Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (25 page)

“Well, we could...” Laurel stopped, frowning.
“Wait. Are you sure the MREs were out of the Hummer?”

“Absolutely.”

She had a strange look on her face.
“But...why would somebody take them out of the Humvee, then lug
them inside?”

Rae gave her a confused look. “I don't
follow.”

Laurel slid slowly off the worktable with a
worried expression and began moving towards the hangar door.
“Something's... not right.”

“I didn't see anyone outside.” Rae hopped off
the table and strode after her. “The area's still secure, so none
of the infected got in.”

“That's not it,” Laurel replied as they left
the hanger and started for the one housing the Mimi. “Why take the
time to put the MREs inside? Why not just toss them back into the
bed of the Hummer? No one would've noticed until we repacked
it.”

“Maybe whoever did it would be the one doing
the repacking?”

Laurel started into space for a moment then
trotted outside and stared at the Mimi's hangar. Rae came to a halt
beside her and slid the MP-5 around from her shoulder. Scanning the
area, the gorgeous fixer wasn't able to locate a threat. What was
stranger was the fact that both of the other woman's pistols were
still secure in her ever-present, thigh holsters.

“Oh no,” Laurel's eyes were growing wider by
the moment. She looked like she was frightened half to death and
pissed off beyond all sense of the word, besides.
“No-no-no-no-NO!”

Then she was sprinting for the hangar, red
hair flying out behind her like a living banner. Rae hurried to
catch up as Laurel flew through the door and almost ran straight
into her as the evidently, panicking woman came to a sudden halt,
ten feet inside the hatch. Jake's lover's head whipped around
wildly, then she ran for the Mimi, with the still confused female
fixer in tow.

“Laurel, what's wrong?” she called. “I don't
see anything!”

Cornering around the transport's ramp, Laurel
came sliding to a halt in front of the large pile of MREs. There
were over a hundred and forty of them, two of George's seventy-two
count boxes, dumped there. What Rae
hadn't
noticed in her
initial irritation however, were the rest of the supplies and
equipment that lay just beyond, half-obscured by the pile of
army-issue meals.

“Where the hell did all of this come from?”
she asked, quizzically.

Instead of answering, Laurel raced up the
Mimi's loading ramp and into the belly of the huge, pink
transport.

“Jake?” She yelled. “Jake, answer me!”

She blew through the rear section towards the
vehicles prow without pausing, worry building in her guts. Laurel
didn't want to believe what her brain was suggesting and began
bargaining with the gods as she crossed the threshold to the second
module.

Let him be up front,
she pleaded.
Let him be here and whole and safe. Let it just be me being
paranoid and stupid. Please, please, please, please,
please!

She came to a halt again, just after passing
through the airlock door to the front of the Mimi.

“Laurel, tell me what the hell is going on!”
Rae demanded, ducking though the hatch and crowding in behind
her.

Her companion didn't answer, but instead
slowly walked to the secondary seats and reaching into one, picked
up—

Jake's tac-vest. Rae moved forward to see
that his Glock and large Hammer pistol, both still in their thigh
holsters, were resting in the seat as well. Laurel pulled a folded
piece of printer paper out of the tactical vest's pocket and
started to read, as a sneaking suspicion began to build in Rae's
mind.

“Jake's gone to meet Poole,” she said a
minute later, still reading.

“
What?”

Laurel lowered the note. “He says they
promised to let Karen go, if Jake turned himself over. He's going
to trade himself for her. We need George.”

Rae was shocked. “Why would he think Poole
would
do
that? He has to know once that guy's got his hands
on him, there's no
way
he'll let the girl go! With
everything we know about Poole? He wouldn't be above hanging on to
Karen just to keep Jake under control. They'll both be his
permanent guests! That's…”

“Rae! Focus!” Laurel yelled. “Go. Get.
George!
Now!”

As the femme-fixer turned and ran for the
rear of the Mimi, she folded Jake's tactical vest, placed it back
on the plush officer chair. She took a deep breath, took up the
writer's note and read it again.

Laurel,

Poole made contact last night. He demanded
the Mimi and for all of us to turn ourselves over to him, or he's
going to give Karen to his men.

