Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2)

by Durnin, S. P.

  Jake looked into the piss-yellow eyes of one particularly angry specimen as the thing oriented upon him. Its gray teeth clacked together like a pair of castanets played by Charlie Benante—longtime drummer for the speed metal band, Anthrax—after way too much cocaine. A piece of one tooth snapped off and went flying, spinning freely through the air to imbed firmly in one of the other ghoul’s shoulders.

  This is what hell will look like, Jake thought.

  “Jake! Come on!”

  Kat's voice from outside broke him out of his reverie. O'Connor turned and ran for his life.

  He dove under the bay door, maybe twenty feet ahead of the lead rank of creatures inside, and rolled to his feet. “Go! Head for the fence!”

  Neither Kat nor Penny needed to be told twice. They were right on his heels as he ran for the distant chain-link.

  Behind them, the trio could hear the ongoing battle between Rebecca's people and the dead continuing. It didn't sound good for 'Mama Moo-moo” and her little cult of personality. Fully half of the living were either out of ammunition, or were vainly attempting to secure the grainery, while the infected pressed forward like a moaning, California mudslide.

  Penny stopped and grabbed at Kat's shoulder as she passed by. “Hey! Do you see that?”

  Kat's eyes followed the Deputies’ shaking finger. “Oh-my-god. Jake, those zombie just coming through the front gate? They're running.”

  “What?” Jake's head whipped around as he plowed to a halt.

  Sure enough, a pack of maybe fifteen or so infected were headed for the grainery, at speed. The things weren't actually 'running' per say, but they sure-as-hell weren't moving at the shambling gait of an average zombie either. It was more like watching, someone who had issues with their center of gravity—

  and were really drunk—trying to jog. Some of the creatures kept weaving back and forth, stumbling over their own feet and having to correct course over and over, but moving damn fast. Jake didn't want to believe it. To date, none of their group had ever seen the dead do anything even close to what they were seeing.

  “That's really bad.” Kat's eyes were wide. “What if they start, you know, learning to do other things?”

  “Other things?” Penny demanded as the three of them set off across the overgrown field again.

  “Like—I don't know—how to open doors? Or use weapons, like clubs and stuff?” Kat frowned. “What if they get smart enough to set traps?”

  “Let's talk about this later,” Jake puffed behind them, “when we're not in danger of getting our asses bitten off!”

  The trio reached the fence-line and, true to her namesake, Kat leapt for the top rail. She somersaulted over it, using her hands as a guide to send her body up above the nearly eight-foot tall barrier, and dropped soundlessly to her feet on the outer side. Jake retrieved his crowbar from Carson, stuck it back in its scabbard, and bent at the knees beside the fence while he made a cup with his hands. Penny put one hiking boot on his palms and reached for the top rail, but she needn’t have bothered. Jake set himself, then pushed upwards on the bottom of her foot like he was competing in the Caber Toss event, and Penny literally sailed over the fence with a yelp of surprise. Ignoring the sound of what was sure to be an embarrassing landing on her part, he climbed the fence until his waist was level with the top rail, reached down, took a firm grip on the chain-link, kept his other on the rail, and flipped his legs over. This allowed him to come down, albeit a bit heavily, on his feet, without rolling to absorb the impact.

  “Thanks a lot.” Penny sat on the grass, and was just beginning to brush herself off. There were several small pinecones in her hair. “I was right. You're a dick.”

  Kat faked a cough to cover her laughter, which fooled no one. After helping Penny to her feet—and removing the pinecones—the survivors turned back to view the grainery. The facility's loading door was already bashed in, and what survivors were left had fled to the walkway of the silo's dust collection system. Jake pulled the mini binoculars from their pocket on his tac-vest and took a look.

  He was able to pick out Will plugging away at the dead from just above the collector's main suction tube. The man was a machine with that BN36 of his, Jake had to admit. His marksmanship was the only reason zombies hadn't already overrun the walkway. Rebecca stood at the top of the single access stairway, holding a revolver in each hand, sending rounds into the slowly advancing creatures below. She called for the others to make a stand in an attempt to organize her people, maybe even try to push back so they could make for the gallery tower, but her remaining followers weren't listening. They were panicking, basically. Running to and fro around the circular walkway, searching for some break in the drooling horde that would provide them an avenue of escape. There were none to be had.

