Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2) (23 page)

There was a brief lull in the gunfire, though neither John nor Ethan thought the fight was over. They had not seen the Pied Piper since they followed him there nor had they determined who had been screaming. As John was about to ask the Mad Scientist
how many other people were with their group
, another crazed man burst out of the clubhouse.

Just like in every bad police movie ever made, the man yelled, “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!”

A burst of fully automatic gunfire erupted, peppering the underside of the golf cart with bullets. Ethan peered around just in time to see the man dive headlong behind a lawn care truck parked in front of the clubhouse.
Does Johnny Outlaw seriously believe we are with the police? Does he really think the police still exist? I wonder how long these guys have been hiding out here?

Ethan and the Outlaw exchanged several bursts of gunfire, each one popping up in turn to send a few bullets in the other’s direction. After a couple of rounds, Ethan realized the futility of his current strategy and instead waited for the man to finish his next barrage. When the man ducked back behind the truck, Ethan sighted in on his lower leg beneath the vehicle.

Clink. Clink.

The two bullets struck the Outlaw’s left ankle nearly amputating his foot, and sending him toppling to his left side. When the man’s submachine gun hit the ground, Ethan saw his chance. Slipping out of cover, Ethan said, “Advancing! Cover me!”

Ethan raced around the back of the truck, careful to stay out of sight of the front of the building. He kicked the machine gun away as he approached the wounded man.

Despite the fact that his left foot hung at an unnatural angle, connected by only a few thin, tendrils of tissue, the Outlaw did not seem to be in any significant pain. He stared up at Ethan with the same psychotic eyes Dirty Harry had shown him. When his damaged mind registered Ethan approaching, he let out a boisterous laugh, and said, “You self-righteous prick! You think you’re better than us? You think you can just waltz in here and take us in? Well I got news for you, mister! The world’s over—I ain’t gotta suffer your unjust laws no more!” He resumed his maniacal laughter, as though he had just heard the funniest damn joke in the world.

Confused by the Outlaw’s words, Ethan barked in the authoritative tone he had picked up during his years of military service, “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. Where was the screaming coming from? How many of you are here?”

His questions led to another round of spirited laughter. “Kiss my rotting ass, pig!” the Outlaw said, as he held up his hand with his middle finger extended defiantly. The index and ring fingers were missing entirely, and the middle finger was a truncated nub. Only the thumb and little finger were intact.

“What the
hell
is wrong with you people?” Ethan asked with disgust evident in his voice.

When the Outlaw realized Ethan was referring to his gnarled digits, he said, “Asked the pot of the kettle. You know, you ain’t all there either, buddy.” The Outlaw’s continued laughter gave way to paroxysms of vigorous, rib-cracking coughing.

Ethan felt the cool breeze in his exposed sinus cavity, drawing his attention to the fact that his prosthesis must have been dislodged at some point during the fight. As the meaning behind the Outlaw’s words became apparent, his mind went white-hot with anger. Lunging forward, Ethan planted his boot squarely in the man’s solar plexus, displacing a belch of air that was tinged with the biting odor of a dog’s clogged anal glands. In the blink of an eye, Ethan was on him, his entire body quaking with fury.

John watched as Ethan leapt forward, and then dropped out of sight. From his position behind the golf cart, he could just make out Ethan’s voice, which came out as a low, guttural growl like that of a rabid dog. Despite the fact that his friend’s menacing words were unintelligible, he was thankful they were not directed toward him.

“You listen to me, you piece of shit!” Ethan snarled. “I will gut your worthless ass in two seconds if you don’t tell me what I want to know! Do you understand me?”

The petrified man simply looked at Ethan and nodded his head.

“Good,” Ethan continued, slightly more calm, but with no less malice in his voice. “Now, answer these questions. What’s your name, and who are you people? How many of you are there? And what the hell are you guys doing here?”

