Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (39 page)

“I want you to know something,” she told him,
calmly removing her tac-vest to lay it on the roof. “You need to
know that you
saved
me.”

Jake opened his mouth to speak, but she cut
him off.

“There's not much time, so I need you to just
listen.” Checking the door again, Laurel saw a gore-covered hand
slither out between it and the stairwell proper. “I don't have any
regrets about our time together. In the safe-house, at Rae's, none
of it. If I had to morn something, it would be how long it took for
me to trust you. And that was my fault, never yours. You've always
been gentle and patient and—”

She was trying really hard not to cry. It
would hurt him so much more if she did.

“I want you to understand that I'd given up.
On caring for someone, I mean. You changed that. I never thought...
Well, I thought you were too good to be true. I was afraid. And
because of that it kept us apart for much too long.” The arm was
through up to the elbow now. “I don't want to die. I want to get
off this roof and be able to kiss you again. I w-want you to hold
me and feel you against me, but—”

His face was a rictus of pain. “Laurel—”

It was hard, but she managed to stay in
control.

“—but I want you to
live
, Jake. I want
you to be safe. To grow old with someone who loves you in return.”
The things at the door were almost through. Laurel saw another trio
of hands come around to grip the edge. “I wish... I wish I could be
there with you to see it.”

She took a grenade from the bandolier that
rode between her breasts and Jake realized what she was about to
do.

“No! Don't!!” He yelled and tried to run for
the gate, but was unable to shake free from Kat and the others.
“Laurel,
please!”

The door collapsed outward to reveal the
stairwell. It was packed with zombies and Laurel watched as they
began moving slowly out onto the roof. She hefted her M-4 and
pulled the pin on the grenade clutched in her fist.

“I have to go now,” she said. “I expect you
take care of one another. Tell George and Gertie and the others
that I'll see them on the other side, someday.”

“Oh no,” Kat whispered.

“Don't let me be your last, love,” she told
Jake, her affection for him evident in her wavering voice. Then
Laurel smiled brilliantly for him one last time, and her lopsided
expression allowed what she felt in her heart to shine through
clearly on her face. “Goodbye.”

Then she was off and running, back towards
the center of the roof and the oncoming dead.

Firing steadily, the redhead dropped the
nearest creatures before letting her grenade's spoon go clattering
away across the roof's surface. She dodged quickly around the outer
edge of the crowd, as the weapon's fuse burned down, and shouted
nearly into the zombies’ rotting faces.

“
Come and get me, you fuckers!”

Jake and Kat were beside themselves. They
could hear her battle with the creatures as it went on, but they
didn't have a clue what was happening. Being five stories below,
there was no way the others could see her. They called out, begging
for Laurel to keep running, hoping she could find a hatch or
skylight or
something
that would allow her to escape the
things. If she could just find a place to hide, they could still go
in after her, armed to the teeth once Foster showed up.

The survivors all realized that would
probably be a suicide mission. Even if they managed to reach her,
there was very little chance they'd have enough ammunition left to
make it back down through the building again. They didn't care
though. Laurel was one of them. Perhaps more dear to some than to
others, but Jake had educated them on the meaning of
loyalty
. He'd turned himself over to Poole, fully expecting
to die if it meant the bastard would release Karen Parker. Also,
Donna had shown them what courage truly was when she'd kept the
dead off Laurel and Penny, before being dragged down. Her last
stand had galvanized within each of them the belief that anyone,
even the most fearful, even the most overlooked and unproven, could
accomplish something heroic. Maybe even glorious. None of them
would ever forget the way Donna had made the creatures suffer
before she'd died. If it was their time, could they do any less
when it came to saving Laurel?

“Dammit, why didn't any of you bring a
radio?” Jake demanded, as the discharge of Laurel’s weapon echoed
from the roof.

“We didn't
have
one!” Rae told him.
“None of them were charged by the time we got here! George wanted
Laurel to take one for when we found you, but we'd—”

Then the roof of the office block
exploded.

