Chapter 45
Duncan heard snatches of conversation outside the door. One voice was deep. A male. No doubt about it. The other was whispering, so he couldn’t place a guess. When the conversation ceased, the loud footfalls against the wood floor in the hall began anew. As the heavy thuds moved off toward the front of the building, the doorknob jiggled back and forth and then turned clockwise—away from the striker plate.
As the door swung inward, the change in pressure caused the blinds to rattle against the sash. Which in turn drew Duncan’s attention to the dresser where his Stetson was sitting like a big white beacon saying Someone’s been here recently, Baby Bear.
Hoping his hat would be more distraction than warning to whoever was about to step over the threshold, he sucked in his gut and tried to become one with the wall.
The muzzle of a small caliber pistol broke the plane first. Next, Duncan saw the toe of a hiking boot swing past the door’s edge. Not one of those expensive jobs Cade and his special ops buddies favored. This was a run of the mill item sold by every sporting good outfit before the fall. It was soiled with clumps of wet mud and speckled with black dots he took to be spattered blood.
Sure enough, the person entering the room was immediately fixated on the out of place Stetson. Stumped, would be a better description, thought Duncan as the door stopped moving and the person froze. Not wanting to squander the element of surprise, Duncan lashed out with his left hand and clamped his fingers around the weapon, effectively blocking the hammer open. Straightaway he felt a stab of pain as the web of skin between thumb and pointer finger stopped the hammer fall and the gun from discharging.
Enlivened by the adrenaline dumping into his system, he clamped down harder on the gun, twisted the barrel away from him, and yanked hard, drawing the weapon toward his breastbone. Fingers crushed between Duncan’s palm and the pistol’s grip, a woman a hundred pounds lighter and a full head shorter than he came along for the ride. He locked eyes with the platinum blonde whose mouth was forming a silent O. Without hesitation, Duncan brought the butt of the Colt down hard on the crown of the woman’s head.
The blow was vicious and unexpected. It froze the scream forming on her lips and sent her eyes rolling back in their lids.
Game over.
As the mousy woman’s legs turned to jelly, he threw his right arm around her shoulders and dragged her limp form away from the door swing. He let her down to the floor gently, plucked the Ruger revolver from her grasp, and, for good measure, gave her a swift kick to the temple.
With the door still yawning open, the noise of the footfalls halting and then quickly reversing course was not lost on Duncan. Nor was the distinct chatter of an AK-47 and instant return fire from a different caliber rifle coming from the street below.
“Joy. Joy. Joy …” the man in the hall called repeatedly between labored breaths. There was worry in the tone and he went on about how they were under attack until he reached the doorway and the gaping muzzle of Duncan’s .45 shocked him into silence.
For half a heartbeat Duncan sized up the man filling the doorway. He was half a head north of six-foot and three hundred pounds, easy. Legs like tree trunks. Arms like anacondas. Fingers thick as a Chicago bratwurst. And somehow the big man had worked one of them through the trigger guard of the revolver he was dragging up from beside his leg.
Finger tensing on the trigger, Duncan stared into those deep-set eyes for the latter half of the beat, meeting hatred with hatred.
Was it hatred? Or were this breather’s eyes already consuming the flesh off of his bones? Tiny here with his mouthful of chromed choppers was well fed. That was for damn sure. A biggun considering the lean times they were all surviving in.
Oh well, thought Duncan as he took a quick step to his right. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Mid-step he squeezed the trigger and saw surprise dawn on the man’s fleshy face. The single slug left the semiauto pistol at eight hundred feet per second and smacked the man’s forehead with enough force to open wide his heavily lidded eyes.
Undetectable to the human eye, the energy transferred as the bullet split bone and breached the man’s oversized cranium started a mini tsunami that rippled through pockets of cellulite and started the jowls and folds of skin encircling his neck to vibrate wildly like room temperature Jell-O.
