Once down on the ground floor, the others greeted the news much the same way Cole had. They wanted the job done and over with.
“We should set a blood trap right here,” McGuigan said, his voice high and strident. “There’s no need to go any further.”
“No,” Cole said, heading for the door. “If gunshots aren’t stirring them, it’s because there’s none around. Also, the wind is from the west. The smell of blood will trail back the way we came, and did any of you see zombies back that way?” No one answered. “Yeah, me neither.”
McGuigan hadn’t budged. “The wind can shift! It could shift at any moment and we would be sitting pretty right here.”
“It could also stay out of the west for the next week,” Cole countered. He strode out into the night, his ears pricked for the smallest sound; other than the wind there was nothing. “Same formation as before, only this time I want Corrina and McGuigan armed with the dart guns. If they come at us a few at a time, we will aim low for the knees and then Corrina and McGuigan will dart them.”
This sounded like a smart plan to everyone other than Corrina and McGuigan. After watching the demons attack, the dart guns felt tiny and useless.
Cole picked out a new landmark to aim for. It had once been a water tower set on a hill amongst a small forest of oak. The oak trees had been turned to ash when the nukes fell. At the same time, the water tower had been contorted and bent. Its water had boiled away a hundred and fifty years earlier and now it looked like a cross between a tipping teapot and a giant metal stork.
It was a slow half-mile walk as the group moved at little more than a shuffle. Being that tense for that long was exhausting. Eventually, they stood under the water tower, sipping from their bottles and staring west in wonder. The slope down was nothing like the walk up had been. They had passed more of the ugly stunted trees, as well as low scraggy bushes and shoots of brown weeds. On the west side of the hill there was nothing but soft ash. It was like powdery grey snow and they sank deep with each step. At the bottom they found dunes of the stuff that the wind had collected. They had to wade through in single file, with the ash up to their chests. As the ash poured in around them, they were horribly exposed to an attack.
Once through the ash, the broken world resumed, becoming even more broken than before. The land was fissured and craggy, the lines running like lightning bolts. Sometimes these cracks in the earth’s surface were so deep they couldn’t see the bottom. Whole neighborhoods had been swallowed by the earth and in more than one place, there were intact houses perfectly balanced within these gullies.
A few held grey water. With a foam of yellow/green bubbles along the edges and a nasty unearthly stench percolating up, no one thought for a moment about taking a sip.
They passed through an industrial area where the reinforced concrete walls of a few of the buildings were still standing. Everything was grey with the ash. It had become even more fine and the footprints in it were obvious. Cole stopped a few steps from the others and squatted low, his eyes searching the shadows.
“What is it, Cole?” Corrina asked, her nerves jangling.
“Dead-eyes,” he whispered. “They’re here.”
Chapter 28
“How many of them are there?” Sergeant Phillips asked, trying to look over the little crowd. Before Cole could answer, he went on quickly, “It looks like a lot. That looks like a lot, right?”
“Eight or nine,” was Cole’s guess. “That’s not too many. The real question is how old are these tracks? This ash isn’t like normal ash.”
McGuigan knelt and let the strange powder run through his fingers. “It’s like loam. Like dry silt or something. Those prints could be weeks old.”
Cole rolled his eyes. “Or minutes old. With this wind, I doubt they’re more than an hour old. We should follow them.” This was met by a wall of silence. “I’m not asking permission,” he said, hitching his pack. He turned to the right to follow the prints. The others followed, though now there was a bit of a separation between him and the others. They were all too willing to let him lead.
The tracks led into one of the buildings. It had been a warehouse with rows of tremendous industrial shelving that had once stood forty feet high. All of these had fallen or collapsed, probably during the fire that had turned the interior of the building into a blackened tangled mess. After one look inside, Cole decided against going in after the Dead-eyes. There were a hundred ambush sites in which the group could be attacked from ten directions at once.
