After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6]

by Hately, Warren

  He’d fucked up.

  “Your lust brought you here,” the Apex said.

  The Ascended guard stood a dozen paces back. Now he started towards them, and Dkembe offered a vague look of warning to Gonzales and dug one of the grenade rounds out of his pocket.

  No threats or demands could save them here. Panic be damned, Dkembe still had time to chastise himself as he knelt and slammed the firing mechanism into the concrete. The grenade issued a gassy noise and Dkembe was still rising to his feet as he lobbed it underhanded down the corridor just behind the Apex.

  Erak crouched and withdrew a needle-thin dagger from his sock, but Dkembe didn’t register it before he dived into his lover to get him to safety. The Apex whirled about and clutched his skirts and the hooded sentry paused, frozen, triangulating the various threats and players as the grenade clattered into their backdrop.

  The guard gave a grunt and charged the five yards past the Apex to throw himself atop the grenade just a fraction late to thwart the whole explosion which then send fragments of blasted meat roaring down the corridor and back at them.

  Dkembe felt pain in his hand where Erak’s dagger pierced it, and was half upright even as the blast sent the upper chunks of the Ascended man’s body across them like a meaty rain. A thick cut of the dead man’s scalp splatted across Dkembe’s shoulder and stuck there. The Apex tumbled, spluttering and off-balance in the periphery as Dkembe’s eyes bulged, fixed like they were nailed in place, staring down at the oozing gray-haired clump adorning his shoulder.

  Just as suddenly, he remembered his Uncle Rodney – the only black man he’d ever known with a toupee, and how that musty, unnatural rug of his had spurred numerous childhood nightmares he’d forgotten where the hairpiece crept up on Dkembe like a tarantula while he slept.

  Dkembe pissed himself at the same time he flicked the ugly chunk of scalp off him with a seal’s yelp, and only then finally registered the Apex up again and staggering towards them emitting his own shrieking yell.

  The Apex’s headwear remained in place, but so much blood and human tissue clung to his filthy robes, Dkembe couldn’t tell if the madman was hurt or not. And it didn’t matter. The fear response hardened Dkembe’s fist and he knocked the screaming man flat.

  The Apex dropped heavily to the concrete floor and twisted still. Dkembe looked to Erak with the knife in hand, ears still ringing, regretting their confiscated weapons. He grabbed the dead guard’s ax and motioned for Gonzales to follow as he stepped past the Apex and rushed into the gore-blasted hall.

  The remains of the human sacrifice lay in the middle of the blast zone in front of a metal door now hanging off a single hinge. The dead guard wasn’t getting up again – in this life, or the next. The grenade eviscerated the bulk of the corpse from the chest up. The dead man’s arms splayed impossibly wide across the bloody carpet thick with concrete shards and itself.

  Dkembe hurried them through the door without looking back.

  *

  THE BLASTED DOOR opened onto a strip of trampled ground between the outbuildings, and at a guess, Dkembe saw the wood-paneled exterior of an enclosed walkway between the warehouse and the next building across and ran towards it remembering his previous visit. The ax he clutched was well suited to the task as he collided with the wall and chopped at the pine boards until he’d cleared the bare minimum needed, stomping through more timber panels with his boot while shouts and cries rang out behind him and Erak.

  “Quickly,” Gonzales hissed.

  Dkembe pushed into the corridor, ignoring the jagged timber cutting his neck and face as he ducked through to make way for his slimmer companion to follow. An amber half-daylight spilled into the prefabricated hall through windows like those in truck stop restrooms. Dkembe forced on around the turn and veered into the first room with its withered crucifixion dominating the far left wall.

  Erak took in the grisly sight of the mummified corpse appalled and still in shock. Dkembe’s eyes flickered too quickly over everything for anything to make much sense.

  The single door on the far side of the bare room flew open. A hooded Ascended guard burst out with a Colt six-shooter raised.

  Dkembe threw the ax the moment he saw motion, and the bright red spinning beard of the weapon somersaulted almost lazily to thunk into the Ascended’s chest.

