23 Hours (5 page)

Now I should have been a little more careful, I know that, but a legless creature just doesn’t seem too terrifying so I just kind of sauntered up to him. Big mistake, because that’s when he used his arms to launch himself at me. Thankfully he only managed to make it as high as my kneecap, but that was my favorite kneecap. I screamed out in pain as his teeth ripped through the skin and into bone but then something happened; the pain stopped and I just got really, really pissed off.

I brought Excalibur down, quickly slicing through the brainstem and spine but the damn thing’s head was still attached to my leg. It took a moment to pry its mouth open but once I did I managed to punt that thing at least 30 yards. Had there been some goal posts I might have even made it through.

Though Tweedledum wasn’t moving, and several bullets seemed to have turned his neck and head into Swiss cheese, I still decapitated him. It was the least I could do after everything he’d done for me. That left only one thing to take care of before heading back to the kid.

The beasts’ initial victim was still right where they left him/her. As I got close I couldn’t make out a gender but I could tell they were young, like early teen young. Way too young to have to deal with that shit. Male or female, it didn’t really matter so I called them sleeping beauty.

Those creatures had done a real number on beauty, making a meal of most of her insides before going to work on the arms and legs. They always seemed to like to go for the intestines and livers first; hers were long gone. So was most of an arm and a leg, but somehow she was still moving; squirming; writhing in pain. Apparently they hadn’t made it to her brain yet.

I would have liked to give her a proper burial but I really couldn’t waste any more time. All I could do was say a quick prayer before Excalibur removed her head. With the brainstem severed she wouldn’t come back as one of them; it sucked, but that was the best I could do.

Chapter 7

My bag had gotten tossed in the shuffle though I quickly found it over by the drainage ditch. I knew I had to go find the boy but first I wanted to do something about my shoulder. It would never work again and there was no way I could fix it, but he didn’t need to see it like that. Thankfully I had some extra clothes in my bag.

I was able to take an old Metallica t shirt and fashion a bandage of some sort. Amazingly it had stopped bleeding so I didn’t need the bandage for that, but it wasn’t just the kid I wanted to hide it from. Some people will see any wound as a weakness and that was never a good thing.

I had just barely gotten the wound covered when I heard the branch snap right behind me. In one swift move I managed to grab Excalibur from the ground, spin around and rise to me feet, swinging the blade in a perfect arc. Thankfully the boy was small so I missed him by at least two inches.

Even faced with a lunatic swinging a lawnmower blade the kid was fearless. He waited until I had stopped swinging then launched himself at me, hugging my leg like there was no tomorrow.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I growled as he continued to hold tight. I wanted to be angry, I mean I could have killed him, but damn that kid; I just couldn’t be mad at him.

“You’re going to have to keep a hold of the bag,” I said as soon as he let go. “My shoulder’s not quite working like it should.”

He reached for the bandaged shoulder but I pulled back.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” I replied. “But it’ll be fine.”

He nodded and climbed on my back being careful to avoid the injury and as soon as he grabbed the burlap bag, we took off. I wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline or something else, but I wasn’t nearly as fatigued as I should have been. I should have given up at that point; even with the time we made up in the Ferret it was futile. I mean night had already set in and the hospital was still eight hours away by foot. Even with the best case scenario I couldn’t see my body lasting that long.

They say when you’re out of options and you finally realize that the shit is real, something happens. Some people snap, completely losing it. Others dig deep and find an inner strength to feed off of. None of that shit happened for me. I just kept walking. Walking that far gives you plenty of time to think, and I quickly got lost in my thoughts. The more I thought, the more I walked and before I knew it my walking had turned into a jog. The damage done to my leg didn’t seem to have any effect so I kept going as the kid’s breathing became more and more shallow.

I pulled out Willie’s watch when we reached Culver City and by the light of the moon I could see that it was just about 2 AM. Somehow I had managed to make it almost 20 miles in four hours. That, along with the fact that the pain in my legs and shoulder seemed to have disappeared, should have set off warning bells but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth so I kept running, staying with the tracks until we just about reached the grain elevator.

