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

by Durnin, S. P.

“George? Do me a favor and pull her out of there, would you?”

  Foster didn't bat an eyelid. Rae had informed him of Karen's fate. That alone angered the aging fixer, almost beyond the ability to speak coherently. When she'd told him what happened to Laurel, and of her sacrifice on the building's roof, however, the older man's expression had become—to accurately describe it—absolutely-fucking-terrifying. At that moment, even his niece had taken a cautious step back after bearing witness to the towering rage and utter lack of anything resembling restraint in his eyes. The survivors tended to forget, due to the man's off-colored sense of humor and almost ridiculous lack of tact, that in his younger days, George Foster had been one of the elite. A member of a worldwide fraternity who'd engaged in everything from airborne assaults with Rangers, to maritime infiltrations with Navy SEALs, to clandestine black-bag operations on the orders of the Secretary of Defense. He'd been judge, jury and—when necessary—an executioner of lowlifes around the globe. Everywhere from Cape Town to Cabo to Cairo.

  He'd actually stopped keeping track of his body count back in '74.

  George picked Nichole up callously and set her on her feet, ignoring the blonde's muffled cry when his sandpaper-rough fingers bruised the flesh of her neck further. Kat waved him off and pulled the sock out of the stripper's mouth. Nichole spat little fuzzy tufts off of her tongue for a few seconds, then glared at Laurel's friend venomously.

  “Well. Thanks a bunch for fucking up a good thing, you losers. Do you have any idea how hard it was convincing a fierce pirate like Poole to let a woman have any kind of authority?”

  “Sorry to be an inconvenience,” Kat replied. “You're lucky Rae didn't just leave you out there. She should've, after everything you've done. You could've given all the ghouls blow-jobs. Do you realize how many people you've managed to get killed today?”

  Nichole rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Like I care? You do remember throwing Mike and me out into the street with the infected, right? I don't owe any of you one damn thing.”

  “You were put out for a reason, girlie,” Foster growled.

  “Yeah,” she drawled, in a poor impersonation of the fixer's voice, “that worked out well, huh?”

  Kat folded her arms and gave the madwoman a steady look. “After all this, I should let George put a bullet through your head.”

  “Oh, please!” Foster begged her.

  “I haven't seen a certain, red-haired slut yet. Anything happen I should know about?” Nichole looked around the module, grinning savagely. “I told him what I'd do to her, you know. I had such fun in store for pretty Miss Laurel St. Clair.”

  Kat remained standing and looked at her silently. When her comment didn't elicit a response, the stripper looked past Foster to where Rae worked feverishly on Jake's pale form.

  “I have to say, though. I think I like this better,” Nichole said brightly. “It took a lot of wheedling. You wouldn't believe how stupid some of those Purifiers were.”

  “They swallowed your line of horseshit,” George said. He scratched at his cheek, giving her an obvious middle finger. “So they pretty much had to be the dumbest sons-a'-bitches who ever walked the face of God's green Earth.”

  Nichole gave him a disgusted glance, then looked back to where Jake lay bleeding. A smile grew across her face. “I wish I could've been there. I wish I could've seen his face, just as she died. Maybe even taken a picture of it, so I could relive the moment over and over and over again!”

  The pretty Asian still said nothing.

  “And you want to know the best part?” Nichole asked, her glassy eyes wide and completely mad. “After I've taken away the person he loves most on this planet? Now, he gets to die too! I swear, in all my wildest dreams, I couldn't have—”

  Cho turned to Foster. “Take her cuffs off, please.”

  “What?” George asked.

  “Her cuffs,” she repeated, and walked back to the storage crates. “Take them off.”

  Foster was incensed. “There's no fuckin' way I'm lettin' this—”

  “George.”

  He turned to see Laurel's friend remove her sword and weapons belt. She gave him a look that warriors everywhere knew. It was the look that said, This is going to get ugly.

  She stripped off her tight Volcom tactical shirt, leaving only her cut off tank-top and vambraces. She also tossed her pair of Glocks in the storage bin before nudging the hatch shut and spinning the lock. Turning once more, Kat watched as the fixer released Nichole and stepped back smiling.

  “What are you so happy about, you crusty old fuck?” she demanded.