The man’s collapse happened faster than Duncan could have imagined. Thankfully he had taken the extra half step that removed him from harm’s way. Because the man’s weight and forward lean had basically nullified the hurtling slug’s kinetic punch, he landed face first and still twitching on the exact spot Duncan had hastily vacated.
Less than ten seconds had elapsed between Duncan’s knockout blow to the woman and the gunshot that had incapacitated the monster of a man who was still flopping around on the floor, jaw clenched and eyelids aflutter.
The gunfire below was showing no sign of letting up. Using the din to cover a second report, Duncan put another bullet into the man’s head, stilling him forever. Ears ringing from the pair of thunderous discharges, he bent over and grabbed the chromed revolver. A hard tug wasn’t enough to gain possession, so he emptied it of all six shells and left it trapped in the dead man’s hand.
Duncan unslung the M4 and crossed the room in a crouch. As he passed by the prostrate woman, her hand lashed out and her fingers caught hold of his pant leg.
An action that earned her another kick to the temple.
Point of the boot dead on.
No holding back.
Last thing he wanted was for her to come to a second time and get in the way of all the killing he still had to do.
By the time Duncan reached the dresser, pulled the shades back a few inches, and jabbed the M4’s suppressor through the open window, large volumes of fire were being poured into the house across the street that Lev was holed up in. Heartened by the sight of orange licks of return fire coming from the house under siege, he braced his left elbow on the dresser top, trained the EOTech’s red pip on the roof of the middle truck, and squeezed the trigger six times in quick succession. Shiny, nickel-sized patches of bare metal materialized in a diagonal line as he raked the roof right to left.
Leaning farther over the dresser top for a better firing angle, he targeted the third pickup. Behind the windshield, he saw two women wearing looks of shock and surprise.
Whites of their eyes.
The passenger leaned forward and glanced up a tick before the barrage of lead spewing from the M4 spidered the glass and punched her back into the seat, leaving her with a shattered breastbone and frothy blood spewing from the closely spaced entry wounds. In a panic, the driver pinned the accelerator. Transmission obviously stuck in Park, the engine merely revved and continued climbing into the higher rpm band until the next pair of 5.56 hardball fired from the M4 ended her poorly executed escape attempt.
Finished with his major tasks of stalling the convoy, Duncan swung the rifle left and engaged the men firing on the house from the bed of the rear truck. Before he could get off a shot, the two bearded men were cut down by someone out of sight.
So he started firing on the men clambering out of the middle truck. After riddling the two across the backs and seeing them go face down on the brass-littered road, both dead or well on the way, what sounded like a swarm of angry hornets suddenly inhabited the airspace around his head.
Respecting the buzzing noise for what it was—the sonic signature of bullets barely missing their mark—he ducked below the sill and dove for the center of the room.
Half-dollar-sized bullet holes appeared in the ceiling, showering him with a white talc-like dust for the second time in as many hours. Through the gun-smoke haze, he watched a second barrage shred his Stetson. The offending bullets continued on in their upward trajectory and punched gaping holes in the lathe and plaster above the door, adding more dust to that already clouding the air.
Instinctively going to all fours, eyes seeking out the door, Duncan found hi
mself face-to-face with the platinum-haired woman. Up close she looked much older than he had at first thought. By two decades at least. Nearly his age instead of Cade’s. Her eyes were closed and the features of her narrow face unmoving. Once flushed red from the struggle to retain her gun, her cheeks were now rapidly approaching the color of her hair. The observation caused him to stop briefly and press his fingers to her neck on the way out the door.
Dead.
“Better you than us,” he spat.
With the gunfire directed his way dropping off sharply, he grabbed the Saiga then crawled on hands and knees and made it to the doorway unscathed.
After a quick listen divulged nothing riding over the gunfire-induced ring in his head save for continual discharges coming from somewhere outside, he holstered the .45 and turkey-peeked around the doorjamb.
Clear.
Using the door frame for support, he rose on shaky legs.
