Escape from the Damned (APEX Predator Book 2) (6 page)

He found Poncho Villa and two of the little punks standing near the front gate.  Poncho Villa had an AK-47 and his big pistol on his belt.  One of the punks had a Mac-10 and the other a revolver.  Beau realized he was the only one wearing body armor.  He hoped that the others wouldn’t regret that.

Without a word, he led the rest of the group out the gate.  He followed the trail for about 20 minutes. He and Poncho Villa froze when they heard the moaning.  The younger of the punks wasn’t paying attention and bumped into the man in front of him.

“What the fuck!” the man blurted.

The moaning grew louder at the sound of the outburst.  Shit, Beau thought.  He drew his knife and tried to locate the source of the sound.  It sounded like it was all around them.  He crept forward.  As he rounded a bend in the trail, he found the bodies of Leroy and the courier.  There were several zombies walking towards his team.

Beau didn’t hesitate.  He lunged towards the closest zombie, driving his combat knife through the monster’s skull.  It stopped moving, and fell motionless to the ground.  He jammed his foot into the dead zombie’s face and jerked the knife out of its skull.

A shot rang out, then another.  A second later the kid with the Mac-10 began firing on full automatic.  Beau combat rolled to the left, away from the zombies, and out of the line of fire.  As he came up, he saw several bullets strike a large zombie in the crotch, belly and chest without effect.

Suddenly Beau felt like someone hit his right calf with a burning baseball bat.  His leg crumpled beneath him and he was forced to roll back to his left.  This brought him closer to the zombie with the newly shredded chest.

He dropped his knife and reached for his Sig Saur 9mm pistol.  The zombie leaned over, falling onto the wounded man.  He dropped his butt to the ground, and shoved his foot into the monster’s chest, keeping its mouth away from him.

Black blood ran down the ex-legionnaire’s leg, pooling under his backside.  He tried to push the ghoul off of him, but it was too heavy.  The creature stretched its arms in an attempt to grab Beau’s face.  Fuck this!

He shoved his pistol under the ghoul’s chin and fired.  Blackish pink mist exploded behind the monster’s head.  It went limp.  Beau kicked the ghoul to the left and continued to roll.

He tried to stand, but his right leg wouldn’t bear weight.  He lunged toward Poncho Villa and the punks.  It was then that he realized how bad things had actually gotten.  The kid with the Mac-10 was on the ground, a zombie on top of him and blood pooling behind him.

Poncho Villa was also down.  There were several zombies lying dead around him and two on top of him.  He was screaming in Spanish.  Beau was pretty sure he was calling for his mother.  He’d heard those same words before.

His mind went to another time.  He thought of the Spaniard named Cortez.  The kid was right out of training when their regiment was deployed to the Ivory Coast.  Two weeks after they had arrived, their patrol had been ambushed by a group of rebels.

Poor Cortez had been right behind the point man.  His legs were blown off when the rebels initiated the ambush.  For the next three hours, his platoon was pinned down, listening to Cortez cry in Spanish.  Until, that is, he mercifully passed out.  They eventually fell back, unable to reach the poor Spaniard.  They found his dismembered corpse two weeks later.

A shot rang out, bringing Beau back to the present.  The other punk was standing over him, reaching down with one hand, while shooting another zombie in the head.

“Get the fuck up,” the kid yelled.  “Or I’m gonna leave your ass!”  BANG!  The kid dropped another one.

Beau took his hand, taking stock of the situation as he did:  Three zombies down on the ground eating people, four between them and Valhalla, and three still in the direction they were going.  This isn’t good.

The kid dragged him left and around.  This put most of the zombies behind them, as they moved at an angle back towards Valhalla.  The zombies fell in line behind the duo.  Beau realized that they weren’t really opening the distance.  If anything, the zombies were slowly catching them.  Fuck!  His leg hurt.

“Hey kid,” he said as the kid dragged him along.  “Why’d you do that?  Why didn’t you just run?”