A huge fireball mushroomed skyward, lighting
up the deepening gloom and creating a beacon seen for miles around.
It threw debris out for a hundred yards in every direction,
peppering the surrounding area and tossing wreckage into the water
on the far side of the power plant. Chunks of concrete, steel, and
insulation—along with a hell of a lot of cooked body parts—rained
down across the area, pelting the survivors and the infected alike.
The roof was burning as well. Flames, clearly visible in the
growing darkness, lit the building's top like a crown sent straight
from the bowels of perdition. There was a noise like the sound of a
giant groaning, then the roof fell in.

The prior explosion had damaged virtually the
entire rooftop one way or another. Much of it collapsed into the
top floor, and that set off a chain reaction of destruction. While
well supported, the impact of so much weight destroyed the center
section of the fifth floor. That, along with what had come down
with the roof, proceeded to fall down into the fourth. The process
continued, blowing out many of the windows on its way down, until
even part of the cafeteria was demolished, smashed flat beneath
tons and tons of ecclesiastically burning steel and stone. That
turned the building into a gigantic chimney. Air was drawn into the
wrecked dining area, up past the center of each floor, and on out
through the roof where it fed oxygen to the rising flames. Nothing
living inside or above on the tar and gravel-covered roof would
survive through that. Any human or zombie would've been vaporized
by the initial blast, let alone the five story fall and growing
fire in the building's core.

Jake screamed like the freshly dammed.

An agonized cry of loss and sorrow tore its
way from his throat, causing Gwen, Penny, and Rae to release him
then back quickly away. Kat was the only one who kept her hold,
doggedly refusing to let him go. She pressed her face into the
hollow between the muscles of his chest as they clenched taunt
beneath his skin, and wept.

Jake screamed, head thrown back to the
uncaring sky. His body stiffened and jerked as he attempted to deal
with a sensory overload of grief that ripped through his brain. Kat
held him tighter, trying to lend him comfort with her presence, but
he started to shake and his hands spasmed violently.

Jake screamed, and his sanity shook to its
foundations. His howl went on and on and on. Never taking a breath,
the writer sent his pain heavenward in an agony-filled cry of
unimaginable suffering. Kat was positive that if there actually
were such a thing as angels, all of them had assuredly looked about
just then in terror.

They'd realize something dark had been
birthed.

Something that knew their names.

And it
hated
them.

But the ninja-girl remained where she was,
clutched to Jake as he gave voice to what they both felt in the
face of Laurel's death.

His cry broke off suddenly and Jake's body
slumped, falling across her as he collapsed.

Cho caught his weight with some effort,
calling out to him as she eased them both to their knees, but she
received no reply. After getting him to the ground she leaned Jake
back, making sure to support his head, and felt over his carotid
for a pulse. His heart was beating, but he was completely
unresponsive.

He was bleeding from his
eyes.

As Kat watched, blood quickly welled up from
beneath his lower lids to roll down his cheeks in thick crimson
tears.

“
Rae!”

The fixer knelt quickly beside her and,
brushing her own sandy-brown hair out of her face, proceeded to
give O'Connor a thorough once over. Gwen and Penny stood guard
nervously, watching the creatures as they continued clawing at the
fence. The things tore away fingernails and smeared gore on the
wires in their efforts to breach the barrier. There were so
many
of them outside the gate now, some of the ten-foot
sections had already bowed in towards the transformer units
noticeably. Rae finished quickly and sighed as she pulled a small
pack of wipes from her hip bag.

“What's happening?” Kat demanded, still
holding an unconscious Jake against her body. She knew he would've
been embarrassed, laying his head against her boobs in front of the
other two women, but it was the easiest way for her to support him.
“Rae, what the hell is wrong with him?”

“Well, let's see,” she replied. “He's
virtually exhausted, partially dehydrated and—at a guess—I'd say he
hasn't eaten anything in about thirty-six hours. He may have a
concussion, his ribs look like they've taken one
hell
of a
beating recently, and he's burst some of the blood vessels in his
lower eyelids with that scream just now. Oh, yeah. He's got a
pretty nasty-looking stab wound in his left shoulder?”

Kat frowned “So, he's passed out
because...”

“He needs rest. And blood.”

“Um. As far as I know, his name isn't Eddie
and he doesn't glitter when the sun is out,” Kat said.

Rae closed her eyes and counted to ten. Out
loud. “See that red stuff all over Jake's left arm? You
do
realize that's supposed to be on the inside, right?”