As though a levee had broken inside the man’s head, words began sluicing out like floodwaters after a torrential rain. “My name’s Scout, and we ain’t nobody, man! Honest! We’re just a bunch of damn junkies! They’s just seven of us countin’ Chef. We come out here because things dried up back in Atlanta when shit got bad at the start of the plague. Chef said he would take care of business as long as we helped him get out of the city. He’s been cooking us
des
ever since. Some folks call it krokodil, but I call it
des
. It’s real good shit! We’ll share, man! I swear! Just don’t hurt me no more,” the man whimpered.

“What the hell are you taking about? Stop blubbering! And speak English!” Ethan yelled. He saw Scout’s frantic eyes flick to the side briefly, to a point just over his left shoulder. Taking some of his weight off the man, Ethan rose up slightly; pivoting to sweep the leg of the person he assumed was closing ranks on him from behind. The move paid off as his leg whipped around and slammed into those of the Pied Piper, who had been sneaking up on him.

The Piper let out a shrill cry that nearly obscured the sharp crack of his fibula snapping under the force of Ethan’s blow. His entire body went limp, as though a switch had been thrown, and the knife clutched in his outstretched hands fell to the ground. It landed blade first, impaling the ground less than an inch from Ethan’s leg.

A searing pain erupted from Ethan’s neck as something sharp dug deeply into his skin. The coarse sandpaper texture of Scout’s leathery skin told him the pain was likely due to the jagged bone protruding from the decaying stumps of his mangled fingers. Instinctively, Ethan threw his elbow back hard, striking Scout squarely in the liver. He felt the tenuous grip relax instantly. Scooping up the Pied Piper’s knife, he whirled on the man. The blade was buried to the hilt in Scout’s abdomen before he ever had a chance to register what was happening. Ethan rode the man’s sagging body to the ground before wrenching the blade free with a wet, sucking sound akin to a boot being pulled out of a foot of thick mud. A crimson spray spewed from the wound, spattering the writhing form of the Pied Piper, and sending him into an uncontrollable bout of screaming. The steady, bright red stream pouring from Scout’s abdominal wound held Ethan momentarily transfixed.
Red blood—not the dark, pestilential fluid of the infected.

Ethan watched for another instant, wondering if the gut wound would lead to Scout’s demise or if he would live through the otherwise mortal injury that did not destroy his brain. Having seen death more times than he wished to count, he did not think the man would survive. With every passing second the crimson rivulet grew thinner and thinner, evidence that the seemingly eternal spring from which it came was not eternal at all. His sickly skin grew increasingly ashen before his unmoving eyes fixed on the sky. The Pied Piper’s renewed screams jolted Ethan from his musings.

Advancing on him, Ethan realized that he needed to quiet the hysterical man before every rev not already en route to the little cesspool heard his wailing invitation. The Piper, in turn, began kicking and flailing wildly. He landed a lucky shot that connected with Ethan’s Achilles tendon, causing his leg to buckle. Off-balanced, Ethan collapsed forward onto the panicked man. The irritating smell of iodine, like boiled metal and burnt thyroid, flooded Ethan’s nasal cavities as the Piper’s screaming increased in intensity. The acrid odor was soon joined by the coppery scent of violent death, as his shrill cries were replaced by the gurgling sputters of air bubbling out of his severed trachea. The look of sheer desperation as the gushing blood quickly filled his lungs left no doubt in Ethan’s mind that he was not one of the infected. There was definitely something wrong with him, but he was no rev. Revs simply were not capable of the emotion he saw locked in the dead man’s glass-eyed stare.

Although it had been a necessary part of his entire adult life, Ethan hated killing more every time he was forced to do it. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the ghastly slideshow of carnage left in his wake as it played through his mind.

* * *

John strained to see what was happening on the other side of the truck. He saw Ethan drop out of sight, but he did not think it was because he had been injured. Although he could not make out what was being said, he heard the occasional snarling word buried amidst grunts of exertion. Agonizing cries followed a
snap
like that of a tree branch breaking, and John assumed Ethan had broken one of the man’s ribs. His stomach turned at the thought, and he shifted his attention back to the Mad Scientist cowering behind the table. The anguished shrieks from the other side of the truck were mercifully short-lived, replaced by an odd, but brief, sound that John put somewhere between that of a babbling brook and a powerful geyser.

