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

by Durnin, S. P.

  Cho wrinkled her nose in disgust, then threw the nasty thing towards the center of the yard. It rolled to a stop against one of the transformer units and hurriedly ran back to kneel next to Jake. He was breathing evenly, and she took that as a good sign.

  “I won't let them have you. I promise.” She eased down against him again and laid her head on his right shoulder. Closing her eyes a moment, it was easy to pretend they were alone somewhere, despite the noise of the creatures attempting to enter the yard.

  That was when the cafeteria fence finally collapsed.

  Kat's eyes snapped open at the sound of flesh and steel striking the ground. She stared east at the sight of zombies struggling over one another—and the fence's double strand of razor wire—into the yard. There was no order or system to their efforts. Each strove only to move forward, completely unaware of all the others in the massive dead pod. It reminded her of a crowd at a heavy metal concert. On acid. If everyone had been infected with rabies.

  The first ranks were pushed to the gravel by the initial surge when the barrier fell. They struggled awkwardly to rise, but remained pressed to the diamond-shaped links by lifeless feet as the others stumbled forward on top of them. There were so many. Men, women, even toddlers slowly crossed the razor wire, leaving behind fabric from their filthy clothes and strips of skin torn from their unfeeling bodies. The offices at their backs were an inferno, framing the mobile dead with flames ripped straight from the Devil's own personal playground. Kat was certain if there was a place, where all the evil people of the world went to burn after they died, she had surely just caught a glimpse of it.

  The foremost creatures began to wander aimlessly after crossing the wire. They were aware there was prey inside the transformer enclosure somewhere; they didn't know its exact location yet though.

  After attempting to rouse Jake, Cho watched them shamble around drunkenly as she wracked her brain for options. The conduit was out. That's why she'd moved them to the distant fence-line. Even with Rae, Penny, and Gwen's help, it would've been a struggle to get the writer's limp body up onto the piping. Kat didn't have a hope of doing it by herself. Trying to hide was equally pointless. The only shelter inside the perimeter of the yard was the small shed, previously used to house the scissor-lift. It wouldn't withstand five minutes of pounding by the hungry ghouls before they either gained entry through the roll-down door, or it lost its integrity altogether and simply fell apart.

  Now would be the perfect time for the cavalry to show up.

  Kat visually searched the area outside the fence. Nothing. She felt her stomach head south for her ankles. Even in the darkness, the Mimi's ugly, pink hull would be visible from quite...

  Wait a minute. She felt a light-bulb pop flick on inside her head.

  There was nothing outside the rear fence-line. No Mimi, no Rae, or Penny, or Gwen.

  But more importantly, no zombies. They were all trying to cram through the ten-foot gap in front, where the fence had gone down.

  Keeping low, Kat took Jake under his armpits and pulled him towards the spot where Rae had cut her way through the high-tension wire at the chain-link's base.

  “Just so you know,” she grunted, “we make it through this? You're not going anywhere without me, ever again. You get in way too much trouble.”

  * * *

  The hunger was all.

  The heat given off by the burning Gas and Electric plant meant nothing. None of the creature's nerve endings registered any sensation. It had moved towards the light and sound generated by the burning pseudo-fortress steadily, instinctively aware that prey should be nearby.

  It had once been a woman in her late thirties. The garish, neon cat-vomit, pattern of the things skirt warred with its excessive, raccoon-style eye makeup and what was left of its fraying gray skin. Other unfortunates milled around it, clothes igniting from the nearby flames and not one of them reacted.

  The hunger was all.

  There was movement through the flames. The creature could see brief flickers of the transformer yard beyond the smoke. Maybe it was prey. The blonde in the garish skirt, missing both her arms and most of the soft tissue from her upper torso, staggered into the fire. The already rot-fouled air filled with the aroma of burning hair. The creature continued slowly into the inferno, climbing over wreckage and white hot steel, losing more and more of itself with every step.

  It made it almost halfway through. By the time the burning horror finally fell, the BeautyQuest Team Coordinator pin had melted deep into its charred flesh.

