“So where should we go, then?” Fiona asked.
“The same place we were going before we met Mr. Bolton,” Cole said. “Bear Lake.”
“Bear Lake?” Bolton said.
“You know where that is?”
“A friend of a friend has a house down there. Lets me fish on the pier every now and then. Nice guy. Vietnam vet.”
“So you can take us there,” Dante said. He could barely contain his excitement.
“Sure, kid,” Bolton said. “But what’s at Bear Lake?”
“My family,” Cole said.
“No offense, but what’s that got to do with me?”
“Get me to Bear Lake, and I’ll keep you alive.”
“Again, no offense, but I’ve been staying alive pretty well even before I met you folks. What’s Bear Lake have that I don’t already? Or could get? Those crazies are bloodthirsty and dangerous as heck, but they can’t get to something they can’t touch.”
“What happens when you run out of fuel?”
“I refuel.”
“How? Where?”
“Plenty of stations where there aren’t those crazies running around. I know them all. The best part? I don’t got to pay money to fill ’er up these days.”
“You should still take me and the others to Bear Lake.”
“You’re not gonna offer me money, are you? Because I don’t think rectangular green pieces of paper matters much anymore.”
“Not money.”
Bolton chewed on one of his cheesy crackers, his eyes still locked on Cole. “I’m listening.”
“Before I retired to a suit and tie, I spent a lot of my time around the world, doing things I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t forget all those lessons I learned, even after I became…civilized.”
By now, the others had turned to look at Cole as well and were listening intently.
Cole continued: “Bear Lake has all the resources you and all of us will need to survive something like this.”
“No one knows what ‘something like this’ is,” Bolton said.
“No, but it’s close enough.”
“How so?”
“The end of the world.”
Bolton’s lips creased into a smirk. “You were prepared for the end of the world? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Not quite, but I do have everything we’ll need to survive it.”
“At Bear Lake.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m doing just fine out here by myself. Like I said, those crazies can’t fly. Not yet, anyway.”
“No, but how long before your luck runs out? Sooner or later, one of your fuel runs won’t just be you standing alone next to a pump. The longer you stay out here, the higher your chances of running into them.”
Bolton looked over at Fiona, sitting next to him. “Is this true? About his setup at Bear Lake?”
Fiona didn’t answer right away. Instead, she turned to Cole—as if asking for his permission to talk.
“Go ahead,” Cole said.
“I don’t know,” Fiona said to Bolton.
“I didn’t tell them before, because I didn’t have to,” Cole said.
“Why’s that?” Bolton asked.
“They needed someone to take care of them, to get them through this. That was good enough for them to stick with me.”
“But you’re telling me now. Telling them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because now I need that chopper of yours, and I never learned how to fly one.”
“Ah.”
“He wouldn’t lie,” Zoe said. Then, when Bolton turned in her direction, “My daughter and I wouldn’t be alive now without Cole.”
“Me neither,” Dante said. He pursed a smile in Cole’s direction. “I believe him.”
Cole gave the teenager a slight Thanks nod.
“Yeah, well, don’t get me wrong,” Bolton said, “you folks look like good people, but I’m going to need more than just your words—”
A loud bang! cut him off.
Bolton shot up to his feet, crumbs from the Lunchables he’d been snacking on falling out of his beard. “What the hell was that?”
“That was downstairs,” Cole said even as he ran to the door, the Glock already in his hand.
“Here we go,” the Voice said. “Here we go!”
Chapter 28
He ran past Zoe, who was already on her feet and looking after him. “The side door,” she said. “That sounded like the side door.”
She was referring to the same door they’d come through the night before, the one with two metal shelves blocking it. Like the front entrance, it would take something massive and constant to beat it down. Even a man as big as Gargantuan wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that.
“You sure about that?” the Voice asked.
Cole didn’t answer as he all but lunged through the open door—
Bang! from below.
—and ran to the stairs. He didn’t go down the steps but instead peered over the railing even as the others rushed out behind him.
Bang!
It very much sounded like someone was trying to come in through the metal side door, using something very big and very heavy.
Bang!
“Cole?” Fiona said, her voice barely audible behind him—
Another echoing bang!, but this one seemed to go on for a while, even as it was followed by the crash! of something heavy slamming into something else just as heavy, and both of those two somethings spilling to the floor.
…like a metal door being forced open, knocking loose two metal shelves he’d used to barricade it…
“Here we go!” the Voice shouted again.
“Kid, what’s happening?” Bolton said, standing behind him.
Cole turned around to face the older man. “Discussion’s over. How long will it take you to get that chopper started?”
“What?”
“The chopper! How long?”
Bolton seemed to struggle for a response. Thankfully not for too long. It took him about two seconds to answer. “I got her cocked these days. It’ll take me sixty seconds. Ninety, max.”
“Get up there and start it.”
“What are you—”
The very loud screech of metal shelves scraping against the floor, rising through the staircase like an ocean wave.
“They’re coming in,” Cole said, stepping closer toward Bolton. The older man actually took an involuntary step back. “You need to get everyone upstairs and into that Bell before they get up here.”