  George didn't answer. He just leaned against the bulkhead.

  “Do you remember when I slapped you, back at the safe-house in Columbus?” the blue-haired woman asked her, head tilted to one side.

  Nichole's eyes went flat.

  Kat was the one who smiled now. “I see that you do. You said it was a cheap shot. I think it's time we settled something between the two of us.”

  The blonde looked very upset now.

  “I think you need to learn that you are not the by-god, center of the universe,” Kat said, totally relaxed as she stood on the deck. The Mimi rocked slightly as it ran over creatures in its path, but Kat kept her balance easily without so much as a momentary wobble. “I think if you try to go after Jake or anyone else but me, Foster's going to put a bullet through your eye and feel really, really good about it. Won't you George?”

  “Praying for the opportunity,” the fixer said, pistol in one scar-covered hand.

  Eyes narrowing, Nichole moved forward a fraction. “How do I know he won't shoot me in the back anyway?”

  “You don't,” Kat admitted and stepped up to face her. “The world's changed in case you haven't noticed. I can understand your failure to keep up with current events, though. You've been too busy, what with spending all your time sucking off bigoted jerk-weeds and shooting up. What I do know is you are in severe need of an epic-level butt-kicking, and guess what? I am just the crazy-ass, Nazi-killing, zombie-slaying bitch , who also just so happens to think Jacob O'Connor is the bravest and sexiest damn man ever to walk the face of this planet, to give you one.”

  Nichole ran forward screaming with her arm drawn back, which completely telegraphed her punch. Cho waited calmly until the mad-woman was only six feet away, and then blurred forward with a quick, stiff-armed fist that caught the blonde squarely in the center of her solar plexus. The air whooshed from Nichole's lungs in an awkward rush, as her forward momentum was brought to a sudden halt. She stood there clutching her chest, all the while trying to inhale despite her clenched diaphragm in a fair impression of a goldfish. Kat watched and waited for her to recover. The woman before her had been the catalyst behind the torture of Allen and Maggie. Nichole had contributed to the deaths of Karen and the blue-haired woman's best friend Laurel. This megalomaniacal, pea-brained thunder-cunt had attempted to take Jacob away from her.

  And she was due some pain.

  After getting her breath, the blonde came at her again, arms wind-milling. Kat would've laughed, if the sight hadn't brought the taste of bile to her mouth. It was a miscarriage of fate that this pathetic creature—because that's what Nichole really was—still drew breath, while Laurel didn't. Cho swept her clumsy attack aside and sent Nichole reeling with an elbow to the side of her face. The blonde recovered before bashing into the Mimi's rear door, spun, and gamely tried to come at her again. Kat bounced her off the transport's hull by redirecting a truly ridiculous punch the woman threw at her head. She recovered and staggered towards Kat again. That earned Nichole an open-handed chop across chops, which caused her teeth to cut into the inside of her mouth painfully.

  Kat began to pummel Nichole at will. A right cross opened up a gash in her cheek. Another blacked her left eye. Cho's spinning backhand sent the stripper bouncing off the hull again and into one of the motorcycles in the rear of the module. Finally, a powerful haymaker dropped the blonde nearly senseless to the gigantic vehicle
's steel deck.

  The ninja-girl turned to George and took a step back. As he watched, a terrifying presence moved there just behind her eyes. Something Kat normally kept locked away, imprisoned deep within the darkest, dankest pits of her psyche with the strongest chains her soul could muster. A diabolic shadow that gloried in the pain she caused. A ravager only loosed on rare, special occasions like this. When it needed to be unleashed on people who preyed upon others.

  On monsters.

  “Open the rear hatch,” she told him.

  He nodded slowly and moved to the nearby control panel, as Cho bent and hefted the now dazed Nichole by her hair. The ex-stripper managed to rise painfully to her feet, and Laurel's friend dragged her to the clam-shell as it slowly lowered towards the passing pavement outside.

  They were outside the facility now, away from the horde that stalked the power plant's grounds. This was not to say there were no infected about. Many were still heading towards the blazing office complex, drawn there by the moans of the other creatures inside, the movement of the flames, even by the sour smell of rotten jerky cooking as fully a third of the awful things were consumed and finally purified with fire. Some had turned to watch and even shuffle towards the three humans in the Mimi's rear hatch, as it passed into the darkness, though.