Culver City wasn’t a pleasant place during the day; at night it was downright sinister. Compared to the people there, the Town was practically filled with saints. No one in their right mind would ever take a kid there or even go there themselves at night. I was doing both.

By keeping to the outskirts of the city I was hoping to avoid some of the most dangerous residents, but as luck would have it we stumbled into a particularly nasty welcoming committee about a hundred yards from the elevator. I had just turned down a side street and passed a couple buildings that looked like they were imported from Hiroshima circa 1945 when three guys emerged from a large hole in a crumbling wall.

“Am I glad to see you,” an extremely large brute said as he walked up to me. The other two closed in from the sides but from the corner of my eye I caught a brief hint of movement in the shadows, so I knew we weren’t alone.

“Sorry I can’t really say the same about you,” I quipped. He stared blankly for a minute before his face broke into an incredibly wide, toothless grin. For a moment he reminded me of a stereotypical hillbilly that everyone likes to laugh at, and he would have been comical too, if it wasn’t for his soulless eyes. When he looked at me with those eyes I knew just how serious he was. In spite of his obvious depravity, or maybe because of it, I decided to call him Bubba.

“I like you,” he said, “so here’s what I’m going to do for you.”

Bubba came forward as he said this, his stench quite evident even from several feet away. Thankfully it wasn’t nearly as bad as the stench of an infected, but I still wouldn’t want to eat my dinner around him.

“You leave that pretty little boy,” he said practically licking his lips, “and that nice little bag of yours, and I’ll let you live.”

“That’s a very tempting offer, Bubba,” I replied, “but how about I make you a counter offer?”

Again he stared blankly for a moment before that wide grin returned. Then he laughed, a full bodied laugh, before turning to no one in particular.

“He thinks he actually has a choice,” he said, still chuckling. It barely took me a second to end that laughter but at least Bubba died with a smile on his face.

I pulled the knife from his jugular and swung the kid off my back just in time for one of Bubba’s brothers to tackle me, sending my face sliding across the busted concrete walk. I could feel the skin being ground off before we finally came to a stop against an overflowing dumpster.

The fists started hammering down before I even had a chance to flip over onto my back and even with Excalibur still in my hand, I was defenseless. Face down on a grimy back alley is the last place you want to be with several deranged rednecks on a Saturday night, especially if one of them is using your head as a punching bag. I tried pushing myself up but a kick to my liver made me turtle up; he obviously wasn’t done with his fun yet.

I heard the boy scream out, and instantly the anger flared from within. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to roll over and kick the legs out from under Bubba’s brother Larry at the same time. Larry went down hard, his head bouncing of the concrete, but unfortunately he remained conscious.

I never even made it back to my feet before two more of Bubba’s brothers, I called Darryl and Darryl,  were on me, one grabbing my legs, dragging me as the other followed along, stomping any part of my body he could land a foot on. I don’t know if it was intentional, but my groin seemed to be receiving more than its fair share, but I couldn’t even get my hands in place to cover it before another foot would smash into my head.

The boy screamed again and I suddenly froze, I couldn’t even protect myself, let alone do anything to help him. The combination of panic, anger, frustration and helplessness does some weird things to you. For me I short-circuited; just shut down. I let my hand fall to the side and I just went limp. The feeling of complete impotence was just too much. I closed my eyes and just prayed for a quick death, for me and the boy.

The gunshots rang out like a crack of thunder, forcing my eyes open just as the last punch smashed into my nose. Even through the blurred vision I could see the shock on Darryl and Darryl’s faces just before their foreheads were given a little extra ventilation, courtesy of my new favorite person. Unfortunately I had no idea who they were or what they wanted, so I quickly scrambled to my feet.