Bolton looked past Cole toward the stairs, but there was nothing to see.
Not yet, anyway.
“Fuck me dead,” Bolton said.
“Haha, the man’s got a way with them words!” the Voice laughed.
“Go,” Cole said. He turned to the others, gathered around them. “The rest of you go with him. Fiona, help Bolton with Dante. Zoe, you got Ashley.”
“What about you?” Zoe asked.
Cole faced Bolton again, squinting at the older man. “You understand what I’m saying? You understand what’s at stake here?”
“Yeah,” Bolton said quickly. “I understand.”
“So go do it.”
“Cole—” Fiona said, but Cole didn’t hear the rest because he was already hopping down the stairs with the Glock in his hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the Voice asked.
What does it look like I’m doing?
“Something stupid?”
That’s open to debate.
“No, it’s not. Do you have a death wish all of a sudden?”
No.
“Sure seems like it.”
I need to give them time.
“You’re going to die, is what you’re going to do.”
Not if I can help it.
The Voice laughed. “That’s the trick, isn’t it?”
Cole concentrated on taking the steps in front of him two,
then three at a time without tripping and rolling down the stairs like an idiot and, God forbid, landing on the back of his neck. Now that would have been embarrassing. Not to mention deadly.
He told himself that he knew what he was doing, and maybe he did. (“Yeah, right,” the Voice laughed.) He only knew there was no way they would all make it to Bolton’s chopper in time. He and Bolton might, and maybe Zoe and Ashley, and Fiona. But Dante wouldn’t. Not by a long shot. Not before whoever was down there (“Really? You’re pretending you don’t know the answer to that one?” the Voice asked mockingly.) made it up to the second floor.
He had to buy time.
How much time, was the question.
“I got her cocked these days. It’ll take me sixty seconds. Ninety, max,” Bolton had said.
Cole had no idea what the hell cocked meant when it came to choppers, but he figured out the sixty seconds or ninety max part easily enough.
He went with ninety seconds, just in case. But, of course, that was just Bolton prepping the Bell, ready to take off. It would probably take them anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute just to get to the rooftop with Dante. Loading him onto the chopper would likely take another thirty seconds to a minute. Or more.
The or more part was the problem.
“Just one problem?” the Voice asked.
Cole ignored the Voice and concentrated on hopping the last three steps and landing in a slight crouch on the first floor. He immediately turned left and ran past a series of shelves toward the side—
He saw the big, round head first, followed by the man’s impressive bulk, then the bloody metal object in his right hand.
Gargantuan.
But of course it was Gargantuan. Who else could have powered their way through the side door, knocking all the shelves free, then kicked them out of his path? It would have to be the biggest crazy out there.
Cole had been sure the man’s weapon was a metal pole earlier, and he was mostly right: It was actually some kind of rusted pipe, the seemingly random and slight bends along its length, sharing space with the patches of hair and pink flesh that clung to the weapon like notches, proof of Gargantuan’s continued victory over the other crazies.
And, finally, now that he had come face-to-face with the killer, Cole could read the name tag on the blood-splattered coveralls:
GREGORY.
Not Greg, but Gregory.
Not that Gregory looked like a Gregory at all. If Cole had been handed the task of giving the man a name, he would have gone with…
Well, Gargantuan worked pretty damn well, if he did say so himself.
Fortunately for Cole, he didn’t have to go hand-to-hand with Gargantuan because he would have lost. It didn’t matter how much experience he had in close-quarters fighting or how many times he’d killed bigger and tougher men than him. This was different. This wasn’t just a man. This was a crazed killer that, somehow, still managed to retain some level of intelligence, and was powered by adrenaline.
This was something else. Something new.
Something crazy.
Cole stopped on a dime and took a step back even as he raised the Glock. If Gargantuan was even the least bit intimidated by the pistol, he didn’t show it. Instead, the man charged forward, shelves clattering out of his path as he moved with the impossibly nimble speed of a man half his size.
“Goddamn, that’s impressive,” the Voice said.
Oh, shut the hell up, you’re not helping, Cole thought even as he fired.
His first bullet struck the running man exactly where Cole had intended—right in the chest. Center mass. It was the most obvious target, and it didn’t matter how big you were. Everyone went down.
Everyone.
Except, apparently, for Gargantuan.
“Well, shit, didn’t see that coming,” the Voice said as the crazy slowed down for exactly half a heartbeat…before he continued charging again.
Cole took a second—then a third—step back as he fired again, and again.
Both shots also landed where they were supposed to—right at center mass, inches from the first bullet—but neither additional 9mm rounds did anything to stop the rampaging madman. He had cut the distance between himself and Cole to five meters—
—four—
Cole backed up and fired again, and again, and again.
His seventh bullet hit the man in the neck as Cole moved the Glock up, going for the head this time now that the torso shots didn’t seem to be doing any good. Blood sprayed, tracing a still-standing shelf of old shoes as Gargantuan ran past it.
