Gaby drew her SIG Sauer and held it at her side. She watched Buck’s men walk past them, then kept going.
Two minutes later, and she could still see them in the rings of lights, but they were getting smaller…and smaller.
Then they were gone.
“Go. I’ll stay back here until you’re done,” Gaby said.
June looked back at her. “What happens after this? Are you going to let me go?”
“Yeah,” Gaby nodded.
“You swear.”
Gaby stared the woman in the eyes. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of here—and that includes killing anyone who gets in my way—but I’m not a murderer. You do your part and we’ll go our separate ways once I’m in the clear.”
June nodded. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“Go.”
June turned and jogged off, bending slightly at the waist to lower her profile. She moved like a woman with a purpose, and Gaby counted the distance between them as it widened. At thirty meters, Gaby put the handgun away and unslung the rifle.
The other woman stopped at the fence and glanced back in Gaby’s direction. Gaby stepped slightly out of the shadows to let June see that she had switched to the rifle. June pursed her lips, then turned back around and began working on the fence with the bolt cutter. The tool was big and heavy enough that it took both hands for her to wield it, and she snapped one chain link and went to work on a second, then a third—going north to south. She worked with a sense of urgency. That, more than anything, eased Gaby’s mind.
A little bit, anyway.
She kept the rifle in front of her and her forefinger in the trigger guard while constantly checking around her. She listened for footsteps, for voices—everything except the clink! coming from in front of her every time June snapped loose another link in the fence.
Clink!
Clink!
Clink!
June was almost at the bottom now, and she tossed the bolt cutter to the ground and pulled at the metal strips linking the fence. Gaby took that as the signal she had been waiting for and stepped out from the cover of the shack—
“June?” a voice shouted.
Gaby turned left just as two figures appeared out of nowhere.
It wasn’t the two-men team that had passed them earlier, because these two were coming out of the building ten meters from where Gaby was standing. She quickly retraced her steps back into the shadows and lifted the rifle as the men stepped outside.
They were both armed but didn’t look too alarmed by June’s presence next to the fence, because one of them was rubbing his gloved hands together while his partner kept his safely tucked away inside his jacket pockets.
So close. So close, Gaby thought as the two men walked farther out into the open and toward June.
It didn’t take long before they figured out what she was doing, and the bright spotlights didn’t for a second conceal the opening June had made in the fence behind her.
“What the hell, June?” one of them said.
The fact that June stood there looking back at them, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, only made things worse. What helped even less, at least for Gaby, was when June turned her head and looked in her direction.
Oh, goddammit, Gaby thought, a heartbeat before she stepped out of the shadows, pivoted, and pulled the trigger.
Fourteen
The first gunshot boomed in Gaby’s ears, and the first man to come out of the building pitched forward and slammed into the ground face-first. His partner scrambled to unsling his rifle, at the same time turning left and right, trying to identify where the shot had come from.
The man was still searching when Gaby shot him in the chest, the round hitting him exactly in the middle of the circled M very close to the center of his vest. Buck’s man dropped, landing almost right beside the first one.
Then Gaby was running.
Move, move, move!
She made a beeline for June even as lights popped to life behind windows of buildings around her. Suddenly the world looked a whole lot brighter than it had been just mere seconds ago.
Move, move, move!
June stood frozen at the fence, and the only thing she was moving was her head as it swiveled from the two dead men to Gaby and back again. She looked very much like a deer caught in the headlights, and Gaby kept expecting her to take off, but instead she just stood there.
“Go!” Gaby shouted.
June’s eyes darted back and stayed on Gaby.
“Don’t be stupid!” Gaby shouted. “They’ll know it was you who helped me escape!”
June continued to stand still, and at that moment Gaby wasn’t sure if she was even capable of doing anything except staring.
Gaby finally (finally!) reached the fence and grabbed one side of the open section and slipped through. She felt but ignored the scrapes as a few sharp edges snagged at her clothes and got some skin underneath. There were sharp stabs of pain, but there would be even more if she didn’t keep moving.
There was a slight ditch on the other side, about five feet of slanted ground between the fence and the paved road. Gaby nearly fell when her feet gave out unexpectedly underneath her, but she quickly got her footing and was halfway across when she looked back and saw that June still hadn’t moved.
“June!” Gaby shouted.
That got the other woman’s attention, and June turned around, that deer in the headlights expression even more pronounced underneath all the bright lights. With the dried blood still covering parts of her face, it looked almost comical.
There was a lot of movement behind June, including the sound of doors opening and slamming. Out of the corner of one eye, Gaby glimpsed figures racing along the other side of the fence in their direction.
“The shack!” Gaby said. “You want to end up in one of those? You think they’ll forgive you for helping me?”
