Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (20 page)

“I got no idea what you two are talkin'
about.” George sat there unconcerned with the idea of breast-based
retribution. “I'm just sayin' what any guy with half a brain will
confirm for ya'. You'd admit I'm tellin' the truth too, but it
would violate the edicts of the Ladies’ League of Crazy.”

Bee gave her uncle an exaggerated, pitying
look. “And now, you've gone and made yourself a target for the
International Sisterhood. Not a good move, Uncle George”

George glanced around at the gathered members
of the female sex nervously.

His green-haired niece laughed, breaking the
tension, and the other women followed. “Relax, maybe we can
convince the Matriarchy to keep you on as court jester.”

That prompted yet more laughter, and Allen
pointed at George from his small mattress on the floor, where he
lay recovering from his injuries at the hands of the raiders.

“Never let on you know about the LLC, dude.
That'll get you black-listed by the local chapter of the Men's
Lodge for the Appreciation of Boobs, Beer, and Boobs. They might
even take away your secret decoder ring.”

Allen Ryker was an unobtrusive looking guy
with a constant smile who radiated—what he himself had
termed—competent goofiness. He was a few inches shorter than Jake
and about thirty pounds lighter, due to the fact that his parents
were both diminutive in stature. Still, his forearms and wrists
were rock hard from ripping apart whatever piece of machinery
caught his fancy at a given moment. Though skinny, Allen moved with
confidence due to years of both ballet in various studios and
Kung-Fu lessons with Jake. Truth be told, he only enjoyed ballet
because it gave him a great sense of balance (which was helpful in
the martial arts), and he got to all but grope some really hot
women on a regular basis. The phrase “curly haired, bundle of
energy”, described Allen perfectly.

Rae frowned. “You said boobs twice.”

“I know.” Al leered at her from where he lay,
safely out of arm’s reach.

Rae rolled her eyes and turned back to her
workbench.

“Ooo. That side's nice too!” Allen piped.

“Will you shut up?” Rae didn't turn around
again, but she did stuff a rag into the belt on her flight suit to
conceal her butt from further ogling.

Now it was the men's turn to laugh.

“Seriously though, what are we going to do
about our missing duo? How long do we wait before we head out to
look for them?”

That was given voice by the group’s resident
EMT: one Maggie Reed. Maggie would never be what people considered
beautiful. She was pleasant enough to the eye, but her face was
just a bit too harsh for beauty. Her hair was short, and so blonde
it was almost white. While her arms and shoulders were heavy with
muscle, she had high breasts that tapered into a slim waist, and
legs so long that she matched Jake in height. That put her a couple
of inches taller than the diminutive Allen.

George pointed towards the front of their
sanctuary. “If they don't show, or we don't hear from 'em by the
morning, I think we should take Rae's baby there an' begin
searching. It might take a while, but there can't be
that
many places in Bainbridge they'd pick to shelter in. I mean, this
place ain't Downtown Chicago or anything.”

Their Hummer, sitting outside at the
forefront of the airport hangar, was real one—not the yuppie
yellow,
Look at me! Look at me! I’m so rich and important, but I
still feel the need to overcompensate
model and had been
heavily modified. Its exterior had been augmented with inch thick,
steel bars welded together in a crosshatch pattern, then bolted
through the armored doors over its darkened, bulletproof windows. A
heavy crash plate covered the front grill and someone had painted a
large, fanged smile across it, in yellow spray paint.

Each of those gathered were nodding absently,
half-lost in their own private thoughts. Secretly they would all
admit there was little chance that—after nearly four days—they'd
find any sign of Jake and Kat, but none of them were willing to
abandon hope their friends had survived just yet.

“Where should we start?” Rae tossed an old
radio transceiver into the growing pile of rejected hardware on her
worktable, turned away, strode to the partial circle with the
others, and took a knee.

Foster massaged the bridge of his nose
thoughtfully. “I take it we're all in agreement here?”

The survivors all nodded in affirmation.

“Alright,” George sat forward, smoke from his
Cuban swirled around his head as he did so, giving the older man a
momentarily demonic appearance, “we go out loaded for bear. Elle? I
want you to—”

A firm knocking on the hangar's access door
interrupted Foster as he began to hand out preparation assignments,
forestalling further discussion.

