Green Ice: A Deadly High (47 page)

“Good luck,” Leticia whispered, gripping the handgun tightly.

Mancini nodded and forced a slight smile. He shuffled around and dropped from the ledge into the soft earth of a flower garden below. No alerted screams or observant screeches came Mancini’s way and he ducked behind the tree trunk. He wished he had some sort of radio in which he could communicate with Trey positioned above him.

Mancini peeked out around the tree trunk and saw the infected still milling around in a perpetually reanimated state. He knew if they’d spotted him, they’d be rapidly heading his way. If he was a comic book super hero, he’d amazingly rustle up a cloak with invisible qualities at that moment and proceed unhindered and unseen towards the house.
But reality was a great deal harsher than illustrated fiction. Mancini hesitated, psyching himself up for breaking his cover. He glanced up at Trey on top of the wall and gave him a brief nod to tell him he was ready. Trey returned the gesture and aimed his sight down the rifle scope, scanning the spacious gardens for potentially threatening hostiles.

After taking a few deep breaths, Mancini bolted from the cover of shade under the tree.
He glanced to his left towards the pool area as he ran full pelt across the lawn, heading for the house. The infected surrounding the swimming pool and wandering around the gardens braced up and sniffed the air. They caught sight of Mancini’s movement, snarled and grunted before pursuing their quarry with murderous intent. They clawed the air as they ran, growling and shrieking in demented rage.

Mancini decided to focus on the house. He turned his head away from the onrushing horde and kept his gaze firmly on the upstairs window where he’d seen Logrono and
Luiz. The house was twenty yards away but he’d still have to negotiate moving around the line of stationary vehicles parked in the driveway in front of the building.

The crack of rifle fire caused Mancini to instinctively wince and duck his head down as he ran. Trey was obviously picking off targets, which was a good thing but it also indicated that the infected were gaining ground and about to get up close and personal.
Mancini swiveled around and saw the infected running in a pack towards him. Two formerly attractive women led the chase. One was tall, tanned and blonde, wearing a red bikini and the other was shorter and dark haired, wearing only the remains of a skimpy black swimsuit. The women shrieked in high pitched tones as they closed in. The girl in the red bikini had bite marks covering her shoulders and a large chunk of flesh had been torn from each of her thighs. The woman in the black swimsuit was missing half of her face on her left side, the remaining skin of her cheek flapped beside her gaping mouth.

The snap of a rifle round echoed around the
garden and the woman in the red bikini jolted and fell sideways into the grass with a large bullet hole in her temple. Mancini was slightly relieved Trey was doing his job but the infected still kept up their relentless pursuit. He was worried Trey wouldn’t be able to fire off enough accurate shots by the time he reached the house.

Mancini swiveled around slightly as he ran. He saw the infected crowd sprinting towards him and estimated they were around fifteen yards from his position. Calculating he had only a few seconds before they surged on him, Mancini leapt on top of the trunk of the vehicle nearest to him. He ran across the roof of the car and heard two more quick fire rifle shots before he jumped onto the next vehicle in line.
Mancini was only a few feet from the house but had no clue how he was going to get inside. He dropped down from the car roof and headed for the front door.

With shrieks and snarls burning in his ears, Mancini rattled the handle of the chunky wooden front door.

“Shit,” he hissed. The door wouldn’t budge and was locked from the inside. He knew firing the shotgun at the lock would prove futile. That particular trick only worked in the movies. The reality was he’d only be wasting a cartridge while peppering the wooden door with small holes.

Mancini turned towards his assailants and fired off a shot, striking a man in a black suit fully in the face. The guy’s head exploded in a mist of blood
, skull fragments and brain matter.

Trey fired another couple of killing shots with the
rifle but struggled to stem the tide of infected from gaining ground on Mancini.

“The guy’s going to be overrun any second,” he squawked from the top of the wall.

“Keep firing at them,” Leticia urged. “Shoot the man in the blue shorts to the left.” She pointed at a big, pale skinned guy, who looked out of place amongst the lean tanned bodies surrounding him.

Trey aimed and fired, bringing down the infected guy in the blue shorts. For some reason
Trey couldn’t fathom, the felled infected guy reminded him of a hunted white buffalo when he landed on the ground with his ample flesh quivering in ripples.

Mancini saw the big fat guy in the blue shorts go down a few yards from his position. He stood with his back against the front door of the house and fired the shotgun at a topless redheaded woman, who launched an attack over the top of the line of vehicles.
The shot caught the woman as she closed in, stopping her in her tracks and obliterating half her face.

Trey fired another couple of rounds, dispatching another two infected people but they were rapidly surrounding Mancini.
Worried looking faces appeared at the second floor window but they didn’t seem willing to assist in the dilemma.

“Come on, man,” Trey yelled. “Get the hell away from the front wall. You’re going to get yourself trapped
, dude.”

Mancini heard Trey shouting but couldn’t make out his exact words above the grunting and wailing he was confronted with. He had to move quickly from his position or he’d be set upon by the closing infected crowd.
              

Chapter Seventy-Three

Mancini reloaded and racked the shotgun after firing another killing round. He took a couple of steps to his right and spun around to face the nearest first floor window. Glass and wood crumpled from the window frame when Mancini squeezed the shotgun trigger. He felt a hand from behind grab at his shoulder before he bolted for the obliterated window. Mancini dived headfirst through the wreckage of the window frame and rolled over on his back when he hit the wooden floor inside the room. He didn’t have time to take in his surroundings as the infected leading the pack followed him through the busted window.