  The sentry’s gun went off, the bullet wide, and Dkembe rushed forward to grab the handle of the ax and lever the wounded man aside, at the same time also stamping down madly on the guard’s hand until the gun clattered free. Only then could he yank the ax free with an adrenal roar to bring the weapon down, and it rebounded off the guard’s forearm and into his masked face.

  Just as Tom had taken to Jay with the longsword, now his lieutenant rained slaughter on the hooded man until the mask was a red ruin leaking pulp.

  Dkembe caught himself on the seventh blow and whipped his gaze at Erak as if accusing him of something, but his companion just stared back, pragmatic, moving now it was safe to grab the fallen pistol just in time for the door behind them to throw open.

  Erak fired three times into the black worker in abattoir coveralls.

  The man slumped, a hand raised halfway to his chest as he lay down instead and his slow-dying gasps filled the silence left by the heavy gunshot’s retort.

  Dkembe snarled and tore down one of the nearest long religious banners from the wall and wiped his hands and the handle of the ax with it as he thrust his chin importantly towards the dead sentry’s door.

  “Through here,” he said.

  “How many are there?” Erak asked, tactical and terrified in equal measure.

  “I don’t know.”

  Erak’s returned stare was enough. Dkembe whirled back to the door and clutched the handle, hesitating as if, with the blood pounding in his hears, he could possibly discern what lay beyond. More Tom Vanicek’s disciple than he’d ever wanted to believe, Dkembe growled low, took a steadying breath, and threw the door open to plunge through despite the near total darkness inside.

  Something or someone groaned aloud and Dkembe shuffled to one side to avoid his silhouette in the open door, through which now a semblance of light trickled. But Dkembe collided with someone in the gloom, and it took only the bare minimum of light to reveal a gray-bearded man restrained in an upright chair set against the wall.

  Another door faced them on the opposite side of the room across from a spotless long dining table neatly laid out with cutlery and plates.

  The man strapped in the chair was missing legs from the knee down.

  Fevered and barely conscious, the fifty- or sixty-year-old captive turned towards them and shook weakly at his restraints.

  “Please. . . .”

  “Holy shit,” Dkembe whispered under his breath.

  Erak looked at the captive man as if snake-bit, then backed his way around the table, followed by Dkembe, ignoring the crying man and forcing the other door instead.

  It led into a hallway with various doors to their right. Rather than scan their other options, Dkembe noted the heavy locks on the nearest door and his own cosmic wisdom somehow came to life despite all its previous errors.

  The ax chimed as it hit the locks until they broke.

  *

  THE ECHOES OF more booted feet pounded towards them somewhere in the building as Dkembe stared through the broken doorway to the half-dozen hooded women crouched inside, all of them awaiting disaster and – not that any faces were visible – looking anything but pleased at a chance for freedom.

  “We’re leaving,” Dkembe said with heaving breaths, and added, “You’re gonna be free at last.”

  Nestled among the six, one young woman abruptly pulled off her conical mask to reveal a scrawny, near-starved-looking blonde with tears already coursing down her face.

  “You came back?”

  Her voice was just a whisper. A daydream. A secret wish. Gray daylight was harsh on the women in their hovel, and Dkembe blinked, confused, barely recognizing the gaunt-
ribbed blonde girl as the exquisite waif he’d perhaps only ever imagined.

  She met his eyes with weeping gratitude despite the other hands reaching out to clutch and hold her back.

  “Don’t be stupid,” one of the women hissed.

  “We can’t go!” said another.

  “No,” Dkembe told them, less sure of himself with each passing second. “You’re free. Come with us. Now.”

  He had the sense of forces closing in on them, beyond the corridor, and he wished violently for his shotgun rather than the fire ax.

  Dkembe stepped back from the doorway and motioned and yet none of the women moved. The girl he’d come to rescue – her, and her fellow captives, he lied to himself – struggled so weakly it almost seemed like she sought an excuse not to flee.

  Gonzales gave a muttering hiss and stalked into their quarters to start jostling the frightened women as if that was any help. To Erak’s astonishment, the closest women batted away his hands, and then he was completely outnumbered as they grabbed and then clutched at him as well. He only got free by drawing his knife.