Everyone, even Gertrude, immediately had a
weapon in their hands targeting the front of their refuge. Along
with the airplane-sized hanger doors, which would allow something
perhaps the size of an Airbus 310 through when fully opened, there
was a smaller, human-sized door set into the front wall. Previously
this had allowed pilots, crew, and maintenance personnel access to
the hanger, without having to open the huge sliding entrance to
move inside. When their group had arrived at the decommissioned,
now-abandoned DHL hub, they'd chained the hangar doors and parked
the Hummer right in front of them. There was really no point in
bringing it inside, since they might require a scout vehicle and
roaming around in Foster's gigantic, pink behemoth just wasn't
practical. Now, a few of them wished they'd brought the monstrous
machine inside.

It had an M134 minigun bolted to the roof
turret after all.

“Do zombies... knock?” Bee asked quizzically,
as Laurel, Warren (an airline mechanic they'd come across hiding
within the airport), Leo (a nineteen-year-old fan of all things
sharp and pointy), and the Barbie Duo (Donna and Gwen, who they'd
rescued from a band of redneck rapists) came running down the
Mimi's loading ramp, and joined them in pointing things that go
'Bang' at their front door.

“We've had that discussion before,” Rae
informed her quietly. She shot a glance at Foster and he nodded.
The two of them moved quietly to the steel entrance and took
positions on either side. Laurel noted for all the lip the pair
gave one-another, George and his shapely counterpart worked as
quite an effective team when the situation called for it. George
gave Rae a series of quick signs none of the others recognized, and
she pulled a grenade from a pocket of her flight-suit. After
signaling she was ready, Rae pulled the pin on her grenade—taking
great care to, as George always told them,
Fucking-Hold The
Fucking-Spoon Down Fucking Firmly!—
and squatted on the leeward
edge of the door.

Foster pressed his back against the wall next
to the doorknob, gripped his pistol with his right hand, put his
other on the knob, and quietly asked, “Who is it?”

“It's the plumber. I've come to fix the
sink...” Jake replied.

“Son of a bitch.” George yanked the door
open. Outside stood Kat, a woman none of them had seen before, and
one very tired-looking, messy-haired writer.

“Well it's about time.” Rae stood and a broad
smile lit up her normally serious face.

“Hey, guys! Miss us?” Kat asked.

George fought not to break into a happy grin
himself. “Nope. I liked being able ta eat the 'French Toast with
Bacon' MRE for breakfast. I suppose you're gonna want it from now
on again.”

“Damn skippy. The Inevitable Zombie
Apocalypse would suck beyond description without my daily dose of
pork-based goodness!” Kat hugged both of them before introducing
the newcomer. “This is Deputy Penny Carson. She's going to be
coming with us.”

Stepping forward to take Foster’s
outstretched hand, Penny said, “Nice to meet you. You've gotta be
George.”

That surprised Foster. “Yeah. How'd ya
know?”

“You look like the resident 'abrasive but
badass, foul-mouthed, ex-Squid' to me,” She told him.

“Oh, you're going to fit in just fine.” Rae's
smile grew wider.

Penny gave her a discrete once-over and shook
hands, which Rae missed entirely. O'Connor noticed the good
Deputy's eyes widened, and noticeably lingered on Rae's ample
cleavage, when the female fixer half-turned and waved an 'all
clear' signal to the rest of their group. That provided him quite a
few mental images of possible outcomes, most of which were
definitely
not
rated PG-13. While Jake wasn't really into
that sort of thing, he was male. Things like that were kind of
involuntary when you came equipped with external genitalia. It
didn't mean he ever had to
act
on urges of that sort, but
the images in his brain were definitely interesting.

“Get your ass in here, boy.” Foster nearly
crushed Jake's hand in his own as he pulled him into a rough
embrace. The older man released him quickly then slapped the back
of one gnarled mitt against Jake's chest, nearly bruising his
sternum. “What the fuck took you two so long? You stop for pizza
again, or somethin'?”

Jake ignored the reference to his previous
outing. Acknowledging he and Kat had been hip-deep in trouble once
again without—as Gertrude jokingly put it—'adult supervision',
would not be beneficial to his love life. He realized he'd
eventually have to come clean with Laurel about being trapped in
Old Hall—and the following craziness in Rebecca's grainery—but that
wasn't going to happen just then. Not with his aforementioned
redhead stalking towards him on swift feet, eyes flashing, looking
hot, sweaty, and utterly sexy despite the obvious expression of
anger on her face.

