Zompoc Survivor: Inferno (17 page)

“Aim for the body!” I said as I flipped the selector to burst and pointed at his jiggling belly. I put the first three rounds center mass then started aiming around it. It started flailing and screeching, and that was all it took to get Hernandez to go full auto on it. We ran dry at about the same time, and as we both called out “Reloading!”, Jumbo got back on its feet. It turned its attention from me toward Hernandez, and started its slow, waddling run. That lasted all of two steps, which was when Mark got into the fight. There was a loud boom as the shotgun went off, and Jumbo toppled onto its face.

“That’s not right!” I called out in disgust as Jumbo showed me in no uncertain terms that he was going commando. His right leg was missing halfway down the shin as well, and Mark stepped forward to put another round into his side. I tried not to look too closely at where I was firing as I put three bursts into my massive target. Mark put another two loads of double-aught buckshot into him as well, taking a step forward with each shot. He stepped forward again and racked another shell into the chamber. I tried to call out to him before he pulled the trigger, but it was too late. Fortunately, he had changed targets, and his last shot sprayed Jumbo’s misshapen head across thirty feet of asphalt. Still, there was back-splatter, and I jumped off the dock.

“Yeah!” he yelled as I ran to him.

“Get your shirt off!” I called as I approached. He looked down for a brief second, then let the shotgun go as he scrambled to get his sweatshirt away from his skin. Three smoking droplets had landed inches from the edge of his collar. He pulled it over his head and threw it at Jumbo’s smoking remains, then stepped back.

“What the f..” he cried as he watched the shirt start to smoke and dissolve as soon as it hit the body, which was doing the same thing only with a lot more bubbles and goo.

“Anyone have an antacid?” I asked as I bent down and picked up his shotgun.

“Talk about heartburn,” Hernandez said as she came up. Mark had his t-shirt up and was checking his skin for burns, but his sweatshirt seemed to have stopped the acidic splatter. “What the hell made it do that?”

“Not sure,” I said.

“What’s that smell?” Chris asked as he walked back up. “It’s like…sugar or soda or something.” I sniffed experimentally and sure enough, an almost sickly sweet smell filled my nostrils.

“Smells like my suite mate in college,” Mark said. “Kinda looks like him, too.” We all looked at him. “He had a thyroid condition or something, and he was diabetic,” he said off our looks.

“So…he’s digesting himself,” Hernandez said with a grimace.

“What a world…” I quoted.

“And you!” Hernandez turned on Chris. “You just about got yourself killed, and you put our asses in the same damn sling. We do things the way we do for a reason, and if you think that’s chicken shit, you can kill the next fucking zombie yourself!”

“Geez, sorry,” Chris sneered. “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“You think this is a fucking game?” she said as she stepped up close to him. He took a step back but she didn’t relent. “You’re not playing paintball with your buddies from the office,
pendejo
. This is real fucking life and death. You brought that damn thing down on us and then you ran like a bitch. If I didn’t need your pansy ass to help carry shit back to the garage, I’d leave you right here with a bullet in your skull. So don’t you tell me not to get my fucking panties in a twist! You almost got someone killed.” By the time she’d finished, she’d backed him up to the loading dock and had him leaning away from her. She turned away from him muttering under her breath.

“I don’t have to take this shit,” he said as he started after her. Mark stepped in front of him and shook his head while I regarded him with disdain. “I should kick both your asses,” he said.

“She’s a Marine, buddy,” I told him as I tossed Mark the shotgun. “She wouldn’t even break a sweat.” I turned my back on him and started to walk away.

“You’re not,” he said from behind me.

“Hell no. I’m not nearly as good in a fist fight as she is. I’ll just shoot you.” For a moment I only heard one set of footsteps behind me. “Where to now?” I asked Mark.

“Let’s try Hillside Market,” he said. It’s a couple of blocks down and to the north.”

Not quite fifteen minutes later, we stood in front of an empty building. The shelves were bare, and there was not a shopping cart to be seen, or even a basket. I turned and looked up at a sign that advertised a special on pumpkins, then turned back to face the others.

