Well Fed - 05 (34 page)

She shoved the arm away. “You said you were going to tell me.”

“There was––”

“Nothing to tell? Are you fucking
kidding
me? The fuck you think
that
is? A paper cut?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Like hell, it’s nothing. I’d say it’s progressing faster than you expected. Than I expected.”

In the verbal ceasefire that followed, Gus hung back and stayed clear.

“Your color’s changed,” Collie noted. “You’re grayer.”

The visor remained still for a moment. “Noticed that this morning,” Wallace muttered.

“Ah, shit.
Shit
, Ollie! You’re supposed… you’re supposed to
tell
me these things.”

Wallace didn’t reply.

Collie rubbed her face and then did a double take of Gus, as if realizing he was there for the first time. “Holy shit. In front of the civvie, no less.”

Gus rolled his eyes.

She stood there, visibly battling with the urge to reprimand her husband in front of Gus, when the sound of engines drifted into hearing, drawing everyone’s attention to the road.

In seconds, pickups and SUVs screamed into existence along the highway, shooting out from behind a veil of trees and halting in a screech of rubber.

Armed men spilled from the vehicles.

“Who––”

But Collie was already pulling Gus through the front door and into the living room. Wallace lumbered in after them, closing the door, the grimace on his face almost painful to see. Collie left Gus at the archway and took position at the edge of the picture window.

“Stay away from the windows,” Collie hissed at him, her own Sig Sauer drawn and posed at her shoulder as she peeked around the edge of the sheers.

“Who are they?” Gus asked in an anxious whisper.

“Road savages. Freaks. Killers. Whatever you want to call them.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“I don’t, but it’s best to assume until proven otherwise.”

“Jesus,” Gus said. He glanced toward the end of the hall, where the stairs began, and his mouth dropped open. There, like a pair of huge cockroaches freshly squashed, lay the leftovers of Dwight and Ricky.

Collie kept her eyes on the road as Wallace shuffled past Gus toward the end of the hall.

“
Hey
!” someone shouted from the highway. Some men had already stormed the RVs while the rest formed a line behind the low beds of their pickups. Gun barrels pointed at the house. “
Hey! You in the house. You got the guys in there?
”

“How many?” Wallace asked from the hall.

“Six shooters facing the house. Three going through the RVs, which pisses me off to no end.”

“Nine to two.”

“Three,” Gus said, slightly insulted.

“
Listen! You send Dwight and Ricky out, and we’ll let you live. Promise.
”

Collie cocked her head. A sarcastic smile split her harsh features. “What about the RVs?” she muttered.

“What about the RVs?” Gus asked.

“Talking to myself. They’ll take them. Guaranteed. And kill us. They’re the same breed as those two sick pups I shot back there—an evil kind of crazy. Who knows how many they’ve killed up to this point.”

On some mystical impulse, Gus glanced over his shoulder to see Wallace standing back from where the dead men had fallen.

The soldier was studying the bodies with brooding interest.

Uncertainty and dread flooded Gus’s mental capacities. He’d seen that posture before.

Wallace was considering taking a bite out of Ricky’s and Dwight’s bleeding hides.

“Ollie?” Collie asked and met Gus’s eyes.

“
What’s it gonna be? Huh?
”

Wallace didn’t answer. The back of his head moved ever so slightly, studying the meat just lying there.

“
You hear me in there?
”

“Ollie!” Collie snapped, and Wallace turned his head toward her so slowly Gus thought he heard vertebrae crackle.

“
All right, assholes. I fuckin’ tried to be peaceful.
”

Gus’s breath caught in his airpipe. In between Collie’s whispers and the hollering outside, Wallace was moaning… and sizing up the chunks of human steak marinating in their own juices on the floor.

“Ollie,” Collie commanded. “You back away from that shit right this instant! You’re not like that, mister! You’re not like that at
all
! You’re JTF for Christ’s sake, and you are
not
some walking ghoul.”

Perhaps it was her words or the bedrock seriousness in her tone. Probably both. Wallace’s shoulders trembled, twitching around the edges like a curtain about to fall to the ground. He stopped making noises and backed up a step.

