Well Fed - 05 (56 page)

“Freeze,” Collie said, and the woman did exactly that as the shouting from Whitecap’s mouth seemed to level off. “You know anyone called Gus?” Collie asked her.

“What?”

“You fuckin’ heard me, sister.”

“Yes, yes! Gus! He’s here! I know where he is!”

Collie studied her then the room. A doorway and short hall branched off, but with the paper-covered tables, cabinets, and medical charts, there was no mistaking the office’s purpose.

“What’s your name?”

“Maggie.”

Collie smiled behind her mask. She’d just found the pecker checker. “Best news I’ve heard this morning. Where’s Gus?”

“They have him in an empty trailer two units down.”

“Yeah?” Collie glanced outside and counted off trailers, spying no guards. They’d probably joined the commotion coming from Whitecap. “You’re supposed to have some kids with you?”

Maggie blinked. “Not here. This is only a clinic. But I know where.”

“Where?”

“The other office just past Gus’s trailer.”

“You get them and bring them here?”

“There’s a guard.”

“Honey, anyone with an asshole is heading to that tunnel right now. We don’t have much time, but if we both hustle, I’m pretty sure I can locate some wheels and drive outta here. You with me?”

Maggie’s head almost fell off she nodded so hard.

“Let’s do it,” Collie said.

Maggie hurried to the door only to have Collie stop her with a hand.

She peered left and right then across an open stretch of cement to more trailers, motor homes, and the beast of a dump truck on the other side. “Okay, stay between me and the trailers,” Collie ordered. “We go.”

Shovel met Slick Pick and most of his gasping crew around the flatbed at the base of the ramp. Pickups with armed men and women gathered behind a thick wall of sandbags. They looked to him for leadership. Shovel didn’t disappoint. He got into the thick of it right away.

“All right, calm the fuck down. Calm down and get behind those sandbags. Dig in and aim at whatever comes out of that hole, but don’t none of you fire a single fucking shot. You wait until I tell you to shoot. Got that?”

With anxious affirmatives, those wielding guns settled in behind the wall and prepared themselves.

“Giovanni, get up there and fire up the mini––you hold your shit until I say so.”

Giovanni nodded, bearded jawline set and grim, and climbed up onto the platform. Two others piled onto the flatbed in support. Shovel whirled upon Slick Pick with an expression demanding explanation.

“We pulled that truck out, and they fuckin’ dropped in from the ceiling,” Slick Pick babbled. “They fuckin’ dropped in and all that stirred-up dust and shit fuckin’ creeped me out, and I told the guys to fire, and we did, but that didn’t stop them. We shot the living batshit outta them unbreathing bastards, but only a few went down, so I got everyone out like I was supposed to. Eddie couldn’t get clear of the backhoe and freaked out—tried to fuckin’ rodeo-bang his way out of there, but he couldn’t get clear. He couldn’t get clear.”

Shovel swung a hateful glare to the smoking mouth of Whitecap and waited as the sounds of weapons being locked and loaded filled the air.

“Eddie’s dead,” Shovel declared. “Get your shit tight and get ready for the slaughter.”

He racked the slide on his submachine gun for emphasis and jerked his head in the direction Slick Pick should scamper off to.

Slick Pick bolted.

“Dickless,” Shovel hissed, and turned to meet the forbidding countenance of the mountain called Nolan, already suited up as if he might’ve gone to bed in his gear. The big man carried his axe, and his silver face gleamed in the gauzy daylight.

“You stay around me,” Shovel commanded and got a nod. That was all Shovel needed.

“How you doin’, Gio?” Shovel shouted and stepped to the side of the flatbed, looking up toward the minigun and the two-person crew ready to swap out ammo boxes.

“Ready to fuck people up,” Giovanni replied.

“All right, you sorry-assed sonsabitches,” Shovel barked at the people behind the sandbagged wall. Even the new recruits huddled nearby, which was good.

“One more time. You wait until the minigun opens up. You do
not
fire. You prematurely squeeze your trigger finger, and I swear to goddamn, I’ll stick my size eleven up your crusty hole and wipe my toes on your ass. Clear?”

They were, and they voiced it.

