Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (17 page)

“Whoa! Seriously now, hang on a second.” Jake
backpedaled until his rear hit the wall beside one of the large,
wide-open, top floor windows. “We can just make a ton of noise or
something to fool anyone listening, can't we? Limp around in the
morning like we're sore? You know, fake it.”

Penny gave him a meaningful grin. “I'm not
good at 'faking it'.”

“O-o-o-kay. Well, I can try prying the door
open again.” She was padding forward with a determined, no-nonsense
expression. “We've got all night to come up with something else,
you know?”

Jake had to get control of the situation,
before things got
really
out of hand. Once again he wondered
if it was the fear brought on from trying to survive the zombie
apocalypse, or feelings of guilt because someone had managed to
stay alive when everyone they'd known hadn't, or if it was just the
'instant gratification' mindset taking hold of survivors minds
which seemed to be sending everyone's libido into overdrive lately.
What was it that currently prompted average people to say 'To hell
with it!', and act like horny lemmings?

Maybe there's something in the water,
he thought.

Penny stopped just out of reach and put her
hands on her hips. Jake put forth a mighty effort not to stare at
the effect of her doing so had on her front-facing feminine
attributes, and he was only moderately successful. Carson slid her
thumbs down her hips, beneath the waistband of her panties, and
began sliding them floorward. “Well, at least that part's accurate.
We've definitely got all night.”

“We really don't,” Kat said mildly.

“She's right, we need to... Huh?” Jake's head
snapped to his left at the sound of her voice.

Outside the window, Cho was hanging where the
side of the grainery wall met the “ascetically pleasing, decorative
building accent” (a useless, three-foot wide wall) that ran up the
outer edge of the grainery tower from the near-most silo, seven
floors below, to the roof. Her back was pressed firmly into the
corner with her arms and legs spread outward, providing support and
pressure to hold her tight to the building's face, and her sword
was strapped across the front of her chest. Her short, blue
pixie-cut ruffled in the breeze as Jake stared at her,
bug-eyed.

“Holy shit!” Penny exclaimed, forgetting all
about dropping her panties and joined O'Connor as he gaped at the
pretty half-Asian clinging to the outside of the wall, just beyond
the window frame.

Relief washed over Jake in a physical wave.
“Kat!”

“The one and only,” she replied with a grin.
“Mind moving away from the window there so I can get it? It's a
little windy out here.”

Jake and Penny each took a big step back and
Kat pounced. First, she leaned to her right, shifting her weight to
her right foot and leaped skyward. As she rose, Kat brought her
right leg around, almost pirouetting on her extended left leg while
airborne, which spun her body 180 degrees. This momentum turned her
leap into a precision jump. Her feet tapped against the narrow
window ledge for a moment—

legs bent ever-so slightly to absorb the
impact of her landing— then she bounced upwards off the ledge,
flipped in midair, and landed soundlessly within the room.

“Hey there, hero. Did you miss me? Oof!”

The last was involuntarily pushed from her
lungs as O'Connor bodily wrapped his arms around her waist and held
her nearly over his head, spinning them both around briefly. As
Jake danced her about, Kat laughed and flung her own arms around
his neck to hug him emphatically.

“Woman, I am
so
glad to see you!” he
exclaimed happily.

“I can tell,” she said. “What, no kiss?”

“Maybe later,” Jake told her and set Cho
down. “What the hell have you got all over you?”

Every inch of her skin—save for what was
covered under Kat's leather pants and a new black tank top she'd
acquired from somewhere—had a thin coating of some tacky substance.
It was enough to darken her skin unevenly, which would provide her
excellent camouflage at night, but not enough to make her look like
a living shadow. Jake had seen the same done in a boat-load of
military-themed action movies, war games, and even by the rough n'
tumble shooters of Britain's SAS when in the field in dangerous
locales.

Kat quickly ran a finger over her collarbone
and gave it a glance. “This? Shoe polish.”

Jake gave her a calm look. “I have it all
over my face now, don’t I?”

“Just the left side,” she told him
dismissively.

O'Connor closed his eyes and sighed. “Why
shoe polish?”

