Blood Soaked and Contagious (47 page)

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Good man. Good man.”

“Let’s go pee.” I gestured toward the open doorway.

“Together? Aw, Frank! That’s so kinky! You didn’t tell me that you’re all perverted!” She stood up, gave me a hand, and grinned at me. I think she was joking. I hoped she was joking.

“Nah. I’m practical, not a pervert.”

“Shucks!” She snapped her fingers in mock disappointment, crossed her eyes, and fled down the stairs.

“Wait up! What’s wrong?” I hurried after her.

“A Southern girl won’t tell! Gotta pee!” She disappeared into the ladies room.

“I didn’t think a Southern girl would admit she has to pee in the first place!” I called out to the closed door, stirring the pot a little bit.

“I’m a modern Southern woman. Don’t sass me, Frank the Love Machine! Get your peeing done!”

Modern conveniences were utilized, a wee bit of readjusting was done, and I snagged some clothes that I’d dried but hadn’t put away. Charlie pawed through the pile of clothes, gave me some grief about destroying her bra, and found some clothes that looked like they’d do for the time being. We scooted back up the stairs and threw our clothes on.

I thought she looked particularly saucy with no bra, but I was gently lectured about how inappropriate it would be to go into a firefight with bouncing titties. She was kind enough to listen to my theory that mobile mammary glands would be a superb tool for distracting any heterosexual male opponents. It got me a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

“Dude, I think you’re a little biased here.”

“Well, don’t you think I ought to be? After all, we just had incredibly hot sex... in front of one of our neighbors.”

“Oh, please do not remind me. Okay? I’m still beside myself about that.”

“You’re beside yourself? I’m the one who was flashing my butt and nuts at her.” The memory made me shudder.

“Frank, you’re right. Absolutely right, in fact. You should be horrified you were pointing your furry exit at a hot woman like that! Shit! You really are kinky!” She took one look at the horrified expression on my face and laughed herself sick at my expense. When she was done, we attacked Chunhua’s cooking with terrible vengeance.

We were a hot zombie-killing couple, dressed in black-on-black, with shiny black weapons, ferociously devouring dumplings that were not black. The clock was starting to tick, but we were alert, tucking away some chow, and enjoying our Normal before things became Crazy again.

“I think we’ve got about ten minutes before we need to head over there. Shall we go, Milady?”

“Zounds, Sir Knight! Let us be on our way!”

We grabbed the last of our gear, snagged our vests, and headed to the garage.

Being early was the rule of the evening, or so it seemed. Members of both teams converged on the garage from all directions; there were a few high fives and one or two friendly headbutts. Omura was the only seriously solitary member of the crew, walking along with a loaded rucksack that probably contained more explosives than it was amusing to contemplate.

Charlie ducked back into the more homely side of Shawn’s place when we arrived, I suspect to quickly throw on a bra since I’d pulled the other one apart in my late afternoon zest for life. I had a momentary flash of potential parent paranoia and did my absolute best to drive it, kicking and screaming, into a lock box inside my skull. It quieted down when she reappeared and was promptly replaced by determination that the both of us come back alive.

“All right people, here’s the rest of the plan. In three minutes, we load up into our appropriated Humvee.” Flower gave us educational finger-pointing to go along with the lecture. “Ramos is our wheelman. We will enter the neighborhood around the church approximately 50 yards from our target, hard cover, break into teams and proceed on foot using appropriate stealth. The high sign to commence the mission is my rifle firing. You know the rest. Questions?”

“Do we get to sing road songs on the way there?” Franklin asked, bouncing up and down like an idiot.

“If you sing anything while we’re moving, I will pop you in the jaw with my rifle butt. Clear?” Flower was smiling but was also dead serious.

“Clear, Sir!”

“All right people, saddle up.” Like we would have balked at that order.

“Frank,” Charlie snagged my arm and whispered to me. “I think I love you, and that was really hot earlier!”

“I know.” I grinned at her and she punched me in the shoulder. “I love you, too. Let’s go rip it up, Chuck!”

