Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (40 page)

Needless to say, the new Commander in Chief
wasn’t in the mood to fuck around.

Most of the Project Reclamation hierarchy
took him up on that offer. They were sent to duty-stations very
close to the edge of the Safe Zone, where the unit commanders were
given very specific instructions as to their new
responsibilities.

The once elite were going to spend a lot of
time cooking meals and digging latrines for the troops that held
humanities boundaries.

Realizing nobody had shoved a needle in
her arm yet, Kat looked up to see Rae watching her curiously.

“It's not what you think.” Kat closed her
eyes and gripped Jake's limp form against her protectively.

“You mean you
haven't
been in love
with him since the day you two met?” Rae arched an elegant
eyebrow.

“Uh. Well. Yeah. But we haven't
done
anything about it. He and Laurel were together. She was my best
friend.
I couldn't come between them just because I was
stupid and didn't keep him for myself.” Her lower lip quivered.
“He's... Is he going to die?”

Rae looked to where Gwen stood with Penny,
still keeping a watchful eye on the bulging fence-line. The gate
was holding, but it was anyone's guess for how long. Most likely,
the creatures wouldn't even bother with the entrance. Their numbers
were steadily increasing. Soon the pressure from the outside would
be so great, even the thick chain-link would buckle and
collapse.

“Honey, it doesn't look good,” Foster's
counterpart admitted. “There's very little I can do for Jake here.
I don't have many medical supplies on me, and certainly not what's
necessary to do a transfusion. The only IVs we have are in the
Mimi, so...”

Looking down at Jake's face from less than a
foot away, the only thing Kat wanted was for him to open his eyes
and smile at her. He could tell her to get bent tomorrow. That he
never wanted to have anything more to do with her and was going off
to Alaska to raise snipes with Miss December from
Soapy Jugs
Magazine
, just so long as he was alive.

Well. Maybe not the best example, but she was
under a little stress.

“I'm going to check around the enclosure. See
if there's anything we can use in here. If... When those things get
in, we're all going to have to move up onto the conduits there.”
Rae pointed back to the middle of their little—temporarily—safe
area. “Come on. Gwen and the Deputy can watch the gate for now. It
will be a little while yet, but let's get our boy over there. Just
in case.”

She took one arm, Kat took his other, and
together they carried Jake to the conduit access point. He was
still out cold, and his feet dragged grooves in the gravel surface
behind them as they moved quickly to the enclosures center. Cho
attempted not to cry at the sight of his head hanging limply
against his chest, swaying with every step. Once they got him
settled against the unit's housing, Rae pulled a short-needled
syringe out of her bag, uncapped it, and shot its contents into the
writer's vein.

“What was that?” Kat asked her, as the woman
tossed the needle away.

“Just a stimulant,” Rae answered. “We have
some time yet, but... Kat, if you have anything to say to him, you
should do it now.”

Then she rose and walked off among the
now-dormant transformer units towards their other two companions,
readying her huge assault rifle as she strode away.

Taking Jake's hand, Kat pressed his palm
against her cheek, rocking back and forth as she knelt beside him.
She couldn't believe it. She'd finally found the person made for
her on this miserable, little mud-ball, and the gods had seen fit
to take him away from her not once, but twice now.

It's not fair!
she mind yelled,
preying the powers-that-be would listen to her, as she begged for
his life.
I'll never so much as look at another man as long as I
live! Just don't take him away from me! Please!

She thought about everything they still had
yet to—and now probably never would—do. They would never get to be
intimate. She'd never be able to wake up with him holding her. They
wouldn't have a life together. Time to love one another.

Oh, but our kids would've been so
beautiful,
she thought.

That set off a fresh storm of grief. Jake
would've been such a tender lover. A truly wonderful husband. An
amazing father. But none of that was going to happen now. Kat's
tears were making his hand moist against her cheek, and she kissed
the quietly thumping pulse in his wrist. She kept her mouth pressed
against the slow beating of his heart.

“I tried so hard to save you,” she choked.
“I'd have done
anything
to save you. It's not
fair.”

