Hellifax (42 page)

Amy stuck the barrel of the gun under his chin and squeezed the trigger, popping off the top of his skull.

Amid the blustery firing of the Ruger, a big man flung open the passenger door and fell from the van. He rose and pulled what looked to be a sawed-off, doubled-barreled shotgun from a thigh holster. Scott got up and charged, feeling his boots punch through the depths of snow, faintly aware of the final shots coming from within the van.

The survivor’s head lurched up and homed in on Scott. The shotgun came around, and Scott realized he’d made a mistake. He lurched to the left, toward the back of the van. The brute in the military helmet fired, and Scott felt the hot storm of pellets rip by his shoulder.

Missed.

The shooter shouted in frustration and struggled to reload the weapon. Scott charged along the side of the van. The man’s head flicked up, eyes going wide behind the visor.

Amy reached him first, snapping a kick into the warrior’s midsection, buckling him over and mashing him against the side of the van. She grabbed the back of his head and pulled it down as her padded knee came up and crashed into the visor. There was a crack, and the shotgun dropped from his hand. Amy didn’t stop. She kneed his head repeatedly and, when her victim slumped to the ground, she stomped, grunting with each impact.

“Amy.”

She stopped and regarded Scott.

“He’s done.”

The man at her feet wasn’t moving. The amount of blood leaving him told them both he wouldn’t be going anywhere ever again. Scott scooped up the shotgun and threw it into the van. He turned the battered form at his feet onto its side, looked for more weapons, and saw none.

Amy went back around the van and hopped in the driver’s seat.

“You coming?” she asked.

Scott stood outside the vehicle. The dormitory stood gloomy underneath the night sky, wisps of smoke lingering as if something burned.

“I can’t,” Scott said. “I have to…”
stop Tenner
he wanted to say, but couldn’t.

“You think you can kill him?”

Scott didn’t answer.

“Well?”

“I’m going to try,” he said. “Gun, please.”

“It’s empty.”

“You emptied it?” Scott was incredulous. “That’s a little much, ain’t it?”

“Hey…” Amy said, looking ahead. Perhaps she was going to say something sarcastic, but instead she hesitated, leaning forward into the steering wheel.

“Scott,” Amy started. “Get in the van.”

He was about to protest, but the sounds stopped him––that soft, unmistakable rustling that he’d already encountered too many times. He stared ahead and saw them scurry up over the white road, a writhing, knobby carpet. The rats had finally caught up with them. The blood and the recent dead all over the area had brought the seemingly unending wave of undead vermin.

An uneasy Scott got into the van. “Drop me off over there.”

Amy gaped at him. “I’m not going anywhere near there. That’s driving into them.”

“Amy, drive me over there right fucking now and you can be on your way.”

“No.” She put the machine into gear.

“Goddammit.” Scott gnashed his teeth and jumped out as she put the van into reverse. He never looked back. He got out his bat and climbed the nearby slope, getting out of the immediate path of the rats. There was no way he was going to let Tenner escape. If he did, the killer would only keep on killing innocent people. He doubted he could convince Amy he could stop him, not with Buckle and Vick probably dying somewhere. He didn’t blame her.

But he had to see this through, had to steel himself to do what needed to be done.

Facing that familiar river of undead, Scott plunged forward toward the dormitory. Rats streamed by him, zeroing in on the meat, both old and fresh, lying in the street. He stepped on a few that got in his way, glancing back to see the van’s headlights still on, Amy behind the wheel, rats teeming around the two motionless bodies the two of them had thrown into the street.

He was focused on the dark mass of the building ahead when he heard the angry exchange of gunfire.

The other two survivors of the grenade blast weaved around the opposite side of the dormitory until they came to the main entrance. High overhead, not visible from the road, was a pedway that connected the top floor with the adjacent building. Shards of glass from broken windows littered the ground as the two men walked up to the dormitory’s closed door. White paint, still in relatively good condition, glowed with moonlight. Armed with shotguns and axes, the ready-to-kill pair opened the door and barged inside.

Cray had been something of a leatherworker back in the real world, and he’d seen right away the protective qualities of tire rubber, which he fashioned into armor for himself and the others. He’d also been a member of the local Society for Creative Anachronism, so he knew how to construct a Roman cuirass. Once he and the others went back west and got home, he intended to get to work making more tire cuirasses, improving on his initial design. The one thing he wanted to find on this trip were ancient weapons, and he cursed himself for not insisting on ravaging the big museum they’d passed in Toronto.

