“This is what we’ve been seeing glimpses of at night,” Dave said, his mouth dry.
“Apex carriers?” Johnny asked.
Dave shook his head. “I don’t think so. These things are different.” He looked at the group. “But I can’t see how they’re not related.”
“Let’s go,” Audrey said. “I don’t like this at all.”
Then the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell racking into a chamber echoed from behind them.
“You step away from my babbies,” a voice commanded. “Right fuckin’ now.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dave turned quickly, catching sight of a man who fit the definition of a lunatic so well that he seemed like a caricature. He was dressed in ragged bum’s clothes, maybe fifty years old with a salt and pepper beard that stretched halfway down his belly. White, wispy hair reached down his back; longer than the beard and thinning out into scraggly threads at the end. Deep wrinkles lined his leathery face. His skin was fish-belly white; like a troll living deep beneath the mountains, rarely seeing the sun.
But the man’s eyes…they told the true story of his insanity. Deep blue with pitch-black pupils and opened so wide they nearly bugged out of his head.
“Those are my babbies,” Bug Eyes repeated. “You keep yer distance, or I’ll send you all straight to Hell.” He motioned downward with his shotgun. “Drop them weapons now.”
Johnny had his pistol pointed and ready. “Not a chance, gramps.”
Dave and Audrey hadn’t even had time to raise their weapons.
“I’ll fill yer asses full of buckshot, ya fucks,” Bug Eyes said.
Johnny cocked his head to the side. “You willing to bet you’re faster than me?”
“I can’t let you hurt the little ‘uns,” Bug Eyes said.
This guy’s way off his rocker, Dave thought. He remembered the standoff he’d had with Ed in Mitchell’s warehouse. He had a bad feeling that this wouldn’t end as favorably as that had.
“These aren’t children,” Audrey said. “They’re monsters.”
Bug Eyes glared. “You shut your goddamn mouth. I’ve been following them for a while now. I watch over them. I look out for them.”
“They need to be killed,” Audrey said. “All of them.”
Dave sighed. Audrey wasn’t helping things. Crazy can’t be reasoned with.
No more than the vengeful could be.
Bug Eye’s giant white orbs grew even wider. He pointed the shotgun at Audrey.
She took a step backward.
“Chill out, pops,” Johnny said, adjusting his grip on the pistol. “Don’t go getting any ideas about that trigger finger.”
Bug Eyes shook his head. “Ain’t nobody killing Arn’s babbies, you hear? I won’t allow it.” Arn’s expression changed, a pained look spreading across his weathered face. “You wouldn’t smash a butterfly’s cocoon, would you?”
“These are anything but butterflies,” Dave said.
Arn’s expression hardened. “What the hell do you know?”
Dave softened his voice. “Nobody is going to hurt your babies,” he said, taking a step back. “We’re going to leave now.”
Arn raised the shotgun. “You ain’t going anywhere.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was Johnny who acted first. In a motion so fast that it rivaled Dave’s long-dead gunslinging friend Mitchell Burdette, Johnny raised the rifle and pulled off a single shot that caught Arn in the shoulder, knocking the older man off balance. As Arn spun on his heels, he inadvertently pulled the shotgun’s trigger, the resulting blast echoing like a cannon inside the large warehouse.
The shot went wild, sending a deadly scattering of buckshot into the nearby cocoon, ripping away a huge chunk of the milky-white sack. The creature that had been gestating inside took the full brunt of the blast. Bright red blood oozed from the ruptured cocoon, pooling onto the filthy concrete floor below as the creature spasmed in spectacular fashion. Gutted by buckshot, it convulsed and shook, causing the hanging mass of translucent silk to swing from side to side.
“OH GOD, MY BABBY!” Arn cried, his wild eyes nearing leaping out of their sockets. He stood frozen in place, his wounded shoulder and the shotgun in his hand forgotten, as the cocoon swung from side to side, droplets of blood puddling onto the floor.