  It wasn't long before the dead gained the walkway. It took even less time for them to push Rebecca and the few who still had working firearms back towards the collector. Will had long since abandoned his rifle and traded it for an automatic he pulled from his hip, then the damn broke. While the defenders kept firing, they were simply unable to hold back the slow, unrelenting press of rotting bodies. Rebecca was the first to fall. The portly woman had stopped to reload her wheel-guns and five of the things were on her. From where he and the women stood beyond the fence, Jake clearly heard her shrieks as the creatures began to feed.

  Those didn't last long either.

  Once she was down, her people lost their spine. Any semblance of orderly defense went right out the window, and it was a free-for-all of shoving to escape. To where, O'Connor had no idea. The walkway only wrapped around the dust collector to come back upon itself again. There was nowhere for those remaining to go.

  Jake watched as long as he could, but in the end passed his binoculars to Penny. He hadn't necessarily wanted those people dead. Rebecca had pushed them into adopting her bizarre philosophy, but they were still living humans. However fucked up.

  “Will's trapped on top of the collector,” Penny told him, eyes glued to the bloody spectacle on the walkway. “He's still shooting into the crowd. Everyone else is... Well. They're gone. He just threw his gun down at one of them, and now he's just standing there. They can't climb the ducts to reach him. He's flipping them off. Oh...”

  Penny handed his binoculars back. “He jumped. Dove head-first right off the top of the collector.”

  “Damn.” Kat looked back, one brow raised. “That's a good five stories down from way up there.”

  “I'd guess that was the point.” Penny turned away. While they hadn't agreed on everything, Jake knew she and Will had been intimate for a short time. Maybe his death affected her in ways she—

  “Fuck him.” Penny spat at the fence.

  Or maybe not, Jake thought.

  Quite a few of the creatures had followed the fleeing trio as they'd escaped the garage. Nearly a third had already made it to the fence-line and were clawing vainly at the chain-link, attempting to reach the warm, living flesh beyond. Twice as many again were still on the way, and yet more were taking notice of the excitement south of the grainery. In short order, there would be hundreds of them at the fence.

  “Time to go,” Kat said with great enthusiasm.

  “I'll second that.” Jake began jogging beside her deeper into the trees. He looked back to see Penny still staring at the grainery. “Coming, Deputy?”

  Carson pulled her Beretta free from the holster at her hip, took aim, and ventilated the skull of a single zombie inside the fence. It didn't drop. The other creatures pressing against the barrier held its now truly dead body in place as they continued their horrendous moaning.

  “You're not getting me, you ugly fucks.” Penny slowly lowered her weapon. After a few steps towards the tree line, she turned her back on them, the grainery, and those she'd known within.

  The three of them headed quickly into the surrounding woods, away from the salivating horde.

  “Where are we headed?” Penny trotted along behind Jake, easily keep
ing pace.

  He looked back at her over one shoulder. “You know how to get to the old DSL airport from here?”

  * * *

  Laurel was understandably near-frantic with worry.

  It had been three days since Jake, along with her roommate and best friend Kat, had lured an enormous crowd of zombies away from their airport hideaway. They'd sworn to return the following evening after redirecting the bloodthirsty horde, but there'd been no sign of them as of yet. The pair did have one of George Foster's digital, hand-held radios but—knowing those two—wouldn't risk broadcasting even if they were 'deep in the shit', for fear of drawing the others into the hungry arms of a few hundred zombies. Even worse, the group who'd destroyed Rae's junkyard cache, kidnapped four of their party members (killing at least one of them), then tortured Jake's friend Allen Ryker along with EMT Maggie Reed, was still out there somewhere. While chances were small those aggressors would actually be monitoring the exact channel their party would be using at that exact moment, it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. Jake and Kat would err on the side of caution to keep their friends safe, even if it put them in serious danger. That was why Laurel was 'freaking', as George's buxom counterpart put it.

