Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (35 page)

He began to ready himself at the fifty
minute mark. JB looked through the scope again and picked out
another maggot-head looking for a likely target. He tracked one
wearing only a pair of Sorrel waterproof boots and a silly-looking
pair of smiley-face pajama pants. That one would do. He slowed his
breathing and lowered his heart rate, calming his body in
preparation for the shot. When he was ready, JB put his right index
finger against his weapon’s trigger, squeezed ever so slowly,
and…

“They'd better hurry!” Bee called.

George had quickly moved a few ammunition
boxes full of magazines to the Mimi's back door as the women
entered the building. They'd exit again using the same entryway,
once they found O'Connor and Kat, so George would know to crack the
hatch again. And then? He was going to level this whole goddamn
place.

Foster had seen red when the blue-haired Cho
had informed them that young Karen was dead. She'd heard the guards
laugh about the fact when they'd come to unload the Hummer, just
before she'd taken them out, and George was
spoiling
for
payback.

After dealing with the Purifier's sentries,
Kat had managed to use the Hummer's radio to send a quick message
to them. Luckily, they'd been most of the way there anyhow and were
able to locate the still-smoldering guest house Jake had set
alight. After observing the para-military groups security (what a
joke that was), Foster was reasonably certain they could get their
friends back in one piece.
If
they were careful. So they'd
all sat in the transport, dead roaming all around outside, and
waited for fifty-three, nerve-frazzling minutes.

“What's up, kiddo?” George asked her, as he
ducked though the hatch into the drive module.

Beatrix just pointed towards the gate.

Foster's gaze followed her gesture.

The area was full of zombies already. Maybe
an even hundred had already stumbled through the wreckage and,
though some clustered around the fallen Purifiers to feed, there
were many,
many
more outside the wall.

“It was us blowin' in the way we did,” he
said, watching the infernal mass slowly closing on the entrance.
“Drawin' in every one of 'em for miles. Knew it would happen.
Should add to the general chaos an' help them girls get our people
back. The grounds will be full of ‘em soon.”

Bee pulled her eyes away from the horde and
looked up at him. “Um. That means...we won't be able to open the
hatch, doesn't it?”

He stared at her.

“I mean, if there are zombies all around,
they'd get in too, right?” She put one hand to her lips. “Uncle
George, how do Laurel and the others get back in?”

Foster looked like he'd just crapped his
shorts.

“Oh shit.”

* * *

Making it out of the generator building had
been easy.

After emptying the M134 into the cafeteria's
face, Jake and Kat left the cumbersome weapon and ammunition pack,
then hurried down four flights of metal steps to ground level. The
writer was a little light-headed by then, but that was
understandable. He'd had a pretty stressful day so far. Besides, he
hadn't eaten anything since the previous evening, and he needed a
cigarette. It couldn't have been because Poole's men had worked him
over when they'd caught him attempting to strangle Nichole. Or the
deep knife wound in his shoulder, which was already beginning to
seep through the bandages.

Moving quickly through the structure, the two
came to the exterior door. It opened to the building's leeward side
and afforded them cover as they carefully opened the solid,
seven-foot plate, before creeping to the corner closest to the
office block.

Even though he wasn't at one-hundred percent,
Jake insisted on being in the lead. Kat did try to argue him out of
it, citing that she should be the one on point since he was
hurt.

“It's a guy thing,” he'd replied, leaning
against the cinder-block wall and peeking cautiously around the
corner. The ninja-girl bit her lip when she saw the smear of
crimson he left along its surface. “They're still inside. If we
move next to the patio slab they won't have a clear line of sight,
and we might be able to circle around to the Hummer. Then we
can—”

The sound of an incredible explosion echoed
off the surrounding walls. Taking advantage of the moment, Jake
grabbed Cho's free hand and they sprinted across the gap. Once they
stood panting against the outer wall of the offices, weapons
trained on the nearby stairs, he had time to worry about what had
caused it.

“That would be the sound of shit hitting the
fan. At least for these assholes,” Kat told him with a knowing
smile. “I'm pretty sure George won't have left much in the way of a
door on the front of their little clubhouse.”