The mortally wounded creature inside the cocoon jerked violently, and the slimy husk surrounding it split open wide, giving birth to an abomination from the deepest recesses of Hell. Its pale white body landed hard on the concrete floor with a sickening, wet thud. Clear slime ran from the ruptured sack like pus from a lanced boil, pooling around the monstrosity on the floor like vile afterbirth.
His feet glued to the floor, Dave could only stare at the dying cocoon creature. Its white body was nearly translucent, blue veins visibly crisscrossing beneath the skin like a roadmap. Its head was smooth with small nubs for ears pinned to the side of its head. Sharp fangs grew from its broad mouth. From its fingertips, black claws extended nearly a half inch before ending in a vicious point.
It was a nightmare come true, writhing on the floor before him.
Arn moaned like a grieving mother as he watched the creature spasm a final time before becoming motionless. He dropped the shotgun and ran to its side, dropping to one knee in bloody-pink slime. He caressed the thing’s bald head like a doting mother might stroke her baby.
“YOU MADE ME DO IT!” Arn screamed, bug eyes staring Johnny down. “YOU MADE ME DO IT! YOU GO AWAY! ALL OF YOU GO AWAY NOW!”
But Dave couldn’t move. He felt sick to his stomach at the sight before him, like his insides might turn to mush and run out any available orifice. Audrey shook her head in disbelief, her face a mask of horror and revulsion. Even battle-hardened Johnny Ratliff seemed temporarily incapacitated.
And then, from all around them, the screaming began.
Shrill cries echoed throughout the cavernous warehouse. Dave glanced at Audrey; her skin had visibly turned to gooseflesh. Johnny wore a confused look on his weathered face.
Arn cackled, his wet eyes shining with glee now. “It’s them!” he said, locking eyes with Dave. “My babbies’ are being born!”
The smile sent a chill down Dave’s spine.
Audrey gripped Dave by the arm, snapping him from his trance. “We need to go. Right now.”
“HAPPY FUCKIN’ BIRTHDAY!” Arn cried, leaping to his feet and dashing away into the depths of the warehouse.
“These fuckers are waking up,” Johnny said, pulling himself back into the moment. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
Dave didn’t argue.
They turned and headed toward the front door, jogging at first before breaking into a full-blown run. The incessant cries grew louder around them as they skirted the debris littering the floor. The sound quickly mounted into a haunting crescendo that seemed as if it might never peak, that it might simply get louder and louder and louder until it blocked out every other sound in the world.
They closed the distance, each step like an eternity. The front doors beckoned with glorious escape, bright sunlight piercing into the building and chasing away the shadows. The collective shrieking mounted around them, like a haunting dirge of epic proportion. Dave could almost feel the monsters closing in behind them, but he dared not look. He focused only on the doors, only on escape.
And then they were at the doors and passing through them, into the bright and warm sunlight.
Dave had to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare as he and Audrey and Johnny made their way across the cracked and broken asphalt.
The Jeep sat where they’d left it, Gia behind the wheel.
But something was wrong.
Gia sat behind the wheel; her head slumped forward as if she might be asleep.
Dave reached her first. When he did, he froze.
He’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter Seventeen
Slinging t
he rifle over his shoulder, Dave shook Gia as if he expected her to wake up. As he did, her head tipped backward like a human Pez dispenser, revealing a gaping slash across her throat. The cut was so deep that Dave could see her spine. Gia’s dead eyes stared blankly into the sky. That’s when he noticed the blood; buckets of the stuff saturating her shirt and the Jeep’s driver’s seat.
Audrey got there a moment later, stopping short.
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head.
The shrieking from inside the building drifted out into the parking lot through the building’s shattered windows.
“Arn, that son of a bitch,” Johnny said from behind them. “Crazy motherfucker.” He tossed his rifle into the Jeep’s trailer before retrieving his pistol. He turned and headed back to the Costco’s front doors.
“Where are you going?” Dave called out. “We need to leave now, before those things wake up.”