Nolan spoke mostly in grunts, growls, and barks of harsh laughter. Quick to anger, Nolan had already killed two men on this expedition over jokes at his expense. While he wasn’t the best conversationalist in the world, he had other talents, like being able to kill people with little hesitation and swinging a murderous axe. No other man beside Fist instilled fear like Nolan, and some wondered if the crazy man would eventually make an attempt at the leader’s position. Such a move would only incite a bloody breakdown in the party, as several of the Norsemen didn’t want Nolan in charge. Fist was scary, but Nolan was unstable. Of all the people to be paired with as they went into a potential nest, Nolan was the best and perhaps the worst companion Cray could have asked for.

“This way,” Cray said, pointing toward one of two corridors. An archway opened into some type of common area, its features nearly invisible under a blue-black canopy of darkness.

Not totally unexpected, Nolan ignored Cray and went the other way. Swearing to himself, Cray was half-tempted to shoot the bastard in the back. He turned around and followed the man’s meaty frame. Nolan was the only one in the group who didn’t wear any protection. His clothing consisted of a couple of sweaters, a leather jacket, and a thick winter coat that bulked him up even further. He did wear an old riot helmet missing its visor, but he didn’t seem to care. Nolan was baiting the dead to fight him, but none had yet taken him.

They made their way to the end of the hall, pausing at open doorways and making certain the rooms were empty. When they located the stairwell, Nolan opened the door with one hand while holding on to his axe with the other.

Empty.

“Hrrm,” Nolan growled, in a rattling voice, as if his throat was coated in smoker’s phlegm.

Cray thought the killer might have said more, but he didn’t dare reply.

“Meh,” Nolan grunted, arching his head back and studying the stairs. He moved up. When Cray entered the stairwell, he couldn’t see up or down. The darkness swallowed Nolan and, for a moment, Cray hesitated. The dark would be a perfect place for Nolan to kill him. He didn’t have any reason to, but one simply couldn’t tell what the brute might do.

“Mmhrrr,” Nolan growled.

“Right,” Cray muttered, holding his shotgun before him and carefully placing a shoulder against the wall for guidance. He started up the stairs.

He caught up to Nolan just as the man opened the door to the second floor. Pale light gave the corridor shape, and the corpses filling it turned at the clicking of the door. Over Nolan’s shoulder, Cray could see the dead shuffle toward the unpredictable grunt, their dark faces moaning.

“Mehhehe,” Nolan chortled, in what Cray thought was pure Orcish glee. Nolan hefted his axe and went to meet them, much to the other man’s dismay. Cray hesitated to follow.

The corridor was dark and many doors had been left open, leaving the dead occupying them to slink forth as if escaping tombs. Nolan took ten steps and chopped downward––the ceiling just high enough for such a strike––cleaving one dead thing’s head open with a crack. Nolan pushed the corpse back with his boot and wrenched his axe free. He drew in a breath and nearly decapitated another zombie with one mighty swipe. Nolan raised his axe again and split open another face, driving the thing to its knees. The dead filled the corridor beyond the slaughter, struggling to get into the melee. Nolan met them head on, wading into a fray that was potentially beyond even his vicious capabilities.

Ghoulish forms slinked forth from the open doorways in frightening silence, freezing Cray where he stood. They reached for Nolan, clawed at his back, and the warrior turned on them with a puzzled grunt. He grabbed the throat of one dead man and savagely put its head and torso through a nearby window. The blow might’ve killed a living man, but the dead thing’s limbs only fluttered in annoyance. More dead closed in on Nolan, crowding him and his axe, and the killer soon found himself immersed in zombies. He released his weapon with one of his trademark grunts, not sounding panicked in the least.