“Did anyone else notice the green X on the door when we came in?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Hernandez said. “Looters welcome.”

“This wasn’t your run of the mill looters,” I said as I looked around. “See that sign in the window for the special on pumpkins?”

“Yeah…kinda creepy, huh?” she said.

“If this place was looted by your average person, we’d be walking on that glass, not looking at it. This place would be a disaster area. But look at it. Shelves are bare, but the cash registers are closed. Come on, let’s check the deli.” We led the way, and our two civilians were quiet as we stalked down the aisles. We reached the end and each checked our flanks, then swept a slow arc, each cutting our half of the pie. The deli looked bare except for the big slicer. I slung the M4 and drew the SOCOM. Its smaller tactical light showed me bare counters and empty drawers. I stepped back into the storeroom and found myself drawing down on an empty room.

“Anything?” she asked.

“Dust bunnies,” I said. “With big, sharp teeth,” I crooked my index and middle finger and put them in front of my face. “It’s okay, though. I challenged the leader to a fight to the death, and now they’ve accepted me as one of the tribe.”

“What the hell were you expecting to find?” Chris said.

“Knives, cooking tools, pots, pans. Industrial size bags of flour, yeast, eggs. All the stuff that goes into making bread and tasty menu items that most people looting a store don’t think about because it isn’t on the shelves. This place wasn’t ransacked or looted. It was stripped bare all the way to the stockroom, exactly the way I would have done it. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we’d already been here.” I turned and started for the front of the store.

“Well, this was a total waste of our time,” Chris said. “Way to go.”

“Any other stores you know of?” I asked Mark.

“There are a couple of places most people wouldn’t know about unless they shopped for ethnic food,” he said. “Closest one is a few blocks north of here.”

“Let’s give it a shot,” Hernandez said with a sigh. Mark led the way north, heading east through a side street for a while before turning back north again until we found ourselves standing under the dubious cover of an empty fountain between two burning buildings, facing our second biggest fear: open space. Ahead of us was an open parking lot on the right with a ten story building that was still spewing black smoke from its upper floors, and a glass sided building on our left with its parking lot on the far side. On our right was another parking garage, but this one sported four levels of burning offices. On the left was a building that seemed to be the headquarters for the color beige, at least where it wasn’t on fire. The fountain we were crouched behind was of a woman with a net behind her and fish around her legs. A Lexus had lost to a panel van and its nose covered the plaque that gave the name, but I could make out “Muse of…” before the writing was obscured by forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of luxury scrap metal. Beyond that it was asphalt and concrete. But what suddenly held my attention was what was above that: sky. Clouds that ran in strips across pale blue high above us suddenly made me ache to be as far away from this hellhole as I could get. The first cool breeze I’d felt in days touched my cheeks, and I took a breath in through my nose…and smelled death. My new formed instincts buzzed as I closed my eyes and took another experimental sniff. I’d smelled zombies outside this strongly before, though at the time, it was decidedly fresher than it was now, and not as noticeable. That had been on Tuesday morning on my way to Sherwood, the ten acre plot I’d bought outside of Springfield with help from my grandfather’s inheritance. Then I’d faced a horde of about fifty stage two infected near Highway 65. I did a mental calendar check and realized today was Friday. Whatever I was smelling had been dead from five to seven days. The fact that I wasn’t gagging on the stench made me think we had to be a couple of hundred yards away from a lot of undead. The road angled left about a hundred yards ahead of us and then gently sloped up, and I realized exactly where we were.

“Oh, this is going to be interesting,” I said softly. “This road goes over a major highway, doesn’t it?” I asked Mark.

“Yeah, US 35,” he said. Beside me, Vasquez groaned.