Seven people and associated equipment were a bit of a snug fit, even in a top-down military Humvee. Franklin and I found ourselves standing in the cargo area, holding onto the roll bar. He had a tight grip on his weapon, which was, as he informed me, a Light Anti-Tank Weapon. He pointed at the box on the floor between us and suggested that I not step on it.

“Why?”

“It isn’t a reinforced ammo container. You don’t want to dislodge a warhead on an anti-tank missile. Trust me on that.”

That was all the conversation we had time for, because we started to move.

It was a very quiet, nearly eternal trip. I had never been in a military version of a Humvee before and I was pretty surprised at how quiet they were on normal roads. That did not hold true for the occasional pothole.

The irony was not lost on me when we pulled up to the yard I had visited earlier in the day. From a visual standpoint, it was better in the dark, except for how white disjointed bones look in the moonlight. The smell, sadly, was also several hours more ripe. Zombies were not as attentive to burying their comrades as I might have hoped, or even wished, they might be.

We broke into our teams and I watched Charlie head away with her group. I had to swallow the worry and resign myself to the fact that I could help her best by doing the best for my team as I possibly could. Truth be told, the three of us were going straight down the throat of the enemy and were probably in a shitload more danger than she would be in a flanking position.

Omura took point, I was the middleman, and Franklin was bringing up the rear, lugging the anti-tank weapon over one shoulder and the unstable box of projectiles under his other arm. We halted at the corner of Sarge’s house, as I referred to it in my head, and Omura poked his head around the corner. He gave me the high sign and pointed to the far corner of the neighboring house. I took the direction and moved.

I looked left, then right, somewhat surprised to find a sentry standing beside the residence’s heat pump. The critters hadn’t given me an advance warning about him, I assume because his body temperature was nearly the same as the surroundings. Cool or not, he needed to be dealt with. I gave a single finger sign followed by pointing right and then the closed fist for “stop.” This one was mine.

The knife on my belt was situated for a right cross draw, much like a samurai sword would be, but edge down rather than edge up. I drew it with my left hand, giving me the classic “ice pick” grip, and moved toward my target. There wasn’t a reaction I could see as I got closer. So much the better for me, because approaching someone from their side or from anywhere in their peripheral vision is a chancy matter. Any little flicker could cause a startle reaction and the encounter would begin ahead of time, rather than on your terms and timetable.

This sentry was either asleep, dead, or a mannequin. No reaction, not even a sigh, gave me a clue he even knew I was there. Something was up, and I was barely eight feet away from him. Generally, someone with a blade can cover eight feet before a gun can be drawn, aimed, and fired. Time for a risk.

“Dude,” I whispered, “your fly is down!”

Dude snorted, startled out of whatever reverie he was enjoying, and looked down at his crotch. I was beside him, blade in motion, as he turned his head to look at me. The tanto in my hand cut his throat back to the spine, causing a spray of cool, gummy blood, but not a single noise. The sentry started to collapse, and I reversed the blade in mid-air, turned with him, and used my hips to make the second cut before he hit the ground. I caught his head while the rest of his body hit the dirt.

The third strike put the point of the blade through the head’s eye and into the backside of the skull. I pulled the head off the knife, swished the blade through the air to get the majority of the blood off, and resheathed it. My skull pinged, and I heard a single word from Omura. “Clean.”

I smirked and we moved on.

There weren’t any other sentries between the one I dispatched and the row of broken-down cars at the far edge of the church parking lot. I may never be sure whether we arrived precisely at the best time or the most unfortunate. It was feeding time.

The noises the poor souls in that pen were making were some of the most pitiful and hideous I’ve heard up to that point or since. I had to hold myself down to keep from rushing in there and heating the barrel of my gun to bright red with flying bullets. Watching people die, even ones you could never keep from their fate, can fill you with an oozing bitterness unlike anything else you will ever experience.

