The Renegades (Book 4): Colony (7 page)

W
e’d hit
the mother lode.

Initially Chuck Raynor, the owner of Shooters, took us into the main store on the ground level, which carried all your regular-style handguns and shotguns. Though, most of them were gone. He told us that police and military were the first ones to scoop them up. We learned that before the infection went crazy, police made most of the purchases. However, he had a hidden stockpile of weapons stashed away behind a false wall. It was packed with AR-15’s, machetes, and Magnum revolvers.

When Chuck said police had been his top customers, I think Ben felt vindicated.

“So you don’t remember this guy?”

“Different owner back then,” Ben muttered as we feasted our eyes on a buffet of weapons. It was a tough choice. I picked up a Mossberg 500, 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and peered down at the front sight before laying it down and selecting a different one. I felt like a kid in a candy store.

“You’re going to need new clothes too,” Chuck said.

“I was just getting used to this,” Baja said.

“You might as well paint a bull’s-eye on your back, no one will trust you in those clothes.”

Chuck nodded his head in the direction of a small turnstile rack of sandy-colored tactical pants, jackets, and ball caps. By the time we were kitted up we all looked as if we were about to head out into the wilderness. But in reality we were. Outside, the city barely resembled anything like what you would see on a postcard or in a travel brochure. It was full of predators that would tear us apart.

“Tell me, what happened to the city?” I asked Chuck.

He got this faraway look in his eyes as if he was recalling a traumatic event. “When it all kicked off there were riots. People looting stores. I guess the average person didn’t realize what was going on. I had pulled down the shutters to prevent people coming in. Then I saw those things clawing into people. My wife was still out at the time with Hannah.” He paused for a minute to compose himself. “I went to meet her at one of the local stores but it was just overrun with people running into each other, biting and tearing one another apart. I barely made it out of there with my life. That was the first time I shot someone. He just kept coming at me. I told him to stop. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years of age. I blew his head off.” He breathed in deeply. “Anyway, I located my daughter and wife but she was already dead. She had managed to get our daughter into one of the washrooms before she took her last breath.”

“Did you kill her?”

He looked at me as if I was insane. “No. I grabbed Hannah and ran. That’s when I noticed the bite marks on her. My wife died defending our daughter.”

“And the buildings?”

“A month passed before planes flew over and started bombing. I guess they thought that was the only way they could wipe it out. They were wrong.”

“Do you know anything about the Coalition and what they are doing with anomalies?”

“Vinny Carlone does.”

“Who is he?”

“Before all of this, he ran a protection ring here in the city.”

“A mobster?”

He nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway he works deals, knows people, if anyone can tell you about the Coalition it will be him.”

“You trust him?”

He laughed a little. “I should do, he’s my son.”

“Your son? But your last name is Raynor.”

“He’s my son from another relationship. When we split up she didn’t want him to have anything to do with me. Out of spite she changed his last name to hers.”

Ben came out of the weapons room with a bag over his shoulder. Both thighs had Glocks attached. Elijah followed suit but with Sig Sauer P226’s. At least we would stand a chance against what lay beyond the door. No matter how terrifying it was.

“So where can we find him?” Ben asked.

He smiled. “The penthouse, Four Seasons Hotel. The most expensive hotel in New York.”

“What? Why is he there?”

“Where else would he be? He has a taste for the finer things in life.”

“That place is still standing?”

He nodded.

After what we had seen so far, I couldn’t imagine anything was still in one piece.

“Do you know where that is?” I asked.

He chuckled. “You folks really aren’t from around here, are you? Where did you come from?”

“Castle Rock, Nevada.”

“You are quite a distance from home.”

“Tell me about it.”

As the others continued to gear up and make sure they had enough ammo, I asked Chuck if he knew about what the Coalition were doing with anomalies. He nodded. “They think they can create the cure.” He laughed before getting all serious and looking over at Hannah. “I just don’t want anything to happen to her.”

“Why not take her to them? I mean if she can end this…”

“That’s what they all say. Including the Hive and look at that. People leave every day with them in trucks and never return. Now don’t tell me they have all of them stored up on that island. They are killing them one by one until they find the anomalies.”

