Before Ricky could turn to Hendrix, he felt an explosion of pain and pitched to the ground and rolled over to see his blood shooting from a gash in his ankle. Hendrix held a blade of some kind in hand. The bastard had cut him.
“Jesus!” Ricky screamed, “WHY?!”
Hendrix peered down at him with his eyes as black as gun-barrels and whispered, “Cause one of us gotta make it back, hoss.”
Hendrix kicked up his heels and ran as Ricky fought to ready another explosive. He heard the Thresher keening with delight as they closed and he fixed a wad of C-4. Before he could finish, hands mashed up through the soft ground underneath him, and Ricky was grabbed and hauled down into a spider hole. The wind-scraped hollowness of the tunnel rushed past, the light fading from view.
All was dark and silent and then the feeding sounds started. Ricky Keys screamed, his nerve-endings redlining. He could feel flesh tugging away, cartilage separating, and he lashed out stabbing whatever it was that was eating him with his metal hand. Then he triggered his explosive which induced a retina-searing flash of fire that brought Ricky his final release.
58
The world seemed to pause as Marisol stopped dead in her tracks. Her senses were overloaded, skin tingling, never more alive than at that very moment. She felt a displacement in the air, a telltale warning sign, and she quickly whipped around to see a Thresher stagger at Elias, who had his back to the thing.
Marisol pulled her pistol around, her hands quivering as she sighted down the monster. She hesitated, just as she’d done before when looking over her barrel at Elias. She remembered her father telling her that desensitization empowered the violent. Yes, he’d taught her how to use weapons, but that was solely so that she could defend herself.
But looking for a fight, killing for the sake of killing inevitably led to a hardened heart. ‘And a hardened heart leads to dry eyes,’ he said. But his words didn’t cut any ice anymore did they? She’d killed before, only a few, but she’d done the deed. Besides, she’d seen enough evil to bleed her eyes dry and in these new times it was better to be hard than soft. That’s just the way it was, and it pained her, but she had no choice. And so she blinked and triggered her pistol and willed an expert shot as the Thresher vanished in a plume of blood, skin, and bone.
The blast startled Elias who dropped to the ground, covered in Thresher gore. He realized she’d saved his neck, and so he dove next to her as she lowered her pistol in a still-shaking hand.
“What the hell are you doing?!” he asked.
For a moment she just stared at the pistol and then she whispered, “What I’m good at.”
Before he had a chance to process this, a dozen Thresher appeared out of the ground and around the side of an upturned troop transport. Marisol and Elias sat, back-to-back, pistols out. Marisol brought her pistol up, hand still trembling, aim fixed on the oncoming Thresher. It had only been seconds since her kill, and she still felt a prick of remorse. The thing she’d downed had been kin to somebody back in the days before. That still had to mean something didn’t it?
She mulled this over for a second and then recalled Farrow telling her that like lots of things, killing got easier the more you did it. The secret was to ease back on the trigger and so she did and blew the head off the next Thresher rampaging toward her. Balletic bloodshed ensued, Elias and Marisol firing, the Thresher ticking and clicking and whip-snapping back where they were shot.
Elias shook his head to rearrange his hearing and thoughts. His ears rang from the staccato firing, sound muffled as if he was underwater. Rising to his feet, he moved over to Marisol, the ground around them littered with bodies.
Marisol moved forward silently. There was one last Thresher, facing forward, its stooped posture denoting feeding. The thing must have been deaf, Marisol thought, as it continued to reach down and grab and stuff something into its foul mouth. She saw the thing it was feeding on. One of Longman’s men who’d been all but hollowed out, chest opened, organs removed, skin pulled down from limbs like the silk on an ear of silver corn.
Marisol grabbed a piece of rusted rebar from the ground and cleaved the Thresher’s skull. She looked back to Elias and was about to suggest a next move when they heard bursts of gunfire on the other side of the compound.
59
Jessup and others cursed Marisol for blowing their cover and for leading them away from the vault which is what they’d come for. But they couldn’t stop her or Elias. They were too fast. Too far out ahead of everyone else. They were separated now from the boy and the girl and their destination, which was a few klicks off according to the digital map.
A few klicks and three dozen Serks (Jessup refused to call them “Thresh” or “Thresher”) stood between them and what they’d come for. Jessup waited for the Serks to charge and then paused to see them surrounding what looked like a portable toilet that had been tipped on its side. They were clawing at the fiberglass shell, fighting to get inside like otters trying to crack open clams.
Jessup had always believed in fate, in the power of higher beings looking over his shoulder and whether it was providence or foolishness he whistled to the others and signaled for them to charge the preoccupied monsters. And so they did.
Jessup zero-eyed the monsters as he led the others on a ragged run. Their guns roared as the closest Serk ranks buckled and soon Jessup and his comrades were knee deep in a whirlwind of close-quarters combat. Jessup watched figures running to and fro, heard screams and the hiss and dull thud of bullets harpooning flesh, as he and his brethren laid waste to anything that roamed before them.
Jessup was in the middle of it. Predatory look on his face. Gun ablaze, spitting a trail of fire. Bullets scorching the air. Smoke everywhere. Dense. Suffocating. Jessup squeezing off shot after shot, using both hands, buckling the Thresher.
He turned and Terry was beside him, grinning, handing a magazine of ammo to Jessup as they both reloaded.
“Shit! You planning on saving any of them for us, J.?!” asked Terry.
A grim smile tugged at Jessup’s mouth.
“Let me show you how it’s done,” he said, wheeling around and firing a series of expertly-placed shots.
In a matter of seconds they’d killed every last Serk, Bennie and Jon high-fiving, psyched by the kills, Terry clutching his chest, fighting for air, Jessup taking aim at the portable shitter, head-bobbing to Terry who used the barrel of his gun to unfasten an outer clasp on the toilet.
At that moment, Elias and Marisol were visible, approaching around the side of a building, Elias out ahead, shank in hand. Terry undid the clasp and a black blur sprang from the inside of the toilet, startling Jessup and knocking hi
m back before he could get off a shot.
Elias tackled the thing that had sprung from the toilet and, without thinking, raised his shank over his head, intent on striking a deathblow when the thing before him turned to reveal a familiar face. Moses!
Jessup regained his footing and angled his gun around as Elias grabbed the still-warm barrel and shook his head.
“God … I k-know him,” Elias chattered. “His name’s Moses. He is … was … my trainer.”
From his hiding spot, Hendrix watched the group haul Moses to his feet. He couldn’t hear the words that were exchanged, but was surprised when Moses wasn’t instantly dispatched. Whoever these strangers were they were well-armed and well-trained. For Crissakes they’d taken down nearly a hundred Thresher without losing one of their own! He also saw the girl and the boy. The bastards! They’d made it! They’d found a way out of New Chicago and were now working with these … brigands.
As he ran into the woods, Hendrix knew that Longman would be furious with him (and the others) for failing to obtain what he’d sent them to get, but he would be grateful for the information. He would want to know about the boy and girl and about how they apparently had joined some new, small army of insurgents.
60
Bennie and Jon held Moses down. Jessup and Terry glanced inside the toilet and pulled out the metal briefcase and dropped it on the ground before Moses.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Jessup.
“Like I said. I know him,” Elias muttered. “He used to oversee us in the Pits.”
“That’s not what I asked,” said Jessup.
Moses pointed to Elias, “Name’s Moses O’Shea and what the kid says is true. I was his trainer.”
“Trainer for what?” Terry asked.
“The runs,” Elias offered. “The Absolution runs.”
Blood Runners: Box Set Page 26
