Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two)

by James Hunter

  I scooted into the alley, Ferraro raced in behind me on her horse. The alley was maybe ten feet wide, with red brick to one side and rough gray concrete on the other. Not a great fighting position: the murder could still approach four or five abreast. Still, it was a helluva lot better than being swarmed and crushed in the world’s grossest and most uncomfortable doggy pile.

  I holstered my pistol, planted one foot, cranked the brake, and brought the moped about face before redrawing my gun. “Stay mounted,” I called over my shoulder to Ferraro, “alternating fire pattern. Groovy?”

  “Got it,” she shouted, her Glock already in hand.

  “We’ll just thin ‘em out a little, then we’ll blow this nightmare popsicle stand.”

  The murder of meatbags from the parking garage were the first to make contact, lurching into the alleyway with all the grace of drunken frat boys after a long bender—staggering, stumbling, and jockeying to be the first at getting a nibble. I leveled the gun and started firing, not slow, but not fast either. I was scared, but measured and accurate fire would serve me far better than desperate pray-and-spray shooting. Plus, these guys made it as easy as target practice at the range. These freaks were dead things that didn’t seem to be afraid of pain or death, so they weren’t struggling to find cover and they weren’t shooting back.

  They just staggered along, five of ‘em in a rough row, and walked right at me. Idiots.

  So I took my time. Inhale. Exhale. Pop. The barrel raised a fraction of an inch and I let it reset naturally. Inhale. Exhale. Pop. Nice and easy, slow, steady breaths. Rinse and repeat. Each bullet careened into a neck or face, dropping corpses left and right, twitching bodies hitting the floor. As a side note, these sons of bitches were far hardier than those brain-eaters you see in most films these days. Decapitated heads continued to work jaws—if they still had them—and bodies still floundered and flailed on the ground, even though they were rendered dumb and impotent.

  I ran dry after the first five zombies fell, but more meatbags flooded in, stumbling momentarily on the pile of corpses blocking their way. The bark of Ferraro’s Glock cut into the air, her pace faster than mine, but still even and purposeful. The Glock carried more rounds but couldn’t dish out the same damage my hand-cannon could. So Ferraro was compensating by firing three shot groups: crack-crack-crack, two to the chest, one to the head.

  That was her training asserting itself. Even though I’d told her to conserve ammo, I was glad she wasn’t skimping, but was instead going with enough to make sure the job got done and done right. Here’s a pro tip for you: if you’re faced with an enemy who just needs killing, like yesterday, use that second or third round and make sure you do it proper. No need to go overboard, but don’t skimp either. Just don’t do it, it might come back to bite you in the worst way.

  I slipped a hand into my coat pocket and pulled out a speedloader—a circular metal plate with six rounds already loaded in position. I flipped out the cylinder, shook the shell casings free, pushed the loader into place, released the fresh rounds, and swung the cylinder closed with a click. I only had one more speedloader ready to go, so after that I’d be stuck feeding in shells by hand; a much slower and more tedious process.

  Ferraro’s gunfire stopped—and no, I wasn’t counting rounds, unless you’re Rain Man, leave that for action heroes—she’d added four or five new bodies to the pile (it was tough to tell exactly with all those tangled and intertwined limbs). So I went back to work, a shooter on the range, a camper chopping wood, just a guy with a bit of business to be about. The bodies were forming a nice wall, but we couldn’t hold here for much longer. Yeah, these freaks were falling in droves, but there were a metric shit-load of ‘em—swelling and bunching up at the entrance, the mob was growing more and more impatient to reach us.

  I wasn’t too worried about them. But, and this was a game changer, there were new things starting to poke disgusting-looking heads into the fray. They waited at the back, standing a little apart, assessing the situation with cold, calculating gazes—their eyes dark as fresh-laid tar, which looked almost human and smart as hell. One: covered in lustrous white scales with a small ridge of black spikes running from its head to its back. Another: maggot-white like the others, but with strange double-hinged legs and a tearing beak like a crow. A third: this one almost arachnid, crouching low to the ground with too many eyes and a slew of limbs splayed out around it like a halo.