“Oh. Well, it was kind like this. I ran into
some trouble after you got caught at the school. Zombies, you know.
I ended up hiding in the principal's office for a while. I searched
it for anything useful while I was stuck there anyway and found a
tin of old 'Kiwi black' in the desk drawer. I thought it couldn't
hurt to apply some and cut down on my visibility.” She nodded to
Penny. “Hi there. I'm Kat. Nice tits, by the way.”

Penny blinked. “Uh. Thank you?” She looked a
bit numb from watching Kat's entrance.

“I take it she's coming with us?” Kat pulled
her lock pick case from the top of her boot.

Jake nodded. “Yeah. There's likely a guard
outside or below us somewhere, so let's do this sneaky-like.”

“Have you ever known me to be anything but?”
Kat looked offended.

“Alright, alright, I'm sorry. You're still
the baddest, totally devious, most stylish, ninja-girl ever. Happy
now?” Jake told her.

This seemed to mollify Kat and she turned to
Penny with a bright smile. “See? Who says you can't teach guys
anything?”

“Some of them
do
learn occasionally,”
Penny chuckled. “You might have to beat them over the head with
something large and blunt, but it is possible.”

“We're going to get along just fine. Oh, just
so you know: If you try to hurt him? I'll have to kill you.
Painfully. So play nice.” Kat told her pleasantly, then skipped
over to unlock the door.

Penny began quickly donning her clothing
again and gave Jake a quizzical look. “She was kidding, wasn't
she?”

O'Connor shook his head in resignation. “Not
even a little bit. Kat's the deadliest woman I've ever encountered,
and that's saying something. I think I'd rather face a horde of
zombies than go up against her with that sword in her hand.
Granted, I won't claim to understand how that Manic Panic-saturated
brain of hers works most days, but I'd be dead ten times over if it
weren't for her. Just don't go pointing any guns in my direction...
or hers...and you'll be alright.”

“You say the nicest things. Remind me to buy
you a drink once we get back to the Mimi,” Kat said from where she
was hurriedly working on the lock.

“The what?” Penny slipped into her hiking
boots and belted her holster back in place.

“Later,” Jake shot Kat a look that said
Ix-nay On The Alking-Tay.
“We'll have time to explain once
we get out of here.”

Kat coaxed the final tumbler within the lock
into place. “Uh, Jake? There's, um, something I didn't tell you.
Getting out of this building could be... interesting.”

“Okay. Why?” O'Connor felt his stomach begin
to drop.

“Let me say that it's not my fault,” Kat told
him defensively. She quickly made her lock picks disappear, moved
her sword to its normal home across her back, and pulled the blade
from its scabbard in a smooth draw. “If these jerks hadn't taken
you prisoner none of this would be happening. We'd be safely out of
the area, we wouldn't have to tromp down seventeen flights of
stairs, I wouldn't have had to sacrifice my favorite tank top
'cause it got all nasty while I was—”

“Kat? I'll loot you another shirt the first
chance I get. Can you focus for a minute please?” The sinking
feeling in Jake's gut was getting more pronounced.

“What? Oh. Sorry.” Cho shook her head
briefly. “What were you saying?”

Jake managed to keep the exasperation out of
his voice. “Why is getting out of here going to be
'interesting'?”

Cho mumbled something they couldn't hear.

“What was that again?” Penny hadn't been able
to make it out either.

Kat looked at Jake guiltily. “The horde that
had us trapped in Bainbridge? The one we got away from? Well, um...
They're kind of coming here.”

“What?” Deputy Carson turned white as a
sheet.

“I thought I lost them a few streets back,
but some must have seen me. Even with the added camouflage,” Kat
admitted and fidgeted with her sword. “They were pretty much right
behind me when I picked the lock on the gate and came inside to
find you. There's going to be a few thousand zombies knocking at
the door of this place really,
really
soon.”

“How soon?” Jake reached over his right
shoulder and took hold of his crowbar.

A flurry of small arms fire broke out from
the front of the building below them.

Kat wrinkled her nose. “Oh... About right
now.”

“Didn't it hurt, getting your nipples pierced
like that?” Kat asked.

Deputy Carson shook her head. “It wasn't so
bad at the time, what with the whole Endorphin rush and all. I'll
admit it though: They were pretty tender for a week or two
afterwards.”