The kid was breathing heavily from dragging Beau’s gimpy ass.

“I don’t know,” he panted.  “I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do right?  I mean, you was in the Legion wasn’t you?  You don’t leave a buddy behind and all that right?”

“Yeah,” he said as his hand tightened on his pistol.  “You’re right.”

Then he shot the kid in the stomach.  The kid fell to the ground, clutching his stomach.  He pulled Beau to the ground as he did. Beau got to his feet, limping away from the now bleeding kid.

“Now, you get to cover my retreat,” he quipped over his shoulder.  “Thanks kid.”

His mind hardly had time to register the sound of the .357 revolver before the magnum bullet ripped through his back and lung.  His pistol fell from his hand as he clutched at the 3 inch hole above his left nipple.  His knees buckled.  He fell face first into the dirt, coughing up pink froth.  Karma stuck it to him one last time, as he was still alive as the first zombie began to feed upon him.

Valhalla

Jackie fought back another wave of nausea as the teenager thrust inside of her.  His breathing quickened, as he arched and thrust harder and faster.  She prayed he was almost finished.

The teen was probably a few years younger than her, maybe 16.  He was a black kid with a row of gold teeth across the front of his smile.  His breath was horrid.  She couldn’t help but think that he hadn’t brushed those gold teeth since the first zombies had shown up.

She gagged again.  He was the fourth “visitor” she’d had since she arrived in what she’d come to believe was hell.  The first had been the one they called Thor.  A sting of pain shot through her cheek where he had hit her.

During that first visit, he had explained to her what he expected of her.

“Just in case you think about it, you are never getting out of here,” he told her.

“You live at the pleasure of me and my staff,” he said later.  “If for any reason I decide you aren’t earning your keep, you’re dead.”

Without another word, he pulled her shirt over her head.  She had wanted to hit him, but knew better.  This apparently was what he expected of her.  He simply pointed at her pants, waving his hand.  She did as she was ordered.

She tried to forget the rest of his first visit.  She remembered crying for a long time after he left.  She felt anger, dirty, hopeless, and nauseous.   She thought she was through the nausea, until the next visitor showed up.

Now, in the middle of her fourth rape in two days, she realized the nausea would never go away.  It was at that point, as the kid with the bad breath was finishing, that she decided she was not going to take it anymore.

He rolled off of her, still panting.

“Get up and get my pants bitch,” he barked at her.

She could feel the tears welling up as she stood up, clutching the blanket over her naked body as she did.

“What, I can’t look now?  Why you holding that blanket?  Just get my pants.”

She dropped the blanket next to the kid’s pants.  As she picked everything up, she felt the long cylindrical object in his front pocket:  a knife.  The kid had a pocket knife.  She slipped her hand into the pocket and dropped the knife into the wad of blankets.

After ass breath left, she retrieved the pocket knife from the blanket.  The knife was actually pretty nice.  The word Gerber was imbedded in the rubber of the handle.  She guessed the knife was about four inches in length.  She toyed around with the knife.  Her hands weren’t big enough to open it with just her thumb.  But, she was able to flip her wrist and still open it one-handed.  She slid the knife between the mattress and the wall.  A plan was formulating in her head.

The Vet Clinic

SSgt Brown, Sgt Procell, and Mike stood on the roof.

“Look at how many there are,” Mike pointed to the group of zombies walking aimlessly around the parking lot.  “Yesterday I could count the number of zombies I saw all day on one hand.  Now, I can’t even count them.”

“Must have been that shootin’ that attracted them,” Sgt Procell said.

“Shit,” SSgt Brown muttered under his breath.  “Well, I guess we ain’t going anywhere for a while.”

He turned to the others.  “Ok, we just hang out for a while longer.  We keep quiet and let these things pass.  Mike stay here.  Procell, come with me.”  The two soldiers descended the ladder.  Sgt Procell followed the big National Guard NCO into the vet’s office.

“How much longer do you figure we can stay here?” Sgt Procell asked.

“I don’t know.  I guessed after yesterday we had about another week’s worth.”