  “Seriously, they'll be fine,” Rae insisted, attempting for the hundredth time to quell Laurel's growing anxiety over Jake's absence. She stood before a workbench, in an olive flight-suit she'd begun to favor, ripping apart small digital something-or-others. “Jake can take care of himself, and Kat's definitely no slouch when it comes to dealing with zombies either. Damn, girl, have a little faith.”

  Jake's red-haired lover was having none of it. “You do recall the 'quick trip' the pair of them went on when we got to your place for our pair of motorcycles, don't you? When they took on a group of asshole rapists, and ended up burning down a pizzeria?”

  “In Jake's defense, that was actually me.” Sergeant Elle Pierce sat nearby on their transport's C130 style loading ramp. “I shot an RPG into the propane tank in the rear of the pizzeria’s parking lot, and—”

  “So not helping,” Foster's green-haired niece mumbled. Beatrix Foster sat brushing her green-dyed hair, ignoring her uncle's disapproving expression. She'd raided his supply of military-issue clothing earlier and while the pants she wore fit, her plain, brown, tank-top style undershirt was about three sizes too small. Possibly four.

  Laurel St. Clair was an inch or so shorter than Kat’s 5'10" with a shock of deep red hair cascading halfway down her back which earned her countless envious complements. The only problem was it would never quite cooperate. No matter what she did, one stray lock would always work its way from the scrunchie, or out of the hair clip, and fall over her left eye. She had a dancer’s build and, even though she didn’t possess the Out-To-Here breasts modern day, semi-anorexic movie starlets displayed, filled out her green tank top quite nicely. Her waist was slim and it curved appealingly into shapely hips, which had a tendency to sway a bit more than usual when she got upset. A few freckles—the legacy from a Scottish grandmother—complimented her looks and as Kat had phrased it, Would make any red-blooded boy sit up and bark at the moon.

  Currently, she 'had her mad on'.

  “I swear, I'm going to kick his ass,” Laurel fumed. “Kat's too. I kid you not.”

  “Gonna have ta get in line, Red.” George Foster sat in a camp chair, smoking one of his ever present Cuban cigars. He didn't care whether they were legal before the zombies got up and started eating everybody, and had smoked them for better than ten years.

  That took Laurel aback momentarily. “Excuse me?”

  “I told your boy to get himself back here quick. What? You think the past three days have been fun and games for me?” he demanded.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Rae told him, clearly irritated at the older man's comment. “You've been holed up in that control tower out there, drinking shit-tons of my whiskey, and—”

  George looked offended. “Hey, my 'activities' are gonna let us find them raider pussies and our girl, once our missing duo get back here. You do remember Karen, right? The one we've been trying ta figure out how ta rescue?”

  “Stop being a prick. I haven't forgotten. My memory is just fine, unlike some people. I'll cut you some slack and chalk your forgetfulness up to advancing age, not just HIAS.” Ray did not look amused.

  Foster looked confused. “What the hell is HIAS?”

  “Head In Ass Syndrome,” she told him snidely. “It was pretty common before the apocalypse, at least among older, out of shape, ex-Squids.”

  George looked as if he'd blow a gasket. “Now look here, woman. I don't mind ya' bashin' on me, but don't talk shit about the navy. That's just wrong. Besides, I'm no more—”

  “Gods above and below, will you two give it a rest?” Laurel snapped. “Why don't you do something constructive with your time? Like helping me figure out how to locate our two missing idiots?”

  She stalked up the Mimi's loading ramp past Elle, through the first of its three modules, and slammed the airlock door at the far end.

  George shook his head. “You know, I like Jake. The boy's got guts. Not a lot a' brains, though.”

  “Now, why the hell would you say that?” Rae demanded, turning away from the mess of electronic components she was tearing apart on one of the hanger's workbenches. She put both her fists on her Army-green clad hips, causing what pretty much everyone would agree was an impressive set of feminine endowments to thrust forward. These were emphasized by the fact she wore her flight-suit unzipped down to her navel, and had taken to wearing only a sports bra underneath. When Foster had asked why, Rae had moodily informed him that air conditioning was a thing of the past, and she didn't feel like strutting around with 'chicken soup stains.' Then the buxom woman had looked meaningfully at George's own sweat-soaked armpits and snorted. That had prompted one hell of an argument, proving that—like Laurel—she also had no problem dishing out a verbal lashing.