  The dagger caught one of the other girls on the forearm and that was enough to free the unmasked girl. She tumbled free like a stunt double and got on her feet again alongside Dkembe as several of the other captives howled at them and for help.

  “Come on, damn it,” Dkembe called.

  Erak moved past. “No time.”

  Another of the hooded girls broke free of the pack and tore the headgear from her face out of sheer practicality, sorrowful eyes masking resentment at the other women in the cult’s harem.

  “Don’t go!”

  It was an older woman. Now she pulled down her mask just enough to show desperate fear framed by dusty brown plaits. “The Anointed –”

  A pair of hooded guards stepped into the dining room behind them and lifted guns.

  Erak only had time to shoot the first of them, near point-blank range as the guard entered the doorway. The hooded man’s brains spattered the man behind him with sufficient force that Dkembe had the slightest chance for action. A stranger to himself, he gave another savage roar and his ax stroke came down into the side of the second man’s hooded jaw, deflected hard off the bone, and sank into the base where the man’s shoulder joined the neck. A student of such a recent atrocity, Dkembe then yanked the weapon free before it could settle – and the unnerving impact caused the Ascended to stagger, his M4 still coming up, and then Erak stepped in close with the Colt mere inches from the man’s head he then fired into with a face twisted in savage glee.

  The chamber clicked empty.

  The wounded Ascended twisted in his own fall to grab Gonzales by the gun barrel he then used to haul himself upright despite the grievous wound, his strength far exceeding Erak’s own, and causing the skinnier man to tumble into his attacker and embrace the man’s gushing neck wound.

  The reddened pair fell heavily together onto the floor and the M4 emptied one round into the low ceiling as Erak dropped the dead pistol and switched hands with the knife again before viciously stabbing down four or five times into the side of the man’s half-askew hood.

  “Erak!”

  Dkembe had to yell over the women shrieking in their cell.

  “We have to go!” the skinny blonde captive added.

  She grabbed Dkembe’s numb hand to drag him further down the long corridor. Erak took in all the handholding as he got upright. He unclipped the guard’s rifle, sparing Dkembe his shocked outrage as Dkembe himself stumbled on as if in shock with the girl taking the lead.

  *

  THEY BURST OUT the door into naked daylight like they were breaking through ice. A scouring wind and the harsh light and the walls no longer closing in around them gave the moment a weird serenity, though that would be short-lived too.

  Stumbling to get his footing, Dkembe looked mutely at the chalk-white hand clutching his own, the prosaic beauty of its owner, the tang of effluent and bleach and something even nastier filling his nose, the cawing of scavenger birds overhead and the cries and jeers and honking horns of nearby trucks as he and the girl ran like rabbits up a short brick staircase that took them along the far rear side of the Ascended compound.

  The steps led to a path alongside the back of the last Ascended building. Dkembe remembered the gate the workers used before and the woman with the toolbox. The dark shadows cast by its neighbor – a four-floor industrial building with a solid brick curtain wall – strangled all light beneath its dominion.

  When a rear door opened ahead, Dkembe wasn’t even surprised. The man wore no Ascended gear, but the shotgun was familiar. Dkembe’s own.

  The man spotted them and stepped back into cover of the doorway twenty feet ahead.

  “Stop!” Dkembe yelled.

  He pulled back hard on the girl’s wrist and then tore his hand free, changing hands with the ax as Erak piled in behind them checking on all the angles with the M4 before scuttling up against the grimy brick wall to get the best line of fire – and just in time, too, as the worker with the shotgun jumped back out, seeking a few Brownie points from his employers perhaps, and instead taking a focused burst of 5.56mm rounds in the face and throat.

  The slain man flailed back and then fell to his ass like someone pulled the rug beneath him, brain and hair particles a gelid mass staining the doorframe above what used to be his head. Dkembe had just a moment to stare in astonishment at his companion. Erak met his look and dropped it just as quickly.

  Dkembe pulled the second 40mm grenade from his pocket.

  “Quickly,” he said.

