Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands

by Meredith, Peter

  “Aren’t you going to help me?” the Dead-eye asked.

  “I was thinking I might kill you instead.” He let the glove fall and now the Forino gleamed. The Dead-eye was too far away for Cole to trust taking a shot. Of course, he didn’t need to. Not just yet. He knew more would be coming and they’d be coming straight for him.

  Right on cue, there was movement in the darkness. From out of it came a soft hiss. “He knows. That can only mean one thing.”

  “He’s a hunter,” another voice growled.

  A third, from somewhere above him, whispered, “We can’t let him escape.”

  Cole was about to say that he wasn’t interested in escape, when there was a scrape from behind him. He turned just in time to see the narrow board pulled down into the shadows of the gaping chasm. He shot the light in that direction and stared as a black scaly thing climbed up, spider-like from the opening.

  It stood hunched over on the far side of the opening, licking black teeth with a black tongue.

  Chapter 16

  Movement to the side had Cole spinning, flashing the light sideways as if it were a saber. The light burned into a pair of black eyes, causing the creature to flail back in pain. He shot the light into the next, and she too cringed and cursed. These two were the closest—there were three more behind them.

  “Fuuuck,” he whispered, feeling the dread coalesce inside him like a huge ball of cold grease sitting in the pit of his stomach. Six was too many. No one could take on six. Not in the dark. Not under these insane conditions. Suddenly, escape was very much on Cole’s mind, but that creature—it was hard to even think of it as a Dead-eye—was blocking the way. To escape, Cole would have to practically leap into its arms.

  “Run Corrina!” he yelled, deciding to make a show of it before turning the gun on himself. There could be only one outcome in this fight and he wasn’t going to be someone’s meal. Not while he was alive, that is.

  His one hope was to buy Corrina enough time to get out. How? The thought bounced around uselessly in his mind. There was no how, and there would be no escape. That was the truth. The truth sucked. It was enraging, and that was good. Cole needed a little rage just then to overcome the fear of the Dead-eyes arrayed before him. Thankfully, he lived in a constant state of irritation and it didn’t take much to turn that into rage.

  To the amazement of the zombies inching forward, Cole attacked. The Forino was a fine gun, but under the conditions: the dark, the swaying, tilted floor, the small, moving targets, he had to be careful not to burn through ammo. Fifteen rounds can go in seconds. When he leapt forward, his first attack was not with the gun. It was with a thundering front kick. He put all his strength into it and when he connected, he felt the jolt right up to his hip. The force of the kick sent the black-eyed female tumbling down the linoleum.

  Then a hulking beast was reaching out a long arm. Cole twisted to the side and fired the gun. The bullet split the creature’s jaw, but instead of riding through its throat to blast out its spine, it followed a path along the interior of the creature’s mouth and came out under its ear—a waste of a bullet. The beast didn’t even blink. Its outstretched hand caught Cole and pulled him in close.

  The move was fast and vicious, and had his jaw not been broken and unhinged, he would have torn Cole’s throat out with his teeth. Instead it only mashed its bloody face into Cole’s neck.

  Cole stuck the Forino into the thing’s ear and pulled the trigger, spraying blood in a black fan. He was so confident that the creatures was dead that he was already aiming the gun over the creature’s shoulder. But this was the problem with the speed and ferocity of the Dead-eyes. The hulking zombie had not sat quietly by waiting for the bullet to tunnel out its head. Furious that it couldn’t feed, it had reared back to head-butt Cole when the bullet from the Forino blasted out its left eye, skipped off its nasal bridge and flew out who knew where.

  This, of course, infuriated the beast even more and he flung Cole away from him, just as Cole pulled the trigger a third time. This bullet went wide of everything, while Cole found himself bouncing and sliding down the incline until he fetched up hard against the metal grid. When he looked up, he saw all five of the creatures racing down at him, glee on their hideously grey faces.

  They thought he was trapped. The metal frame was no cage, however, and he wiggled through and found himself hanging over a drop into darkness. Although he could see glints of metal, he had no idea on what exactly he’d be landing.

