Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (44 page)

They were outside the facility now, away from
the horde that stalked the power plant's grounds. This was not to
say there were no infected about. Many were still heading towards
the blazing office complex, drawn there by the moans of the other
creatures inside, the movement of the flames, even by the sour
smell of rotten jerky cooking as fully a third of the awful things
were consumed and finally purified with fire. Some had turned to
watch and even shuffle towards the three humans in the Mimi's rear
hatch, as it passed into the darkness, though.

“I'm not a vindictive person by nature.” Kat
held Nichole against the hull by her ratty and ash- coated hair. “I
don't hold grudges. I never saw the point of being cruel or
hurtful, even to people I didn't like.”

Nichole's eyes were locked on the hatchway.
More specifically, on the dozens of creatures the Mimi passed on
the road
outside
the hatchway.

“The problem is you're beyond redemption.”
Kat let go of the woman's hair. “You create nothing but pain, and
then you attempt to make others as miserable as you are so you
won't have to be alone in your misery. I'd pity you, if you had an
ounce of concern for anyone other than yourself. But you don't.
And, quite frankly,
I'm sick of the sight of you
.”

Pain exploded up into Nichole's brain from
her left knee. The same one Kat had just shattered with a brutal
roundhouse kick that caused her joint to fold
sideways
instead of backwards. The unmistakable pop of cartilage tearing was
heard clearly by both Gwen and Rae at the other end of the module.
The force of the blow spun Nichole halfway around. She began to
collapse as her leg bent like a broken ventriloquist dummy’s
appendage and sent her screaming towards the floor.

Laurel's friend caught her as she fell by the
back of her hair and her filthy, ash-covered, Purifier-issue
suspenders. The look on Cho's face was beyond anger. Beyond hate.
Beyond anything George had ever seen in his forty-plus years as a
soldier and then a covert operative of the United States'
Government. They'd turned the overhead lighting on after carrying
the writer's limp form into the Mimi, because the green security
lights had been far too dim for Rae to work on Jake's wound. The
brighter halogen lights gave George a great view of the
all-consuming rage on Kat's face, as she hefted the woman—like the
hundred and fifteen pound sack of shit she was—took a step forward,
and threw her out of the transport's hatch into the night.

Bee had obeyed her uncle's order and kept
their speed low, between fifteen and twenty miles per hour. So when
Nichole hit the asphalt, she rolled a bit but wasn't
really
injured. Unless you counted the teeth that Kat had loosened prior,
her knee that wouldn't support her weight, and a healthy case of
road-rash.

After rolling to a stop, the stripper finally
realized how bad her situation really was. She was currently
sitting out in the open, there wasn't a soul around, and she had no
weapons. Oh, and there were quite a few very hungry ghouls looking
at her like someone had just rung the dinner bell from the lanes on
both sides of Route 52.

“Say hello to your friends Milo and Poole for
us, you miserable twat!” Nichole heard Kat yell.

The light streaming from the Mimi's rear door
was fading fast as the vehicle rolled on, but there was plenty of
moonlight. Nichole could clearly see the creatures orienting on
her. She didn't lose it until dozens of moans droned out from cold,
gray lungs and the infected began to stagger her way.

“No!” Though hurt, she managed to rise and
began hopping comically after the vehicle. “Come back! Come
ba-a-a-ack!”

The pair standing in the Mimi's hatch watched
as Nichole avoided the first few infected, but it wasn't long
before they had her surrounded. Once that happened, her screams of
fear soon changed to shrieks of agony. The creatures latched onto
her arms first, then went to town. They began chewing on her
shoulders and thighs next, tearing away great, bloody mouthfuls and
clawing at her skin with half-skeletal fingers. It was repulsive
beyond words, watching someone being consumed by those that were
once human. There was something horrible—and fundamentally
disturbing—about the expressions on their faces as they gnawed on
Jake's ex. It wasn't quite pleasure. Satisfaction, maybe?