He skirted the outside of the building and when he didn’t see fresh tracks leading away, he directed the group to a smaller building across the street. This one had bars across the opening of the windows. After a look inside, he said, “We start over there, make a fighting withdrawal and if we have to, we’ll fall back here. Everyone give over your dart guns.” He didn’t ask if there were any questions and nor did he bother with a discussion; they had lost too much time as it was.
“Take your time and aim,” he told Corrina, handing her his dart gun. She stuck it down the front of her pants as he went on, “It’s going to be just like a gun but with no kick, so it’ll be easier. This time aim right for the chest. Pop. Dead center.” She nodded as did McGuigan who had been listening intently. “Alright,” Cole said, “here we go. Ham, you ready? Brunker? Sergeant?”
Sergeant Phillips was sweating and shaking. He didn’t feel good. He tried to tell himself that it was all in his head, that he’d been going without sleep for too long and that it was stress making his head ache. He didn’t know why it hurt to breathe, but there had to be a logical reason. Being infected wasn’t logical. That shit happened to other dumb fucks. Not to him.
“Sergeant?”
“Yeah,” he said, dry-swallowing. “I’m good. Don’t worry about me.”
Cole was worried. He didn’t like the way Phillips looked. If he was infected it was coming on faster than anything Cole had ever heard of. “Just remember to aim low. Take out their knees.” The group crept to the open bay and stared into the blackness. Cole gave the air a sniff, expecting to smell the familiar scent of old smoke, instead he smelled nothing, or rather, he smelled a dull “sameness.” The Rad Lands had its own all-permeating scent. It could only be described as bitter, but that was it.
“Hello?” he called out and then paused as if there was a possibility of a response. Feeling stupid, he tried again, “Hey!” His voice echoed around the interior of the vast building. Now there was movement. Something fell with a crash and there was a scraping noise as the darkness seemed to shift nearer. “Over here, fuckers!”
A high, insane scream split the dead air as the shadows grew and swept towards them.
“God,” Sergeant Phillips whispered. He was just about to crap himself.
Cole was about the only one who wasn’t. He hated being afraid and, simultaneously, he enjoyed hate. It made him stronger, nastier. “Come on you dumb shits. Come get some.” Kneeling, he took aim at the mass moving towards them. At thirty feet, he let out a blast with the gun. In the flick of flame, he saw there were perhaps thirty of the scaly humanoids bearing down at them at full speed.
The scattergun blast took out the knees of one, causing it to stumble. Others fell over the top of it. Boom! Boom! Hamilton and Sergeant Phillips had fired in quick succession. Brunker was a second behind: Boom! Then came a light thoomp noise as Corrina fired her dart gun.
She had no idea whether the dart had hit anything. It was too dark to tell. She let the gun fall as she drew the second of her three guns. When she looked down the barrel this time, the raging beasts were right on top of her. The scatterguns went off almost as one and dropped the lead creatures, giving her a perfect shot at a knot of them all of ten feet away. The dart was a silver blur in the night as it streaked at the creatures and hit one dead center.
“I got one!” she cried. She paused to watch it drop to the ground unconscious—only it didn’t. It ignored the dart altogether and rushed right at Cole. With utt
er calm he jacked in a new shell and fired, bringing the thing down just out of arm’s reach. The creature ignored its shattered knee, just as it had the dart, and began to crawl forward.
There was no need to call for the fighting withdrawal. Sergeant Phillips and McGuigan were already five steps back and not slowing. Hamilton and Cole fired twice more before dropping their empty scatterguns and pulling the next ones. Hamilton had given up firing for the knees and killed three in quick succession with head shots. With each shot, the mob of beasts got closer and closer until the last one was within arm’s reach.
Cole and Hamilton retreated, trading shots, always aiming for the nearest of them. On their right, Sergeant Phillips had broken and had run for their fallback position with McGuigan right behind them. Corrina fired her third dart gun and was just about to run when she saw the beasts sweeping to her left towards Brunker. He emptied his second scattergun into them and then drew his Riker Ten, aimed and—did not fire!