But Johnny wasn’t listening.
He disappeared back into the building, leaving Dave and Audrey standing beside Gia’s lifeless body.
Chapter Eighteen
During Johnny’s time in the service, he’d seen some ghastly shit. Heads blown apart. Limbs severed. He’d barely escaped death when a roadside bomb took out the Humvee traveling directly in front of his own. Those guys had been turned into shredded wheat, gutted by an IED detonated by cowardly religious nuts hiding out of sight.
In the early months of the world-ending viral outbreak, he’d survived the infected by keeping his head and using the skills he’d learned in the army. The carriers had been bad, but he’d learned to deal with them. He’d almost gotten used to them.
But the things inside those cocoons, however, were like nothing he’d ever experienced.
By the time Johnny reentered the building, the screaming inside had reached ear-splitting levels. He knew that he should have been afraid. Any sane person would have been petrified.
But Johnny Ratliff hadn’t known fear in a very long time. It wasn’t bravery. Not at all. A man needed fear to be brave. Johnny wasn’t brave, not anymore at least. Now he just didn’t care. Live or die, none of it really mattered amidst the dying remains of civilization. Dave’s quest to find and kill Calvin Summerville had been the distraction Johnny had needed. Something to keep him occupied. A task that needed to be accomplished.
And maybe something to keep Johnny from putting a bullet in his own head.
Johnny made his way into the shadows of the building, toward the harrowing sounds of wailing and shrieking and screaming. Somewhere in the bowels of this warehouse turned madhouse he would find Gia’s killer; a psychopath who considered himself a surrogate father for monsters. Given the brutal way Arn had murdered a teenager, Johnny thought that maybe it took a monster to know another.
With all its nooks and crannies, he worried that it might be difficult to find Arn in the vast depths of the warehouse. Plenty of places to hide, for sure. It was entirely possible, even likely, that he’d not survive the monsters long enough to search all those hiding places.
But as it turned out, he was wrong. In the dim light of the Costco’s interior, Johnny spotted the old fuck as he slinked out from the shadows, making his way to one of the suspended cocoons. Arn clutched a knife in the hand of his still functional arm; the other arm hung impotently by his side.
Arn had been one card short of a full deck, and now he was one arm short of a full man. The thought made Johnny smile.
But if the useless arm slowed Arn down much, he didn’t show it. He approached the cocoon and plunged the knife in, dragging it downward. The sack split open like a fish’s belly, spilling forth its vile contents onto the warehouse floor.
Johnny picked up the pace, closing the distance. He wondered why Arn would be killing his babbies, but as the pale white monstrosity landed on the floor and began to cry out, Johnny realized Arn’s intent wasn’t to kill them.
No, he didn’t want them dead at all.
He was birthing them.
The monster wailed like the world’s ugliest newborn. With his surrogate child now out in the world, Arn darted away, his gimpy arm hanging as he disappeared into the shadows to continue his misguided work.
Johnny froze, watching in disbelief as the monster got to its feet. It stood in the puddle of its afterbirth, sniffing the air around it, fangs bared.
It locked eyes on Johnny.
Then it sprinted after him.
The creature moved with a cunning ferocity that took Johnny by surprise. It closed half of the forty-yard gap between them before Johnny got his wits back. He raised the pistol and fired off a single round into the beast’s head. Blood and brains and bone erupted from the back of the monster’s skull as it collapsed to the dirty warehouse floor. It convulsed once before becoming motionless, dark red blood pooling about its smooth head.
Johnny took a moment to catch his breath. He still didn’t know exactly what these things were, but he knew that they could be killed.
He headed into the shadows after Arn, giving the creature a considerable berth as he went around its corpse. He navigated a path between the hanging cocoons, like maneuvering through a morbid slalom course, pistol ready and eyes open wide. As he passed one of the husks, the creature inside it twitched. It took all Johnny had not to put a bullet in the thing. If it wouldn’t have given away his location and sabotaged the element of surprise, he surely would have.