“He's bleeding to death?” Cho exclaimed,
looking down at Jake's face in panic.

“Unless we can stop the blood-flow, or find
him a donor soon he will,” the chesty fixer confirmed.

“Hey, type O-negative here!” Kat said
hastily, extending her arm and shaking it in Rae's direction.
“Let's get with the transfusion!”

She didn't even look up and simply kept her
arm pointed in Rae's direction. Jake wasn't going to die. There was
no way Cho was going to let
that
happen. She didn't care if
the brown-haired woman took every, last drop of blood in her
veins.

Sitting back against the nearby transformer,
Kat pulled his upper body into her lap and, after ripping off her
shirtsleeve, used it to wipe the blood away from O'Connor's face.
She'd wanted to touch him this way for a while now. To just hold
him, without having to play the vapid vixen, or make up some other
excuse—like say tossing him around the surface of a practice mat
for an hour or so—while attempting not to be overtly sexual.
Cleaning his face as best she could, Kat tossed her bloody sleeve
away, then haltingly touched Jake's pale and lightly-stubbled
cheek. He didn't stir, so she caressed his face gently.

He was cold. His skin was clammy and damp
like he'd been sitting in a tub full of ice water, even though it
was late July.
Now
she was getting really scared. Murderous
Nazis, sex-cults, crazed ex-girlfriends, flesh-eating monsters: all
that she could handle. But if Jake died...

She wouldn't have any reason to keep on
living. Not with Laurel gone, too. Cho calmly realized if that
happened she would commit seppuku, thereby following Jake to what
her roommate called the “Summer-lands.” The place most everyone
else called Heaven. Or down to Hell, if that's where he went.

Heaven wouldn't be paradise without him
anyway.

Kat bent close and lightly pressed her lips
to his. “Stay. Stay with me.
Please
.”

* * *

There was little of the old world left
now.

Some of the higher-ups, using the campuses
of UCLA and Berkeley, since both were located in the Western Safe
Zone, had been searching for the cause of the outbreak. Those
involved termed it Project Reclamation. They believed a vaccine or
inoculation could be developed. Something which would provide
immunity to whatever the hell it was that had caused over ninety
percent of the world’s population to become nothing but
flesh-eating revenants. They diverted a large number of the Zone’s
already-lean supplies and much-needed manpower in continued
attempts to fix the problem. What they were really doing—while some
of the other survivors attempted to avoid starvation—was stocking
up.

At least, until the new Commander in Chief
heard about it, rolled up his sleeves, and stepped in swinging.

Unlike his worthless, mealy-mouthed
predecessor—who had succeeded only in bringing the United States to
the brink of financial and social collapse—the newly sworn-in
president was a warrior. He’d seen action in many theaters of
conflict, fought right there, shoulder to shoulder with his men,
even before the dead rose to consume humanity. He understood that
“Leading from the front” didn’t entail sitting on your ass, sipping
sherry, and eating your steak medium rare, while civilians
struggled by with beans, cornmeal, and (if they were lucky) the
stray dog, squirrel, or pigeon. He understood that in order to save
what remained of the country and its occupants, he needed to
restore some semblance of hope. There was no way to do that with a
pack of power-hungry lobbyists wasting precious resources many
desperately needed to survive. He believed in the oath every
soldier took to “support and defend the Constitution of the United
States”, and that didn’t entail starving or abandoning people just
so a lucky few could live high on the hog.

Taking the entire 1
^st
Marine Division from Camp Pendleton and the
1
^st
, 5
^th
, and 11
^th
Regiments, newly returned from duty posts overseas, just prior
to the outbreak, the new president proceeded to put boot to
butt-cheek. His forces secured first UCLA, then Berkeley, and began
to swiftly distribute the amassed supplies stockpiled there
throughout the Zone. As this went on, the newly-minted president
held a closed-door meeting with the higher-ups of Project
Reclamation. This half-hour long gathering entailed him telling
them what they were going to do, and those gathered
“fucking-keeping their fucking-mouths fucking-shut and doing as
they were fucking-ordered, or they would fucking-well be taken from
the conference room by the capable squad of Marines conveniently
waiting at the rear and held under guard—sans due process—until
such time as the country’s judicial system had an opportunity to
deal with them.” Which might very well take, well, forever.