Gus looked at Collie and was about to give a report when Collie’s attention snapped back to the developing scene outside.

“
Down
!” Collie shrieked and grabbed Gus by the shoulders.

A dragon’s whine of smoke and sound ended with the picture window exploding. Scintillating slivers zipped past bodies spinning out of harm’s way. The room went white. Time slowed.

Then the house chuffed and blew outward.

It was as if God himself reached down and tore out a chunk of the home. Wooden beams crackled and fell to the living room floor while plaster crashed down in a floury puff. Timbers creaked, and a huge hole appeared in a wall and a good chunk of the ceiling. The second floor revealed itself in a stunning gauze of wreckage. Splintered edges flickered with fire.

Gus was on his back, not knowing how he’d wound up there. His ears were splitting with a pitch that would make dogs cringe. He coughed, wheezed in a lungful of plaster dust, and coughed again. Grainy water polluted his eyes.

Hysterical
whoop
s came from the roadside and echoed in his skull.

A white hand clawed at his shoulder.

“Get up,” Wallace’s voice warbled with a distorted fishbowl sound effect. Dust clung to his person, making him appear to be smoking. He pulled a dazed Gus upward, and slabs of thick plaster slid from his shoulders. “Collie?”

“Here,” she responded, her voice sounding far off, and a ghost pushed itself up from the debris, pulling off a slab of useless-looking body armor.

“Grenade blew through the window,” Wallace explained as he helped Gus to his feet. “Chewed up the house.”

“We gotta get clear of this.” Collie grunted, recovering quickly. “Not out the back.”

“Basement,” Gus croaked and lurched away. Holding his head, he turned two corners, coughing smoke and dust and stumbling on debris blasted into the hall. Gus ignored the bodies on the stairs and floor and stepped over a set of legs to get to the basement door. He descended, slumping against the wall at one point.

“Down,” Collie ordered, pushing him onward.

The door closed behind him, plunging them into blackness.

With another explosion, the house seemed to jump off its foundation. Beams groaned and cracked like arctic ice breaking as another blinding burst of dust blew past the three figures descending into the basement. Gus felt a light switch on a wall and flipped it to no effect before Collie stumbled into him from behind and sent him flying. He crashed over something, clutching at what felt like an easy chair before slamming into a carpeted floor.

“Someone boarded up the windows,” Collie gasped.

The house rocked a third time.

A heavy rain of debris pattered the floor over their heads.

“Here,” Wallace said and grabbed Gus’s collar. The soldier guided him through the blackness of the furnished basement. Gus rapped his lower leg off the corner of something immobile, crippling him and sending him to his knees.

“Move,” Collie urged and shoved him forward. They fumbled around a corner while something crashed into the floorboards overhead.

“You can see?” Gus yelled at Wallace.

The soldier didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled his two companions through the dusty dark. Gus struck a wall and another chair and hit what might’ve been a countertop.

“You got a wide ass,” Wallace commented when Gus’s shoulder careened off a doorway. “Over here.”

Feeling his way deeper into the void, Gus touched the cold metal of what might have been a washer and dryer set.

“Where are we, Ollie?” Collie asked from the rear.

Wallace didn’t answer. Instead, he stopped and opened a door, its hinges squealing.

Another explosion made the ceiling shiver, and for a brief moment, Gus’s attention went heavenward to long lines of fire illuminating the seams of the floorboards.

Then Wallace pushed Gus, sending him tripping and landing on a concrete floor, hands splayed out to cushion the impact. He sputtered, ears still ringing, and glanced back the way he’d come in time to see Collie’s shape briefly illuminated by a hellish orange glow.

“Stay inside,” Wallace commanded and slammed a heavy door.

“The hell…?” Gus muttered and sat up, feeling shelves against his back.

“We’re in a wine cellar,” Collie said.

“What?”

The next muted explosion made him cringe. He stared up at the night that was the ceiling, fully expecting to see a fiery sun come crashing down. “The fuck are they using?”

“Grenade launcher,” Collie answered. “Don’t know the model, but they got their hands on one. Probably from a dead soldier or somewhere. That pause in between means they’re reloading.”

“My ears are fucked up.”

“Are they bleeding?”

Gus dabbed at them. “No.”