“I suppose that makes sense. Does it add
anything to…you know?”

“Oh, hell yes,” Penny told her with a smile.
“Your nipples are pretty sensitive anyway, so it's easy—at least if
you know what you're doing—to give a whole lot of pleasure through
them. Now, add a way to manipulate more of the nerve endings from
the inside, and you've got yourself a
whole
new experience.
It doesn't have to be anything gigantic either. People make that
mistake a lot. All you really need is a five/sixteen inch hoop,
maybe even just a quarter inch for somebody with smaller areolas,
and you wouldn't believe—”

“Ladies, if you wouldn't mind?” Jake growled.
“Let's shelve the topic of body modifications for a bit and move
right along, shall we? It's damn distracting, and I need to watch
out for zombies.”

Kat and Penny shared a look, then followed
Jake as he moved deeper into the tunnel.

After Cho's timely appearance, which saved
O'Connor from a truly awkward (possibly sweaty) discussion with
Deputy Carson about whether or not they were going to 'bump ugly',
zombies had breached the grainery's perimeter. That was because for
some reason Jake couldn't fathom, rather than simply scaling the
fence at some inconspicuous spot, Kat had chosen to enter the
refuge of Rebecca's little group-o'-crazy through the facility’s
front gate. She'd been in a bit of a hurry, since there had been
several thousand hungry corpses in the immediate area (many of
which witnessed her entry, unlike Rebecca's people on fence duty),
and had neglected to secure it once inside. This had allowed the
rotting crowd to simply stagger onto the grounds unimpeded.
En
masse
.

It hadn't been long before Rebecca's people
finally opened their eyes and noticed the oncoming horde flowing up
their driveway.

Penny had recognized the sound of Will's BN36
(an AR-10 chambered for .30-06 rounds, basically) when the man
started cracking away when they'd begun moving speedily down
through the gallery tower. Jake could tell, even though Rebecca's
'top-shot' had squashed Penny's belief they'd actually been
involved earlier, the good Deputy still experienced an instant of
regret when they passed the ground floor. She stopped for a moment
to gaze at the door leading from the gallery into the common room,
stared at it for a few seconds and then... flipped it off.

Okay, maybe not,
Jake amended.

As the three trotted down into the lower
level, they passed through the facilities guts: past large machines
of unknown operation, now-immobile conveyer belts, and... Rats. An
impressive number of large, well-fed, not particularly aggressive,
somewhat frightening rats. Luckily, neither of the women showed the
slightest concern over all the raccoon-sized rodents, nor did
either lady flinch at the curious gazes the animals gave them as
the humans hurried past their hidey-holes. Jake was thankful of
that fact because, while he wasn't really fearful of the things
himself, all those beady, little, glowing red eyes did kind of
creep him out a bit as he crept along with the ladies. “How much
farther?” he asked.

“The tunnel runs for another fifty yards,
then terminates beyond the tracks.” Penny moved up behind him, just
inside the dim circle of light Jake's flashlight provided in the
blackness. “It's locked, so we shouldn't have any problems with
zombies getting inside. At least, not right away. If they find us,
they
could
beat their way in through the walls, I guess.
It's just corrugated steel, not cement like the rest of this
place.”

Jake pushed on into the dark, attempting to
hold the flashlight steady despite the pronounced shaking of his
hand. “Hopefully we'll be long gone before they finish with
Rebecca's people.”

“That's pretty hard-core. At least for you.”
Kat's frown was invisible in the gloom. “They were human, even if
they did go all 'Jim Jones' because of Penny's friend.”

Deputy Carson stumbled briefly on a
protruding support for one of the conveyer belts and corrected her.
“Rebecca wasn't my friend. She wasn't anybody's 'friend'. She
didn't get close to people, at least not since the zombies came
along. She spent all her time organizing her little fiefdom within
an inch of its life. And my sanity. She was totally focused on
'birthing a new society', as she put it.”

“From what you and Jake have told me about
her matchmaking, I can believe the whole 'birthing' part,” Kat
snickered.

“Maybe she was different before everything
went to hell. Who knows?” Penny told her without interest. “After
pairing me off with your genius here, I don't owe her jack.”