Mutated - 04 (19 page)

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Authors: Joe McKinney

BOOK: Mutated - 04
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“That long, huh?” Nate said.
“What?” Ben said.
Nate smiled and shook his head. “Say, what do you think about Avery Harper? She’s got a little meat on her, I know, but she seems pretty cool. I wonder if she’s got a boyfriend back at that compound she’s from.”
“I doubt it,” Richardson said.
“She told you that?”
“No, Nate. She didn’t say a word to me about it. But seeing as all these soldiers around here are trying to kill her, I doubt she has anyone back at the compound anymore. Know what I mean?”
Nate nodded, the smile leaving his face. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I got you.”
They found Sylvia and Avery hiding behind a row of wrecked cars that had been there so long that weeds were growing up around the wheels and through the empty engine compartments. Richardson gave them the clothes he’d found for them and he and Nate waited while the women crawled inside one of the wrecked cars and changed. When they came out, Richardson told them about the boat he’d chartered.
“Hinton and his wife,” Sylvia said, “you think we can trust them?”
“I think so. The wife seemed to have a pretty good head on her shoulders, and I got the feeling they weren’t any more eager to meet up with Ken Stoler’s soldiers than we are. That’s their boat right over there, the white one at slip six. It’s called the
Sugar Jane
.”
She nodded. The ponytail between her shoulders looked as lively as a squirrel back there, and he frowned, looking at it.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Your hair.” The clothes he’d obtained for them managed to change their appearance somewhat, but that head of frizzy gray hair of hers was going to give them away for sure if any of Stoler’s soldiers got close. And they still had to get past the squad stationed at the entrance to the docks. “Have you ever thought of cutting it? I mean really short?”
“Cut my hair?” she said. She looked momentarily horrified.
But she didn’t get to finish the rest of it. Before she could say anything else, they heard a lot of yelling coming from the edge of the market. The soldiers who had been lounging around the entry to the docks sprinted toward the disturbance.
“That doesn’t look good,” Nate said.
They heard two shotgun blasts and more screaming.
Avery put a hand on Sylvia’s shoulder. “There’s no one guarding the docks,” she said. “We should get going.”
Sylvia took the young woman’s hand and squeezed it. “She’s right, Ben. Let’s move while we have a chance.”
Another shotgun blast from the edge of the market made them turn. Jimmy Hinton and his wife, who was wielding the shotgun, were running into the clearing. Though it wasn’t really a run. Both husband and wife were in their late sixties and overweight, and they advanced with an awkward loping gait that looked terrifyingly slow compared to the soldiers chasing after them. Richardson saw one of the soldiers bring his rifle up to his shoulder and fire at the couple. Little umbrellas of dirt exploded around Hinton’s feet, and he raised his arms and wobbled like a man trying to stay balanced on a high wire. Gabi Hinton turned and jammed the stock of her shotgun into her belly and fired twice at the advancing soldiers. One of the soldiers dropped to his knees, holding his side. Then she turned and ran after her husband, who was still gesturing to Richardson to get onto the dock.
Richardson ran up the short flight of stairs that led to the dock. Twenty feet ahead of him, Sylvia, Avery, and Nate were face-to-face with a soldier—the man was barely Avery’s age; just a kid, really—who had his rifle leveled at them. The soldier looked frightened, almost like he was seasick, but when he saw Richardson charging up the stairs he turned and fired at Richardson. The bullet whined through the air, narrowly missing his face. Richardson ducked behind a thick wooden pylon and drew his pistol.
He gave a quick glance over his shoulder and saw that Jimmy and his wife had almost reached the dock. Then he looked back at Sylvia, Avery, and Nate, who had backed up to the edge of the dock, their hands in the air. The soldier was still standing in the middle of the gangway, the rifle down around his hips. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were darting back and forth between his prisoners and the pylon where Richardson was hiding. It looked like he couldn’t make up his mind what to do. Richardson made it up for him. He stepped out from behind the pylon with his pistol in both hands, leveled it at the soldier’s chest, and fired twice before the man could register what was happening. The soldier kept his feet, even after getting hit. He staggered back to the opposite edge of the dock, his hands hanging limply at his side, the rifle dropped and forgotten on the wooden planks. His face had an elastic, slack-jawed expression as he stared about him. He never cried out. He saw a wooden pylon and fell against it. There was a look of utter disbelief on his face as he sank down onto his butt. His eyes never closed.