  Erak was forced on point, and checked several times that Dkembe and the girl were definitely following before he committed to their last mad advance down the path between the two buildings to where the low wire gate looked back out onto the rear loading area and open gate, blocked now by the front end of an old farm truck. The truck doors flew open as if to worsen the escape, just like the two gruff-looking motherfuckers who skipped out carrying guns.

  “Dkembe?”

  “Hold still.”

  He smacked the grenade against the brick wall and went to throw it, then realized the ignition hadn’t sparked. He repeated the move with similar results, and then the sheer panic at continuing to smash long-unused military ordnance against a wall overcame him, and he gave a scream and dared try it one last time, then hurling the grenade towards the truck regardless of whether it hissed or not.

  The grenade struck the truck’s bulbar and went off.

  The brief flash told nothing of the carnage. Its dry bang sent the truck’s hood flying and shrapnel took out the windows, peppered the open doors with ragged holes, and saw both the gunmen stagger away and then fall down. The older of the two writhed in agony on the filthy bricks as blood pumped from dozens of small wounds. His offsider lay completely still where he’d fallen, his back shredded and dark and wet.

  Dkembe led Erak and the girl straight for the gate, but only halfway across the yard, their eyes switched to rising screams coming beyond the top of the warehouse ramp. Dkembe’s look of disbelief betrayed him as a half-dozen men and women poured from the shed. Several of the now-unmasked concubines, the woman with the toolkit, one last Ascended henchman – and the Apex raced after them as well.

  “Run!”

  Dkembe’s trio moved to the cover of the blast-damaged truck he now dearly wished they could drive to freedom. More self-hatred poured in atop his resurgent panic. But Gonzales stopped at the truck’s burning front panel and callously turned the M4 into their pursuers, and Dkembe – a dispenser of wrongdoings himself, today – stared, somehow astonished, waiting for his friend to call a warning as the inevitable laying down of gunfire occurred.

  The stolen M4 clattered more mechanically than old movies ever showed, and the deadly rounds cut down one of the women and the toolkit lady.

  And that was it for their ammunition.

  “Fuck!” Erak bawled.

  “Run!”

  Dkembe and the girl-w
hose-name-he-still-didn’t-know yelled as one.

  All three fled as the unperturbed pack of surviving cultists chased them out into the street and running on madly down behind them through the first intersection. Gonzales hurled the useless rifle. The Apex lagged behind the others, and the hooded guard stumbled a misstep, but otherwise all ran close on their tails.

  The wind-battered street before them was void of life and working vehicles.

  Dkembe and the girl ran side by side. He had one of his moments again, running through treacle while contemplating the enormity of what he only now considered – had maybe planned for all along, in case things came to this point – and the utter misery of knowing he had such betrayal in him.

  The four cultists ran with such rage, it was like they were trapped within an apocryphal vision – a living nightmare writ real by the apocalypse which conjured forth madness. They pursued the escapees doggedly, relentless, crossing one shanty block and then the next. A woman hurled a glass bottle and it exploded like a grenade to the Ascended girl’s flank. She veered into Dkembe who only guided her along to avoid the collision, panting and out of breath and astonished at himself that someone who had a habit of running all his life wasn’t better at it.

  He took an even deeper breath as they crossed the next intersection and ran right, darting between two ancient trucks angled to create a chokepoint. The cultists kept on their tail undeterred. Desperation and pointless questions tumbled through Dkembe’s head.

  He turned side-on as he ran, hitching his pace as if to check on his friend, refusing to meet Erak’s eyes as he slowed and instead hacked with the fire ax one-handed into Erak’s knee.

  A shriek of mixed fear, shock, pain and outrage tore from Erak’s mouth like the blood from his ruined leg. He staggered and fell flat to the road surface and lay there looking at Dkembe in utter astonishment as Dkembe kept running with the slave girl just ahead.

  Dkembe closed his eyes trying to fight off the image burning into his mind, checking the path ahead was clear before his eyes were then dragged backward one last time at Erak, knowing fully well the sight would destroy him even though he’d wrought it himself.