His head snapped around. “The others are
here?”

“You didn't think I shot off that flare to
amuse myself did you? Mind, I always did like the fireworks on the
fourth of July. And once, I accidentally burned down—”

“Moving on,” he said firmly. “Was there
something resembling a plan? Or are we just winging it?”

Cho gave him an amused look. “Because that
worked out so well for you? No. I set it up with George, just after
they took you to meet the Grand Poo-bah.”

“Shithead-in-Charge is a more accurate
description.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “What-
ever.
That’s why I brought your vest. Tracker, you know?”

Jake considered that for a moment. “The gate
is on the other side of this building.”

“So?”

“So, the others will come through it,” he
replied, and checked his pistol to insure a round was in the
chamber. “The Purifiers have cover in the cafeteria and they know
the layout. They'll tear our people to shreds.”

Kat thought about that. “Let me see up on the
patio for a sec.”

Jake let her slide by to scan the concrete
slab.

“Thought so.” Cho reached out, pulled an
AR-15 back over the edge and handed it to him. “Here. I'll take the
pistols. You're better with a machine gun than I am.”

As he inspected the weapon, she turned back,
hopped up, and pushed her upper body over the lip of the patio.
Jake dropped the carbine, ignoring the awful pain in his shoulder,
grabbed Kat by her hips, and pulled her back off the slab into his
arms.

“Dammit! Do! Not! Do that!” O'Connor
exclaimed through clenched teeth.

She gave him a quizzical look. “I was
just—”

He was in no mood to listen just then. “No!
You step up there, stroll around the corner, the Purifiers
blow
your head off,
and I end up a basket case! What the
hell
were you thinking??”

“But—”

“You can't rip me for coming here on my own,
and then take a risk like that!” He shook her firmly, determined to
make her see reason. That was how Kat knew Jake was actually
terrified. “You want me to go crazy? Do you think I could handle
watching
you
die? I couldn't, alright? It would—”

Kat raised her hand. An ammunition bag
holding seven full magazines of 5.56 by 45 rounds hung from her
palm. It was covered in blood and bone fragments from one of the
Purifiers that she'd cut in half with the Minigun. She smiled as
Jake stuffed his pistol in the waistband of his khakis, then passed
the bag's strap over his head and wounded arm. After he retrieved
the AR-15 from the ground, he ejected the mag and swapped it for a
fresh one.

“Uh. Sorry about that,” he said lamely.

The pretty ninja-girl's smile widened. She
reached down and
carefully
extracted the Glock from the
front of his pants. “Let's not keep projectile weapons anywhere
near that particular area, shall we? Who knows? You might need that
later.”

The thought of that conversation made his
pulse jump a bit.

“OK,” he said, “here's what we'll do…”

* * *

Rae tossed a pair of grenades into the
cafeteria.

Poole and his men were concentrated on her
friends outside, so the buxom fixer decided to start the party.

She wasn't that surprised their pair of
missing friends had managed not only to escape the Purifiers—a
bunch of wanna-be, weekend warriors if she'd ever seen any—but also
to launch a fairly successful attack against them. Kat was a
deadly,
deadly
woman. The little Rae had seen of her martial
arts skills alone put her at a threat level far above that of an
average person. Stick a sword or a gun in Cho's hand, and you had a
smiling, Smurf-haired, Angel of the Apocalypse. She'd have to watch
Kat closely in the future.

Jake was a force to be reckoned with in his
own right. The intense, younger man was usually still a bit soft
spoken, as if he were afraid to voice his thoughts. Probably why
he'd become a journalist and not an actor. But with a body like
that, and those eyes? Hubba-hubba. He was in good shape, had
obviously been put through some more-than-decent Special Forces
training (both hand-to-hand and with weaponry) and had a quick—if
somewhat odd—mind. Underneath it all, even though he didn't seem to
realize it himself, the unruly-haired writer was made of
industrial-tooled steel.