Mancini
hurriedly reloaded, racked the shotgun and fired on an approaching man wearing a pair of skimpy orange swim trunks. The cartridge blew out the man’s guts, sending a splattering of gore across the room and up the walls beside the window. The infected guy was projected backwards with the shotgun blast and crashed into a woman climbing through the window behind him. The pair fell to the floor, squirming in the pool of blood pouring from the guy’s guts and trying to rise to their feet.

More snarling infected toppled through the window and Mancini scrambled to his feet. He caught sight of an open doorway behind him and headed towards it, knocking over a table
and a large lamp in the process.

The pursuing infected crossed the floor space, skidding and stumbling through the blood pool. Mancini headed through the arched entryway and slammed the door shut behind him. He knew the infected would either tear the door down or accidently engage the handle but at least it gave him a few seconds respite before they came after him.

Mancini hardly had time to catch his breath before the infected guy in the Hawaiian shirt he’d seen earlier, came charging towards him through the corridor. The man raised his arms above his head and growled like a pissed off bear as he approached. Mancini heard the shrieks and scraping of nails on the wooden door behind him as he raised the shotgun. He squeezed the trigger but nothing happened.

“Shit,” he hissed, fumbling in his pocket for more cartridges. He realized he wasn’t going to have time to reload so he turned the shotgun over in his hands.

The big guy closed the ground between them and Mancini drew back the shotgun stock and slammed the bottom of the butt fully into his attacker’s face. The man in the brightly colored shirt went down on the seat of his pants but Mancini didn’t stop there. He rounded on the felled man and clubbed at the top of his head with the shotgun butt.

The guy’s skull gave way after the fifth strike from the weapon’s solid frame. Blood and brains splashed up Mancini’s shoes and legs but
squeamishness wasn’t in his agenda. He hurried through the corridor, searching for the staircase to the second floor. The screams and yells from the infected elsewhere inside the house caused Mancini to stop in his tracks. He couldn’t work out where the hell the raging creatures were but they sounded close.

Mancini continued on through the house, stepping cautiously as he reloaded the shotgun.
He moved through another arched door frame and found himself in the hallway facing the front door. A wide staircase stood to his right but a young teenage girl, with long black hair and wearing a blood stained nightgown sat on the steps, half way up. She looked at him with harrowing black eyeballs, before emitting a low rumble.

Mancini took a few tentative steps up the staircase, aiming the shotgun at the infected girl. It pained him to see somebody so young with their whole life ahead of them reduced to such a wreck of a human being. With no cure for the disease readily available, there could only be one outcome for the girl’s predicament.

The girl scowled and rose to her feet as Mancini approached.

“I’m sorry I have to do this,” Mancini muttered. He squeezed the shotgun trigger and the girl’s body jerked sideways as the blast ripped through her skull.

Mancini stepped over the prone body, trying to concentrate on the job at hand and not allow the creeping sense of guilt overwhelm him. He continued on, cautiously climbing the staircase. Crimson smears and bloody handprints marked the wall paper running down the side of the staircase to the left. Mancini wondered what type of horrors had occurred in the property before he arrived.

The staircase gave way to a long corridor with a dark wooden floor and flanked by a series of closed, white painted doors. Mancini remembered the room he wanted was at the end of the house so he followed the path after orientating himself with the second floor layout.

Shuffling sounds from a room to his left caused Mancini to turn sharply. He braced himself for an attack but the noise receded and then ceased, so he carried on padding nervously through the corridor. He stopped outside the furthest door on the left of the corridor and rapped his knuckles on the wooden surface.

“Hey, are you
still alive in there?” Mancini hissed.

He heard muffled voices then a scraping noise from the room inside.

“Hey, I’ve come to try and get you guys out of here. Are you going to open the door, or what?” Mancini decided to leave the real reason for his appearance a secret for now. First he had to gain the men’s trust before he could spring Luiz out of the place. 

Mancini heard grunts and growls echo through the corridor, then the noise of the wooden stairs creaking. The infected were heading his way and sounded as though they were bunched into a blood thirsty mob. Mancini frantically rattled the door handle.

“Hey, come on guys. Let me in, will you?”

The first few infected leading the crowd reached the top of the staircase. They stood shoulder to shoulder, hunched and growling while sniffing the air. Mancini felt his heart hammering in his chest as he banged his shoulder into the door. More infected bunched behind the leaders and jostled in a pack across the landing.

Mancini rifled through his pockets and counted he had three more shotgun cartridges and one in the chamber. The infected caught sight of Mancini and let out shrieks that sounded like wild whoops of excitement. The contaminated crowd, numbering at least fifteen, surged through the corridor towards their intended prey.

Mancini had a total of four shotgun shells plus the ammunition in his handgun. He decided when it came to crunch
time, he’d save the last round to use on himself.

Chapter Seventy-Four

Mancini raised the shotgun, pulling the butt tightly into his shoulder and aiming the barrel at the onrushing infected horde.
Every round was going to have to count as a kill shot. There was no time or breathing space for wounding or totally missing the targets. He aimed slightly between the two leading attacker’s heads, hoping one shot would equal two kills. Mancini fired and saw the two advancing creatures fall. The boom of the shotgun reverberated around the corridor and a spray of blood spattered over the walls. The onrushing pack stumbled over the felled bodies and continued on in their unrelenting pursuit.