Gaby didn’t have to keep going, because June snapped out of her stupor as soon as she heard the word shack. The woman slipped through the fence, and like Gaby, caught her clothes on the sharp edges and nearly ripped one of her long sleeves as she pushed through. Gaby reached back to lend her a hand, and together they cleared the ditch and climbed up onto the other side.
“Where to now?” Gaby asked, using the moment to catch her breath.
June didn’t answer. Instead, she looked back at the fence as a half dozen or so men appeared in the lights, every single one of them converging on their position.
“June!” Gaby shouted. “Where to now?”
Instead of answering, June turned right and started running before angling left and vanishing into the first row of corn. Gaby was on the other woman’s heels even as screams pierced the night behind her. Different people shouting, trying to make sense of what had happened.
But no gunshots.
Stay that way. Stay that way!
It was pitch dark around her, and Gaby lost sight of June, but not the path the other woman had carved in front of her. All Gaby had to do was follow the series of trampled grass and broken stalks of corn as June wove her way through the field before starting to slide over to the right until she was running parallel to the road and the fence.
They ran for nearly five minutes straight, and June never stopped, but she did slow down enough for Gaby to finally see her up ahead. She was in much better shape than the Fenton woman, and despite carrying all the spare magazines and loaded weapons, eventually caught up to June, until they were running almost side by side. June, Gaby saw, was still carrying her unloaded rifle and handgun despite both being empty.
“How far does this thing go?” Gaby asked even as stalks of corn slapped at her face and shoulders and chest. It might have been only five (six, now) minutes of full-on running, but it seemed as if they had been wading through the agriculture fields for hours and there was still no end in sight.
“Almost there,” June said between labored gasps.
“How big is this place?”
About thirty seconds later, they stepped through the last row of corn and out into an open field, where they both slid to a stop, doubled over, and gasped for breath.
There, about twenty meters dead ahead, was a wall of black trees.
God, that’s dark.
Gaby spent the next ten seconds listening for sounds of pursuit, but there was nothing. No voices, no sirens. Just the sound of her and June sucking in large lungfuls of air.
“Why aren’t they chasing us?” Gaby asked.
“I don’t know.” June shook her head. “Maybe they’re waiting for morning. It won’t be long now.”
Long enough, Gaby thought, straightening up and staring across at the trees. She wasn’t looking forward to going in there. Not one bit.
“I need bullets,” June said next to her.
Gaby looked over. “What for?”
“You know what for.”
“No.”
June clenched her teeth. “You know what’s waiting for us in there?”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“The hell I don’t. They know we’re here. They’ve always known. If we’re going to go in there, I need bullets.”
“You’re not getting them.”
“Goddammit, I helped you!”
“Yeah, you did.” Gaby unslung her rifle. “If I were you, I’d stay close. Unless you want to take your chances back there. I’m sure Buck can be convinced you didn’t mean to help me escape.”
June glared at her, but Gaby ignored it and started walking forward.
The other woman didn’t follow right away, and Gaby was convinced that she wouldn’t.
It took ten seconds before Gaby heard footsteps behind her.
She wished she could feel bad for the woman, but she didn’t. June had made her choice, and she would have to live with it.
Or die with it, depending on what was waiting for them inside the woods.
It was a lot darker inside than it had looked from the outside, thanks to massive tree crowns that fought against even the smallest hints of moonlight. Some made it through the vast canvas above them anyway, but not nearly enough to see more than a few meters in front or to the sides or behind her at once.
God, it’s dark in here.
Gaby clutched the rifle in front of her. The weapon had been modified to fire full auto, and she’d made sure it was on semi before taking the first step into the woods. She had a limited supply of bullets—the almost full magazine in the AR at the moment, with two spares in her vest pockets. The SIG Sauer was fully loaded at her hip, with two more spares in her back pocket.
More than enough bullets. More than enough.
Hopefully…
June walked slowly next to her, keeping about five feet of space between them as instructed. Gaby didn’t want the other woman getting too close for fear she might reach for her pistol. To avoid that temptation, Gaby had made her walk on her left side, with the holster on Gaby’s right hip. June hadn’t been happy about that, but Gaby couldn’t muster the energy to give a damn.
God, it’s dark. Why is it so damn dark?
Even though she didn’t have any bullets on her, June still clung to her rifle. The Fenton woman’s eyes shifted left and right every few seconds, and she spun around to look behind them whenever she heard a noise back there. Or thought she heard them, anyway.
Gaby didn’t hear anything except their footsteps and heavy breathing, but maybe that had a (lot) little something to do with her own racing heartbeat filling her eardrums. They had been walking slowly, very slowly for the last ten or so minutes, and there was no end in sight. More and more trees kept appearing in front (and to the left and right and behind) of her instead of getting fewer.
Snap!
She heard it that time, and glanced right, lifting the AR to fire just as something scampered across the rifle’s red dot scope. It was too small and low to the ground to be anything other than a small critter, and Gaby took her finger off the trigger. Slightly.
