Wet Work: The Definitive Edition (31 page)

When the journey’s over, there’ll be time enough to sleep.
He focused on the line from his favorite Houseman poem, trying to push away the pain.

“
Look at us,” Skolomowski said wearily, his eyes on the fallen soldiers littering the lobby. “This is what we’ve become. Meat writhing with maggots.”

There were four bodies. One soldier had taken his own life, a bullet wound to the head. Another had been attacked by his comrades, his rent viscera spilling forth from the gaping hole in his side. The other two still spasmed on the marble floor, limbs shattered, tendons torn by the rounds the suicidal soldier had emptied into them. One let out a moan, then started gibbering.

“
Time to get it over with.”

Corvino’s eyes watched his opponent’s blade as Skolomowski started to move around in a circle.

“
You’re a dead shot and that roundhouse kick of yours takes some beating, but just how good are you with this?” Skolomowski motioned with the knife. “Never seen you use one with any skill.” The Pole grinned ferally.

“
This is the one I skinned that bitch Mitra with.”

He paused, seeing Corvino tense.

“
And all those other dumb cunts.”

Corvino continued to circle his opponent slowly. A rage was building inside him. He fought to control it. The Pole’s statement was simple manipulation.

“
Why?” he asked calmly, struggling with his anger.

“
Why the hell not? I enjoy my work. Killing is my business. And business is good.”

Skolomowski stopped, passing the knife between hands for effect.

You always were full of your own shit
, Corvino thought fleetingly, his eyes locked on the Pole’s. The eyes gave away a move split seconds before the body responded. It was a basic tenet of martial arts training: never take your eyes off those of your opponent.

Skolomowski smiled a big Cheshire Cat grin.

“
I’ve always enjoyed my work,” he said. “A man’s got to have a hobby, though. Slicing up bitches is more fun than collecting art—or listening to all that old jazz shit you listen to.”

Left to right.

Right to left.

The knife glided between the Pole’s fingertips. He started to move again, this time in the opposite direction.

Left to right, the knife back in his right hand.

“
It’s an art. Ever skin a deer? Slicing an animal’s easy. Skinning a live bitch takes skill.”

Behind Skolomowski, one of the crippled dead let out a low, mewling sound full of confusion and agony.

Corvino’s arm was burning with white-hot pain. It was now or never. He held his ground. Enough circling. The Pole continued to move but the gap between them had closed. Six feet. Optimum range. Each man’s eyes were still locked on the other’s. Neither gave anything away. Skolomowski slowed his movements.

“
I’m going to enjoy taking you apart, limb by fucking limb,” he whispered as if the words were an endearment, the grin perpetually glued on his dry, peeling lips.

Corvino ignored the taunt.

Mitra.

Focus.

Calm. Steady.

Focus.

The sound of an explosion rang forth from above.

Faint gunfire.

The Pole’s eyes darted momentarily to the right towards the stairway, giving Corvino an opening.

He came in with a left roundhouse kick that shattered Skolomowski’s right wrist, causing his knife to fly from his fingers. Corvino followed it with a thrust, plunging the SEAL knife into the Pole’s left shoulder as he grasped the shattered right wrist in a blur of movement and twisted it inwards—two pressure points causing Skolomowski intense agony. Corvino used the Pole’s weight against him, dislocating the lacerated shoulder, bringing his right elbow down at a 90-degree angle to break the arm.

For the first time ever, he heard Skolomowski scream.

The sound was satisfying.

Corvino let him go, the Pole’s breath heaving in bull-like bellows.

“
Fuck you,” he spat between clenched teeth, countering with an unexpected sidekick that caught Corvino in the ribs.

Two of them snapped like twigs in a storm. He groaned.

Circle.

Both men were breathing heavily now.

Pain.

Fight it.

Willpower…

The Pole turned his left side towards Corvino, protecting his right. Came in fast and hard with a high front kick.

Corvino escaped, flowing in a crescent, countering with a low side kick, shattering the Pole’s left knee.

Another scream, globs of spittle spattering from his lips, Skolomowski tried to retain his balance by pulling back to place his full weight on his other leg.

