Hellifax

Hellifax

(Mountain Man Book Three)

By Keith C. Blackmore

Copyright 2012 Keith C. Blackmore

Edited by Sean Fox (Red Adept Publishing)

Formatted by Jason G Anderson

Cover by Athanasios of Covers For Hire

www.mad-gods.com/CoverHIRE

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

They came from the west.

Three great cargo vans crossed the Ontario-Quebec border, threading the wide Trans Canada Highway as if driven by drunkards and blazing through the summer heat shimmers over the road.

Men with bad intentions filled the vehicles loaded with guns and supplies for a lengthy journey. Body armor and sports padding covered their frames in a patchwork that didn’t always fit properly, bulking them up and widening their shoulders. Some wore helmets with face cages, while others had only visors spray-painted black on the outside, hiding their features. The men were well-built and strong, battered and scarred. Tattoos covered exposed flesh in red and black ink: dragons and chains, sickles and skulls, executioners and axes. Fearsome images etched across entire arms, spreading over shoulders and up the sides of faces like some horrible disease. Most of the men did not shave or cut their hair, in honor of the conquering Norsemen who had prowled the Atlantic centuries ago. They looked hard and possessed the stares of instigators and shit disturbers. All were born killers, once unaware of their true potential, which had been unleashed after the fall of civilization. They joked and guffawed amongst themselves, shoving shoulders and slapping backs like hungry bears taking fleshy swipes out of each other’s hides. Sometimes, when they stopped for the night, the jokes would go too far, and fights would start. When that happened, the others would pull back and form a ring, allowing whoever was at odds to go at each other’s throats with all the enthusiasm of rabid Dobermans, pissed beyond pissed. Two men had already been killed in such a way, practically sliced into bleeding ribbons. No doubt one or two more would go the same way before they returned to the west.

“Boys will be boys” was a favorite saying of Fist. He was perhaps the biggest, the strongest, and hands down the most
psychotic
of them all, and he regarded all of his companions as nothing more than meat that talked back––easily managed with a yank and a cut, if need be. That they took orders from him made no difference, and he knew more than one of them slept at night with knives in their hands, as he himself did, just in case. He didn’t trust those walking husks of carrion feeders, and when he slept, it was usually in the van or in an apartment that could be locked. He didn’t worry about them stealing the vans. Fear kept his minions in check, and he made it painfully clear that if any of them decided to run off with one of the vehicles, he’d find them. No matter how long it took, he’d sniff them out like a bloodhound on a mission from the Devil, even if the trail took him across boiling oceans and hateful volcanoes. He’d
find
them.

And skull-fuck the offenders with his Bowie knife.

Fear was power, and he’d learned that from the best. Fear kept them wary of opportunities. None of them feared the dead that walked the earth. The dead were easy to fight, easy to kill. The dead were nothing more than dried-up shit under the boots of empire makers. Fist was the first of many to come east. The east was the last great frontier in the new world. The last unknown. Fist had been sent east to
see
… and to report.

And thus far, he’d seen utter shit.

The east was
weak
.

Unorganized.

Ill-prepared for the chains of agony that would follow Fist’s initial expedition.

The land was much the same as the rest of the world. The dead ruled it. The remaining pockets of humanity had shrivelled up like old men’s scrotums after a dip in arctic waters. Fallout from nuclear reactors melting down after the power grid failed had ruined much of the earth. The same fallout withered survivors near the installations with the irradiated kiss of death. Fist and his crew avoided those places and the greater cities. They headed east to look not only for safe havens, but pure, uncontaminated sustenance.

There was no Canada anymore. There were no States. There certainly was no North, Central, or South America. There was only land and warlords cutting out the new order from the bones of the old, stamping their sign on conquered territory, basking in anarchy, and lapping up lakes of blood.

There were only predators… and meat.

The three vans screamed over the crumbling grey of the highway, barreling down the highway like spray-painted missiles. The early fall sun glared at the travellers through the windshields. Fist sat in the passenger side of the first battle van, his dark eyes hooded and lazy. The long drives sometimes made him sleepy, and he resisted with a sharp shake of his head or a widening of his eyes. The asphalt stitch that was the Trans-Canada Highway shoved the forest back on both sides, splitting it wide. The tree line’s red, brown, and gold held no beauty for him or his self-named Norsemen, and more than one of the warriors entertained thoughts of stopping and starting a fire.

Just for fun.

At first, Fist hadn’t really wanted to go east. But he was chosen, and he wasn’t ready to challenge the man who had given the order. Fist had gone along with it, keeping his true feelings to himself. Sending him east was probably just a way of getting rid of him, removing him from the power structure in favor of someone less intimidating, easier to control. Eventually, in the back of his mind, he realized the expedition just might give him the edge needed to take power over the Norsemen. It might provide him with useful weapons, perhaps even children to be raised as future raiders.

And over time, the more he thought about it, the more Fist’s mind had changed about the journey.

The driver of one of the other vans honked a horn. The sound hooked Fist from his sleepy drifting, and he shook his head to clear it. He blinked his soot-blackened eyes and paused for a moment, hearing the horn once more.

“What is it?” he rumbled at the driver, leaning forward in his seat, his bass voice as sonorous and silky as a fine burning scotch. Some of the men believed Fist might only possess one lung or that he had suffered from some extreme upbringing where he had screamed incessantly. They were half right. After the Fall, when the wild things rose up, there was plenty to scream about, and every time Fist did, it shaved away a little more of his already frayed vocal chords until only bedrock remained.