Even as Cole’s eighth bullet struck, then exited Gargantuan’s right cheek, taking a big chunk of flesh and bone with it, the crazy raised the rusted pipe in his hand and cocked his arm back to strike.
The ninth bullet hit, then seemed to ricochet off the man’s right temple, taking another patch of flesh and bone and some hair with it.
—three meters—
“If he lands that, you’re dead,” the Voice said.
Yeah, I know, Cole thought as he began squeezing the Glock’s trigger as fast as he could, over and over and over—
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
—contact!
Gargantuan slammed into Cole and drove him back and to the floor, where Cole struck the dirt-covered linoleum tiles and slid along it for a good five feet or so. He might have kept on going if he didn’t crash into the counter. A cracking sound, and Cole hoped it wasn’t the back of his neck snapping.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the case, because he could still move his head, and looked down at Gargantuan, lying on top of him as if he were trying to smother Cole with his bulk. Except the big crazy was doing nothing of the sort, because he was dead.
Finally, the fucker was dead.
“Hallelujah!” the Voice shouted.
Cole didn’t have a chance to wallow in his success, because he could hear them—the fresh sounds of pounding footsteps coming from in front of him.
…from the now-wide-open side door!
He grabbed ahold of Gargantuan, the man that used to be called Gregory, and pushed the massive mound of flesh and fat off him. If the crazy looked huge when he was alive, he was practically an immovable juggernaut in death.
But not completely immovable. Just very, very hard.
Cole pushed—and slowly the body gave an inch.
He pushed some more—and Gargantuan slid off him another inch.
Cole looked up as a thin figure in a miniskirt that had been ripped to shreds, exposing a tattered pink G-string underneath, appeared out of nowhere. No, not out of nowhere, but from the side door. In order to reach Cole, the woman—she had long, flowing blonde hair, but the only thing he could really focus on was the rivers of blood dripping down her cheeks—had to leap over the fallen shelves.
She was in mid-air when Cole shot her.
Unlike Gargantuan, who took nearly a dozen bullets before he gave up the ghost, it only took one round to drop the woman. The 9mm actually went right through her chest, between her exposed breasts—she’d been wearing a pink blouse, perhaps to coordinate with the G-string; it, too, was barely still clinging to her frame—and pekked! off the wall behind her.
Even as the woman seemed to pirouette in the air before smashing back down to earth with a brutal thump!, then sliding along the tiles as Cole had seconds earlier, Cole went back to pushing Gargantuan’s dead weight off him.
He got the man moving another inch, then another.
A pained grunt, followed by the familiar sound of blades tearing into flesh.
Cole looked up as a man in a police uniform pulled a machete out of the collarbone of another crazy where it was wedged. The weapon had gone in too deep, and to get the blade out the cop had to step on his victim’s chest and jerk with both hands. But he got it out just the same and turned to focus on Cole.
A blade flashed behind the cop. The uniformed man never saw the weapon, and by the time he realized there was another crazy behind him, half of
the cleaver had already gone into the back of his skull.
“Forget them! Let them kill each other!” the Voice shouted. “Get your ass off the floor, and get up to the rooftop! Bolton isn’t going to wait forever! If the fucker waits at all!”
The Voice was right. How long had he been down here? Thirty seconds? A minute? And how long would it take Bolton to get the others to the rooftop and take off?
Cole concentrated on Gargantuan, sliding the man another two inches off him, even as a woman in an apron with some kind of writing on it (Cole could only make out World’s Best something) and a shock of amazingly white hair struggled to pry her meat cleaver out of the cop. She was having a difficult time, having sunk it so deep into the dead man’s skull.
Plop! as, finally, Gargantuan’s bulk dropped to the floor next to Cole.
Cole scrambled up and thought about shooting the granny with the meat cleaver, but she was still struggling with removing her weapon from her prey. Even though the cop’s machete was right there and all she had to do was reach down and take it. But she didn’t, for whatever reason.
The granny looked up and locked eyes with Cole, and he swore the old hag smirked at him as if to say, You just stay right there, boy, I’ll be with you in a sec!
Cole almost shot her just for that, but he didn’t.
“Conserve ammo!” the Voice shouted. “Let the other crazies take care of that hag!”
The Voice was right. He had to conserve ammo. He had another magazine, but that was it. After that…
He turned and ran toward the stairs, hoping and praying that Bolton hadn’t taken off yet.
“That old bastard,” the Voice said. “If he’s gone, we’re gonna have to find him and cut his fucking head off!”
If we can find him.
“Now what kind of defeatist thinking is that? That’s my job!” the Voice said, laughing.
But its laugh was cut off by a bloodcurdling scream from behind Cole, followed by the echoing thwack! of something metal and sharp going into something soft and fleshy.
Was that the granny falling victim to another crazy that had come up behind her? Because at this point there was nothing to stop them. Gargantuan was gone, courtesy of Cole. And the side door into the shop was open, courtesy of Gargantuan. If there were any crazies in the area, they could be converging on the property right this second.
Fall of Man (Book 1): The Break Page 22