I can't allow that to happen.

I managed to convince him to take me in
trade. For some reason, he's willing to accept that and I've taken
the Hummer, after unloading most of its supplies. He's agreed to
let Karen leave with it and she's going to meet you at the location
I've marked on the map in my tac-vest. You all need to move today,
in case he's able to get our …your, current location out of me.

George and Rae can get you the rest of the
way. Give Kat the Humvee. She, Elle, and Leo are a good team, so
let them continue on as the scouting party. Gwen seems to have
potential as a marksman, so you may want to send her along as well,
after some training with the Longarm rifle.

I know you won't agree with what I'm doing,
but it's the only way to free Karen, at least without putting
everyone at risk. You all agreed that I was the one who could lead
us west. Well, this is what it's going to take to get you
there.

I want you to go.

No, I don't, actually. What I want, is to
live to a ripe old age with the woman I've been searching this
little mud-ball for, so I can wake up thirty years from now and see
her lying next to me. What I want is to not be such a coward and
tell you... well, it doesn't really matter now.

You've been the best part of my life. Before
we met, was a dream. Nothing but a bad dream. If this is my fate,
at least I have the memory of the time we spent together to give me
the strength to endure it.

Goodbye.

-Jake

Laurel felt her knees go, but she couldn't
feel when they hit the transport's metal floor. She didn't see the
floor as she bent over; clutching Jake's note to her breast, half
crumpling it while crippling fear stole away her ability to think.
Blind panic turned her thoughts into a confused jumble that raced
past her eyes and set her limbs to shaking violently.

A scream tore its way from her throat. It
echoed through the hangar so loudly, the others back in the
Beechcraft’s prior home heard it, even before Rae burst through the
door yelling for George.

The old fixer was slow exiting the office. He
came staggering through the doorway on rubbery legs, holding a
rising knot on his forehead. Laurel's scream had jolted him out of
a dead sleep and he'd banged it on the edge of the desk he'd been
lying next to, as he sat up suddenly.

After hearing what Jake had done (and letting
loose a string of truly vile curses), he told the others they had
fifteen minutes to gather everything, before they moved out and ran
back to the Mimi's hangar with Rae at his heels. They found Laurel
almost prone on the floor, holding herself up with shaking arms,
weeping.

George moved to pull her gently upright.
“Red. Red! Come on, girl! You can't do this now. We've gotta
go.”

“He's gone
,
” She sobbed, eyes frantic.
“George, he's
gone!
He's going to trade himself for—”

“Rae told me,” Foster replied. “I know yer
hurtin' right now, Red, but you've got ta pull it together! We need
to get our people movin' right now!”

“B-but…”

“Laurel!” he yelled into her face as he
gripped her shoulders roughly. The aging fixer had never used her
name before. He'd always called her Red, or Girlie, or something to
that effect. It shocked her into a relative calm and momentarily
allowed her to get control of her fear.

“Come on, girl. We need you with us,” he said
gently, pulling her up to her feet.

George helped her over to sit at the systems
terminal and Laurel put her face in her hands. Her world was
spinning and she was struggling to keep from being sucked down into
the hole that seemed to have opened beneath her feet.

She could handle the zombies. She could
handle the constant fear and death. She could handle the
uncertainty of whether or not they'd live through another day. What
she
couldn't
handle was Jake sacrificing himself. The
thought of never seeing him again. Kissing him again. Feeling her
heart beat wildly as he held her.

“Kat,” she said, clutching George's arm, as
Rae activated the hydrogen drive and began bringing the Mimi to
life. “I need to talk to Kat.”

* * *

“He didn't!” Penny exclaimed as she ran
across the tamarack beside Gwen and Elle.

The trio had spent the last few minutes
scurrying about the control tower, attempting to locate Kat to no
avail. The pretty ninja-girl wasn't in the second hanger Warren
Jenner, Bee, and the other two members of his little survivor group
had sheltered either, which left the rear offices of the Mimi's
hanger for them to check.