“
You’re good, fuckstain,” the Pole wheezed.

Corvino took off with a close-quarters head kick stretching ligaments, muscles, his boot-heel a black whiplash pulping his opponent’s nose.

He spun as he landed, taking the Pole down with a crescent kick, the big man landing like a timber fall. Corvino stomped down, right foot to right knee, bone and cartilage crunching under impact. Skolomowski screamed a second time, his eyes blazing hate through a mask of blood splattering from his flattened nose.

The Pole jerked around on the floor, bellowing with pain-flushed rage.

Corvino moved quickly towards an M-16 lying near one of the jerking corpses.

The mutilated soldier near the gun twitched, moaning, strips of flesh gumming his teeth.

Corvino kicked the dying man’s head, snapping his neck, before stooping to grab the weapon.

“
Corvino!!!”

He turned, bringing the gun up to chest level.

“
You’re scum like…like the rest of—”

“
Suck on this,” Corvino hissed, pulling the trigger.

The Pole ‘s body jumped as bullets tore into his torso, a split second before his head exploded in a Roman candle of bone, blood and brains.

“
Fuck you.
Fuck you all…
” Corvino’s voice dropped an octave as he let the rifle slip from his fingers.

It was over.

Over.

Mitra. Ryan. Harris.

And now he, too, could rest.

A dense, black abyss opened up before him—

—
and then he heard

(???
—
)

…
the sound of an M-16 as bullets ripped through his chest lifting him off the ground as they exited sternum and shrapnel blood showering the wall the floor as

(what???)

his legs stopped working as bullets tore his spinal column and the Pentagon floor polished blood-splashed marble rushed up to meet him
—

Gifford, descending the stairs, continued to fire, the clip spent, metal hitting metal.

Finally realizing the M-16 was spent, he threw the gun down, slumping against he wall, sliding down into a crouch.

Nick appeared behind him.

“
Gifford.”

The pilot ignored him, shaking as he looked at the carnage below. The entrance lobby was an abattoir.

“
Come on, we’ve got to get moving,” Nick said, kneeling down beside him.

Gifford shook his head. “I’ve had it. This…this is insane. There’s nowhere to go. It’s all gone to hell.”

“
We can make it to the farm, get out into the countryside—”

“
Just leave me alone.” Gifford looked tired and old, his eyes bloodshot, deep shadows etched beneath as if they were tattooed into his skin. He turned away from Nick.

Down in the lobby, one of the dead things twitched and moaned. Another one—the one Gifford had just shot—tried to move.

Nick stood up and started walking down the steps.

Pain flared through his body. He wanted to die. To die properly like he should have done back in the parking area when Lang shot him.
I’m tasting the tortures of purgatory
, Corvino thought—dead yet alive, shot almost in two, his wounds a network of fierce white agony, his mind denying him peace. He had to get a gun, finish himself off.

He could see a .45 automatic lying beside one of the bodies near the entrance. He began to crawl, dragging his useless legs, clenching his teeth against the pain.

As Nick reached the bottom of the steps the body on the floor nearest to him cried out again. He took aim and fired into its head. The dead thing stopped moving.

The man who’d been trying to crawl stopped, and turned to face him. It was one of the soldiers who’d captured them. The one who’d stopped the other from killing Ellen. The man’s face wore a mask of pain, but unlike the other living dead this one seemed to have a glimmer of intelligence still lurking in his dark brown eyes, a look of relief perhaps.

“
The head,” Corvino said softly, the word barely above a whisper. “My…head.”

Nick stared at the dead man, an alien feeling of compassion for something—
someone
—who had once been human fleetingly crossing his mind as he lifted the M-16.

“
Do it,” Corvino said, lowering his head to the cold marble, closing his eyes.

Nick squeezed the trigger.

MARYLAND.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7.

DAWN.

Nick had been driving all night, his eyes burning from lack of sleep, ghostly images flickering across his retinas as he steered first a Lincoln Town Car, then a Toyota truck across the empty terrain of northern Maryland.