Kat was certainly feeling satisfied.
Depressed, about two steps from having a breakdown because Laurel
was
dead
and Jake lay bleeding less than fifty feet
away
,
but definitely satisfied with how the sickness called
Nichole had finally been dealt with. She'd reached her breaking
point when the smarmy blonde started gloating about how Jake was
going to die. She'd even surprised
herself
then. She'd never
actually snapped like that before. Granted Kat had slapped the
bubble-head back in Foster's safe-house, but the blue-haired woman
had never intentionally set out to inflict pain on that level
before. It came as no surprise to her that she was good at it.

Must be love,
Cho thought with a
mental shrug.

Nichole's screams cut off with a gurgle as
one of the creatures bit her throat out. Blood fountained and
Jake's blonde, ex-stripper, ex-Nazi, ex-girlfriend then became
ex-tinct. At least, if she didn't turn into one of them she did.
Kat didn't see that as much of a problem, however. From the look of
it, there were some fresh limbs being tugged loosely around the dog
pile in the middle of Route 52.

“Hope they choke on her,” Foster chuckled. He
spat into the darkness before toggling the Mimi's hatch shut once
more.

Kat missed his comment entirely as she rushed
back to the front of the module. All the bimbo-slapping in the
world wouldn't change the fact that Jake's blood was still all over
her. It had become tacky and begun to dry on her clothes and in her
hair, but she couldn't have cared less. Upon reaching the lead end
of the rear compartment, she was treated to the sight of Rae
heating the blade of her Field Fighter knife.

With a blowtorch.

“What, exactly, are you going to do with
that?” Cho asked calmly, while attempting not to jump to any
conclusions.

“I'm going to use it to seal Jake's wound
shut.”

So much for not jumping to
conclusions
, Kat mused. “Oh, you are out of your fucking
m—”

“Dammit, Kat, if I don't, he'll just keep
bleeding!”
The knife was beginning to glow an angry orange.
“I've done what I can! I've sutured the muscles in his shoulder
together again, and the cord will dissolve over time. With a little
rest and a lot of work, he'll probably keep full use of his arm,
but it's either this, or we start looking for a nice pretty spot
for Jake's
grave!”

Kat's eyes went to the writer's face. It was
almost eggshell pale and his breathing was getting ever more
shallow. She moved beside his good arm to take his hand. She'd
spoken with enough burn victims to know the nerves deadened as the
wound healed, but until then the pain would be nearly
unbearable.

“Do it,” she said quietly.

“Alright, George? Hold his legs. Gwen, you
take his arm with the gaping stab wound.” Foster's counterpart hit
the intercom. “Beatrix? Penny? We're sealing Jake's arm up now, so
he's probably going to yell. Do not. Crash. The Mimi.”

Bee's voice crackled back. “
Oh, jeez. It's
gonna be bad, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Rae told him shortly.

They all grabbed hold and, after taking a
deep breath, Rae pressed the glowing knife against Jake's
shoulder.

His skin melted under the blade and the scent
of cooking meat filled the air. For a few seconds nothing happened,
then his eyes shot open but they were wide and unseeing. As the
flesh of his arm sizzled, the pain finally worked its way through
the exhaustion and into O'Connor's brain. His body heaved up off
the gurney, too tired to rise but unable to remain still, while Rae
pressed the red-hot steel against his shoulder.

“Hold him!” George was hanging on for all he
was worth. Even half-dead, Jake seemed to be a hell of a lot
stronger than a man his size should be. “Shit! Rae, ya gotta hurry,
woman!”

Gwen could barely keep her grip and Kat
wasn't doing much better. The writer struggled blindly and was
pulling her off her feet. Rae yanked the knife away, dropped it in
a tray behind her under the med cabinet, and quickly began
slathering triple antibiotic gel on his seared flesh. That did
nothing to make him comfortable, and he nearly made it up off that
gurney.

