Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) (14 page)

Sayles?  McRae?  Somebody else?

Artiss had lost his footing when the door burst inward and pushed him forward.  His teeth were still clamped onto Mackie’s cheek, and that was the only thing still keeping him upright.

The figure in the doorway pointed his rifle and fired into the ceiling, the air turning bitter with gun smoke.

Artiss’ teeth loosened from his Mackie’s cheek, warm blood leaking from around the gash, and his weight sagged against Mackie.

Mackie pushed Artiss away and dropped him to his knees with a quick kick to the shin.  Then, before Artiss could recover enough to reach for his weapon, Mackie moved behind him, snatched the Glock from the waist of Artiss’ jeans, and pressed it into the back of his skull.

Another burst from the assault rifle peppered the ceiling, chunks of gypsum raining down.

“
That’s enough.”

Mackie looked over his shoulder as the figure stepped forward, lean face, bright eyes, unkempt hair.

M
cRae
.

“You gotta help me, man,” Artiss said.  “This guy’s crazy, he’s—”

“Shut up,” McRae said.  “Mackie, put that gun down, let him up.”

“Two girls, Meredith and Kara, he’s got them tied up somewhere in the back.  He was gonna rape them and kill me and this kid here.”

“That true?” McRae asked Artiss.

“No!  It’s bullshit, man, he’s—”

“No, it’s true!” Jason shouted.  “I heard him—”

“Kid, I don’t know you, never laid eyes on you,” McRae said.  “So how about you shut the hell up unless I ask for your side of things?”

“It’s true, McRae,” Mackie said.  “He wants to bump off Krider and get Herrera involved in a power play, take over the campus. He already killed one of us.”

“That’s
bullshit!
” Artiss shouted.  Mackie cracked him across the back of his skull with the Glock.  Hard enough to hurt, but not quite hard enough to render him unconscious.

“Mackie, you do that again and I’m gonna put you down,” McRae said.  “You said he killed somebody.  Who’d he kill?”

“Dante.”

“The Guardsman, the older one that went out with you guys?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t kill him!” Artiss wailed.  The tears were back.  Maybe he couldn’t help it.  Or maybe he was just a manipulative little shit.

“Maybe not right away,” Mackie said.  “But he’s dead because of you.”

“I’m gonna ask you again,” McRae said to Artiss.  “Is any of what he’s saying true?”

“You don’t need to take my word for any of it,” Mackie said.  “The girls are tied up back there somewhere.  Go look for yourself.”

“I’d rather not do that while you’ve got that pistol pointed at someone’s head,” McRae said.  “Everybody’s a little jumpy right now, and all the noise is probably drawing every Zaphead for miles around.”

“He wants to kill you, too,” Artiss said.

“What was that?”

Mackie drove the Glock deeper into Artiss’ skull, pushing his head forward.  “Artiss, you shut the hell—”

McRae said, “Mackie, what the hell’s he talkin’ about?”

“You, Krider, Herrera...he wants you all dead,” Artiss said.  “That’s his plan.  To kill you all.”

McRae squeezed off another round into the ceiling.  “I need you to put that gun down and back away, Mackie.”

“I can’t do that, McRae.  Like you said, Zaps might be coming.”

“Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t worry about getting at the truth and just kill you both.”

“If that’s what you need to do,” Mackie said.  “But if you want to survive, you might want to hear what’s going down.”

Artiss suddenly jerked to his feet and scooped up the weapon he’d dropped, dodging into the shadows of the room.  Jason tried to tackle him, but Artiss elbowed him away and dove behind the sofa.  Mackie squeezed the Glock’s trigger, but the round punched harmlessly into the carpet.

Artiss fired off a burst, revealing his position with the bright muzzle flash.  McRae dropped to the floor and returned fire, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility that Mackie or Jason could easily catch a bullet meant for Artiss.

“Dammit, McRae, stop!” Mackie shouted.  The bullets went
wick-wick-wick
against the furniture.

Artiss fired once more at McRae and all was silent for a few long seconds, gun barrels ticking from the heat.  Then Artiss exploded past Mackie and plowed into the window to the right of the television set.  His plan, Mackie knew, was to have an Action Hero moment straight out of the movies—toss himself through a window and escape, something that looked deceptively simple on TV when a trained stunt man had practiced it beforehand.

But in this instance, like most, Hollywood and reality were miles apart.

The glass shattered, but rather than sail through the window in one clean, fluid motion, Artiss became tangled in the blinds.  He screamed and thrashed trying to free himself, and the pain from glass shards shredding Artiss’ skin had to be unbearable.

Mackie aimed the Glock and squeezed off a round, but his aim in the dim light was questionable.  If the round found its way into Artiss—snared as he was in those blinds like a moth in a spider’s web—-Mackie couldn’t tell.

And then the blinds pulled free from the window frame, and Artiss fell to the ground below.

McRae dashed outside, and then came cursing and a burst of gunfire that grew more distant by the moment.

Jason huddled in a corner, panting heavily.  Sabbath wailed inside Mackie’s backpack.  The sound was ghostly, but also oddly human.

Mackie thought a stray round had hit the backpack and Sabbath inside.  But a bullet from McRae’s rifle wouldn’t have stopped there, and Mackie himself would have been struck.  Even so, he removed the backpack and took a quick look just to be sure.  Sabbath was agitated but unharmed.

He called out to Jason, “Are you hit?”

Jason didn’t respond.

“Jason?”

Finally, he replied.  “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah...yeah, I’m fine.”

Mackie felt his way along the wall past the kitchen and into a short hallway.  The first door led to a dark bathroom that was empty, but Mackie found Kara and Meredith in the first bedroom he tried.  Thick layers of duct tape were wound around their hands and ankles, and each had a piece of tape covering her mouth.