“Kat..?”

Cho's eyes flew open at his voice. It was low
and raspy, telling her he may have damaged it somehow earlier, when
he let loose that terrible scream, but he was awake. Sort of. Jake
looked decidedly groggy, and his eyes still bled ever-so-slightly
as he spoke.

“I heard you say something, but I
couldn't...” He frowned. “Can't see. Looks weird. Something in my
eyes.”

He reached up to wipe them, but she
intercepted his hand with her own. “It's alright. You got hurt, but
you'll be fine. Do you know where we are? The Purifiers? The power
plant?”

“Sure. I remember. What happened? Did one of
those things...?”

She gripped his hand reassuringly. “No!
Nothing like that. You're just hurt, that's all. You weren't bitten
or anything.”

“You'd tell me if I was... right?” He pressed
her.

“Yes. I could never lie to you.”

He relaxed against the transformer casing.
“Okay.”

“Jake, I-I need to admit something,” she
said.

“Okay.”

“I need to tell you...that I love you!” She
blurted out. There she'd said it.

He smiled weakly. “I know. Love you
too...We're a team. Remember?”

“That's not what I mean.” She let loose her
grip on his hand, took his bloody face between both of her own,
then carefully leaned forward and kissed him.

Hard as it was, Kat refrained from letting
herself turn into a slobbering, sex-crazed animal, and concentrated
on conveying her feelings for him instead. Her kiss moved gently
against his mouth and she almost lost it again as she felt him
grin. She sighed against his lips when she pulled away but stayed
close. So close, that they brushed Jake's when she spoke.

“We may not get out of here, so I'm through
hiding how I feel. I love you. I think about you all the
time
. I kept finding excuses to stay near you, even when we
were stuck in George's hideaway. To keep you with me, keep you
close. Even though I knew it was wrong, and we couldn't...” Kat had
to take a couple of deep breaths to calm herself before she could
go on.

“I get chills when you say my name
.
I
can't breathe wh…when you look at me. And when you t… touch me, I
never... I never want you to
stop.”
She was having to force
the words out between half-sobs, as her hands moved tenderly over
his blood-slick face. “I know you don't feel the same way about
m-me, but I can't, I
won't
hide it anymore.”

The half-blind writer moved his hand up by
feel alone. He ran it awkwardly along her arm until he felt the
place where her shoulder and collarbone met, up the elegant curve
of her throat, and finally stopping to cup the back of her neck
just beneath the line of her newly-shortened blue hair.

“Kat.” The blood pushing up in Jake's eyes
stung horribly and he had to keep them shut. “I don't... I could
ever be...
good
enough for you...”

She gaped at him. “Good enough for
me?”

Jake nodded drunkenly. “I've done awful... I
failed, Kat. Allen and Maggie. Heather and Karen and Donna... I
even
tortured
that Purifier we caught... but none of it
made... a bit of difference. This is all my fault. How can you care
about me when... everything I do... ends up killing our
friends?”

“Oh, Jake,” Kat said, and wiped fresh, bloody
tears back from his cheeks. “You couldn't have stopped any of it.
That was Poole and his pack of murdering flunkies. You tried to
save
them. You saved us on the day of the outbreak. You
saved Donna and Gwen at the pizza shop from those hillbilly
bastards. You saved Allen and Mags from the Purifiers. And me too,
if you'll remember. Those two in the sewage plant would've turned
me into Swiss cheese, if you hadn't yanked me out of the doorway
when they started shooting.”

“I can't save you
now,”
he grimaced as
pain shot up from the still-bleeding hole in his shoulder. “I can
barely... I can't get up. I can't see. And Laurel...Laurel
just—”

She could tell he wasn't going to be
conscious for much longer. Jake's head kept nodding towards his
chest. Still crying, Kat kissed him again. This time he managed to
respond weakly, and it made her pulse pound in her ears. She held
him up and rocked him gently.

“That's why we're a team. When I'm crazy,
you're sane. When you give up, I keep going. And when you need
someone to guard your heart, it's gonna to be
me
that's
standing on the skinny bridge yelling,
You shall not
pass!”