“What is it?” June whispered behind her, her voice so low Gaby wouldn’t have heard her if they weren’t the only two living souls for what seemed like miles around.
God, I hope we’re the only two people in here for miles around…
“Nothing,” Gaby whispered as she came out of her shooting stance.
Her heartbeat continued to accelerate, like ocean waves pounding against her chest, and it took her a few seconds to calm it down.
In and out.
In and out…
There. Better.
Mostly.
She started walking again, gripping and regripping the carbine. Her palms were sweating despite the cold air, and beads of sweat appeared across her brow. She wiped at them before they could get into her eyes.
“I need bullets,” June whispered next to her. It was impossible to miss the very real desperation in her voice.
“No,” Gaby whispered back.
“Please…”
“No,” Gaby said. “Don’t ask again.”
“I helped you escape…”
You’ve mentioned that three times already, Gaby thought, but didn’t bother saying it out loud. June had only done it to save herself, even if she wanted to pretend there was something to it.
“Please…” June said, just a little too loud for Gaby’s liking that time.
Gaby shook her head and hissed, “Keep your voice down.”
“They’re out there. I can hear them.”
“There’s nothing out there.”
“I can hear them.”
“There’s nothing out there, and keep your voice down.”
“I swear I can hear them.” June glanced over her shoulder, and in the second or so their eyes made contact, Gaby saw the terror in the other woman’s face. “Please…”
She’s not going to stop.
Gaby didn’t blame her. Would she stop in the other woman’s shoes?
“Please,” June said again.
Gaby sighed, then lowered her rifle slightly and unzipped one of her vest pouches.
“Thank you,” June said. “Thank you, thank you…”
“Be quiet.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry.”
This is such a bad idea, Gaby thought, but she reached for the magazine anyway, and was pulling it out when—
June screamed.
Gaby abandoned the pouch and spun to her left just in time to see the other woman slamming into the ground on her back and being dragged off into the shadows.
Oh, God.
There were two of them, and they each had ahold of June’s legs, and she was screaming and striking their arms with the rifle even as they pulled her across the ground. There was a loud crack! as the buttstock of June’s AR cratered one of the creature’s skull, but it shook it off and continued dragging her.
Ghouls.
Ghouls!
It had been such a long time since she’d come into close proximity with one of them that it took Gaby a full second—two? Three?—to fully accept what she was seeing. They looked very much like nude children, slightly hunched over as they clung to the struggling June, their pruned black skin gleaming against the moonlight. Their crooked frames were hairless from their dome-shaped heads to their bony toes, their flesh like thin layers of Jell-O draped over deformed skeletal remains.
If they even bothered to look up at her, to acknowledge her existence, she would have seen solid black eyes with nothing that resembled life behind them. Except they were oblivious to her presence and only had interest in June, who continued to swing with the rifle and kicked out desperately, trying to loosen their grip.
But they wouldn’t let go and clung to her as if their lives depended on it. And maybe it did. June had what they needed—the blood pumping through her veins—and Gaby imagined that all her struggling, all that adrenaline, was only driving them more rabid.
/> “Help me!” June shouted. “God, please help me!”
Gaby squeezed the trigger, and one of the ghouls slumped to the ground. The bullet had pierced its sickly chest and embedded into a tree behind it.
Death (re-death?) was instantaneous as soon as the silver in the bullet came into contact with the creature’s bloodstream, but the sight of it simply falling down was always so unreal to her. They were so hard to kill otherwise—you could slice off their heads and they would still keep coming—but all it took was one silver round (one silver anything, really) to end it all. (Again?)
With one of her legs now free, June began concentrating her kicks and swings on the second ghoul, and there was another crack! as the undead thing’s face erupted in oozing coagulated black blood when June struck it with the buttstock of her AR. But it held on and continued dragging her anyway, except it didn’t quite have the strength all by itself—
Oh, God, Gaby thought when they came out of the shadows behind the remaining ghoul and collapsed on top of June all at once.
Where had they been hiding all this time? Or maybe it was June’s screams and Gaby’s gunshot that had brought them over. How many more were out there, converging on their position this very second? How many more desperate monsters could hear and sense the blood pumping through her veins at a million miles per second?
She hadn’t seen so many in one location since The Walk Out. The ones that had survived, that had either refused or for whatever reason couldn’t obey Will’s final orders, were far and few these days. But she always knew they were out there.
Hiding, waiting, biding their time…
“They know we’re here. They’ve always known,” June had said.
She was right. The ghouls knew there were people in Fenton. They’d always known, but they couldn’t get to them so they waited, except for the occasional desperate creature that ventured into town, like last night.
Run.
Gaby stood still and stared at the teeming mass—there had to be a dozen of them, maybe more—as they covered June’s struggling form until there was just writhing black flesh and clacking bones as the creatures fought one another to get at the prize underneath the pile.
Road To Babylon Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 42