“David,” Avery shouted. The girl ran over to him and stopped, wanting to touch him, but unable to do so.
Sylvia gave him a sad, pained look before grabbing Avery by the shoulders and pulling her toward the
Sugar Jane
.
“Good shot,” Jimmy Hinton said from the top of the stairs. “You seen the boat yet?”
“Huh?” Richardson said.
“No time like right now.” He turned to his wife. “Gabi, you got this rifle?”
“Got it,” she said, as she too crested the top of the stairs. “Get the boat started.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gabi Hinton ran over to where the dead soldier’s rifle lay on the dock and scooped it up. More soldiers were coming up the stairs. She turned the rifle on them and started firing in short, controlled bursts, aiming every shot, making them count.
“You got those rifles you promised me?” Hinton said to Richardson. “Now’s the time to prove they work.”
The world seemed to be swirling around Richardson, going too fast. Feeling dizzy, he took one of the AR-15s from his pack and started firing at the soldiers who were running toward them from the market. From where they were firing, he and Gabi had both cover and concealment behind the heavy dock timbers, while the soldiers had to cross nearly thirty yards of open concrete slab. They were sitting ducks down there.
“I’m out,” Gabi said to him.
“Go to the boat. I can cover us.”
“We’ll need at least two minutes to get the boat loose from the dock.”
“I got it,” he said. “Go.”
Gabi slung the rifle over her shoulder and waddled down the length of the dock. Richardson watched her go, then turned back to the concrete slab between the dock and the market. Nearly all the vendors had fled. Here and there he saw carts overturned, their contents spilled on the ground. Dead soldiers were everywhere. Here and there he saw a few dead vendors, and their animals.
The soldiers had taken up cover and concealment at the edges of the market. He could see their gray shirts and black pants moving in the shadows. He fired whenever he had a chance, then stopped to reload.
He ejected the empty magazine, slapped in another one, and brought the rifle back up. It had taken him less than five seconds, but in that time, two of the soldiers had sprinted from their hiding places to an overturned vegetable cart off to his left. They’re trying to flank me, he realized. Draw me out.
He could see their feet under the cart, and that was enough. What he knew of fighting he’d learned from Ed Moore, the retired U.S. deputy marshal who had helped Richardson and a handful of others escape Jasper Sewell’s compound years before, and he could almost hear the old marshal’s voice in his ears, reminding him that, when it came to gunfights, there was no such thing as cover. You could conceal yourself, but you couldn’t ever cover yourself. That was a myth.
“Damn right,” he muttered, as he centered the rifle’s sights on the vegetable cart and started to fire.
The bullets cut through the cart like a chainsaw, filling the air with splinters of wood and bits of vegetables, and when the dust settled, the cart was in four large pieces, dripping with the remains of pureed vegetables.
The two soldiers lay dead on the concrete behind it.
From behind him, he heard the
Sugar Jane
’s engines coughing and spluttering to life. Sylvia was calling his name. He fired at the few gray shirts he could see moving in the shadows, then turned and ran for the boat.
It was already pulling away as he reached the end of the dock. Sylvia and Gabi Hinton were motioning to him to hurry up.
“Hurry, Ben!” Sylvia shouted.
He heard more yelling behind him, and the sound of running footsteps on the wooden pier. Richardson glanced over his shoulder and saw a handful of soldiers coming up the stairs.
Jimmy was right beside him. “Let’s go!” he said.
Suddenly Gabi popped up behind Sylvia. She had something in her hand. “Get your head down!” Gabi yelled, and lobbed what looked like a green baseball over Richardson’s head.
A second later, there was an explosion that knocked him off his feet. He looked behind him, toward the market. The dock was in a shambles. Men were dead or dying. Burnt pieces of wood floated on the water. Smoke drifted on the breeze. There was a giant hole where the stairs had been.