Deeper into the building, the light diminished further, making it difficult to see beyond a few dozen yards. Shadows blanketed everything around him. Somewhere in the dark depths of the building, more of the cocoon creatures moaned and wailed. Johnny wondered how many of the things Arn had introduced into the world. From the sound of it, the fucker was making damn good progress.
As Johnny slipped around the corner of a shelving unit, movement caught his eye. His reflexes took over, and he ducked before he knew he’d done it, narrowly avoiding Arn’s knife. But as he went down, Johnny’s back twisted into an unnatural position, causing the muscles to seize, sending him to the floor in a heap.
Arn lost his balance and stumbled, collapsing to the floor after tripping over his own feet. He landed hard on his belly, but he maintained his grip on the knife. He got to his knees; the knife clutched in his good hand. He had a hollow, maniacal look in his eye.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “HAPPY FUCKIN’ BIRTHDAY!”
Lying on his back, Johnny raised the pistol and pointed it at Arn, finger resting on the edge of the trigger. He noticed the blood streaked on Arn’s hands. It had mixed with milky afterbirth from slicing open the cocoons, but Johnny knew whose blood it was.
Gia.
Johnny took his finger off the trigger and got to his feet, tucking the pistol into his back pocket. Around him, deep in the shadows, the cocoon monsters shrieked. The echo effect quadrupled the sounds so that it became impossible to know how many of the things skulked in the dark recesses of the building. There could have been thousands of the bastards running around in there from the sound of it.
Johnny knew there was no way he was getting out of this place alive.
But that was okay because neither was Arn.
Arn glared at Johnny as he got to his feet.
Johnny smiled as Arn charged him. Johnny ducked as Arn swung the knife wildly, missing by a few inches. His back muscles hitched, but he powered through it, delivering a hard right to Arn’s nose. The cartilage snapped with a loud pop as Arn groaned, fresh blood gushing out and drenching his shirt.
Arn glared at Johnny through narrow eyes as he wiped away the blood on his sleeve, smearing it into his beard and onto his face. The flow continued unabated, dripping onto the floor.
“Motherfucker!” Arn screamed.
Johnny braced for Arn’s second attack. He expected the old man to come in high, but at the last minute, Arn dropped low, aiming the knife at Johnny’s gut. Johnny corrected, deflecting the blade but taking the brunt of Arn’s momentum. Both
men went down hard. Johnny landed on his back, smacking his head off the concrete. His vision went blurry as Arn fell on top of him, pinning him to the floor.
Arn raised the knife, preparing to bring it down into Johnny’s chest.
“I won’t let you hurt my babbies!” he screamed.
Johnny shook his head, attempting to get his bearings. He saw the knife in Arn’s hand, ready to plunge, and his reflexes took over again. He shot a hard right into Arn’s throat, his fist connecting solidly. Shocked and surprised, Arn’s eyes went wide as he dropped the knife and clutched his throat.
Seizing his opportunity, Johnny rolled Arn off and shoved him to the floor. The old man went down on this side, struggling to breathe through his damaged windpipe. Johnny got to his knees, and the world tilted on its side. He steadied himself, shaking his head a few times to clear away the cobwebs while Arn choked and gagged beside him.
Johnny spotted the knife lying on the floor—the same knife Arn had used to kill Gia—and he lunged toward it.
Arn struggled to get to his feet, but he never made it that far.
Gripping the knife tightly, Johnny plunged it into Arn’s chest, piercing the old man’s heart. Arn’s eyes went wide as realization set in. He gripped Johnny by the throat in a futile attempt to wrench himself free. Johnny twisted the knife. Blood pumped from the chest wound.
Arn’s grip went limp, and he slumped to the floor, motionless.
Breathing hard, Johnny left the knife in Arn’s chest as he got to his feet. His hands were covered in blood, so he wiped them as best as he could on his pants.
Vengeance in the Badlands Page 6