Jess stepped forward. “Isn’t that reason to take Hannah to them?”

“The Hive?”

“No, the Coalition.”

He shook his head. “Listen, I will take you to the hotel but I won’t be coming in.”

“I would have thought seeing your son would be a good thing, now this is all happened.”

“You don’t know my son.”

I was beginning to wonder if it was a good idea to go and meet up with him. Ben went upstairs to keep an eye on Z’s before Chuck rolled up the shutters and we all streamed out. We waited for Ben and then Chuck turned around and locked up.

“Right, follow me,” he said.

“Please tell me you have a car as I don’t fancy walking for an hour.”

“Good to see one of you knows the city.”

We hustled around back trying to make sure the undead didn’t spot us. We weren’t that lucky. There were ten milling around across the road. The smell that permeated the air was putrid. We each held up an arm to our face to stop ourselves from hurling.

“Save your bullets.”

I yanked out a mean ass machete that was longer than my thigh. We rushed down the street and turned a corner and were faced with even more. Chuck was fiddling with the keys when several of the Z’s heard us. That caused even more fear and he dropped them. It wouldn’t have been bad if they were slow but these were the fast-moving suckers. The same ones we had come across down in the subway. They bounced their way down the street towards us with all the speed of an Olympic runner.

“Fuck this shit,” Baja said, pulling around his AR-15 and unloading round after round at them. Unlike the other Z’s that would just drop, these were harder to hit. It was almost as if they had become wise, evolved even. Was that even possible? What was that biological weapon? Was it meant to kill or turn their people into some kind of super-soldier? Either way, these fuckers weren’t messing around. They were bolting towards us at breakneck speed.

Before they could reach us, Izzy and Jess raced at them. I had to admit we were all absolutely dumbfounded. Machetes out and swinging at them like they were trying to beat candy out of a piñata. Those women didn’t have any fear. They had grown in leaps and bounds. What had they witnessed inside of NORAD? They didn’t shrink back the way they did in Castle Rock. To be quite honest if someone could have tossed us a bag of popcorn, we could have laid back on one of the cars and watched them do their business. It was fucking epic. When they were done they strolled back covered in blood and shit. I had to admit, it was quite a turn-on seeing my lady take care of business. However I opted not to kiss her lips.

Getting from A to B in a zombie apocalypse is hard enough on foot, but if you attempt to do it in a vehicle you are a brave soul — especially if you decided to traverse the clogged-up streets of New York City with Chuck Raynor at the wheel. It was like demolition derby, smashing into stationary vehicles on our way over, squeezing down tight, narrow alleyways and watching the sides of the car get torn up by numerous steel dumpsters that were in the way.

Now I had seen some mad ass drivers in my time but this guy really could have taken home an award. He was out of his frigging mind. Cackling like a lunatic, meanwhile fluffy dice hung down from his mirror like a pair of hairy nads swinging in the wind. I still to this day don’t know if it was just because he was a crazy ass New Yorker or had been a drag racer in his past life, but he didn’t let up on that accelerator the whole time. With him gunning the accelerator and Baja hooting and hollering at Z’s, it was utterly mental.

It didn’t help that Baja was singing Frank Sinatra’s song “New York, New York.”

“Shit, Raynor, was your name Michael Knight in a past life?” I hollered over the noise of the engine. Chuck grinned as he careened around corners like he was bloody Knight Rider.

Now at the speed he was clocking we might have actually arrived there in record time. In fact, it was quite possible that we might have even set a world land record if it hadn’t been for the next corner that we came around. Metal crunched as he slammed the brakes on and we found ourselves facing down at least two hundred Z’s.

“Holy shit.”

The blood rushed from our faces as Chuck slammed the car into reverse and burned rubber backwards. But it was useless. The street behind us was covered in a huge amount of concrete rubble and steel, other areas were blocked off by vehicles that had been abandoned. No amount of skillful driving could have got us around the obstacles that we came across. All of which meant taking a few back alleys and hoping that we didn’t land in a situation like the one we were now in.