She threw a grenade, Richardson realized. Holy shit. That woman’s nuts.
But the shooting hadn’t stopped. More of Stoler’s men were emerging from the edge of the market, firing toward the
Sugar Jane
.
“Hurry!” Gabi said. “Come on.”
He ducked his head and jumped into Sylvia’s open arms, the two of them crashing into a padded seat on the far side of the deck. A sharp pain went through his right shoulder, and he groaned.
“Are you okay? Ben?”
He opened his eyes. He was face-to-face with Sylvia, their noses only inches apart.
Richardson nodded.
“You did good back there. Thanks.”
He smiled and let out an exhausted sigh. “Yeah, you’re welcome.”
They were powering away from the dock now, the diesels making a huge noise, but it still seemed to Richardson like they were creeping along. He licked his lips, all at once aware of just how close he was to Sylvia. She didn’t look away. He could hear her breathing and see the sparkling drops of river water in her hair.
“You still want me to cut it?” she asked.
He was about to laugh when he heard sobbing behind him. Frowning, he rolled over and saw Avery Harper with her face pressed into Nate Royal’s chest. Nate seemed at a complete loss as to what to do with the crying girl, and as he put his hands on her back and slowly patted her shoulders, he looked like he’d just been handed more responsibility than he wanted to deal with.
“Is she okay?” Richardson asked Sylvia.
Sylvia shook her head. “That boy you shot on the dock—that was a friend of hers.”
“Ah, Christ,” Richardson said. He gave the sobbing girl another glance. “Ah, Christ.”
He pulled himself up to a seated position on the gunwale and watched the Missouri coastline slip slowly away.
C
HAPTER
14
The truck lumbered to a stop. Rough hands pulled Niki Booth from her seat and threw her to the ground. Even before she rose to her feet she could smell the sour-sweet stink of putrescence in the air. She was wearing a burlap hood, and the stench of rotting bodies mingled with the heat of her breath and her own suffused terror. But her isolation under the hood was also a small blessing, for it gave her a chance to steady herself before she had to face the place she had only heard of in whispered rumors from the river Bedouins in Herculaneum.
She felt a hand grip the top of the hood and yank it off. Niki wheeled around on the soldier, but he had already stepped back out of range of her feet. Apparently, he had learned his lesson after the incident the night before, when they agreed to uncuff her so she could go to the bathroom. Two of the guards, she saw, still had nasty bruises on their faces where she had kicked them.
But her anger evaporated when she saw what lay before her. And despite her best efforts to look like she could handle herself come hell or high water, she couldn’t help but gasp.
She was standing on a gravel road that led down to the dock at the riverside. A forest of heavy stakes—there were two hundred, maybe more—rose up on either side of the road. Most were topped with the naked bodies of dead men who had been impaled through the rectum and allowed to slide down the spikes. Each body had its hands and feet bound together, their mouths hanging open in eternal screams. Some had been burned from the feet up, the ground around them blackened by the fire. Others had been partially eaten by the infected. The air swarmed with black crows and flies. There were more of the loathsome birds roosting on the impaled bodies, while still others fought over scraps of rotten flesh on the ground. The smell was enough to make the bile rise to the back of her mouth, but she managed to keep it down; and somehow she was able to maintain that control right up to the point where she saw the mouth of one of the men on a stake near her start to move. One look at the man’s eyes and she knew he was still conscious, aware of every bit of the hell he was experiencing. At that point Niki doubled over and vomited.
When she looked up again she saw one of the guards watching her, smiling, like he was enjoying her suffering.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “These are men. You’re a man. How could you do this?”
The smile left his face.
Behind her, she heard a chorus of moans. She turned and saw Loren Skaggs leading an enormous troop of zombies toward them. Niki began to back away, but one of the guards stepped close to her and grabbed her arm tightly.
“It’d be a mistake,” he said. “Stand still. Don’t move.”