“All right,” Shovel said and set his attention on Whitecap’s mouth. “Like the man said. Get ready to fuck some folks up.”

As if they’d heard their introduction, figures emerged from the darkness of the tunnel mouth, dribbling forth into daylight. A whole
lot
of people. They were only forty or so meters away, but the morbid glee at seeing all that fresh pulsating meat at the bottom of the ramp was unmistakable. There were soldiers in full but wrecked battle rattle, women in dresses, and kids in summer clothing. Men and women wore lab coats, formal suits, and leisure wear. All looked as if they’d spent a very long time under the earth. All looked famished. They were a veritable blood-and-guts-soaked parade of unholy might, where shriveled streamers of organic matter dragged behind the owners, where portions of faces had been bitten off for decoration.

“Jesus,” someone said aloud, saying it for everyone.

“How many we estimate were in there?” Giovanni called down from the minigun, sounding positively rock solid.

“Six or seven hundred,” Shovel answered, not quite sharing his confidence but trying to at least fake it.

The trouble was that six or seven hundred seemed like a lot more in reality than in off-the-cuff discussion around the security of a table.

From his concealed perch on the hillside, Wallace watched. He divided his attention between Collie and the forces gathering behind the line of sandbags at the base of the ramp. At a glance, he suspected whoever was trusted with a gun had one. All aimed at the river of corpses that flowed into daylight.

The advancing dead made Wallace smile with cadaverous mirth.

Did he want to deal with shambling meatbags… or the thinking living?

He screwed the scope deeper against his eye socket and took careful aim at a head.

Easiest fucking decision he’d made all week.

Shovel and his group watched in horrified awe as the mob lumbered down the ramp toward them. Without any concern for the poised minigun, the undead marched on. Shovel believed every last one of them sonsabitches was smiling. The sound of their relentless approach became frightening, nerve grating. The chilling mesh of famished voices, bare-skin shuffles, and boot stomps was relentless.

He looked toward Giovanni, and his second-in-command’s expression froze somewhere between collected and grossed-out. Giovanni caught Shovel’s eye, straightened his back, and cocked his head just as it exploded as if under pressure. Blood and brain matter drizzled the two accompanying men as Giovanni’s headless body crumpled back onto the flatbed.

Speckles dotted Shovel, who stood shaking in shocked disbelief.

Then he heard the shot.

But by then, the whole of his militia opened up on the zombies, lighting up the line in a barrage of angry fireworks.

The barrage of gunfire made Sick stop packing a loaded syringe into a carrying case and listen with interest. He glanced at the door of his new motor home––only just inhabited––and went to the living area, where a window faced the inner ring of gathered trailers and offices. Spying nothing, he tried to angle himself to see farther north, past the general quarters and the towering Kat truck. There he glimpsed the flash and smoke of a gun battle.

Sick straightened and considered the engagement. Then he considered his orders.

The orders stood.

Besides, Shovel had the mini up at that end. Any fight would be finished by that lead-spewing beast. Sick put the syringe in a carrying pack and zipped it up, depositing it in a leg pocket. He turned away from the window but froze, catching movement between the gaps of trailers across the way. That flutter made him stop and squint, willing whatever it might be to reveal itself.

And it did.

Sick’s eyes widened at the sight.

Collie and Maggie rounded a corner of a trailer and moved quickly between units, sprinting through the gaps. The automatic fire freaked Maggie out a bit, and Collie had to hold onto her arm for a grounding effect.

“Don’t worry,” she said close to the doctor’s ears. “We pick up Gus and then the kids. Okay?”

That seemed to do the trick. Maggie took a deep breath and pointed to the next trailer over.

“You sure?” Collie asked.

She nodded she was.

No guards
, but Collie figured everyone might be at the ramp with the bullets zinging overhead. That didn’t concern her. Phase two was extracting Gus, and she was nearing completion. They jogged to the trailer, and Collie took a moment to undo the chains wrapped around the door handles.

“You stay out here and keep watch, okay?” Collie instructed her. “Anyone asks, you just say you’re being careful and heading over to see how the kids are doing. Got it?”

Fearfully, Maggie pressed herself up against the trailer and nodded.

“We’re outta here in a minute,” Collie assured her and yanked on the chain, letting it puddle on the cement in a noisy rattle. She pulled down the folded steps underneath the bumper, opened one door, and charged inside.