In the dim light, they seemed to mistake him for Artiss at first, and they made frantic sounds beneath the tape until he said, “It’s okay.  It’s me.”

He reached for Herrera’s knife and then remembered that Artiss had taken it from him earlier along with the Glock.

He said, “Hold tight.  I’ll be back in a second.”

Mackie returned to the kitchen and started opening drawers and feeling around.  He found a utility drawer with the usual assortment of odds and ends: a mousetrap, a screwdriver, rubber bands, loose papers that were probably bills or receipts.  Then his fingers hit a little cardboard square.  A pack of paper matches.  He twisted some of the papers together, struck a match, and made an impromptu torch, which he deposited in the sink.

Using the flickering light, he spied a phone book by the refrigerator and fed pages into the fire until it was leaping up enough to light the room. He added a stack of cookbooks that were arranged in a row atop the refrigerator, and soon a blaze pumped forth oily smoke.

In the silverware drawer was a scattering of cutlery.  None of the knives looked sharp enough to cut through duct tape, and then he glanced to the side and saw a block of cutlery next to the microwave.  He removed the largest knife in the block, put the chunk of wood on the garbage fire, and headed back toward the bedroom.

“Check the cabinets for food,” Mackie ordered Jason, returning to the bedroom.

He removed the tape from Kara’s and Meredith’s mouths first and then cut through the layers of tape binding their hands.  “Thank God,” Kara said, gulping big breaths of air. “That creep...who knows what he would have done?”

“You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”  He sawed at the tape carefully, using delicate motions.

As he cut through the last bit of tape wound around Meredith’s ankles, he asked, “Did he hurt either of you?”

“My head hurts a little,” Meredith said.  “He snuck up behind me, clobbered me in the back of the head, and took my rifle.”

“Is he dead?” Kara asked.

“I don’t know,” Mackie said.  “He’s hurt, but he got away.”

Mackie swung his Glock toward the door at the sound of footsteps.  It was McRae.

“Where is he?” Mackie asked.

“He took off.  I fired on him, but he was in the woods.  Bastard kept shooting back, too.  But he’s hurt.  He won’t make it far.”

Meredith flinched and cringed when McRae stepped into the room, silhouetted with the smoldering sink fire throwing shadows around him.

“It’s cool,” Mackie said.  “He helped us.”

“So what you said is true?” McRae asked.  “Artiss thought he’d pull a coup with Herrera?”

“Yeah.  Why do you think he wanted to kill me?”

“
Everybody
wants you dead, Mackie.”

“That’s what Artiss told me, too, right before he felt me up with his sicko little fingers,” Kara cut in.  “Said he was going to come back and do it right once Herrera was on the throne.”

“We need to find him, then,” McRae said after Mackie finished.  “If he’s not already dead, we need to put him down.  If he makes it back to the campus, no telling how he’ll spin it.”

“The other thing he said, that’s true, too,” Mackie said.

“What do you mean?”

“About me wanting you, Krider, and Herrera dead.”

McRae tensed and raised his rifle.  “Think you need to explain.”

“I don’t know you, McRae.  Don’t know shit about you.  But I do know Krider and Herrera, and I know that unless they’re dead, they’re a threat to all of us.”

“So, what, you think you’re just gonna take us all out and run the show yourself?” McRae said.

“That’s the plan pretty much, yep,” Mackie said.  “We need to stand together against the Zapheads.  That’s the real threat.  And anybody trying to control us is just going to make that job harder.”

“But it doesn’t have to be that way now,” Meredith interjected.  “Sounds to me like Artiss is the problem.  If what he told you is true, then Herrera doesn’t even know about his plan.”

“Doesn’t change anything.  Doesn’t make Krider and Herrera any less dangerous.”

“I don’t understand who the hell you think you are,” McRae said.  “Making a decision like this like you’re God or something.”

“He didn’t exactly make it alone,” Kara said.  “I’m part of this, too.  I know what Krider is, and I know we can’t let him live.”

“And I know I can’t be responsible for taking someone’s life based on your word alone,” Meredith said.

“You got balls talkin’ like this with me standing here, holding this rifle,” McRae said.  “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t just kill you right now, considering you were willing to do the same to me?”

“Like I said, McRae, I don’t know you.  Maybe you’re not as bad as Krider and Herrera.  Maybe you can understand why I think they should die so some good people here can stay safe.  You’ve got no reason to be loyal to them now. But it’s time to choose sides for real.”

“I wouldn’t put too much faith in me being any better than they are,” McRae said.  “I’ve done plenty of bad shit.”

“So have I.”

McRae didn’t reply.  He lowered his rifle, and then after a moment he said, “So how could you tell?”

“Excuse me?”

“
How
could you
tell
?”

“Tell what?”

“You wouldn’t be talking to me like this if you didn’t think I was somehow different than they are.  Krider and Herrera.”

“So are you?  Different?”

“Not a good person, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t.  I know you’re bad.  I am, too.  My question is ‘Are you as bad as they are?’”

McRae’s chin dipped.  “I was supposed to help bring them down,” he said softly.  “That was my job.”

Mackie’s head suddenly felt light.  “What did you say?”

“It was my job to bring them down.  And I didn’t.”

What the hell?

“Undercover?” Mackie said.  His voice was barely a whisper. “FBI?”

“Nope.  ATF.”

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
. 
The wild card in the fed law enforcement poker hand.

“How’d that work out?”

“My handler down in New Mexico, he tells me how the ATF’s declared open season on Lucas Krider. They wanna go after him under the RICO Act and they think I’m the guy that can get close and deliver the goods.  I mean, I wasn’t some piss-ant snitch looking to trade weak info to save my own ass.  I was
tight
at this shit.  I had the rep for high volume, high quality info.”