The pair had begun sniping at the Purifiers
from outside, just after Rae and the others had entered the power
plant. Kat, from shelter behind a large, concrete planter at the
edge of the patio and Jake, from beside the cinder-block door-jam
at the cafeteria entrance on the opposite side.

Smart. They set up a crossfire.
Rae
thought. She waved the Barbie Duo back and pulled a pair of
explosives from the bandolier angled between her impressive
breasts.
A Purifier comes up to shoot at one and the other pops
him, or at least gets a shot close enough to send the bastard
diving for the floor again.

Pulling the pins, Rae let the spoons fall to
the floor, counted to two, and then forcefully bowled the murderous
spheres towards the Nazi's clustered behind some overturned
tables.

Three... Four...

“Fire in the hole!!” She yelled, slammed the
cafeteria door shut, and spun behind the shelter of the wall with
Donna and Gwen.

As explosions went, it was quite
satisfying.

The windows facing the patio (that had
survived Kat's assault with the Minigun) blew out in a cloud of
knife-sharp glitter, and about half the tables were turned into
flying chunks. The twelve-foot wide, steel, roll-down shutter over
the lunch counter window blew into the main floor and—more
importantly—out of the three dozen or so remaining Purifiers, only
thirteen of them actually survived the blast.

M67 fragmentation grenades were designed to
produce very specific results. The body of such a device is most
commonly made of steel, and the case itself provides the shrapnel
fragments that are thrown out in a fifteen meter radius by the
explosive charge within. The weapon, in layman's terms,
causes
catastrophic damage to a given structural or human target
.

Basically, anything inside the area of
detonation gets dead.

Which is exactly what happened to most of
Poole's, goose stepping droogies.

Rae and the Barbies began firing through the
interior door, which killed three more outright and sent the others
running for the patio entrance.

Jake and Kat opened up on them again.

The cement slab became a killing ground.
Purifiers fired their weapons at the pair outside, only to catch
rounds in the back from the three women in the turbine room. When
one would turn back to shoot at Rae or one of the Barbies, Jake's
AR-15 would pepper the man, sending him to the ground. Or Kat would
take awful glee in shooting them in the groin, which the
others—Jake especially—thought was just, plain mean.

Poole, along with his last two surviving
underlings, dropped their weapons and threw their hands to the sky.
Rae and the Barbies held further fire and moved through the mess
inside toward them, stepping over bodies and around growing pools
of blood.

“Don't you move, asshole!
”
Jake
sidestepped away from where he'd sheltered on the wall, carbine
level and locked on the Nazi leader.

“Well. Isn't it odd, how circumstances can
reverse themselves so quickly?” Poole said, as Kat moved from
behind her planter to stand beside the writer.

O'Connor's eyes were venomous. “Did you enjoy
it? What your people did to Karen?”

Poole spread his arms. “Not as such, but it
was unavoidable, really. I required your vehicle for our journey to
safety, and I needed you to gain access to it. The little kike was
just a means to—”

Jake emptied his weapon into Poole from
fifteen feet away. The man's immaculate gray suit front turned
brown as rounds from the AR-15 tore through the Purifier leader's
flesh and internal organs. He danced like a sick marionette as they
penetrated his torso for a few moments, then he fell lifeless to
the patio surface. Standing over the man's body, Jake felt nothing.
No anger, no sorrow, no remorse. Poole and Milo were dead, but so
was Karen. No matter how many Purifiers had died at his hands,
nothing could change the fact he'd failed the young woman Maggie
had charged him with saving.

But that didn't mean the men who'd killed her
should be allowed to live.

Turning his back on the inert sack of shit,
Jake moved close to Cho and took one of the Glocks from her left
hand.

“I can do it. If you want,” she said
softly.

Jake shook his head. “It should be me.”

He double-tapped both men quickly, not
wanting to listen to either of them beg for their miserable lives.
Afterwards, he stared at the gun in his hand for a long time.

“Glad you guys are alive!” Gwen said as she
stepped around the unmoving body of a bearded Purifier Kat had shot
in the neck.