“Fraid so.” Gwen sped along beside her in
Elle's wake. “It sounds like something Jake would do. He's one of
the bravest people I've ever known. Not the most intelligent when
it comes to not doing super-dangerous stuff on his own mind
you—which does nothing but piss off both Laurel
and
Kat—but
definitely one of the bravest.”

“I can't believe he'd be that stupid!” Elle
slammed the door to the Mimi's parking place open and hurried for
the rear. “There's no way in hell he could pull off a swap like
that. Not without support and one hell of a lot of firepower.”

The three women ran through the offices,
yelling for Kat as Penny asked, “We can catch up with him, can't
we?”

Gwen bit her lip. “I don't know. The Mimi is
really awesome, but I don't think it's very fast. George has only
had it up to about forty miles per hour. That might just be because
of all the wrecked and abandoned cars on the roads though. I'm not
sure if it can go any faster or not.”

“It's an amazing piece of armor, but it’s
still
armor.”
Elle was scowling like a thundercloud, kicking
in doors as they searched the main hallway. “Abrams tanks can only
get up to forty-five miles per hour, maybe fifty if you don't care
about blowing the engine quickly or shaking the whole thing apart,
but the Mimi's no tank. It seems to be more functional on actual
roads than something with two steel tracks for a wheel-base. Maybe
we'll be able to get to Jake. Before he does something else really
stupid.”

Penny and Gwen shared a skeptical look and
continued yelling for Kat.

* * *

Justin Lowery had been having the time of
his life.

He’d always said The End would be something
like this.

Everyone in Flovilla, Georgia—the nearest
town roughly nine miles away—had laughed at him for years about it.
Well, they weren’t laughing so loudly now, were they!

The diminutive man had spent the last eleven
years of his life readying himself for just such a situation. He’d
made millions—prior to the housing bubble bursting a few years
back—selling overpriced mansions to addle-headed pop stars, and
he’d prepared extensively for the inevitable fall of civilization.
Lowery had built himself an underground home. Its walls were
two-feet thick concrete with steel reinforcements that could
withstand the force generated by the detonation of an atomic bomb.
He had an efficient solar power system, dual six-thousand gallon
potable water tanks which were supplied by the entire four-thousand
foot surface of his large roof, the works.

He’d stockpiled food. Twenty-five years’
worth of freeze dried food, purchased in bulk from online supply
stores, nearly all of it as tasty as that provided in the five-star
restaurants he’d used to frequent in St Louis.

He’d read numerous books on wilderness
survival, taken land navigation courses, learned to forage his area
for wild edibles to supplement his horde of supplies, lost his beer
gut doing lots and lots of cardio, and was able to run for over
five miles now before becoming winded.

When the dead began coming over the hills
from Flovilla, however, he would’ve traded every bit of it for a
simple, bolt-action rifle.

Prior to the outbreak, Justin Lowery had
been an emphatic anti-gun advocate.

Jake felt like the Pied Piper.

The trip to the Ohio-Kentucky border had
begun with unloading the Hummer he currently drove in the wee hours
of the morning. He'd removed the Starlight and thermal scopes prior
along with most of the weaponry, with the exception of its
mini-gun. It would've taken too long, and surely he would've made
far too much noise unbolting the weapon, so he'd had no choice but
to leave it.

It hadn't taken long to empty the vehicle.
He'd spent far more time writing the note he'd left for Laurel.
That
had taken a quite a while. He'd been torn about how
much to actually say to her. Not just because he knew the others
would likely read it too, but because he didn't want to cause her
more pain. His leaving would hurt her; there was no way to avoid
that. However, giving himself over to Poole would buy Karen's
freedom.

O'Connor cared for Laurel deeply. He honestly
couldn't picture his life without her any more. He knew he'd fallen
in love with her, but finally admitting it in a letter, just as he
was preparing to drive headlong to torture and probable death? Not
really the kindest thing to do. He'd thanked her for the time
they'd spent together, trying to keep the tone light and failing
miserably. Jake had considered rewriting it, but he'd spent
two-thirds of his guard shift unloading the Hummer—and then on the
note—so he'd needed to get moving. He'd left his guns and vest in
the Mimi, keeping only his crowbar and its sheath, then walked from
the hangar.