  -Chapter Sixteen-

  Kat lay on the ground beside Jake in the darkness, and tried to catch her breath.

  The slight incline behind the transformer enclosure had provided them with a bit of cover—which was a lucky break—but their situation had not improved by much.

  After a fair amount of effort and the help of Jake's crowbar, Cho had managed to pry up the base of the fence and pull him into the overgrown grass beyond. Though no weakling, she wasn't going to be able to move them much farther. The muscles in her back and shoulders already felt as if they were on fire. She'd managed to drag him maybe forty yards through the turf outside the barrier but, though safe for the moment, they were totally exposed. Thankfully, the infected still only meandered around inside the transformer yard, some of them still smoldered after getting too close to the flames that engulfed the Purifier's previous home. Soon, when they didn't find anything to feed on, they'd begin to move back through the broken section of the fence and spread out again. It was only a matter of time before the creatures found them hunkering amidst the overgrown weeds, and then it would be over.

  It wasn't that zombies were adept at hunting. The average creature simply walked randomly in a given direction, until some kind of stimuli activated its predatory senses. It seemed to be their natural state, between gristly feedings that is. There was no communication between them, they possessed no hive-mind consciousness, and they had no hierarchy or leadership. So. No smart-ghouls to be had, thank goodness. They were independent, solitary, and utterly devoid of anything resembling personality. They didn't have any conscience, desires, causes, or motivations. They just didn't stop. Ever. They kept going past the point of normal human endurance until they fell apart, or were put down.

  The swift-moving group they'd seen enter Rebecca's grainery during their escape with Deputy Carson still concerned her, but Cho didn't have the luxury—or spare time—to wonder about them at that very second. If they managed to survive the night—and just then, that was a big if—Kat would bring it up to Jake, once he recovered. Surely there would be more of them, and the other members of their group needed to be warned about the more agile creatures. Smart-ghouls would be bad, but zombies that could run could be equally as dangerous. Kat shook off her reverie and focused her attention back on the present once more.

  She had made Jake as comfortable as she could with his head rested on her small fanny-pack sized, med kit, then checked her pistol. Thirteen .9mm bullets. Same as there had been earlier, when she'd combined her two partial magazines. That gave her eleven for the ghouls. She pulled the empty magazine from her pocket and loaded it with the remaining two rounds.

  One for each of us, Kat thought sadly.

  The next half-hour was both excruciatingly long and painfully brief. After the yard filled, many of the creatures began to stumble west along the fence and into the areas beyond. She watched them begin falling back into roamer mode, as Allen had termed it. The point when they stopped actively hunting and resumed a slow, hungry plod towards final death. Jake's friend had taken the term from one of the first-person shooters he'd enjoyed so much, prior to the dead rising.

  A large group of the infected moved along the outside of the chain-link nearby, already beginning to fan out. It would only be a few minutes until the zombies found the two of them, even in the dark. Soon, it would be nothing but a short fight, a few seconds of sorrow, and an instant of pain as Cho took care of them both. Then... Well, maybe
they'd finally be together.

  It was time.

  Bending over Jake's bloody form, Kat kissed him goodbye.

  Then Cho was treated to a welcome and uplifting vision of destruction as Rae's Hummer roared around the south-east corner of the Purifier's pyre.

  Elle opened fire on the crowd approaching their friends’ hiding place, with an MG-34 machine gun. She'd hurriedly assembled it after finding the weapon and its component parts locked inside a strongbox in the Quonset hut style garage. 7.92mm rounds tore through the rotten things as easily as poking a six-penny nail through a framed piece of cheesecloth. The blonde-haired Sergeant screamed obscenities at the horrors as she began perforating their flesh—and quite a few of their skulls—with hot, belt-fed death. Her goal wasn't to kill them all, although if that did happen not a single member of their party would shed a tear. It was to herd them.

  The dead turned towards the Humvee, battalion strong, and shuffled after it in pursuit.