Chapter 8

I had just barely made it over to the kid when a hand reached out from the shadows, with the wrong end of a long barreled revolver pointing at me. From the looks of it, it had to be a .44 magnum with at least an 8” barrel. It’s amazing what details you focus on when you’re once again staring death in the face.

“Damn,” I growled again. “Listen; take the bag, whatever you want, just don’t hurt the kid, okay?”

“Now you know I’d never harm a kid, Mac,” she replied in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard.

It was then my turn to stare blankly for a minute until she stepped from the shadows.

“Rosie?” I asked half in shock. Her blonde hair had grown out quite a bit and she was sporting a new patch over one eye, but she was still as beautiful as ever.

“So you do remember me,” she replied, stepping even closer. I stuttered for a minute, trying to keep my eyes from drifting below her neck and focus on what she wanted, but she didn’t even give me a chance to answer before slapping me across the face with her unarmed hand.

“Is this why you never came back?” She asked waving the gun towards the boy. It was kind of funny, but I swear I could actually see the flames dancing in her eyes, or at least the one that wasn’t covered with an eye patch.

“He’s not mine, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s really a long story, but I’m just trying to get him to the hospital, and quick.”

“What’s in it for you?”

I had to laugh; Rosie knew me well. “Nothing. I don’t even know whose kid it is; I just stumbled across him this morning.”

I don’t know if my face was getting numb or if she was easing up on me but the second slap hurt a little less than the first.

“What’s that for?” I growled as I rubbed my cheek again.

“If he was yours you’d at least have an excuse for never getting back in touch with me.”

“It’s not that simple,” I protested, but actually it was; she had been a good time, and I’d planned on getting back with her, but...

“Save it,” she said as she turned her back on me and started heading back into the shadows.

“Wait,” I said without knowing exactly why. All I knew is I didn’t want her to leave. Not then, not like that. “I was wrong.”

“Damn straight you were,” she said, turning to face me again.

“But don’t take it out on the kid, okay?”

“I’m not taking anything out on him.”

“Not directly, but he needs your help; I need your help - to get him to the hospital.”

“You don’t need my help,” she said. “It might take you a little extra time without me, but I’m sure you’ll make it there in one piece. You always have a way of coming out on top.”

“No,” I said pulling my sleeve back and shoving my arm in her face. “Not this time.”

That stopped her.

“Damn,” she said. “You didn’t have to get it so close to my nose.”

I had to laugh at that.

“Yeah, it should be starting to get ripe. You know what that means...”

“Yeah I do.”

“So then you know I need your help.”

“You always were a bastard who knew how to pull my strings.”

“So you’ll do it then?”

“Okay, I’ll do it on one condition.”

“We really don’t have time for it, and seeing us like that could traumatize the kid...”

I barely even felt the third slap.

“As I was saying,” she continued. “My only condition is that when the time comes I get to do it.”

“You mean...”

“Yeah. I want to make sure you don’t come back as one of them. You’re bad enough as is, as one of them you’d be down right impossible.”

“So you think I’m worth a bullet?”

“I never said I’d use my gun.”

Damn she was something special.

“Besides,” she continued, “I’ll have the whole trip to think about offing you, to decide if you’re worth it.”

“Deal,” I said grabbing the pack and Excalibur. “Now can we get going?”

When the kid was situated on my back I slid a couple more knives from my pack into the holder on my mostly dead arm and headed for the main road.

“No,” she said. “Not that way, unless you want to end up the play thing for these guys’ bigger cousins.”

“Bigger cousins?” I asked, but she didn’t reply before leading us into the darkness of one of the nearby partial buildings. Our eyes actually adjusted pretty quickly and I was able to see that we were standing in the remains of some sort of deli. There was no food and all of the furniture was left in shambles, but thinking back I’m pretty sure I’d eaten there once, years before...

“You coming?” she said, immediately moving across the room.

“So does everyone here live like cockroaches?” I asked as I made my way after her.

“No,” she replied, “only the ones who want to stay alive.”