Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (33 page)

Hopefully, he'd feel the need to spank her.
When she thought about that, she'd broken into a smile beneath her
zukin.

It had been a near thing. It had taken her
almost an hour to remove the Hummer's weaponry, then to don Jake's
tac-vest, secure both the pistols to her thighs with gaffer's tape,
shoulder the Ironman pack, and clandestinely exit the Quonset
garage. Then, the unruly-haired and infuriatingly noble writer had
almost blown her entire plan when he'd taunted Poole. She'd almost
wept in relief when Jake took off through the field of dormant
machines and scurried onto the enormous conduit, which led straight
to the generator building where she had taken position.

When Fuhrer Poole's men started shooting,
she'd known it was now or never.

Kat stood up, slammed the base of the M134 on
the railing facing the cafeteria courtyard and opened up on the
gathered Purifiers.

“
BANZAI, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Her minigun started chewing up wanna-be Nazis
and real estate alike from above, as it sent a flurry of bullets
streaking down like the vengeful wrath of angry angels. Heads
exploded, intestines shredded, limbs went flying. The majority of
the survivors, maybe a little more than half the Purifier's
original number, ran screaming for the cafeteria doors. A few had
the presence of mind to fire their weapons over their shoulders as
they ran for their lives, but the shots went wild, sometimes
hitting their companions behind and adding to the general panic.
Kat kept the pressure on as she targeted the ones at the rear of
the pack, herding them into the main building and away from where
the writer stared at her wide-eyed from where he lay on the
conduit. The few, lucky stragglers dove through the now-perforated
entrance, shoving each other in their haste, which allowed her to
drop the last visible trio in messy explosions of organ-scattered
gore.

“For god’s sake! Move!
”
she screamed,
and sent another volley of flame-kissed death down across the
building's face around the entrance.

Kat didn't need to tell him twice. Jake was
up and running along the conduit again in a heartbeat.

The sixty yards to the generator structure
were some of the longest in his life. He expected to feel a bullet
hit him in the back with every step, but the insane woman succeeded
in keeping the Purifier's heads down. A few of them shot blindly
around the edge of the entryway, hoping to bring him down with a
lucky shot. She answered with bursts from the minigun, tearing
through the cinder-block walls next to the doorway and killing a
pair of over-enthusiastic Purifier's in the process. They seemed to
take the hint, because no more rounds were fired in Jake's
direction.

Reaching the half-frame, mesh-covered
generator building, O'Connor didn't hesitate as he hurdled the gap
between the conduit he'd fled upon and the steel walkway. Kat
dropped her smoking weapon before moving to catch him as he crested
over the railing and dropped towards her. He bowled into her just
before he landed and they both fell to the floor, rolling a few
feet away from the edge, and wound up in each other’s arms. He'd
managed to take the brunt of the fall by twisting his body under
hers, but their impact knocked the wind out of him. Laying there
half stunned, he attempted to focus his eyes.

The back of his head hurt, and he told
himself he'd hit it against the steel during their landing. He
winced as he touched it. Jake hoped he hadn't given himself a
concussion, but his fingers were free of blood when he checked them
with bleary eyes. Kat asked him something, but he couldn't
understand her.

“Give me a second... Almost knocked me for a
loop there—
Shit!”

The last was drawn from him due to a
forceful, open-handed slap from the
really
pissed-off,
ninja-girl.

“You
bastard!”
she cried, trying to
slap him again. He caught one of her hands and held her off. “What
the hell did you think you were
doing?
Did you think these
racist
fucks
would keep their word, once they had you
here?”

“Well, I was hoping to get them to free
Karen, so—” he began.

She didn't let him explain. “And taking off
without telling me what was going on? Or even saying
goodbye?
I should kick your ass up around your ears!”

“Look, I—”

“Shut up! You shouldn't have come alone!
You're our leader, not our babysitter! You're not responsible for
everyone, dammit! Do you know how
monumentally
stupid of an
idea that was?

“What the hell were you thinking?!”” Kat
demanded,

Jake shrugged and tried not to look guilty.
“It was a spur of the moment thing.”

“It was fucking crazy!” she snapped.

“I… never said it wasn't?”