The woeful screams proved to be enough to usurp the Mad Scientist’s fear of being shot by John, as he jumped to his feet to make a break for it. Little did he know, all of John’s attention was focused in his direction in an effort to block out the very same sounds that had distressed him. The moment John saw him get to his feet, he snapped out of it and moved to intercept. Thinking only of escape, the Mad Scientist did not see John until he stepped into his path with his Tavor leveled at his head. The fleeing chemist immediately dropped to his knees, groveling like a baby as snot bubbled from his nose. “Please, don’t hurt me! I’ll do anything! Whatever you want, just don’t hurt me! Please! I’m not like the others!”

John stepped forward, shoving the man back onto his haunches. “Calm down, and shut the hell up! Nobody’s going to hurt you as long as you cooperate.”

Tears poured from the man’s red-rimmed eyes, cutting swaths through the yellow film coating his face. John was unsure if the tears were the result of fear or irritation from the noxious chemicals he was experimenting with. “Who the hell are you people, and what are you doing here?” John asked.

“I’m…I’m Chef. They call me Chef,” the man whimpered. “They brought me here. They’re all sick, you know—junkies, all of them. The leader, Scout, used to buy dope from me on occasion before all this shit started. Not often, because he’s mostly a smackhead. The rest of them are all slammers as well—hooked on oxy, H, or any other narc they can get their hands on.” Chef rambled on and on, sharing every detail as though he were petitioning for a plea bargain. “Anyway, Scout came to me when his usual dealers came up missing or infected. He was desperate, said his girl and some of her friends were already clucking. I’d seen what the virus did to people and knew I needed to get out of Dodge as soon as possible, you know. There were already a ton of cases in Atlanta. Scout said he and his friends would get me out of the city as long as I would do some cooking for them. I’d never made any krokodil, but I knew it wasn’t much different than crystal, so I agreed.”

Incredulous, John stopped the man with a wave of his hand. “All this shit is about drugs? The whole damn world is going to hell, and you people are out here shooting bathtub heroin?”

A perverse smile creased Chef’s face, revealing two jagged rows of snaggled teeth presumably acquired through years of tweaking his own product. “What better way to ride out the apocalypse, brother?” Chef said.

Still confused by the mangled appearance of the people he and Ethan had seen, as well as the fact that the revs seemed to ignore the Pied Piper completely, John asked, “Why is everyone here rotting, with skin sloughing off, and chunks of tissue missing entirely?”

With a sigh, Chef said, “Krok’s some nasty shit, man. The chemistry is crazy. It’s way dirtier than crystal, with all sorts of toxic byproducts and impurities generated during the cook. Making the shit ain’t hard. It’s getting the dirt out that’s the real trick.” John thought the insane man sounded as though he were discussing the intricacies of some complex laboratory reaction with a fellow university professor rather than describing the challenges of cooking homebrewed heroin on a golf course during the apocalypse.

“We saw one of the guys from here stand like a statue as the infected swarmed all around him without so much as a second look. How’s that possible?” John asked.                                                                             

“Huh? Sounds like whatever is causing these walking abominations is afraid of the krokodil’s bite. I guess that just about makes me the king of the world right about now, don’t it?” Chef said with a sincere look of awe and self-satisfaction in his bloodshot eyes.

Angered by the man’s words, John said, “You’re not God or a savior or a king of anything! You’re a dope dealer which makes you no better than the
sick
people you fancy yourself treating with whatever the hell you’re cooking up over there!” Despite his rage at the former meth cook’s delusional ideations, he still wanted to know what made the Pied Piper essentially invisible to the infected.
Is it something unique to him or the result of something Chef cooked up inadvertently? While such protection would seem priceless these days, it would hardly be worth the cost to end up looking no different than the very monsters you are trying to protect yourself from. Maybe Lin can sort out the biochemistry if I tell her about the phenomenon. Assuming she made it to Atlanta…