“I’ll get Williams to get us an inventory.”

“Good.  How’s it going with the kids?”  SSgt Brown had asked Sgt Procell to work with the teachers in training the kids on how to use the tools as weapons.

“Well, they definitely aren’t exactly a Roman Legion, but they’re getting the idea.”

“Realistically, what would you say would happen if we had to run through that pack out there?”

“The kids would get slaughtered.  They can stand in line shoulder to shoulder.  They boys are even strong enough to drive one of those pitchforks into the skull of a zombie.  But, the girls are still a little small and they’re all scared.  The first time someone falls, they’re gonna scatter.”

“So, they’re still pretty useless?”

“I didn’t say that,” the younger NCO shot back.  “You put four or five of them on the inside of that door out there I bet they could stand their ground for a few minutes anyway.”

“So, they’re useful in the defense, but not so much in the offense?”

“Isn’t that the way it usually was with the spear levy?”  He was referring to the spearman of the early middle ages.  They were often peasants who would be pledged by a feudal lord to fill the ranks of his master with spearmen.

Valhalla

Jackie had two more visitors that day.  The first was another of the little punks.  This one had a grill full of gold, and was a talker.  He was 16 and his friends called him Pookie.  He used to sell drugs and “run bitches like you” in Shreveport before the zombies showed up.

He told her all about Valhalla and the man everyone knew as Thor.  He told how Thor was cruel to the women, unlike Pookie was.  He told her how many people were here in Valhalla.  He told her that he had had Sarah earlier that morning, but she was old and Jackie was a better lay.  And, he told her that there were other survivors at a vet clinic east of here.

Her next visitor was a big tall guy.  He was definitely not one of the punks.  He was older, maybe 30’s.  He was more reserved and quiet.  He was dressed in all black.  He was in good shape.  She could see the muscles bulging under his black tee-shirt.  He was too old for her, but she knew some of her friends would be all ga-ga right about now.

She stood when he entered the room.  He had a smile on his face, but his eyes said something else.  He slapped her hard across the face.  She dropped to her knees.

“Get up, bitch,” he ordered.

She looked up at him, fear in her eyes.  A smile crossed his face again.  This time it was genuine.  Ok, she could see now.  He liked to be in control.  He liked for women to fear him.  That’s what got him off.  She stood up, cowering as she did.

Good, she thought.  Relax around this timid little girl.  Yes, I’m so weak.

He reached out with his right hand, grabbing her by the back of her hair.  “Take your pants off,” he demanded.  He loosened his grip as she pulled her pants over her feet, leaving her naked from the waist down.

He released his grip.  “Now the shirt,” he whispered.  She did as he ordered.  Although she tried not to, she could feel herself begin to tremble.  His grin returned.

She stood in front of him completely naked and trembling.  His teeth were now showing through his grin.  This is how he wanted her:  Scared, vulnerable, and totally at his mercy.  He raised his hand again.  She flinched.  He slowly let his hand rest on the back of her neck.  It was almost an embrace.  She was sure he could feel her tremble.

Suddenly he shoved her sideways onto the bed.  She knew he did not want her to stand.  He stood over her as he methodically took his clothes off.  The only time he broke eye contact was when his shirt came over his head.  Jackie continued to tremble, her eyes begging for the big man not to hurt her.  She could see that he was excited.

Playtime was over.  He lowered himself onto the mattress, shoving her onto her back as he did.  He entered her with too much force.  She let out a little yelp.  This only served to excite him more, as he continued to thrust.

For her part, Jackie was done playing also.  Her arms over her head, she felt between the mattress and the wall for the knife.  Damn!  She couldn’t feel it.  C’mon, she begged silently.  No good, she couldn’t find it.

She thrust her hips and upper body up and to her left.  The big Herman Munster looking guy took her action to mean she wanted on top and let her roll over on top of him.  She leaned over his body, pressing her breasts into his face.  He reacted as she expected and began fondling her nipples with his tongue.