  Stuffing the flashlight down into the neck of his overalls, he began climbing up and around the outside of the frame which was covered in bent and warped tin shingles five feet across. Necessity drove him on even as his hands burned and bled. A Dead-eye—the female—crawled out after him. She wore shreds of clothes and her skin was shredded and scarred. Like an insect she raced after him, uncaring that her hands were blistering or that the tin was slicing them to ribbons. All she cared about was the demand inside her for clean blood.

  Cole wished he had the time to pull the flashlight so he could get an exact fix on her forehead, but there were no seconds left to spare as other Dead-eyes were coming up through what was to them the slanted ceiling. He fired three times at the shadowed creature and was satisfied to see her tumble away into the darkness. Satisfied, but not happy as he heard a sound like a gong being struck as she landed in the darkness—a second later she began a slurred cursing. Still alive.

  “Fuck!” Cole snarled. Six bullets down and not one kill. He was about to start on again when part of the metal siding seven feet away was torn inward as easily as if it was wet cardboard. A gruesome and bloody head popped up and Cole proved that he could still shoot straight by putting a bullet right between the eyes.

  His elation was short-lived. More of the tin sheets were pulled down here and there. He shot at a head that popped up and although the bullet creased the thing’s skull, it didn’t kill it. Cole found himself playing whack-a-mole and losing. After another wasted bullet, he was just digging for a second magazine when the tin sheet beneath him was grabbed by two scaled hands.

  Cole had a single moment before he was pulled down along with the shingle. “Fuuuu…” he cried and then he was falling. The creature broke his fall and the two rolled in a heap, the Forino punching holes in the beast as fast as Cole could pull the trigger. Although he emptied the gun into it, the thing did not die, but it did weaken long enough for Cole to rip himself from its grip.

  The second he did, another was on him. Cole was hot at that point and with a pivot and a heave, he threw the beast so hard that it slid right through one of the openings at the bottom of the floor and flew off into the darkness. In a just world it would’ve impaled itself on a hunk of rebar. It wasn’t a just world and it was up again in no time, growling like an animal somewhere in the darkness below.

  There was no time to consider how quickly it could climb back up. There were still two of the creatures with Cole in the center of the trap, and a third watching from across the hole in the tunnel. Cole was honestly surprised that he was still alive. It was too bad that he wouldn’t be for much longer. The Forino’s slide was back, showing an empty chamber and the Mega was still stuffed down in his pocket.

  He didn’t even have the flashlight to wield; it had fallen from his overalls and was uselessly shining its light off at an angle away from the fight. Cole hated the idea of giving up a gun, even an empty one, in the middle of a fight; there’d be no getting it back. But he needed the Mega and he couldn’t spare even a second to switch it to his off hand. He dropped the Forino and dug madly for the huge pistol.

  It had slipped easily into his pocket but now it fought to come out again. Too late, he realized that it had snagged on the frayed edge of the old cotton. Then one of the Dead-eyes was on him. It had been a small man when it was human. Small and weak. Now it was small and inhumanly strong. It flashed at Cole low and amazingly fast, tackling the bigger man and sending him flying. He landed on his back with the creature on top of him,
its hideous mouth snapping black and broken teeth an inch from Cole’s face.

  Cole tried to yank its head back by the long tangles of greasy hair that fell across him. He pulled…and pulled a long strip of bloody scalp from the thing’s head. “Christ!” he cried, dropping the hunk of flesh and shoving his now bloody hand up under the thing’s throat. It took all the strength in his arms to keep those terrible teeth from ripping into him. His hips and legs were another story.

  The zombie was so single-minded that its position was easily turned. Cole twisted violently, planted one foot on the flooring and reversed their positions, only to voluntarily switch back when another of the zombies came straggling up to throw itself on the two. It was bleeding from five holes and couldn’t use the lower right side of its body, but it still had the need! The need made it an unthinking beast and it shoved aside the smaller zombie to get at Cole.