  “I'm not a vindictive person by nature.” Kat held Nichole against the hull by her ratty and ash- coated hair. “I don't hold grudges. I never saw the point of being cruel or hurtful, even to people I didn't like.”

  Nichole's eyes were locked on the hatchway. More specifically, on the dozens of creatures the Mimi passed on the road outside the hatchway.

  “The problem is you're beyond redemption.” Kat let go of the woman's hair. “You create nothing but pain, and then you attempt to make others as miserable as you are so you won't have to be alone in your misery. I'd pity you, if you had an ounce of concern for anyone other than yourself. But you don't. And, quite frankly, I'm sick of the sight of you.”

  Pain exploded up into Nichole's brain from her left knee. The same one Kat had just shattered with a brutal roundhouse kick that caused her joint to fold sideways instead of backwards. The unmistakable pop of cartilage tearing was heard clearly by both Gwen and Rae at the other end of the module. The force of the blow spun Nichole halfway around. She began to collapse as her leg bent like a broken ventriloquist dummy’s appendage and sent her screaming towards the floor.

  Laurel's friend caught her as she fell by the back of her hair and her filthy, ash-covered, Purifier-issue suspenders. The look on Cho's face was beyond anger. Beyond hate. Beyond anything George had ever seen in his forty-plus years as a soldier and then a covert operative of the United States' Government. They'd turned the overhead lighting on after carrying the writer's limp form into the Mimi, because the green security lights had been far too dim for Rae to work on Jake's wound. The brighter halogen lights gave George a great view of the all-consuming rage on Kat's face, as she hefted the woman—like the hundred and fifteen pound sack of shit she was—took a step forward, and threw her out of the transport's hatch into the night.

  Bee had obeyed her uncle's order and kept their speed low, between fifteen and twenty miles per hour. So when Nichole hit the asphalt, she rolled a bit but wasn't really injured. Unless you counted the teeth that Kat had loosened prior, her knee that wouldn't support her weight, and a healthy case of road-rash.

  After rolling to a stop, the stripper finally realized how bad her situation really was. She was currently sitting out in the open, there wasn't a soul around, and she had no weapons. Oh, and there were quite a few very hungry ghouls looking at her like someone had just rung the dinner bell from the lanes on both sides of Route 52.

  “Say hello to your friends Milo and Poole for us, you miserable twat!” Nichole heard Kat yell.

  The light streaming from the Mimi's rear door was fading fast as the vehicle rolled on, but there was plenty of moonlight. Nichole could clearly see the creatures orienting on her. She didn't lose it until dozens of moans droned out from cold, gray lungs and the infected began to stagger her way.

  “No!” Though hurt, she managed to rise and began hopping comically after the vehicle. “Come back! Come ba-a-a-ack!”

  The pair standing in the Mimi's hatch watched as Nichole avoided the first few infected, but it wasn't long before they had her surrounded. Once that happened, her screams of fear soon changed to shrieks of agony. The creatures latched onto her arms first, then went to town. They began chewing on her shoulders and thighs next, tearing away great, bloody mouthfuls and clawing at her skin with half-skeletal fingers. It was repulsive beyond words, watching someone being consumed by those that were once human. There was something horrible—and fundamentally disturbing—about the expressions on their faces as they gnawed on Jake's ex. It wasn't quite pleasure. Satisfaction, maybe?

  Kat was certainly feeling satisfied. Depressed, about two steps from having a breakdown because Laurel was dead and Jake lay bleeding less than fifty feet away, but definitely satisfied with how the sickness called Nichole had finally been dealt with. She'd reached her breaking point when the smarmy blonde started gloating about how Jake was going to die. She'd even surprised herself then. She'd never actually snapped like that before. Granted Kat had slapped the bubble-head back in Foster's safe-house, but the blue-haired woman had never intentionally set out to inflict pain on that level before. It came as no surprise to her that she was good at it.

  Must be love, Cho thought with a mental shrug.

  Nichole's screams cut off with a gurgle as one of the creatures bit her throat out. Blood fountained and Jake's blonde, ex-stripper, ex-Nazi, ex-girlfriend then became ex-tinct. At least, if she didn't turn into one of them she did. Kat didn't see that as much of a problem, however. From the look of it, there were some fresh limbs being tugged loosely around the dog pile in the middle of Route 52.