The gunfire didn’t sound so bad inside the empty trailer.

“Gus,” Collie asked the gloom, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She lifted her rifle, ready if needed, and slowly proceeded.

“Gus? You in here?”

The sky roiled and thundered, and Gus thought a tsunami might charge into sight, a tidal wave from which nobody could escape, and the only thing left to do would be to stand and wait for the water to hit. The Captain laughed at his unease, which didn’t sit well with him.

“That’s not very fucking nice,” Gus scolded him. “I’m freaking out here.”

“Don’t be worried,” the Captain said. “Help is on the…” His face paled, his moustache drooping.

Gus noticed the change. “What?” He lurched forward, wondering if the old guy was having a heart attack.

The Captain regarded Gus, alarm flaring in his eyes. “You
must
wake up now.”

No sooner had he finished the sentence than Gus thought he heard the voice of a woman, coming from down the beach.

The voice was Collie’s.

“Collie?”

Hearing her name through the shadows of the trailer put a smile on her face. She hurried ahead, toward the far end, scanning the shadows from behind her upraised rifle. “That you, babe?”

But Gus didn’t answer.

The shape of a white frame rested on the floor, and on that, Collie realized, was a body, one that stirred and flopped over onto its back.

“Gus?”

He answered with a grunt.

Smiling under her mask, Collie dropped to a knee at the mattress’s edge and gripped a shoulder. Gus groaned again. She rattled him before pulling on an arm, noticing how he was nursing a bottle of what might’ve been booze.

“You okay, Gussy? Huh? How you doing?”

“Collie?”

“It’s me,” she pulled him to a sitting position. His head rolled stupidly on his shoulders, mouth open wide enough to gulp down flies. She placed her rifle against the wall and gripped his face, pulling it in close and studying the tiny flecks of light residing therein.

“Are you fucking
high
?” Collie blurted in amazed contempt.

“Uh-huh.”

“Jesus Christ! How the hell did you… All right. We’re leaving this place. Can you move?”

Gus’s head lolled on his shoulders. “Sick.”

“You think you’re gonna puke?”

“No.”

“Don’t shit yourself. Please don’t shit yourself.”

“Sick.”

“Got that part. Just hold it, okay? Clench. Tighten up every sphincter you got.”

Then, in a display of physical and mental might, forcing his rubbery limbs to obey his will, Gus lifted a finger… and dropped it, still utterly shitfaced.

Collie shifted into a crouch and took a deep breath, knowing she’d have to toss Gus over her shoulders to get him out of there—not something she wanted to do—but she could drop him in the office when they reached the kids.

Then she heard something.

A whimper.

Collie snatched up her rifle and whirled, seeing the rectangular doorway at the back of the trailer and identifying Maggie’s outline from the shoulders up.

A shadow peeked out from behind her.

Not a shadow
, Collie corrected herself.
Some bastard wearing a ski mask.

“Let her go, and I’ll let you live,” Collie commanded and walked toward the frame of daylight.

“Stop,” Maggie blurted, barely heard above the continuous gunfire. “He says stop or he’ll––”

Her voice failed her for two seconds. Then, “He’ll blow my head off.”

Collie stopped but didn’t lower her weapon.

“He says… he says drop the rifle.”

The bastard stood directly behind Maggie, a sliver if that, not presenting a clear shot in the least. Collie could shoot anyway, quickly killing the doctor and the man behind her, but she didn’t want to do that either. The doctor was the most important person on base.

The doctor was gold.

Would he shoot her? She was worth too, too much to them all.

Then again, Collie knew firsthand plenty of crazies were about. Grinding her teeth, she sniffed and slowly placed the rifle at her feet. She wouldn’t take that chance. Not with Maggie’s life.

“He says to kick it forward.”

Collie complied, and the weapon slid forward.

“He says further.”

Screwing up her lips, Collie walked to the rifle and reluctantly did just that, sending the firearm skidding past the halfway point of the trailer.

“Now the side piece. Pinch and toss it.”

Collie complied.

“He says to step back. To the back wall.”

Lifting her hands, she prepared to duck the hail of bullets soon to come and did as told.