  “Stay down!” Elle hollered, her voice almost lost in the bedlam of the .50cal's roar and the hundreds of throats moaning to take just one, little bite out of her.

  Kat dropped flat, still holding the writer protectively, clutched her pistol in one hand, and desperately hoped for a miracle.

  Just this once, those incorporeal, vain, vengeful-minded sky-beasts provided.

  The Screamin' Mimi blew out of the flames along the northern edge of the office block, moving fast and tearing up real estate. The creatures between the massive vehicle and the edge of the transformer yard parted so easily against its enormous Pepto-colored plow, that anyone watching would've searched the surrounding area for Moses. It didn't just ram through the mob. It annihilated them.

  The transport's nose blade sliced scores of infected cleanly in half, while its hull pulped dozens more. Many of the creatures fell beneath its massive weight, smashed into the earth like flesh-flavored jelly beans by its solid combat-armored tires. An awful wake of body-parts and tainted fluids was thrown out to each side of the Mimi's prow, slamming yet more of the loathsome dead from its path. Just like before when it had destroyed the Purifier's gate, the impervious SEP skin of the vehicle preformed like a dream. If she hadn't known the thing was virtually soundproof, Cho would've sworn she'd heard Foster howling at the wheel in glee over the revolting spectacle.

  While the bubble-gum hued leviathan created an avenue of shredded, chunky death worthy of a tank-sized food processor, Leo sped the Hummer back along the parade of creatures, drawing them further away towards the power plant's settling pond. The huge pool located to the south was used for filtering the facilities industrial by-products. Liquid was pumped into the enormous depression, where it was allowed to evaporate, leaving only solid waste. Waste that was then reclaimed and packaged for disposal and shipped to a HazMat facility upstate.

  Young Salizar and the blonde bombshell—who was enthusiastically turning zombies into impressionism pieces—continued to lead the horde away from their friends. They were to circle the pond once, keep the creatures interested for a few minutes, then haul ass. That would give the others time to retrieve Kat and Jake, then head for their prearranged rendezvous point ten miles distant.

  The Mimi's access hatch was already dropping when the rear pulled even with where Cho and the writer lay. George was the first to exit, armed with a carbon copy of the Hummers minigun, followed closely by a frantic looking Gwen. Both ran for their friends, weapons up and pointed at the darkness, scanning the night for nearby threats. The gaping hatch behind them showed the interior lit by a dim, green glow, that didn't seem to attract undead notice. The ninja-girl filed that little factoid away for later investigation and possible use, as Foster skidded to a halt before her.

  “What took you so long?” she demanded.

  The fixer snorted and gestured at his pink behemoth. “Hey, my baby's tough, safe and pretty. Not really that maneuverable in tight spaces, though.”

  “That's why we have the Hummer,” Gwen said as she watched the ghouls in the transformer yard closely.

  “Sweet Baby Jesus on a Flying Fucking Mountain Bike,” Foster said, obviously shaken as he pulled O'Connor into a sitting position and took in his injuries. “This boy looks like ten miles of bad fucking road. Dammit, girl, has he been bit?”

  Kat could've wept in relief at the old soldier's irreverence and helped Foster lift Jake over one of his burly shoulders. “They kicked him around a bit, and he has some shallow cuts on his chest, but none of those things got to him. The wound on his arm is pretty bad, though. That skinhead guy stuck big knife in it. How did you know where to find us?”

  George led her up the ramp. “Since all those fuckers were tryin' to get through the fence back here, Rae, Penny, and Blondie here managed to get to our Hummer. Me and Bee were tryin' to figure out where you all were for a while there, once the fire started. We thought you might be in the shit, so we sat tight and waited for some kind'a signal, two buildings to the north.”

  “Elle used the Hummer's radio to reach them, and George came up with the plan to use it as a distraction.” Gwen activated the hatch controls.

  “It was the only way we could think of ta get ta the two a ya.” He laid Jake on the single gurney and removed the younger man's bandage. “Whoa. How long has he been unconscious?”