  I finished my round of target practice—the bodies were really starting to pile up now, a nice barrier to give us a lead when we turned tail and scrammed. I ran dry and reloaded quick while Ferraro laid in to the murder, blasting wounds into chests and faces. Gun loaded, I holstered my weapon, about-faced my scooter once more, and rode past Ferraro.

  “Be right there,” she hollered before hauling out a matte black cylinder, with the words, “Grenade, Hand” and below that, “Offensive MK3A2 TNT” stenciled on in yellow lettering. With a twist and a pull, Ferraro removed the pin, and tossed the can back at the pile of bodies and the swelling mass of zombies. I kept zipping along, Ferraro followed close behind. As we neared the alley exit, a huge BOOM peeled through the air and the ground rattled beneath us, followed by a brief flare of heat.

  I glanced back, just for a second. That hadn’t been a frag grenade, MK3A2s were concussive grenades—i.e. big explosion. Huge chunks of the bodies had simply been torn apart, vast numbers of the creatures burned in flickering orange fire.

  The sight was awful. Watching them burn like that made me feel sick to my core. I was doing these things a favor—I mean, nobody would want to live on like that—but I also knew that at some point these things had been people, so I couldn’t brush off their deaths without feeling a sharp pang of guilt in my gut. I shook my head, pushing the thought away for later.

  “A grenade?” I shouted over the commotion behind us.

  “Hey,” she hollered back, “a woman’s entitled to a few secrets.”

  We rode through another alley—Ferraro pulling in front and leading us along—which dumped us out onto a street a couple of blocks over. A small ground-level parking lot lurked off to the left, a few dusty cars filled the spaces along with half a dozen more meatbags. But they all just milled around without direction or purpose. They turned curious faces on us for a moment, but seemed mostly uninterested in doing anything more than shuffling around on stupid feet.

  Ferraro led us left on Cherry Street before hanging another left onto 1st Avenue. We took it for another seven or eight blocks, catching occasional glances of the blue expanse of the Elliot Bay and a few sporadic pockets of creepers. But the murder of meatbags, like the idiots from the dusty parking garage, seemed intent on leaving us be. Maybe they’d gotten the memo that messing around with us didn’t work out well unless you wanted to end up as extra-crispy barbeque.

  After ten or fifteen minutes, the Four Seasons finally reared up before us, a huge expanse of broken windows and sleek metal curves. No guards out front, no waiting convention of brain-dead goons. Just a formally beautiful building reduced to a burnt out husk. But this is where Fortuna’s map said to go, this is where the knight, Sir Galahad, and the Holy friggin’ Grail—my cure-all—waited. Probably, it was also the home to Cannibal Steve. But hey, it wouldn’t be my life if I didn’t have to get my ass kicked by someone to get to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Time to save our damsel in distress—in this case a millennia-old Knight of the Round Table. Talk about role reversal.

  TWENTY-FIVE:

  Merry Go ‘Round

  Ferraro and I left our rides in front of the building. I felt bad about the horse … I mean what if one those roving packs of mutants came strolling by? But there was nothing to do about it. Couldn’t take the horse on the elevator with us or march it up thirty stories’ worth of stairs. Ferraro didn’t tether the poor critter, so at least it’d be able to make a break for it. As for me, I was really gonna miss Sir Zippy—the little guy and I had bonded.

  We pushed our way i
nto the lobby of the Four Seasons; the interior looked like the set of some post-apocalyptic flick—completely trashed, furniture overturned, old blood drying on the walls in scribbles of graffiti and old world runes of power. The lights were miraculously on, so it wasn’t hard to make out the raised wooden platform, some kind of stage, against the far wall—a massive thing painted black with red-velvet drapes hanging to either side. Gaudy strings of Christmas lighting ran along the stage’s edge and along the metal pole supporting the curtain.