The gun had been given to him with the safety on and he had never switched it to fire. He squeezed the trigger, which refused to budge. “Shit!” he screamed, thinking that his number was up. His thumb scrambled for the safety and he set it to fire with the Dead-eye’s claws digging into his rags. Two quick shots, one to the throat and the other to the cheek dropped the beast.
It collapsed with three more taking its place. He killed one and Corrina, who had managed to yank out her pistol, got the second with a pair of shots she considered lucky even though she had fired from only three feet away. The third bowled Brunker over, its gaping mouth digging hard for his exposed throat. Brunker flinched inward, bringing his shoulders up and his chin down. Instead of tearing out his throat, the broken shards of the thing’s teeth fastened on Brunker’s jaw with crushing force.
He screamed and fired his gun at the thing’s head just as it reared back trying to rip Brunker’s jawbone from his body. Instead of killing the creature, the screaming bullet skipped right off the top of the Dead-eye’s head, taking away a hunk of flesh from its scalp. It didn’t even blink. The Dead-eye was like a pitbull with the strength of a gorilla. Violently it shook Brunker, breaking his jaw and tearing the flesh of his cheek and neck. Brunker’s scream was high and piercing. Again, he tried to shoot the beast off of him. The bullets thudded into its arm and shoulder which did nothing. Corrina darted forward until she was a foot from the creature and fired twice, hitting with both shots and killing the thing.
Half a dozen more took its place. It was more than the child could handle and she stumbled back, firing into the hideous shrieking mass. They were so close that she couldn’t miss. One practically had its teeth on the hot barrel of the gun when she fired. Their hunger was so great that they led with their gaping mouths and she blasted straight into those black holes.
She amazed herself by killing four of them. As the last one dropped at her feet, she became aware of Brunker screaming. He was a bloody flailing howling mess, trying to fight off a pair of zombies. They were too strong and far too scary. Corrina didn’t rush forward this time. She fired from where she was and wasted six bullets. Maybe she hit the things and maybe she didn’t, either way they ignored her and went on tearing into Brunker.
Cole and Hamilton had cast aside their empty scatterguns and were now unloading on the Dead-eyes with their Rikers while they slowly retreated. Out of the corner of his eye, Cole saw Brunker and raced over. Two shots was all it took for him to kill the pair. “Cover me!” he bellowed at Corrina as he grabbed Brunker by the strap of his pack and hauled him towards the building. McGuigan ran out to help him, while Sergeant Phillips went to the front window and fired through the bars.
There were maybe half a dozen of the beasts left alive by the time they escaped into the barred building.
Cole hauled Brunker into the center of the room where a dull stripe of diffused moonlight pushed back the darkness. “Let me see,” he ordered Brunker, who was curled in a ball. Slowly, as if he had to will each joint to relax, Brunker laid back, breathing wetly, sucking blood in and out of his lungs. Along with the damage done to his face, part of his throat had been ripped open, showing dark red meat and white rings of cartilage. Blood was pooled in the hollow of his throat and was now spilling down the sides in fast streams.
“Fuuuck,” Cole said, staring at the blood. “No. I mean, it’s gonna be okay. Hold on, alright?”
Hold on to what, he couldn’t say. Bounty hunters worked alone and when they inflicted wounds, they were designed to kill. He had no real idea how to treat something like these deep rending gashes. Looking up, he was about to ask McGuigan what to do when he saw the group gunning down the zombies at the window.
“Stop! Use the darts!” Too late. The last of the Dead-eyes fell onto the rest and now there were only the fading echoes. “Morons!” he seethed. “We needed to capture them! Are there any darted?”
“I got two of ’em,” Corrina said. She squinted out into the dark. “But I don’t know which is which.”
“I know I got at least two of them also,” McGuigan said. “I can’t guarantee how good the darts work, however. In the sedation tests, subjects were chained, and uh, the tests were conducted in laboratories under uniform conditions. I have no idea how those same drugs will work in the wild or against those.” He gestured towards the scaly creatures.