  Cole didn’t wait to be eaten. Like a wild thing himself, he kicked away from the mass of flailing arms and tearing claws until he was able to stand. He then went for the Mega, only realizing then that his overalls were in shreds and that the gun was practically falling from his torn pocket. He ripped the gun out and as he did, extra bullets from the pocket began to plunk heavily on the linoleum.

  For half a second, he thought about making a wild grab for them but then reality in the form of a scrabbling bloody thing crawling at him righted his thinking. Even with only three working limbs, it was dreadfully fast. It came right on, utterly unafraid of the big gun. When Cole fired, it was like a bomb went off. Fire leapt from the barrel and the explosion seemed to make the entire barely-balanced structure teeter.

  The huge bullet hit just below the thing’s right eye and tore off that entire side of its face, right down to its neck. Thankfully the dark hid the full spectacle. Nothing could’ve lived through the blast. The beast fell back as if he’d been pile-driven down.

  “Oh fuck,” Cole whispered. It was getting up again. At the same time the other, smaller Dead-eye was circling to the right. The blast from the Mega had shocked it out of its pure animal mode. It had no respect for Cole but the Mega had got its attention.

  Cole swung the gun at the creature. It ducked down and away, circling Cole, looking for an opening or maybe just giving its wounded companion time to get close. It used the dark and kept just far enough away so that it was little more than a black shape.

  Five bullets left, Cole thought—he had killed one of the creatures, had thrown two off into the dark, was fighting a separate pair—and he still had to take on the scaly black monster across the chasm. Five bullets wasn’t enough. He couldn’t waste a single one and yet he couldn’t waste the seconds that were ticking away, either. Unexpectedly, he leapt at the Dead-eye and fired the gun. He just missed. The bullet tore away the thing’s ear and the flame from the gun blinded it. It fell back, in an oddly dramatical manner, arms pinwheeling. Cole had just enough time to think, Is it playacting? before he felt his own center of gravity shift.

  The floor had taken on an even steeper pitch. The reason: the two Dead-eyes he had flung from the trap were now climbing back up, and in their haste, they were kicking away the few beams that were holding the broken portion of the building up. As he watched, the third Dead-eye lost his fight to remain upright and went tumbling down, adding his weight to the wrong end of things. Cole had just turned to run, when the bullet-ridden Dead-eye snaked out a long arm and caught his ankle. Cole snarled and kicked as hard as he could, but the grip was like iron and he was forced to use up another bullet. The huge slug exploded out the back of the thing’s head and seemed to release a black cloud.

  Then he was up and chugging up to the opening of the chasm. He felt slow. His legs were heavy and he was gasping from the intensity of the fight. Across from him was the black-scaled fiend.

  “You’re going to die down here, hunter,” it said in a wheezy breath. “You and the other one. We can smell her. She’s fresh, but not as fresh as you. You’re pure. We can smell your sweet, sweet blood.”

  “That’s great,” Cole said, hefting the Mega. It was a big, powerful gun. It wasn’t known as an accurate gun, especially after the first shot. Cole’s hand was numb from the concussive force expelled through the metal. His breathing was barely in control. The overalls, though tattered and torn in places, was still very tight through the shoulders.

  He was twenty feet from the beast and with the shadows pressing in from all sides, it seemed to meld with the darkness. Cole needed a perfect shot and knew it wasn’t coming. He went with “good enough” and fired three times at the center of thing’s chest. The first two hit, throwing the creature back so that the third whizzed just over it as it collapsed in a pile of scales and limbs.

  Even blasted by .70 caliber slugs, it would be up in no time. Cole took ten steps back and then rushed for the edge of the hole. Under the best circumstances, a fifteen-foot jump was not impossible. These were less than ideal. Because of the shifting, uneven and slanted floor he jumped from, Cole couldn’t generate nearly enough power to carry him across and he saw right away that he wasn’t going to make it to the other side. Flinging the Mega in front of him, he stretched out as far as he could…and still missed the far edge.