He smiled weakly as his strength began to
fade “More of a... Jedi fan... myself.”

Seeing Rae striding towards them in a hurry,
Cho kissed him again and leaned O'Connor back against the
transformer casing. “Rest now. This time,
I
save
you.”

When he didn't respond, Kat realized he was
unconscious again. She smoothed his hair a bit, but gave up when it
seemed to just spring right back into its unruly shape again, then
stood as the femme-fixer jogged to a halt beside them.

“We have a problem,” Rae said.

“Just one?”

“Well, we have a
new
problem,” the
sandy-haired woman clarified. Rae pulled a magazine for her weapon
out of her hip-bag and held it up. “I've got this one and the
partial in my gun right now. Gwen has two of her own left, and
Penny only has half a mag. How much have you got?”

Kat checked her pistols. “Thirteen rounds
total. Damn. What about the AR-15 Jake gloomed from the
Purifier's?”

“One in the pipe, three in the magazine.”

Kat turned back to search O'Connor's vest and
the bag she'd pulled off the patio for the assault rifle. “One and
a partial magazine here.”

“We're going to have to make a decision
soon.” Rae looked at the writer's silent form. “Do we try to hold
here in the hopes George finds us, or do we use the conduit to move
for the generator house now? It's stronger structurally, but we
won't have any options once we're inside.”

“Because..?” Kat asked.

“Its windows are too high for us to use as an
escape route and there's only one door,” Rae told her. “Here, we
might be able to skate out at the opposite side of the yard. The
creatures are concentrated in between us and the fire in the office
block right now. We could slip out and head for cover. Maybe signal
George if you've got more of those flares.”

“Fresh out,” Kat said.

“Well, still. We could start a signal fire on
the other side of the complex. Up wind of that monster.” Rae
motioned at the inferno raging in the main building. The heat was
so intense; it was actually setting some of the creatures near the
cafeteria doors ablaze.

“Why are you asking me about this?”

Rae shrugged. “You're in charge aren't
you?”

“
Me?”

“Jake's too badly hurt; Gwen's got no
training, Penny's too much of a nubie for us to trust her judgment
just yet, and most of my experience is classroom based,” Rae
admitted with a guilty look. “That's why I left the FBI. They stuck
me behind a desk.
No field-worthy skills
, they said. Bet
none of them could build a working, bug-free X-M8 from
scratch...”

Several things went through the blue-haired
young woman's mind at that point. The most pertinent of which was
that their situation had officially moved from merely
desperate,
to
Oh shit, oh shit, we're all going to
die!
in the span of a few seconds.

She bit her lip and considered their options.
If they headed for the generator house, they'd be able to keep the
infected at bay for a good long while. The problem was, they
wouldn't be able to see the Mimi's location if she passed within
visual range. Moving out under the back fence would afford them
great visibility, but they'd be completely exposed. Their party
would have to keep moving until they either found George and his
mega-machine, or they managed to evade the creatures roaming the
grounds long enough to secure another means of transportation. That
didn't seem feasible with Jake currently unconscious. Besides
which, any more strenuous activity would cause him to bleed out
faster, and she wasn't prepared to think about what would happen
then.

“Alright. Here's what we're going to do.” Kat
swapped the rounds from one Glock into the clip of her other as she
spoke, giving her almost a full magazine for the weapon. Just
thirteen rounds. “You, Penny and Gwen will go under the rear fence,
then head along the shore away from the creatures. Set fire to a
vehicle or something so George will see it. I'll stay here with
Jake. There's no way we'll be able to carry him and move fast
enough to keep away from those things at the same time.”

Rae looked out into the half-light beyond the
fence. “Kat, George won't be able to see you in here. You'll be
trapped,
and once those things break through... Do you
really think Jake would want you to—”

Kat was in Rae's face, nose to nose with her,
eyes flat with cold anger when she spoke “Don't. Don't even think
about telling me to leave him. Not unless you want to see what the
afterlife looks like way sooner than expected.”