She looked at the man as she struggled to break his grip. He wouldn’t let go. Loren and his zombies were almost on them now, and she could smell them. Their moaning had blotted out everything, even the squawking of the crows.
“Hold her still,” Loren said, and the sound of his voice sent a chill through her.
She stopped struggling and watched him as he passed, the red flesh on his bald head glistening like a puddle of oil.
“Bring her over with us on the ferry,” Loren said to the guard.
“Yes, sir.”
And with that Loren walked on down to the river and the waiting ferry, his zombies following behind like a congregation headed for baptism. They passed on either side of Niki, so close she could have reached out and touched them had her hands not been cuffed behind her back.
“Let me go,” she pleaded to the guard.
“Stand still, girl. Don’t you move or we’ll both die.”
“Please,” she said. She heard the whining in her voice but she didn’t care. She felt utterly defenseless and more terrified than she had been since her father died, leaving her to fend for herself and for Avery in the wilds of a blasted landscape. Her skin was crawling, the gooseflesh rising on her arms and neck. She was holding her breath, trying not to scream.
“Easy,” the guard holding her arm said. “Almost through them.”
A zombie—a woman in her late fifties—passed just inches from her. The zombie turned to look at Niki as she staggered by. Her face was covered with boils and abscesses and swarming with flies that probed her sores and the oozing fluid at the corners of her milky white eyes.
Unable to stand it anymore, Niki squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t stop trembling.
When the zombies were loaded onto the ferry, two guards led Niki aboard. The guards put her in a chair in the back of the boat and she didn’t resist. In front of her the zombies swayed with the motion of the boat. Loren Skaggs stood at the head of the ferry, looking off toward the crumbling ruins of the Kirkman Hyatt and Convention Center on the opposite bank. The two guards pulled on the guide rope that connected the two sides of the river, and slowly, the ferry inched its way across, the only sounds the creaking of the ropes and the squawking birds behind them.
Before her, silhouetted by the setting sun, was the hotel that Loren had turned into his own private hell on earth. Niki watched as it grew closer, and a feeling of deep despair washed over her.
Into the land of the dead, she thought.
 
 
Flanked by guards, with zombies in front of and behind her, Niki Booth was led up a concrete ramp to the ruins of what had once been the loading dock for the Convention Center portion of the hotel. The building was falling apart now. Everywhere she looked she saw broken windows. The floors were covered with mud and leaves and trash, the walls spray-painted with fading graffiti.
But there was no furniture, no equipment, no signs that an army was using this place as its headquarters. It took her a moment to notice that. All she felt walking in to the facility was a distinct sense that something was off about it. And then a soldier ordered her to stop and his voice echoed inside the two-story-high emptiness of the loading dock and it hit her. There’s nothing here, no signs of occupation.
“What is this place?” she said.
No one answered her, and she knew she’d made a mistake. Don’t show them you’re afraid, kiddo. Keep ’em guessing about you.
She sensed the guards behind her had stopped and she tried to turn around.
Somebody hit her in the shoulder. “Don’t turn around,” one of the guards said.
“Come a little closer and say that.”
A different man spoke, this one older, and a smoker, Niki guessed. His voice sounded like gravel. “You heard the lady. Uncuff her.”
Niki tensed. So they wanted to have some fun with her, eh? Well, bring it, assholes.
One of the guards grabbed her handcuffs and worked the key into the hole. He was a bundle of nerves. She could feel it in the way his hands fumbled with the key and hear it in his breathing.
Niki curled her fingertips up into the man’s palm and smiled when he jumped. But she didn’t move. She just waited for him to come back, and when he did she curled her fingertips into his palm again and gently stroked the length of his index finger, purring under her breath as the muscles in his finger relaxed.
She heard him swallow, and then one of the cuffs fell away.