“We’re going to have to be very quiet going over that bridge,” I said. “Stealth is our only advantage right now.” As I said that, another sound intruded on the moment, one I hadn’t heard in a long time: the sound of men running in armor. Not the subdued clatter and clomp of a man in full battle rattle, but the layered tap-clink of overlapping metal plates over chainmail. I watched in disbelief as a group of ten armored men came pounding through the intersection in front of us, each of them holding a steady pace, with two pulling a handcart behind them, and four ahead and behind. We watched them cross in front of us, none of us saying a word until they had crossed the intersection.

“You were saying?” Hernandez said. From around the corner, we could hear one of them calling out orders in a clear voice.

“It’s a theory that still has a few kinks in it,” I said. Before she could reply, we heard grunting and the sound of feet on pavement, and a group of ghouls sprinted across the intersection.

“Suppressor,” Hernandez said as she brought her own P90 up. I drew the SOCOM and tried to get the suppressor screwed on as I ran behind her.

“Watch our backs and don’t shoot!” I called out over my shoulder as we headed for the corner. As we hit the turn, I could see the first ghoul on top of one of the armored men, clawing at his neck, trying to get its teeth to bare flesh. The ghoul was in leather pants and jacket, and two ghouls in business suits were behind it on either side. They went down at the same time as the men on either side of their downed comrade slammed poleaxes into the skulls of their attackers. With all of their attention focused on the group of men in front of them, they never heard us coming up behind them. I went left and Hernandez followed suit. As soon as I had a clear shot on a ghoul, I brought the SOCOM up and stroked the trigger. Its head disappeared in a crimson spray. Hernandez shoved me forward until we are almost on the flank of the infected. Then she opened fire and I saw what she had in mind. Firing in short bursts, she hit the ghouls center mass, dropping them in twos and threes as she worked her way across their ranks, starting with those closest to us and the other men and going away from both, always making sure her line of fire never crossed where one of the living stood. A ghoul in a shredded dress turned toward her from near the front of the group. With her attention on the back of their ranks, there was no way she could see her, and she was also standing right between the armored men and my position.

I dropped to one knee, brought my pistol up in a two handed grip and let her come. When she was about ten feet away, I fired. The round caught her in the chest and knocked her feet out from under her, sending her sprawling. A bald, heavily tattooed ghoul on my right turned its attention toward us, and I pivoted to fire a snap shot off. The one behind it dropped as it turned my way. I corrected my aim and dropped it with a shot to the sternum. I turned my attention to another one that seemed to have figured out that there were people behind it, but as it turned to face me, a sword smashed through the top of its cranium, and forty-eight inches of steel was the last thing that went through its mind. From my right, Hernandez’s gun gave a final bark, and the last ghoul hit the ground.

I looked around, but I didn’t see any more infected. What I did see were seven pistols aimed at us. I got to my feet, I put my finger outside the trigger guard, and lowered the SOCOM so I wasn’t pointing it at anyone. The man who had fallen was being helped to his feet by a large man in a chain coif. All of them wore chain mail with metal plates on their arms and legs, as well as a metal gorget and paldrons. Each of them held a sword, poleaxe, or a spear in their off hand in addition to the pistols they had pointed at us. Hernandez lowered her P90 and stepped forward.

“Gentlemen, I’m Corporal Ann Hernandez,” she said, making me realize I hadn’t known her first name for the past two days.

“Jason Robertson,” the man wearing the coif said as he turned to face us. “Not that we’re not grateful for the help, but do you mind if I ask what you’re about?” Hernandez glanced my way, but I was too busy staring at the spokesman. He was a few years older, but I’d spent too much time on the SCA battlefield with the man in front of me to forget his face. We’d fought both with and against each other during the annual Estrella War, one of the big regional mock wars. Off the battlefield, we had spent a lot of time sparring with each other, mostly him beating the crap out of me, and we had downed a lot of beer while we sang off key around many a bonfire.

“Willie?” I said with a grin. “Wheel-lock Willie?”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Marcus the Yeoman. My least favorite lefty.” He stepped out from the ranks of his group and crossed the distance between us. I held out my hand, and we gripped each other by the forearm in a greeting that was more common among SCA fighters. “What in the Hell are you doing in Kansas City?” he laughed.