This was what the poor, brave little kid at the wrecked McDonalds missed out on. Dying while I talked to him was a mercy compared to this. I wanted to kill them all, and the rage at having to be silent and hold myself in check was nearly as awful as the tableau unfolding in front of me.

Flower took his shot and I rose up from behind that car with a roar that was drowned out by the rifle in my hands spewing lead across the parking lot. Franklin tossed his rage through the launcher on his shoulder and turned their Humvee into flaming origami.

While my shots were nearly indiscriminate, Omura’s were measured, precise, and unerringly accurate. Between him, Thunder flanking them, and my volume of fire, we dropped half of them in the first few seconds. The rest of the zombies took exception to our flashy entrance and returned fire.

They had enough cover that we couldn’t simply keep firing and hope to force them out. I hollered at Omura and Franklin, “Cover me!” I snapped the Man Scythe out, took a bullet in stride, and headed for the nearest hard cover.

The zombie that was using that cement planter as cover took some exception to my sudden appearance. On the bright side, she dropped her shotgun and screamed when she saw my baby. I made sure it was the last thing she ever needed to scream about.

Her partner attempted to get the drop on me, but someone pumped him full of lead before he got a good bead on me. I spun on the ball of my foot and made a beeline for the nearest parked car. In my combat-juiced state, I vaulted over the little SUV. Charlie was on the other side, calmly wiping blood and brains off one of her short swords.

“RRRRRRRR!” I growled.

“RAAAAR!” She growled back. It was ferocious, bloody, absolutely full of love, and gave me something wonderful to counter the violence as I headed towards the next target, bracketed by a wall of gunfire.

The next three targets I encountered were either dead or about to go, so I simply took their heads and left their skulls open for the squirrels to snack on. The fourth was ready for me when I came across the top of the car he was hiding behind, and he planted the bayonet of his rifle between my ribs on the left side. It hurt, and if I hadn’t been upgraded, I would have been dead the moment he pulled the blade out because it felt like he’d pierced my heart.

When the blade came free and blood sprayed everywhere, it was clear he’d done precisely that. I looked up at him and tried to keep the blackness from eating away at my vision. He was looking incredibly proud of himself for having done me in. I hoped I could ruin his day in a moment or two.

“Ow.”

“What?” he asked over the din of weapons rattling all around us.

“That bayonet hurt.” I had dropped the scythe and was clutching at my chest with both hands. He couldn’t see that I had two fingers jammed into the wound. It kept some of the blood in, or so I hoped, and it gave me some sort of clue as to whether or not my critters were repairing the damage.

Things inside my chest were moving, and it wasn’t just the muscles of my heart. It felt like nothing I could possibly describe without using words like “vibrator” and “hot Jell-O.” The fellow who stabbed me might have found it completely vile if I had been able to vomit all over him, but I regretted I wasn’t able, for that extra “Oh! I’m dying!” effect. The feeling of things moving around certainly inspired me to barf up the contents of my tummy, but the body disagreed.

“I’m glad it hurt, you murderous bastard! Do you know how many of my friends you’ve butchered?”

Let him argue. The longer he raved, the more time I’d have to heal, and then I would feed him every word.

“Let me guess,” I coughed up some blood for effect, “two or three?”

“You killed Sarge and seven of my friends today!” I couldn’t believe he put down the rifle and grabbed me by the ballistic vest I was wearing. “You didn’t just kill them, you dismembered them and tore their brains out!”

“Oh... them. I didn’t tear their brains out.”

“Bullshit!” He was right up in my face, nasty breath and all. I almost thanked him for closing the distance, but I settled for giving him a Hell of a headbutt.

I fell flat on my ass, and so did he. By that point, my chest was forcing the fingers back out of the hole, and I wasn’t dead, so it was time for more mayhem. My tackle caught him by surprise, but smashing his head against the side of the nearest car shouldn’t have. I disliked how satisfying it was to feel his skull collapse, but I didn’t have any time to reflect on it in a meaningful way. There were more zombies that needed mortification... or some variation on the theme of being killed.