  The aging warrior leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring. “He hooked up with a redhead. Any fool will tell ya, redheaded women are trouble.”

  “That's the most asinine thing I've ever heard,” Rae informed him loftily.

  Foster shrugged. “Come on, ya know redhead broads got that mile-wide stubborn streak normally. Not ta mention one hell of a temper. They're famous fer that. Datin' one a' them is like tryin' ta dance with a tornado. Exciting as all hell at first, but eventually they'll tear your ass ta shreds. Especially if you try ta apply reason inta any discussion you have with one. That'll get ya hurt, quick-like.”

  “I'm impressed,” Rae said, shaking her head in disbelief. “That is the single most unenlightened, sexist comment I've ever heard come out of someone's mouth.”

  “Give it time, dear. George is quite the soldier, but he has no tact to speak of.” This came from Gertrude Jennings, Jake's eighty year-old previous neighbor, and their groups surrogate grandmother. The bespectacled woman sat in another chair they'd looted from a camping supply store, her ever present cane hooked over the back, knitting something unidentifiable to keep herself busy. The AR-15 .22 rifle, which was all her slight frame could handle due to a larger weapon's recoil, lay close by on the ground at her feet.

  “I got no idea what you two are talkin' about.” George sat there unconcerned with the idea of breast-based retribution. “I'm just sayin' what any guy with half a brain will confirm for ya'. You'd admit I'm tellin' the truth too, but it would violate the edicts of the Ladies’ League of Crazy.”

  Bee gave her uncle an exaggerated, pitying look. “And now, you've gone and made yourself a target for the International Sisterhood. Not a good move, Uncle George”

  George glanced around at the gathered members of the female sex nervously.

  His green-haired niece laughed, breaking the tension, and the other women followed. “Relax, maybe we can convince the Matriarchy to keep you on as court jester.”

  That prompted yet more laughter, and Allen pointed at George from
his small mattress on the floor, where he lay recovering from his injuries at the hands of the raiders.

  “Never let on you know about the LLC, dude. That'll get you black-listed by the local chapter of the Men's Lodge for the Appreciation of Boobs, Beer, and Boobs. They might even take away your secret decoder ring.”

  Allen Ryker was an unobtrusive looking guy with a constant smile who radiated—what he himself had termed—competent goofiness. He was a few inches shorter than Jake and about thirty pounds lighter, due to the fact that his parents were both diminutive in stature. Still, his forearms and wrists were rock hard from ripping apart whatever piece of machinery caught his fancy at a given moment. Though skinny, Allen moved with confidence due to years of both ballet in various studios and Kung-Fu lessons with Jake. Truth be told, he only enjoyed ballet because it gave him a great sense of balance (which was helpful in the martial arts), and he got to all but grope some really hot women on a regular basis. The phrase “curly haired, bundle of energy”, described Allen perfectly.

  Rae frowned. “You said boobs twice.”

  “I know.” Al leered at her from where he lay, safely out of arm’s reach.

  Rae rolled her eyes and turned back to her workbench.

  “Ooo. That side's nice too!” Allen piped.

  “Will you shut up?” Rae didn't turn around again, but she did stuff a rag into the belt on her flight suit to conceal her butt from further ogling.

  Now it was the men's turn to laugh.

  “Seriously though, what are we going to do about our missing duo? How long do we wait before we head out to look for them?”

  That was given voice by the group’s resident EMT: one Maggie Reed. Maggie would never be what people considered beautiful. She was pleasant enough to the eye, but her face was just a bit too harsh for beauty. Her hair was short, and so blonde it was almost white. While her arms and shoulders were heavy with muscle, she had high breasts that tapered into a slim waist, and legs so long that she matched Jake in height. That put her a couple of inches taller than the diminutive Allen.