  “Hope they choke on her,” Foster chuckled. He spat into the darkness before toggling the Mimi's hatch shut once more.

  Kat missed his comment entirely as she rushed back to the front of the module. All the bimbo-slapping in the world wouldn't change the fact that Jake's blood was still all over her. It had become tacky and begun to dry on her clothes and in her hair, but she couldn't have cared less. Upon reaching the lead end of the rear compartment, she was treated to the sight of Rae heating the blade of her Field Fighter knife.

  With a blowtorch.

  “What, exactly, are you going to do with that?” Cho asked calmly, while attempting not to jump to any conclusions.

  “I'm going to use it to seal Jake's wound shut.”

  So much for not jumping to conclusions, Kat mused. “Oh, you are out of your fucking m—”

  “Dammit, Kat, if I don't, he'll just keep bleeding!” The knife was beginning to glow an angry orange. “I've done what I can! I've sutured the muscles in his shoulder together again, and the cord will dissolve over time. With a little rest and a lot of work, he'll probably keep full use of his arm, but it's either this, or we start looking for a nice pretty spot for Jake's grave!”

  Kat's eyes went to the writer's face. It was almost eggshell pale and his breathing was getting ever more shallow. She moved beside his good arm to take his hand. She'd spoken with enough burn victims to know the nerves deadened as the wound healed, but until then the pain would be nearly unbearable.

  “Do it,” she said quietly.

  “Alright, George? Hold his legs. Gwen, you take his arm with the gaping stab wound.” Foster's counterpart hit the intercom. “Beatrix? Penny? We're sealing Jake's arm up now, so he's probably going to yell. Do not. Crash. The Mimi.”

  Bee's voice crackled back. “Oh, jeez. It's gonna be bad, isn't it?”

  “Yes,” Rae told him shortly.

  They all grabbed hold and, after taking a deep breath, Rae pressed the glowing knife against Jake's shoulder.

  His skin melted under the blade and the scent of cooking meat filled the air. For a few seconds nothi
ng happened, then his eyes shot open but they were wide and unseeing. As the flesh of his arm sizzled, the pain finally worked its way through the exhaustion and into O'Connor's brain. His body heaved up off the gurney, too tired to rise but unable to remain still, while Rae pressed the red-hot steel against his shoulder.

  “Hold him!” George was hanging on for all he was worth. Even half-dead, Jake seemed to be a hell of a lot stronger than a man his size should be. “Shit! Rae, ya gotta hurry, woman!”

  Gwen could barely keep her grip and Kat wasn't doing much better. The writer struggled blindly and was pulling her off her feet. Rae yanked the knife away, dropped it in a tray behind her under the med cabinet, and quickly began slathering triple antibiotic gel on his seared flesh. That did nothing to make him comfortable, and he nearly made it up off that gurney.

  Kat was getting desperate. If he didn't stop, Jake was going to do himself some real damage. Near panic, she jumped up and knelt over him to take his contorting face between her hands.

  “Jake, you have to stop!” Cho was close enough for him to see her, even with blood still half obscuring his vision, but her words still weren't processing.

  “Baby, please!” she begged him.

  That earned her a raised eyebrow from Foster, but he held his tongue. Rae made a shushing motion at him as Kat tried to calm Jake's mad convulsions and realization dawned on his face. She kept speaking to him soothingly, stroking his bloody face and slowly drawing him back from the pain.

  His body gave a final jerk and settled back to the surface of the gurney. Jake's gaze was sane again, but still leaked tears tinted with blood from the broken vessels beneath his eyelids. Kat smoothed his sweaty hair and stroked his face. “We're done now. It's alright. You're going to be fine.” She couldn't keep her hand from trembling at the suffering in his eyes.

  “Laurel's gone,” he said weakly, then clenched his teeth as Rae secured a dressing over the awful burn. “She’s gone, Katherine! Sh-she's...”

  Jake saying her name sent a thrill up Kat's spine. She felt low for enjoying it, but couldn't help herself. “It's not your fault. You did everything... absolutely everything you could.”