Laurel stopped before him, hand on her
cocked-out hip, and close enough that her breasts were pressed
firmly against Jake's tactical vest. “Took your sweet time, didn't
you?”

O'Connor swallowed audibly. “Yeah, sorry
about that. It kind of took much longer than I'd originally planned
for us to—”

“Zip it.” Laurel put her face in his, so they
were almost nose-to-nose even with their pronounced difference in
height. She gave Jake a look that told him he needed to keep his
mouth shut, reached up, and took hold of his vest. “Kat, you got
this for a while?”

Cho nodded with a knowing grin. “No worries.
I'll fill the others in while you deal with our boy here.”

“Traitor,” Jake mumbled.

“What was that?” Laurel demanded sternly.

Jake tried to look innocent. “I didn't say
anything.”

“I didn't think you had.” Laurel pulled him
away from the others. She walked him up the Mimi's loading ramp,
gave a steely look to Elle—who reasoned it would be wise to find
another seat—and the two disappeared into the guts of Fosters
transport. Seconds later, its clam-shell door began cycling shut,
then rose to meet seamlessly with the vehicle's top edge.

Allen began whistling the Military 'Taps'
melody, and Elle snickered.

“What was that about?” Penny asked,
gratefully taking a welcome tin mug of hot, percolator-brewed,
caffeine-bean juice Bee passed to her.

“That, Deputy, was the sound of a whip
cracking,” Foster told her, sipping at a mug-full of the holy,
black brew himself and puffing heartily on his stogie. “I'll be
taking bets on where our boy has lash marks in the morning now.
Buy-in is two MRE desert packets. Who's game?”

The betting commenced in earnest.

* * *

Wendy didn’t like the ugly people.

They weren’t nice.

When Mommy had gotten her up out of bed,
she’d said they were going to Grandpa’s for a while. She’d been in
a really big hurry, stuffing Wendy’s clothes into a suitcase with
her own, as she was on the phone with Daddy.

Daddy was in the army. He worked at the
“Army. Aviation. Support. Facility”. It was at 1921 Turner Road in
Salem Oregon. 97302. Wendy knew this because Mommy and Daddy had
made her memorize the address, just in case she ever got lost. That
way, she could find a police officer or a firefighter and they
could take her to her safe place.

Mommy had driven them to Grandpa’s that
night. It was really late, and there were ugly people on the road
sometimes until they got past Manning. They didn’t talk at all.
They just made scary noises and tried to get into their Pathfinder.
Daddy had bought it for Mommy last year, when her other car had
broken.

Once they reached Grandpa’s house, he’d been
really happy to see them, and Wendy didn’t understand why he was
crying. Wendy liked her Grandpa. He smelled like cigars. Mommy kept
asking him to stop smoking them, but Wendy didn’t know why. She
thought it was a nice smell.

Wendy snuggled down on Grandpa’s overstuffed
couch, and he put the afghan Grandma Jen had knitted over her.
Grandma Jen had gone to heaven just after Wendy was born, so she
didn’t remember her. She loved her Grandma’s afghan though.

Grandpa and Mommy were talking in the
kitchen, but Wendy was sleepy. She smiled and closed her eyes.

The afghan was warm and smelled like
Grandpa.

Their friends left early the next
morning.

Except for the screaming snit fit Donna threw
when the blonde learned she wasn't going along (which earned her a
smart slap across the chops from her friend Gwen), their plane made
it into the air without a hitch.

Maggie had spent most of the previous evening
going over charts and reviewing weight vs. fuel consumption tables,
ensuring they didn't overload the Beechcraft. When everything was
finally packed in, there wasn't really much room left in the cabin.
Boxes of MREs (fully a third of the food stores in the Mimi) went
into the plane to insure the members of the party winging south
would be able to survive in style. At least, until they could
locate one of the caches George had mapped out in the area around
Pecos. Rae, Foster, and Jenner had ripped some of the webbing from
the baggage compartment of a decommissioned 737, sitting in the
third hanger from the road and used it to secure the cases. That
way, none of them would shift mid-flight (possibly unbalancing the
aircraft) and send their friends on an earthbound, roller-coaster
ride, which would end in a sudden and fatal impact with Terra
Firma.