Kat looked like she would either pull her
hair out or deck him. One of the two.

“I-”

“You're an
idiot!”
she hissed. “Did
you even consider how losing you would affect the group? How it
would affect Laurel? Or
me
? Did you think I'd just head off
to Pecos and leave you? Just leave you to get tortured or killed or
staked out and turned into one of those things? How could you?
How could you?”

“I had to keep you safe, dammit!” Jake
insisted.

Kat was livid. “You...You!”

Words failed her and she dove against him,
yanking Jake's lips to her own.

While this was neither the time nor the
place, he responded in kind. The blue-haired woman's hands went
along his throat, and up the sides of his face, to finally lock
firmly in his hair. He crushed her to his blood-smeared chest, one
hand against the small of her back, the other behind the nape of
her neck as she owned his mouth with hers. The still dangerous—if
temporarily contained—Purifiers were forgotten during a moment of
pure passion, rivaling the white hot fury of the sun.

When their lips parted, both were a little
out of breath. It was Cho who finally broke their shared stunned
silence.

“From now on where you go, I go, you hear me?
We're a team.
”

“But—”

“No!” She cut him off firmly. “No arguments.
We stick together. You want to protect me? Then I
have
to be
there to protect you!”

He stared at her. “Kat, I—”

Cho's dark eyes were brimming, threatening to
overflow. “Jake, my heart can't
take
this again! Not
again
.”

Kat's tears were flowing now, but the look on
her face had nothing to do with sorrow. When she smiled at him,
Jake felt invincible and impossibly vulnerable at the same time. He
answered it with one of his own and kissed her again as they sat
up.

She was kneeling over him, thighs pressed
lightly against the outside of his hips. Jake slid his hands down
her ribs, which caused Cho to take a shuddering breath against his
lips before twining her arms around his neck. His hands moved lower
to her leather-covered hips, and he pulled them forward until their
lower bodies were pressed together. She moaned into his mouth and
doubled the intensity of the kiss, writhing against him wildly.
Jake's hands dropped further, and his thumbs slid along the inside
of her thighs as his other fingers caressed the outer. His palms
registered the excited trembling of the muscles in her toned legs,
before bumping into the pistols she'd taped just above her
knees.

“We need to get out of here,” Kat whispered,
“but we are
going
to continue this discussion. Later.”

“Yeah,” he consented. “I think... Well. I
think the three of us need to have a long talk.”

She cocked her head in surprise. “Really? Not
that I'd say no, mind you. I'd be willing to give it a go. Laurel
is my best friend and all. And she's
totally
hot.”

Jake was confused. “Huh?”

A flurry of bullets ricocheted off the top of
the railing and Kat ducked, smashing them together again. O'Connor
pulled the duct tape around her thighs away, took a Glock in each
hand, and rolled them so he could kneel over her. Cho pushed him up
with her thighs and pelvis (which would've been erotic as all hell,
if they weren't being shot at), allowing him to empty both pistols
at the quartet of Purifiers who thought they'd be heroes for their
boss. Two went down with rounds in their chests, and the other pair
scurried back into the shadows of the cafeteria.

Kat quickly stripped off the tactical vest
and passed it up to him. Then she slithered out from under his
hips, moving determinedly to retrieve her minigun.

Jake was fishing for fresh clips when he saw
Milo Tompkins leap from the conduit, straight towards their
position and the ninja-girl's unsuspecting back.

There was no time to think. O'Connor dropped
the pistols to the floor and in the same movement, shoved her out
of the way.

The skinhead's RAD dagger caught him through
the meat of his shoulder and hit bone. Laurel's friend heard Jake
bellow in pain as she came to a stop against the wall,
half-stunned. Tompkins’s face was the picture of insane fury, as he
tried repeatedly to yank the blade out of O'Connor's arm. The
wounded writer had some anger of his own to call on, however.

He used a mental trick the salty, old frog
had beaten into him (along with the rest of his brick) during SAS
training. The same one he called on when his game of cat and mouse
with the Party-Boy rapist came to a bloody (and agonizing) end. The
trick wasn't to forget the pain, but to
use
it. Let the fire
in his shoulder fuel his hate, cause an adrenaline surge in his
system, and then convert it to strength, which he could apply
towards a goal. Basically, it was a way to become really
strong
,
for a very short period of time. Minus the mindless
urge to go all,
Hulk smash!