  “Thirty or forty minutes. Can you help him?” The fixer's reaction worried Cho.

  Foster keyed the intercom next to their med-station. “Rae, get back here. Now.” He began pulling sealed trays from a cabinet on the wall, next to the gurney.

  The brown-haired woman came through the hatch from the second module, took one look at Jake, and then started giving Gwen orders. “George, we can handle this. Can you give me some room? And tell Bee to get this monstrosity moving.”

  “Don't listen to her, honey; she doesn't know you like I do,” he said, brushing by her and patting the Mimi's hull affectionately, before keying the intercom again. “Bee? Head for the gate. Slow-like! We got hurt people back here.”

  “Will do, Uncle George.” Her voice squawked back and they felt the Mimi move forward gently.

  “Penny up there with ya?”

  “I'm here,” Carson's voice told him. “What can I do?”

  George toggled the intercom. “Tell Bee to concentrate on her driving. The Mimi angles a bit wide to be makin' any sudden turns.”

  “Got it, George.”

  “And Deputy? Don't touch anything up there until I can run you through the operations manual. You break it, you buy it,” George said harshly.

  “You know what? You're the most offensive, pea-brained, narrow-minded, son-of-a—”

  George shut down the intercom with a sneer.

  They watched nervously as Rae directed the surviving Barbie in the cleaning of Jake's wound. Normally, Foster's counterpart was an unassuming intellectual. When a problem she knew how to handle came along though, the sandy-haired woman changed completely. She took charge of the area around the gurney, barking orders like a Major General commanding a legion of Dragoons.

  Kat pulled George away by one arm. “I didn't know Rae had medical training.”

  “Oh yeah,” he replied and lit a stogie with a wooden match, once again struck against his cheek. “She's actually got battlefield medic certification. To go along with the Bachelor's Degrees in Bio-Chemistry and Metal Fabrication.”

  “What?” That was a little intimidating. Hot, able to use heavy weaponry, and brilliant? Kat felt a twinge of jealousy at the beautiful woman's mounting list of abilities.

  George grunted. “Always been an overachiever. At least, according to her. Personally? I jus' think she gets bored easy.”

  Rae was currently holding the gash in Jake's flesh open with a pair of small surgical retractors and ignoring George. “Shit. Knife hit the bone.”

  “That's bad, right?” Gwen asked. She handed her more gauze swabs to blot Jake's wound.

  Rae's lips pressed together in frustration. “It's not good. This is deep. It's
still bleeding quite a bit, too. His color is terrible, which tells me he's losing way too much blood, so I'm going to have to stitch him up. Then I'll seal the wound.”

  Foster squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Ah, hell.”

  Kat was confused. “That's bad?”

  “Yeah. Ya might want ta go up front with Bee an' Carson fer a bit.”

  “I'm not leaving Jake,” Cho said firmly.

  “It's alright, George. I'll probably need both of you to help restrain him anyway,” Rae said.

  George snapped his fingers and moved to one of the floor-level crew bunks.

  “Oh, that reminds me. While Rae's workin', there's something you need ta see.” He unlocked the hatch and hefted the privacy door up along its track. “Look who our girls found on her way to the Hummer.”

  Cho bent over and peeked into the chamber. She didn't move or speak for almost a full minute. When she did, her voice was low, cold, and full of promised mayhem.

  “Hello... Nichole.”

  “She was trying to break into one of the vehicles outside,” Foster told her, looking like he couldn't decide whether to laugh at the idea or scrape something smelly off the bottom of his boot. “Almost forgot ‘cause I had to take some drastic measures when they walked her in. She kept carping like a Russian Mafioso's moll, so it was either shut her up or shoot her.”

  Jake's ex was a mess. Her hair was totally disheveled and some of it had been crisped, telling Kat the bimbo had come close to being a briquette in a Nazi barbeque. Her clothing—along with much of her skin—had been coated with ash and dark smudges, making her look like she'd spent some time crawling up a very dirty chimney.

  She'd also been gagged with what looked to be one of the fixer's dirty socks.