Kat was getting desperate. If he didn't stop,
Jake was going to do himself some real damage. Near panic, she
jumped up and knelt over him to take his contorting face between
her hands.

“Jake, you have to stop!” Cho was close
enough for him to see her, even with blood still half obscuring his
vision, but her words still weren't processing.

“Baby, please!” she begged him.

That earned her a raised eyebrow from Foster,
but he held his tongue. Rae made a shushing motion at him as Kat
tried to calm Jake's mad convulsions and realization dawned on his
face. She kept speaking to him soothingly, stroking his bloody face
and slowly drawing him back from the pain.

His body gave a final jerk and settled back
to the surface of the gurney. Jake's gaze was sane again, but still
leaked tears tinted with blood from the broken vessels beneath his
eyelids. Kat smoothed his sweaty hair and stroked his face. “We're
done now. It's alright. You're going to be fine.” She couldn't keep
her hand from trembling at the suffering in his eyes.

“Laurel's gone,” he said weakly, then
clenched his teeth as Rae secured a dressing over the awful burn.
“She’s
gone,
Katherine! Sh-she's...”

Jake saying her name sent a thrill up Kat's
spine. She felt low for enjoying it, but couldn't help herself.
“It's not your fault. You did everything... absolutely
everything
you could.”

“Those things. Those fucking
things
killed her!” Jake groaned. “I- I couldn't save—”

Then his eyes closed and, with a great sigh,
he went slowly limp.

Kat froze. “Jake?”

Nothing.

“Oh no. No, no, no, no, no.” She stared at
his face. “Jake? Jake!”

Rae foolishly moved up in an attempt to
console her and, when she placed a gentle hand on Cho's elbow, the
ninja-girl roughly knocked it away. “Back the fuck off!” she
snarled.

Foster pulled his counterpart out of arm’s
reach and shook his head. Kat missed their encounter, because her
world had narrowed down to a single image. Ignoring everyone and
everything else around her, Kat's eyes never moved from Jake's
face.

“No, you can't die! You can't!” she yelled
brokenly and shook him to no avail.

“Sweetheart, come on. You gotta get off the
boy,” Foster told her sadly.

“No!” Kat wailed and dropped against his
motionless form. Her arms slid under Jake's neck, cradling his head
to her as she wept. “Please! Please!”

Her chest hurt. She couldn't get her breath.
Kat rocked his unresponsive body as the others tried to comfort
her, but she wouldn't release her hold on him.

“Don't go!”

She held him tighter and pressed her lips to
O'Connor's. Her body shook with grief as she clutched at him,
striving with all her might to deny the reaper his prize.

“Jake, I love you!” she sobbed.
“Don't
leave me!”

* * *

T
he enormous, pink transport rolled on
into the darkness, shortly leaving the burning power plant and the
gathering dead in its wake.

Elle and Leo would be meeting them down the
road shortly. They'd find a safe place to hole up for the night.
Maybe another cache if one was nearby or just stay in the security
of the Mimi. Once the sun rose in the morning, the survivors would
continue their journey south towards Pecos and—hopefully—the safety
of the West.

After they licked their wounds.

And after they mourned their dead.

While this concludes the second
novel of The Crowbar Chronicles, fear not.

The journey of the Screamin' Mimi
and her rag-tag crew of misfits is far from over.

Our survivors will return soon in
Book Three:

Assuming Room Temperature

For over a decade, S.P. Durnin
crisscrossed America seeking the perfect pint of Guinness while
developing a deep love/hate relationship with the idea of hungry
mobile corpses. He has lived in: Montana, Texas, California,
Colorado, Washington, and New Jersey.

In his younger days, S.P. was
known to keep a morning after backpack in the trunk of his vehicle
(just in case he woke up in a strange place) right next to his
crowbar, but in recent years took the next logical step and
upgraded to a Bug-Out-Bag.
Keep Your Crowbar Handy
and
Rotting To The Core
are the first novels set within his
“zombie-verse™”.