After spinning the M4 around to his back, he took one final look at his handiwork.
By whatever means necessary, indeed.
Saiga snugged tight and finger on the trigger, he crept toward the stairs, eager to face whatever lay beyond.
Chapter 46
The moment Cade felt the MSR punch back against his shoulder he was moving his hand from the stock to the bolt-handle and working it up and back. The rapid snik-snik of the fresh .338 Lapua round leaving the box magazine and being pushed into the breach by the finely honed bolt was lost on him as he tracked up and right, searching for his next target. Also unnoticed by the focused operator was the spent shell casing that spun away, dragging with it a gossamer tail of white smoke.
The dismount’s sudden death did not go unnoticed. In fact, the simultaneous puff of crimson and violent spasm of her body doubling over on itself from the bullet’s violent impact did make a blip on his give a shit radar. While he didn’t enjoy killing, sending her and those like her to hell, it was strangely satisfying knowing she would never again be part-and-parcel to the kind of wanton violence on display at the Thagon spread.
But he was well-aware her death alone wasn’t going to solve the problem. Nor would killing the others on the road below. It would be a good start but only delay the inevitable. The people the dismount was answering to were more worrisome to Cade than the two dozen cannibals currently being smacked in the face with the cold reality that they were now the hunted. And when he was done here, he was going on safari. For Adrian and her ilk possessed the GPS coordinates to the place he and his daughter called home, and he wasn’t going to rest until he was certain his bird was no longer in any danger.
By the time his second carefully aimed .338 slug was blazing downrange, several of the cannibals were aware their leader had just been stricken by an unseen enemy. A tick later, after said bullet pitched another one of their own backward from the bed of the lead truck silent and limp as a rag doll, all hell broke loose.
Which is exactly what Jamie had been waiting for. And while Cade was shifting his aim and cycling a third round into the suppressed rifle, she was squeezing off her first carefully aimed shot from the Winchester Model 70. Without a suppressor of its own, the .308 caliber proved to be much louder than her 9mm Beretta. And before she saw results through the scope, the sharp report belching from the bolt-action rifle caused her to start.
As the gunshot rolled down from the hide, one of the cannibals brandishing a rifle with a wooden stock and curved magazine went to one knee beside the lead pickup and sprayed the house Lev was holed up in with a sustained burst of gunfire. Then, from out of nowhere another man armed with an AR-style carbine fired a dozen shots non-stop into the rehab place’s upper story window, causing the blinds to jerk and briefly part in the middle.
Cade heard Jamie’s gun bark and saw the lead vehicle’s front end dip as its left front tire was destroyed by the screaming hunk of lead.
“Good shot,” he said as a round of his own found its mark, killing the passenger as she stepped from behind the second truck’s open door.
As Jamie cycled another round into the breach, she saw people piling onto the street from the two cars. Three of the four from the first car headed for the fence and trees in front of Lev’s position. The people exiting the second vehicle split up. Two heavyset women were lost from sight in the vehicle clutter while a pair of men—one wiry, the other overweight—loped off for the far side of the house and then disappeared from sight.
Seeing the middle truck’s windshield spider and buckle, Jamie dragged her crosshairs from the truck’s left front tire and chased a female runner with them until she slid behind a tree and came up on one knee, rifle barrel swinging for the small house.
No thought went into what she did next. The woman was trying to kill her man and she wasn’t having it. Besides, she thought, the trucks are going nowhere. Duncan had done his part, flushing the ones from the second truck and leaving the third with dead occupants and a shattered windshield. She squeezed the trigger with no regret and very little up-front remorse.
Since she blinked when the bullet struck the woman, she failed to see the kinetic energy spin her body clockwise and to the left. The massive damage to the woman’s torso was known only to her as she went prostrate, screaming and clutching her right side just above the hip.
When Jamie’s eyes snapped open and the image in the scope was relayed to her brain, the only thing she could discern was that Cade’s previous two shots had cut down a pair of women who had sought shelter from Lev’s return fire between the pickups and the rehab place’s south-facing wall.