“Then you’re okay. The ringing will pass.”

“Where’s Wallace?”

“Outside?”

“What’s he doing out there?”

“Covering us,” Collie said from near the door.

“Covering us?”

“Breathe easy if you can. This place might be airtight. Or if not, the vents might be blocked. Conserve your air in any case. I can’t see shit.”

Gus shuffled along blindly in the dark, making bottles tinkle in their racks. The shelves ended, and he rested against a wall, taking stock of himself while Collie stood guard at the door. Overhead, the great crackling intensified, as if a swarm of locusts or some other biblical plague had descended upon the house and feasted.

“What’s that sound?” Gus wondered aloud, looking up.

“Topside. Things crumbling.”

“What about Wallace?”

Collie didn’t answer right away. “He doesn’t take in air like you or me.”

That should have startled Gus, but it didn’t, not after he’d witnessed Wallace poke himself without a flinch or a sound.

“Should’ve gone out the back door,” he said ruefully.

“No,” Collie said. “With luck, they’ll figure we died in the explosions. Only thing we have to worry about is smoke or a fire burning through overhead, but I don’t think either will be an issue. The ceiling’s concrete. No, we hunker down here until it’s safe to dig out.”

“And when is that?”

“Jesus, Gus, you’re being a pain in the ass here,” Collie said. “It happens when it happens. So sit tight. Crack a bottle if it’ll relax you.”

Something crashed down overhead with all the might of an avalanche, and Gus inhaled a blast of dust. He sneezed an answering salvo.

“Upper floor falling into the first,” Collie confirmed. “House is collapsing. They blew the shit out of it.”

The rumbling continued, filling the gap in conversation.

“What’s going on with him?” Gus finally asked the darkness. He could sense the hesitation in Collie, and for a while, he figured he’d hear another blast from above before she answered.

But to his surprise, she started talking. “We were assigned to protect a government bunker up north. One called Whitecap. Huge installation. Bigger than anything with NORAD. Anyway, the truth is, the virus that turned folks into zombies was the latest in germ warfare, and despite the best precautions, it leaped to a carrier, who exposed it to the general populace. It started in England and jumped the pond. The prime minister was notified by the British PM and advised to make for the hills. There wasn’t any cure once the virus was released, but there was an inoculation that was relatively untested as that was the fourth or fifth phase of the project. And it only had an estimated seventy-three percent efficacy rate. Worse, there wasn’t enough of it. Anyway, fast forward a year, and the world’s population has either eaten itself or had its head blown off. Over fifteen hundred personnel, including silly servants, are sheltered in Whitecap and slowly going stir crazy. The PM starts to get a hankering for information since all satellite communications have expired. He starts wondering about the state of the country, North America even, as he’s unable to make contact with the president in Groom Lake.”

“Groom Lake?” Gus asked.

“Area 51.”

“Oh, I know that place.”

“Well, that’s where the Americans holed up while they dealt with the apocalypse. And the meltdown of unattended nuclear cores.”

Gus didn’t like the sound of that.

“We’re fortunate in that most of our own nuclear facilities were along the border, so all’s not all TARFU. We stay north of the red line.”

Gus held up his hand. “TARFU?”

Collie grinned. “Things are royally fucked up. Anyway, the PM decided he wanted recon, so he called on the JTF to sally forth and recon. He had a force of forty stationed at Whitecap. He explained that the research team stationed at the facility had failed to improve upon the serum used to inoculate folks—a little cocktail called TI-48. Regardless, all selected JTF operators got a taste of TI. I did.”

“You’re immune now?”

“I guess. Haven’t been bit to find out for sure.”

“But Wallace has.”

Collie sighed. “No. That’s one we’re currently figuring out. Two six-man spec op teams in full battle rattle were dispatched to Ottawa. They never came back. After six months, another six-man team was sent, with the orders to recon and find out what happened to the previous mission. And they never
went
back. Wallace and I were part of that team. We got caught in a running gunfire with a group of crazies calling themselves Norsemen and eventually fought it out in an infested Canada’s Wonderland. Well, let’s just say Wonderland had the living shit kicked out of it. Only Wallace and I got out of that one alive.”