Zipping backwards, swerving all over the road. Baja was now screaming like a little bitch, and I was joining him. It was a horrifying sight and not getting any better the further we drove back. We slammed into more Z’s until we couldn’t go any further. It looked like an ocean of faces. Hands clawed the air, jaws slammed up and down as intestines hung like sausages from body cavities.

“We ain’t getting out of this. There’s too many.”

Frantically our eyes scanned for an escape route. There were none. Trapped in a two-way street I noticed steam rising up from the ground.

“There, over there. We need to go underground.”

“Dude, are you fucking nuts, didn’t you ever see
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
If anything is going to mutate, it’s going to happen in the sewers and let’s face it, it must smell like a …”

We didn’t hang around to listen to the drivel coming out of Baja’s mouth. I burst out of the door, heading for the manhole.

“Cover me.”

The others formed a circle while I heaved up a heavy ass steel manhole cover using the barrel of my gun.

“Come on!” Ben shouted as the swarm crowded in on us.

“Really, have you tried lifting one of these fucking things?” It was surprisingly heavy. With a little bit of help from Elijah we managed to get it out. As soon as it was up we began piling down the hole. There was no time to use the metal rungs. Izzy took down Hannah in an almost slip, grab, and slide method, Elijah went next. Meanwhile we were firing like crazy at the crowd that was moving at us. We couldn’t hold them back anymore, there were too many. One of them took Chuck down and the others just began to attack. That’s when it all went wrong. Just as they began feasting and tearing at Chuck, he screamed out.

“Take care of her…” then his voice was lost in the noise of the Z’s. I didn’t even touch the rung, I didn’t have time. I was the last one down. Above me Z’s smothered out the light as their arms reached down clawing the darkness.

Their snarls echoed as we backed away waiting for some of them to drop. Sure enough several of them landed with a thud.

A few shots to the head and they were taken care of. But the worst of it wasn’t over.

“Where’s my dad?” Hannah asked.

What do you tell a twelve-year-old kid who’d already lost her mother?

I shook my head. “He didn’t make it.”

Her wailing echoed down the tunnel but was lost in the noise of rushing sewer water. It was dank and smelled so bad I pulled up my top over the lower half of my face.

Using the flashlights on the end of our weapons we swept them back and forth. The center of the sewers was rushing with god knows what. Piss, puke, blood, and shit. We knew we couldn’t stay down here long. It wasn’t just the fact that Z’s could be down here, it was the smell. A rancid smell that was probably made worse as blood from the roads trickled into sewers.

Ben stayed at the rear, occasionally firing a few rounds at Z’s that dropped down. The only upside was when they landed they broke what little bones they had left in their bodies. Not even the fast ones could have made that drop. I had twisted my ankle and was limping along. I cursed under my breath at whoever had started this.

Did they know?

Did anyone know what they were unleashing upon the earth?

The walls around us were covered in graffiti. Occasionally we came across armchairs and furniture that had been abandoned; the leftovers of a society that had failed people. People thought it was bad now. The irony was there were hundreds and thousands of people homeless, living on the streets and in the tunnels long before the apocalypse hit.

Were they the first to go?

If so, maybe death was a better alternative to the life they lived. I had always wondered about the homeless. Those who wound up on the streets. Sure, some were drunks and addicts, and others, people who had turned their back on society. But that wasn’t all of them. Some weren’t there by choice. There were others who had hit hard times and hadn’t managed to bounce back.

I gazed at a small area off from the sewer. It looked as if someone had set the place up like a small home. It had two tables and a piece of artwork hanging against the brick and mortar. Above was a large gridded manhole cover that let light in. How many years had someone been down there?

“Hey, look at this,” Jess said, picking up a diary that was weathered and covered in dust. She blew at it and coughed, then read it out.

I
t’s over for me
. These are my final words. What a world that lives above us. Yuppies dashing around in Lexuses and limos, eating at their fake fine restaurants while others fight to get their next meal. Fuck this world.