Taking hold of Milo's knife hand, Jake rammed
the struggling Purifier in his scarred face with the top of his
already sore head. The crown of a person’s skull is one of the
hardest parts of the human skeleton, which was partly what made it
difficult to kill zombies without a firearm. So, even though Jake's
ears rang at the impact, it was Tompkins who went stumbling back,
eyes glazed, with a smashed and obviously broken nose.

As the furious Purifier steadied himself—and
as he held his mangled face—he began to rant.

“You son of a bitch! I'm gonna tear your
pussy head off and feed it to that dead chick down in the yard!
Then I'll teach your little, gook
, whore
a couple of tricks
I know with a razor! After I ram her ass so hard she'll have
to—”

Jake silenced him with a straight-fingered
kite to the throat. Tompkins’s eyes bugged wide and O'Connor
followed it up with a knee to the skinhead’s nuts that bent him
over. Taking careful aim, the writer dropped Milo senseless to the
floor with a smashing elbow to the back of his neck. Jake would've
used the sole of his Bates combat boot to stomp the bastard's head
through the grating like Play-Doh through a noodle strainer, but
the world began spinning violently. He managed to move back a few
yards before his knees got weak, but that forced him to lean
against the wall to stay upright.

The knife. He had to deal with the knife. It
was still lodged firmly in his shoulder and its edges were cutting
him every time he moved.

Oh fuck. This is going to hurt.

Jake grasped the hilt with his right hand,
took a few deep breaths, and yanked with everything he had.

Yup. He'd been right.

It hurt like hell.

Getting the Nazi's dagger out hurt
a
lot
more than when Milo had stabbed him with it. It hurt more
than when the miserable rapist in Columbus and stuck a blade in his
back. It
didn't
hurt more than being shot in Bosnia had, but
it was a damn close second. O'Connor couldn't keep from crying out
in pain when the blade came free, then he tossed it weakly across
the floor. It ended up sticking point down through one of the
perforations in the metal walkway.

The pain was a bit easier to bear, now that a
big piece of steel wasn't shoved into his arm. At least it wasn't
slicing into him with every breath anymore. It was still bad enough
to make him want to vomit, though. Jake closed his eyes and
concentrated on not puking for a while. The wall was wonderfully
cool as he laid his head against its surface, so he used it to keep
from dropping to the floor.

The sound of metal on metal brought him back
from the pain, and he opened his eyes to see Tompkins standing
wobbly, knife in hand.

“Nice try,” the skinhead grated thickly. His
broken nose turned the man's voice into something like that of a
pit bull gargling gravel. Blood ran freely down Milo's mouth and
chin from his nostrils, turning him into a shorn-headed, nightmare.
“You're the first to put me down in almost fifteen years, boy. You
should feel good about that.”

“Oh, I'm thrilled,” Jake replied.

Tompkins began advancing on him on unsteady
legs. “Don't worry. I'll make sure your friends all hear how you
held out when I started cutting pieces off you. I'll make it a
point
to tell them how brave you were, even when I used this
knife to skin your ass alive.”

“We already know. Thanks!”

Spinning awkwardly at Kat's voice, the
Purifier's second in command turned just in time to catch the
thrusting, sidekick she threw, squarely under the point of his jaw.
His head snapped up and back with the force of the impact and Jake
clearly heard the wet snap of the man's neck breaking. He could
even see the imprint Cho's boot's sole left on his chin. She stood
before Milo calmly, put a finger in the middle of his
blood-splattered, white tee, and gave him a gentle push.

Tompkins tipped backwards over the railing.
His knife clattered to the steel again from nerveless fingers as
his feet came up from the floor, and he flipped ass over teakettle
towards the ground. The pretty Asian saw the man's eyes were still
open and aware on the way down. They filled with a mix of
unreasoning hate, disbelief that it was a
woman
who'd killed
him, and finally a flash of utter fear. Then he landed head-first
on the concrete surface of the sidewalk.