The Lincoln took him a little over forty-five miles up I-95 before it, like the rest of the world, had died, forcing him to abandon it at the side of the Interstate to walk in the dark for a mile before discovering another vehicle that still ran. That mile, walked alone, was the most terrifying of his life. Under a clear night sky, he’d walked over the emptiest section of highway he’d ever seen. During the distance he covered on foot, the only other vehicle he came across before the Toyota was a wrecked Dodge Spirit lying in a ditch beside the highway, its sole occupant rotting behind the wheel.

He’d walked in the dark, afraid to use a flashlight in case it attracted attention. Fortunately, a quarter moon shined down from the cloudless dark sky to guide him, and no sign of anyone living or dead lurked near the highway. The silence, the emptiness, felt surreal.

Leaving the D.C. area had been the most difficult part of his journey. Sections of the Interstate were blocked with auto wrecks: multiple vehicle pile-ups, burned-out National Guard trucks and a crushed body-disposal vehicle—its rotting contents strewn across the road like multicolored ticker tape. He’d navigated his way around the accident as best he could, the Lincoln’s wheels snapping bone, pulping putrefying flesh as he drove over several corpses lying near the guardrail.

Fortunately, zombie activity was minimal, and most of the living dead he came across seemed to be falling apart. He saw some with missing arms, others with their heads lolling awkwardly to one side as if their necks were broken, and one crawling by the side of the highway, its legs crushed. None of them attempted to bother him, but if they did he was ready. He’d taken two MAC-10’s, three handguns, and as much ammo as he could carry before leaving the Pentagon. Let ‘em try and get him. He was ready, and by God, he was going to make it to Elliot’s farm one way or another.

What he’d seen at the Pentagon was obviously happening to all the living dead. They were coming apart at the seams mentally and physically. Whatever force had reanimated them could only sustain their rotting flesh and decaying minds for so long.

There’s no one—
no one
—around, he thought, aware of the loud crunching sounds his boot-heels made on the dry tarmac. After days in D.C. filled with constant gunfire, burning buildings, periodic explosions as a gas station or a gas main blew, the silence unnerved him. Absent even was the familiar vibrating rattle of cicadas issuing their mating call. Just the heavy tread of his policeman’s boots as he walked north, a solitary cell traveling through a dark artery of a dead organism.

He was relieved to find the Toyota, its driver slumped backwards in the cab, head lolling to one side as if the guy who’d been driving had fallen asleep at the side of the road. Nick pulled the body from the vehicle and slid into the cab, pleased to find the key still in the ignition and the battery charged.

He continued his journey, heading up I-95, trying to avoid the outskirts of Baltimore. Sporadic pockets of fire smoldered away from the highway. He took no notice.

Ten miles beyond Baltimore, he swallowed some No Doz he’d found in the glove compartment, washing the tablets down with tepid water from his canteen. He was so tired his last reserves of adrenaline were almost gone, a terrible soul-deep exhaustion pulling his body into the truck’s comfortable upholstery.

Keep it going. Got to keep going.
The thought had become a mantra.

Sandy
.

His eyelids were weighted with sleep and he wound down the window hoping the night air would help him until the caffeine kicked in.

Sandy, darling, are you still alive?

Keep going. Don’t think about it. Concentrate on the highway.

He hummed a few bars from “Roadhouse Blues.”

“
Going to the Roadhouse, gonna have a real good time.” He chuckled. “Yeah, gonna have a
real good time.
”

The truck rounded a bend. Two hundred yards ahead on the right was the sign for Keaton. Only a mile before the exit. He sighed with relief. Twenty miles to go. Eyelids flickering, he floored the accelerator, taking the truck up to eighty. He hoped the rest of the journey would be easy.

Dawn’s first light faintly pricked the horizon as Nick steered the Toyota off the tarmac onto the winding dirt road which led to Elliot’s farm. As the first furtive rays of the sun pushed back the twilight rim of night, he saw how empty the landscape here was. Having seen nothing but stone and steel, shattered glass and twisted urban remains since the start of his descent into Hell, the lush green of the fields looked alien to his bloodshot eyes.