It was the break she was waiting for. She slammed her elbow back into the guard’s face and felt the satisfying crunch of the bridge of his nose. Blood gushed from the man’s face. He bent forward, screaming, his hands over his nose. Niki raised her boot and brought it down hard on the side of the man’s knee, breaking it. He sank to one knee, the other leg bent the wrong way, eyes rolling wildly in his head. His mouth was hanging open in a scream that he couldn’t quite get out. Niki still had one cuff around her right wrist, the swing arm on the left cuff dangling free. She swung the open cuff down on the man’s face and the exposed swing arm caught inside his cheek like a fishhook snagging a river trout. She yanked back on the cuff and it tore through his cheek, widening his mouth by a good two inches. The man fell to the floor, writhing in pain.
Two other guards were charging her from the left. She swung the dangling handcuff at the closer of the two, catching him across the side of his face, dropping him to his knees.
The other guard had his hands up like a boxer, ready to block her next swing. Niki feinted with a backhand, then stopped midway through the arc and mule-kicked him in the balls. He doubled over with a gasp, and when the back of his head was exposed, she slammed the handcuff down, catching the swing arm around his ear and yanking back as hard as she could. The man barrel rolled in midair, landed on his face, and didn’t move.
Niki didn’t know if he was dead or just passed out and she didn’t care. One of the guards yelled, “Beanbag her!”
She spun around to face the rest of the guards and got a glimpse of a shotgun’s muzzle blast. The round hit her in the stomach and doubled her over, the pain blindingly intense. Every muscle in her gut and her chest had constricted and she couldn’t breathe. She fought with her body to pull in the air she needed, but couldn’t make it happen. All she managed was a thin, croaking groan.
She coughed up blood on the floor and a wave of dizzying nausea overtook her. She nearly fell over on her side.
Come on, kiddo, she told herself. You gotta fight. Get up.
She lifted her gaze to the narrowing circle of guards around her and tried to stand up straight. One of the guards racked a shotgun and Niki had just enough time to mentally brace herself when the second beanbag round hit her in the chest and dropped her to the ground, unconscious.
 
 
When she awoke, one of the guards had her by the ankle and was dragging her across faded red carpet. “What are . . . stop,” she said, still feeling groggy. Her vision was a blur. She tried to grab hold of something, anything, but the floor beneath her had been worn smooth and all she managed to do was rake her fingernails across Berber.
The guard glanced back when he felt her start to squirm and jerked her leg even harder. “Fucking little bitch,” he said.
The side of his head was dark with a livid bruise and dried blood where the handcuff swing arm had caught him. Beyond him was a large room. He was dragging her straight for it.
“No,” she said. “No, stop.”
“Stop my ass,” he muttered.
He reached the middle of the room and grabbed her ankle with both hands and flung her across the wooden floor.
“Stay down, you little bitch,” the guard said.
She looked up at him in time to see his heel come crashing down on her face, and then her world went black again.
 
 
Niki hurt everywhere. She curled into a fetal ball and cried. She had never been hurt like this before. Every muscle ached, and her mouth was thick with the coppery taste of blood.
The room was dark. Dark, and heavy with the smell of rot. The floor beneath her was cold. She blinked the purple spots from her eyes and tried to peer into the darkness. She could see dim shapes, people, but couldn’t make out details.
“Hello?” she said, her voice coming out like a groan.
Her call was met with a chorus of moans. The moans rose and fell in an uneven, but urgent, ululation that she had come to know all too well over the years.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
She pulled herself to her feet, forcing her way through the pain, pivoting around in a circle, waiting for the attack she knew was sure to come.
The moaning grew louder and louder. The zombies in the dark were in a frenzy now. She heard the musical clinking of a chain-link fence, and in her mind she remembered visiting the St. Louis Zoo as a child, holding her father’s hand as the two of them stared at a chimpanzee shaking furiously at the bars of his cage with both hands. She was hearing the same kind of noise now and knew there was a terrifying, frustrated, insatiable rage fueling it. But the question that mattered—indeed, the only question that really mattered—was which side of the cage was she on?
Turning in a circle, she bumped into something heavy hanging from the ceiling. Her shoulder hit the bottom edge of the object and it rocked away from her. It felt like a huge birdcage. And as soon as she moved it, the zombie inside it turned wild. Its moans rose to a fevered panting as the ghostly shape of its diseased arm shot out at her from between the bars.

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