Cole couldn’t tell if any of the nearer corpses had been darted, and the ones further away were hidden in the murky darkness. “We need to find out if any of them are just knocked out. And we also need to retrieve any weapons that were dropped. Hamilton, check the bodies. Sergeant Phillips, you and…”
“No,” Hamilton snapped. “You can kiss my ass, Cole. You can kiss the darkest, hairiest part of my ass. I’m not touching any of them. Have Brunker do it. He’s already fucked.”
Brunker was back, curled in a ball. “I not!” he said in a wet, hissing, barely intelligible whisper. “An’ I’m not touchin’ nuh-ing.”
“Phillips, I need you to deal with Brunker,” Cole said. “He’s your friend, after all. Hamilton and McGuigan will collect the weapons.” He hadn’t given Corrina a job and expected her to stay inside the building. Instead she followed him out, still clutching her Riker Ten. “Switch out your mag,” he told her. “Always keep a full one in the gun if you can.” He did the same thing before he bent to inspect the pile of bodies. There was only one with a seemingly intact head. When he yanked it out from under two others, he found that its throat had been blown clear away and part of its spinal column had been destroyed.
“Great,” he muttered, standing over it. He then went to a second pile and a third before he found one of them lying on the ground looking as though it was sleeping. Using his boot, he gave it a nudge. When that didn’t get it to move, he gave it a hard kick. Dropping to a knee, he put a hand on the thing’s chest and felt it move—it was breathing!
“We got one,” he hissed across to Hamilton.
Both he and McGuigan came hurrying over, their arms laden down with scatterguns. “That was one of mine,” McGuigan said.
Corrina looked insulted. “I was on this side! Those ones over there were on your side.” She added a few curses, but Cole wasn’t listening. He was too busy getting his manacles on the creature, afraid that it would wake up at any second. They all relaxed once its hands were trussed behind its back and the hood thrown over its head.
Cole went to drag it into the building but held back out of squeamishness. It was naked and the idea of touching those scales struck an unnatural chord in him. The solution was in his pack and in a moment, he slid on the heavy leather mittens.
“That thing stinks!” Corrina groaned. “I think it shit itself.”
“Of course, it did,” McGuigan said. “What? Do you think zombies don’t use bathrooms?” He chuckled at his wit and looked around to see if anyone else had enjoyed his dig. No one had. Sergeant Phillips was squatted down next to his friend doing nothing but patting his shoulder every minute or so. Hamilton was loading the scatter
guns and wasn’t paying attention and Cole didn’t care for jokes when they were at Corrina’s expense.
He reached down and hauled her up before she could spit more curses. “Let’s see how many more of them you got. Three was all we needed.”
They found a second one within ten feet of where they’d found the first. It had been partially hidden by another corpse. Cole called Hamilton over to chain it up. “I’m busy!” the cop answered. “McGuigan can do it.” They began to bicker. Cole and Corrina went on to the next pile of corpses and found a third.
Corrina jumped up, clapping her hands lightly. “Yes! I’ll go get my pack.” As her shoulders and back had been aching from the strain of carrying so much weight, she had left it in the building. While she was gone, Cole inspected the dead near the entrance to the building and couldn’t believe his luck: there was a fourth! “Over here. Let’s do this one first.” Unlike Corrina, who was excited to be done with the adventure and who ran to Cole with her heavy pack, McGuigan muttered his way to the nearest darted creature.
He was sure that the moment he touched the thing it would leap up suddenly and attack him. Just as Cole had done, he toed the beast before giving it a kick. Nothing. Slowly, carefully, he knelt down next to it and brought out the heavy manacles. “Nice and easy,” he whispered, and touched the thing’s wrist. It was then that something moved.
McGuigan fell back with a cry, only to realize that it hadn’t been the zombie that had moved. It was something in his pocket. Confused, he reached inside and pulled out the three-inch long hunk of black plastic. Its red light was blinking on and off. “What the hell?” he said, just as it vibrated again. He looked over and found Cole staring at him with wide eyes and only then did it dawn on McGuigan what the little box was trying to tell him.
They were being soaked in lethal amounts of radiation.
Chapter 29
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 28