The fool was trying the same thing Fist had done back when the van had crashed. Trouble was, as destructive as Nolan was, he was still no Fist. Cray dropped back to the stairwell, poised to bolt, unwilling to risk himself to save the brute’s life. The corpses swarmed Nolan, and for a moment, he appeared as a great black lumberjack, methodically tearing at flesh as pale as maggots and grunting as he punched undead faces. He slammed one body into the wall. Another he hugged to his chest and crushed. The zombies latched onto him in a mesh of limbs, and Nolan disappeared from sight. Then a hammer rose into the air, and the killer began splitting the heads around him with surgical precision. With a roar, he lifted one zombie well above his head and threw it forward, where it tumbled out of sight with a fleshy rattle. He killed three zombies as they tried unsuccessfully to bite into his layered belly. Nolan got his back against a wall and, with one hand, grabbed a face, lined it up, and smashed it with his hammer. More zombies joined the fray with chilling eagerness. Nolan’s strikes became slower, requiring more effort to pull the hammer free from a skull, until one zombie reached out with both hands and grasped Nolan’s arm. Another did the same, homing in on Nolan’s wrist, where the sleeve drooped down just enough to reveal skin.

One of the corpses sank its teeth into that meaty morsel. Nolan’s grunt became a wheezy scream, as if something once fun had suddenly become quite serious. He jerked his wrist back and, in the sparse light, ripped out a chunk of his own flesh. Blood flowed down his arm like oil. Another zombie stretched over its brethren, and Nolan bashed its face away. But there were too many covering him. He actually headbutted a corpse, crunching its nose, but that didn’t stop it from wrapping its white arms around Nolan’s tiring form, its open mouth seeking his throat. Zombies grabbed his gushing wrist, siphoning off veins and chewing deeper.

Nolan slowly sank under the dead tide, finally disappearing with a muted whimper.

Cray almost wanted to help the man, but it was better this way. And it was better for him to get the hell away from the zombies. He’d made the mistake of standing about and watching Nolan fall.

Then he heard the hissing above him in the stairwell.

Cray looked up and just barely saw shapes squirming in the inky blackness, moving toward him. He brought up his shotgun and fired, briefly lighting the stairs and glimpsing a mass of torsos and limbs oozing downward. Cray backed up and figured it was time to beat a strategic retreat.

Something crashed into his legs from behind and staggered him. A corpse moved at his feet. Cray turned on the landing, heard the briefest rush of air, and didn’t have time to look up. A weight slammed into his back, stunning him and driving him to his knees. A moment later, the tide of flesh on the stairs overran him, bending him backward until his knees popped painfully, all the while slowly wrenching the hockey helmet from his head, the chin strap finally snapping. Cray thrust his arms against the bodies, yelling for help, yelling for them to stop, and finally screaming, but they just continued to pile onto him, reaching, reaching…

He still had enough time to shriek when fingers clawed out his eyes, and mouths fastened onto his cheeks like toothy leeches.

That bloodcurdling scream ripped through all levels of the dormitory, making the few living things nearby stop and listen. The sound hung hauntingly on the air, ebbing away until it was abruptly cut off.

In another stairwell on the far side of the building, Fist stopped in his tracks and listened to the scream until it ended. He turned to Shipp and muttered, “That one hurt.”

Hearing the same lingering scream, Tenner shifted on his belly and waited, listening to the sound until it stopped. When silence established itself once more, he set his attention on the dark corridor ahead and whoever or whatever might fill it. He hoped they came soon. He was getting bored, despite the intriguing sounds from elsewhere in building.

Then he heard something, faint, but coming from the end of the corridor. Almost gracefully, he placed an eye to his scope and studied the darkness, settling into a more comfortable position. A shard of light touched the lower part of the door, gashing it, and Tenner was just able to make out a widening crack. He waited. The question of who it might be would soon be answered. He hoped it was alive. The dead usually had trouble opening doors.

The crack widened.

Tenner
tsked
to himself. But then, there was no real way for his visitors to know what lay ahead of them.

Two shadows edged carefully into the corridor, one ahead of the other.

Tenner waited until they filled his sights, then he squeezed the trigger.

At the last possible moment, one shadow split from the other, the wall seemingly swallowing the dusky outline. It was at that moment that the AR-20 went full rock show and lit up the corridor, hammering vicious rounds into the remaining shadow and throwing it back into the stairwell. The weapon rattled slightly against Tenner’s shoulder, stitching up the outline with tracers that cut the gloom like lasers. He stopped firing a few seconds later, smelling the cordite, and studied the results through the scope. The second shadow had disappeared, split from the other, while Tenner discerned boots pointing to the ceiling where his first kill had fallen on his back.