“Don’t know,” Pell answered. He was a beast of a rig pig, once hailing from Red Deer. “My side window’s gone, too.”

Fist filled his lungs and sighed long and deep. “Pull over.”

Pell decreased speed immediately. He wore no helmet while driving, and Fist wasn’t above slamming his driver’s head into the steering column.

Flexing his fingers, Fist studied the knuckles rippling underneath his skin as the seatbelt kept him in place. The van slowed to a stop. Releasing the belt, the Norseman leader took a breath and heaved himself out of the van. Doors opened all round as the rest of the pack jumped to the highway, stretching their legs and arms with guttural glee.

Heels clicking on the road, Fist sauntered past his dogs and glanced toward the trees once more. Something lay beyond the thin fence of autumn color. A golf course, perhaps?

Steam issued from the opened hood of one of their vans, and two bulky Norsemen stood to one side when their leader arrived.

“What is it?” Fist asked in Norse speak, which all of the clan strived to learn. The harsh-sounding syllables came out as the exposed motor tossed grey puffs into the air.

“Carburetor,” Herman reported, his sooty features screwed up in distaste. He was the mechanic of the group.

“Then, fix it,” Fist ordered, the words coming out as
Gur ee agh grum
.

“And try not to fuck it up any worse.” That came from Murphy, a tall, almost skeletal jackal of a man. He grinned behind a face cage, yellow teeth set below grimy eyes and an anvil of a nose.

“Fuck off,” Herman lipped back.

Murphy’s darkened eyes went wide before a snarl twisted his mouth. He nodded, licked his lips, and shoved the mechanic. Herman shoved back.

Then they were swinging at each other amid undulating whoops and hollers.

Fist stood back and watched the two men punch and slam each other around for all of ten seconds. It wasn’t a particularly entertaining fight as they both wore armor, but it was something to wake him up from the monotony of the long drive.

Murphy suddenly upended Herman and dumped him on his back. Murphy pounced, pinning the other man’s arms to the road. A knife flashed up, the steel dull in the daylight.

A thought shot through Fist’s mind.
Herman is the only mechanic we have on this trip
.

Just as Murphy stabbed downward, Fist stepped forward and batted a hand across the man’s face, knocking him flat.

“Aren’t too many mechs around,” the Norseman leader growled. He pointed at both men on the ground. “Don’t fuck around anymore, else I kick the shit outta both.”

Fist focused entirely on Murphy. “Might not stop on you. You aren’t a mech.”

“Takin’ that shit stain’s side?” Murphy asked, sticking out his chin.

“Murph,” Fist warned in a voice low enough to shake spines. “Shut up.”

And like that, Murphy backed off like a dog snapped hard across the muzzle.

Fist directed his attention back to Herman, who climbed to his feet and got to work. The leader lingered for a moment, turning his hips in the direction of the golf course and scratching thoughtfully at his ribs. He’d never played, but he had beaten the brains out of several undead golfers with their own clubs almost a year ago. The memory made him smirk in an unpleasant way. He only wished he could’ve done the same thing back when the world was still the world.

Hands on his hips, Fist meandered back to the lead van. Men quieted as he passed, not daring to look him in the eye, only to resume talking once he was out of arm’s reach. Beyond the vehicle, the TCH stretched out for perhaps another kilometer before being eclipsed by a hill. Fist struck a fearsome pose in his roughshod armor made from tire treads. He glared at the road and wished for something to kill. The urge was hard to control, and sometimes it just took him.

Movement caught his attention.

Not far away, on the other side of the highway, was a subdivision of houses with their backs to the road. Fist held his breath for a moment, staring at a series of fences that had crumpled over time. Things were moving over there.

“Shut the fuck up!” Fist barked without turning around, silencing the rest of the men.

There was no wind, and the sounds that reached them came from the line of houses. There, through a thin mesh of trees sad with dying leaves, he heard the unmistakable sound of moaning.

A second later, Fist zeroed in on a clump of figures laying siege to a two-story house. Fleshy slaps against the panel wood punctuated the crisp afternoon calm. A mob of undead ringed the walls, attempting to get inside. That only meant one thing.

There was someone alive inside.

“Cray!” Fist’s voice boomed like artic ice cracking. “Get ten lined up.”

The man protected by suits of riot gear starting shouting orders.

“Pell, you keep the others in line here. Protect the vans,” Fist ordered his driver and went to the rear of his vehicle. He slapped at his armor and snapped his fingers until a hockey helmet with a face cage was handed to him. He strapped it on and snapped down the cage. Next came his maul, a frightening length of hickory with a hammer and blade head, chipped, scarred, and heavy. Fist took it with one hand from the Norseman inside the van, hefted it as if it weighed one pound instead of ten, and walked away while others mobbed the rear, searching for their own weapons. They possessed firearms of the brutish, short-range kind—sawed-off shotguns. They wore the weapons swinging in crude leather holsters on their thighs or slung over their backs.

Fist sniffed and wiggled a finger underneath his chinstrap, as the damn thing was a touch too snug. Placing the head of the maul down, he reached to his hip holster, pulled out his own sawed-off shotgun, and checked the load. He didn’t want to fire the weapon unless absolutely necessary, as ammunition was limited. Besides, all one truly needed when fighting zombies was a line of men strong enough to hold formation and to keep on swinging once the reaping started. Across the highway, the undead clambered against the house, clawing at it as if exhausted, beating their limbs against windows which held, and wailing for whoever was inside to just open up so all the nasty business of feeding could be taken care of.