Inside the house, it was all Lev could to restrain himself from opening up on targets so near to him. He stood by and watched two of the cannibals eliminated by a killer they couldn’t see.
He even remained disciplined as a passenger slipped over the side of the second truck, knelt beside the open door and fired a dozen rounds through the back window of the decoy truck.
He didn’t push the Baer’s muzzle through the open window and sight on the enemy until the moment he heard the boom from what he guessed to be Duncan’s .45. Mentally, from that moment on he was back in the sandbox. He squared up to the opening, peered through the optics, and squeezed off a dozen rounds into the personnel climbing from the second and third pickups.
A split-second after giving up his position, he was on the move and the window he had been firing from was disintegrating into a hundred jagged shards. Bullets crackled the air, making the fabric curtains dance and jerk in his wake as he hastily relocated to the furthermost window on the home’s northeast corner.
As he huddled by a wall and swapped mags he replayed the initial contact in his mind. Fairly certain he had two kills to his name—both the man who opened up first on the decoy and another fleeing the back of the truck near him—he hinged up and stole a peek at the road.
The two men were still down where he remembered them falling. Both prone forms had lost a fair amount of blood. The one nearest had a halo of crimson encircling the patch of road where his head had come to rest. Lev craned and looked past the bodies. Through the picket of trees growing up from the parking strip, he saw the grievous damage inflicted on the pickups’ occupants. Some were slumped over in the cabs, dead. Others were sprawled on the road where they’d been gunned down trying to escape the ambush. Behind the third pickup the cannibals were frantically extricating themselves from the two cars.
Before Lev could lay any kind of accurate fire on them, they were sprinting across the road and taking cover behind the trunks of the pair of trees furthest from his position. As he continued to train his M4 on the trees in hopes they would leave cover and advance on the house so he could kill them, two things happened. First, in his right-side vision, he saw a pair of squirters cross the road east of the trees and disappear from view. Then, coinciding with a single gunshot, there was screaming from the direction of the trees out front.
Fairly confident that Jamie was the shooter responsible, he used the distraction and pulled away from the
window. Being careful to slide his feet to keep from crunching the broken glass underfoot, he started off for the bedrooms in order to counter the pair flanking him.
On the move, Lev radioed a quick SITREP to the others.
Cade came back at once. “Do you have eyes on Duncan?”
Lev entered the tiny rear bedroom. There were two windows, one facing east and one south. He stepped over the pile of clothes and made his way to the south-facing window first. He parted the blinds to look out over the backyard and saw only brambles crowding the chain-link fence. As he padded to the east-facing window, he radioed back saying that he hadn’t seen or heard anything from inside the rehab place since one of the cannibals raked the upstairs windows with automatic rifle fire.
Equal measures of exasperation and worry evident in his voice, Cade said, “Copy that. Everyone be advised, I’m coming down.”
“Roger that,” said Lev. “I’ve got a pair of tangos trying to flank me. Once I’m done here I’ll check on Old Man.”
There was no response to that. Lev guessed Cade was already on the move. Quickly pocketing the radio, he pressed his body against the wall next to the east-facing window, and parted the blinds with his rifle.
What Lev saw next was wholly unexpected. One of his would-be flankers was already in the yard. Inexplicably, the man was face down in the tall grass and as still as a store mannequin. A second man—fully bearded and wearing a black stocking cap—was straddling the fence with a trio of rotters draped over him. The black nylon strap on his slung rifle was hung up on the chain-link. Which was why he was rather unsuccessfully staving off the monsters with his left arm and foot.
In the handful of seconds Lev spent watching the spectacle unfold, things went from bad to worse for the man. One of the rotters worked its gnarled fingers into the man’s shoulder-length hair and clamped down with cracked and jagged teeth on his left ear. Another wrapped its arms around the man and worked its fingers into his gaping mouth.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 25