  And right smack dab in the center of the lobby sat a great fire pit, maybe ten feet wide, surrounded by a rough wall four feet high, the bricks blackened with soot. A giant spit—like you might use to roast a pig—ran across the fire pit, the blackened remains of something that resembled a human, hung strapped across the bar. There were huge hunks of flesh torn free, leaving streaks of rusty-red and pink streaking through the burnt-out wreck of a corpse. So gross. I didn’t even want to guess what in the hell went on here, but I was sure as shit glad that the dining/entertainment hall was currently closed for business.

  Ferraro placed one arm across her mouth, a feeble guard against the burnt stink in the air. “This world is so fucked up,” she said, “maybe I would’ve been happier in ignorance.”

  “That’s how I felt when they first recruited me,” I said.

  “Does it ever get any better?” she asked.

  “Sure, it gets better. Improvement is, however, directly tied to alcohol consumption.”

  She pointed to the elevator banks on the right. “You think the penthouse?”

  I nodded. “Evil douchebags almost always have some sort of god complex. He’ll be at the top for sure …” I considered the elevators for a moment. “But let’s take the stairs to be on the safe side. I don’t know if this place has video surveillance or not, but they have power, so maybe. Trying to survive a fall in an elevator from fifteen stories up doesn’t sound so hot.”

  We headed across the lobby to the emergency stairwell and hoofed it up like twenty flights of concrete stairs. I huffed and puffed the whole friggin’ way. I’m not in bad shape—slim, natural athletic build—but I’m not rippling with muscles, I don’t like going to the gym. Running? No thank you. And yeah, I know, Marines are supposed to love running, exercise, and shit like that, but let me tell you, it’s all a bunch of phony hype. Mostly, I love beer, brats, burgers, and ribs—ribs most of all—and I like ‘em in large quantities.

  Sometimes, though, I kinda wish I had the self-discipline to be more health conscious—particularly when climbing up a gajillion steps in the world’s tallest building (well, it felt like the world’s tallest building). When we finally made it to the top, I bent over trying to catch a little air, one hand clutching my side where a nasty cramp gnawed at my middle. Ferraro had barely broken a sweat; she just stood there, one eyebrow raised in amusement, tapping a foot as though to say, Any day now old timer. After a minute, I righted myself, and pulled out my gun.

  “Okay …” I said, still panting. “You … ready?”

  “We can take another minute—maybe you should do some warm up stretching before we go in,” she offered.

  “Har-har … Funny stuff, Ms. Chuckles … When did you get so witty?” I bent over and grasped my knees, pride be damned. Another few seconds wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it was time to considering give up the smokes … I kid, I kid.

  “You just make it so easy,” she said totally deadpan. “Now, if you’re done?”

  “Yeah sure,” I righted myself, breathing mostly under control. “I’m fine. Hey, I don’t suppose you brought a flashbang?” I asked. Boy, wouldn’t that makes things easier.

  She shook her head. “Just had the one grenade. Now can we do this?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  We slipped past the door and into a long hallway, the lighting poor and the wallpaper slashed. The hallway contained only a single door, all the way at the end: the penthouse suite. We padded along the thirty or forty feet, moving quiet as a pair of paranoid field mice, just waiting for the door to explode outward and a hail of machine gun fire to erupt. Except it didn’t. As we got closer, I heard music, the thump and tinkle of piano keys intermixed with laughter. They were playing “The Piano Man” in there.

  The hell? This all felt strange. I pushed my back up against the wall … this was weird. I mean everything about this situation was off, but hearing “The Piano Man” made me uneasy all the way down to my toes. We’d come this far though, so there was nothing left to do but put foot to door SWAT-style and end to this mess.

  “Mind if I breach?” Ferraro asked, stepping around me without waiting for a response, so that she was now closest to the door. I could’ve protested or made some stupid comment about how I was the man and I wouldn’t let a woman go through first. But I didn’t, because I’d seen her in action, both at the police station and at the saloon, and I knew she was better at doing a military-style breach than I was. I’ve had a lot of training and experience, but I’ve also relied on the Vis for a very long time and having that kind of power changes your tactics in a big way.

  So instead, I just nodded and let her go, confident in her ability to kick ass and take names with the best of ‘em.