  But his hands did slap onto a length of pipe that jutted out from a chunk of cement. It began bending and Cole thought he would fall with the cement coming down on top of him, then his flailing feet hit something solid. And there was a length of rebar at eye level, and above that half a table with both legs sticking out. He went up like a monkey as behind him the length of flooring with its cage ceiling began to tilt even more. There was a shriek of metal and then the floor tipped completely and fell with thundering crash.

  Cole wasted a second staring behind him; then he began to pull himself up. By that time, he scrambled to his feet he saw that the Dead-eye was also up. In its hand was the Mega.

  “Oops,” it said and aimed the gun at Cole. “You should learn to keep better hold of your stuff.” It pulled the trigger and as it did Cole charged and leapt. The Mega emitted a click and the Dead-eye was looking at the gun in confusion when Cole’s foot struck it in its bloody chest. Cole leveled the thing with that kick and sent it flying back into the wall of trash.

  He couldn’t give it even a second to regain its sense of composure or its balance. Going hand to hand with a Dead-eye was insanity which was just fine with Cole because right then he felt like he was one blink away for going drooling, bat-shit crazy. “You like that!” he cried and grabbed the Dead-eye by the head and began bashing it into what looked like the front fender of an old Buick.

  After the third strike, black blood was going everywhere and made his grip slippery. The Dead-eye spun and tried to bite Cole’s chest but bit down on one of the spare magazines to the now lost Forino. Cole caught the creature by the rags it wore and flung it from him. Lying in the trash to his left was an arm-sized hunk of iron cast to the side. He snatched it up and swung it like a baseball bat.

  The thing’s jaw became unhinged with the first swing as its head whipped to the side with such force its neck nearly snapped. “You like that?” Cole panted again. “How ‘bout one more?” This time he drove the iron down onto the top of its head, sending it to its knees. One more hit and the head split open and the bar sank deep into what looked like a pulsing black pudding.

  “Fuck you,” Cole grunted and then, not a second later he was smashed into and sent sprawling on his back. A zombie loomed above him, its eyes midnight black with evil glee.

  Chapter 17

  During the fight Corrina had sat in her little cubby, too afraid to move. For as long as she could remember she had always considered herself a brave girl, but there was no way she could make that claim now. Cole had been fighting not just for his life, but for hers as well and she had done nothing to help him. He had yelled for her to run and she hadn’t even been able to do that. The black scaly creature was just too horrible. She had never seen anything like it.

  It had c
limbed up out of the pit like a demon—no, not like a demon. It was a demon. It had come from hell. She knew it. According to the little she knew of Catholic doctrinaire, a demon like this had only one purpose: it had come to pull all the sinners down into the fires of the abyss, where they would suffer for eternity. And in her mind, there wasn’t anyone more a sinner than her. As she stared at the demon in pure terror, a list of her sins began to build up in her head: she had lied a million times, she had been committing some sort of adultery for as long as she could remember, she stole everything not tied down, and when she couldn’t steal something, she coveted the hell out of it. She had never kept any day holy, she spat on her mother’s memory, told God to fuck off on a weekly basis, and she had killed people.

  The faces of her victims came to her as she sat utterly petrified in the little cubby. There had been the police officer who was trying to kill Cole, and all those trogs, and…so many. She had built quite the list when Cole suddenly appeared on her side of the raw hole. Peeking out, she saw the demon pointing Cole’s giant gun at him. It was going to kill him!

  Do something! a voice screamed in her mind. She had a gun. She could’ve used it. It sat in her hands like a lump. She was so out of her mind with fear that she couldn’t even bring herself to point it. Corrina could only watch as Cole fought the demon like a mad man and, unbelievably he had won. That struck a strange chord in her. Did that mean Cole wasn’t a sinner? Father James seemed to think Cole was bad news, but he rarely committed any of the big sins, except kill people. He had killed lots of people, but usually they were Dead-eyes or just bad guys and wasn’t killing bad guys a good thing?

  She clung to the idea as a Dead-eye leapt across the gulf, clearing it easily. It rushed at Cole and smashed into him before he even saw it coming. This was a “real” Dead-eye as she understood them. It was a black-eyed beast in a human body. Unlike the demon, it was something she understood. She knew how to kill a Dead-eye.