  She looked back, raised her left hand, and gave me a silent three count before pivoting inward and lashing out with her right leg, delivering a devastating blow just below the doorknob. The door swung in without a hitch, almost like it hadn’t been shut right, like maybe it’d been open for us. That was a worrisome thought, but I put it out of mind because Ferraro was already on the move, sweeping left, pistol raised. I ducked in right, sweeping my muzzle back and forth. The room was long and open—a bank of windows above and on the left, filled the room with soft gray light.

  An odd sense of déjà vu swept through me. There was lots of blood on the walls and floor—it was obvious the lobby and penthouse had been decorated by the same bat-shit crazy interior designer—but the room also looked like a very close cousin of the Hog’s Head back in the Hinterlands. A long bar stretched across the right hand side of the room, with an upright piano near its far end. Straw covered the carpet, a few round card tables dotted the room, all filled with strange pale creatures like the ones we’d found below. Overhead hung a huge chandelier of bone—the very same chandelier I’d shot down on the outlaws back in the saloon.

  At the far end of the room, sitting on a hulking throne of spiky white bone, padded with crushed red velvet, sat Fast Hands Steve. Cannibal Steve … Fast Hands Steve. Son of a bitch. Fortuna had to know—rotten, no good, misleading jerk.

  I knew I should’ve killed that asshole when I’d had the chance—it pays to listen to your gut. Even worse, it looked like good ol’ Steve had also contracted the plague. He was Fast Hands, sure, but he was also more than what he’d been. His burnt copper scales had gone pearly-white, his legs had merged into one long, fat coil of tail.

  His upper body looked grotesquely deformed—his left arm hung on the floor, too long with a withered bicep and a forearm as thick as a light pole. Proportionally, his right arm looked more normal, but his hand—the hand Ferraro had maimed once upon a time—was now a thing of shining metal, chromed and polished to a high sheen. He lazily twirled a familiar gun about his mechanical digit.

  My eyes immediately went to the floor next to Fast Hands’s gaudy and terrifying throne: a regular human, bound around his neck, arms, waist, and legs with a thick chain that glimmered and changed color with the light. Tall guy, probably six foot four, good shape, blond hair, scar running down one cheek and dipping below his jawbone. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. That dude just had to be Sir Galahad—he looked the way a knight was supposed to look. He looked, I dunno, friggin’ gallant, I guess. Probably thought he was better than everyone else too. He had goody-two-shoes-douche written all over him.

  But that douche was my ticket to wholeness, the ticket to having my power back.

  The laughter cut out as Ferraro and I came through, the musi
c dying away—a grotesque piano man with a score of white tentacle arms regarded us with serious black eyes.

  Fast Hands slithered from the chair, one great fist on the floor while he continued to twirl his pistol. “It’s sssso good to see you again,” he hissed. “I couldn’t believe it when my security chief showed me the monitor and I saw you two running through my building. The Big Boss told me this might happen—that the two of you might show up—but I didn’t believe him.” He paused, his tongue flickering in and out. “Do you know that in this world, you’re both dead? Dead long, long ago.” He slid forward, his giant left arm dragging uselessly behind him. “Sadly, I didn’t kill you, Yancy. No, the Savage Prophet did you for. But Ferraro”—he seemed to savor her name, like a fine-tasting Scotch—“you I killt slowly. We had many a long night together, you and me, before you gave up the ghost.”

  I circled right, toward the bar, thinking I could use it for cover just like I had in the saloon. Ferraro caught the motion and followed suit, moving slowly.

  “Listen, bud,” I said to Fast Hands as I drew closer, trying to make it look like a casual swagger and not the fearful shuffle it really was. “I know it’s probably been years and years since you last saw us, but it’s only been a couple of days from our end. I remember what happened in the Hog’s Head—we beat the shit outta you ten ways from Tuesday.”

  The bar was next to me now, running just to my right … I could throw myself over if necessary, and Ferraro was just a step behind me. “So,” I continued, “this thing can play out the exact same way—you, busted up on the ground—or you can give us Princess Leia.” I pointed toward the knight. “And the Grail, and we can mosey our happy asses along. You and your boys, here, can go back to playing cards and throwing cookouts. Whatever.”