Read Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan Online

Authors: Steven Novak

Tags: #Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian

Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (9 page)

BOOK: Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan
10.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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Blueeyes
pushed me face-first into the filth. “Stay down! No matter what, you stay down!”

The back door opened.
Bigbelly
stepped out. He was holding a shotgun. His eyes immediately went to the old woman. “Motherfuc—” 

I felt the gunshot in my ears, so incredibly loud it rattled my brain. The old woman’s chest exploded. Her back erupted. Blood and bone and bits of charred meat sprayed backward, sprayed everywhere. Something chunky landed in my hair. Something slimy bounced off my back. Her body jerked backward, bent awkwardly over the fallen fence, and hung limp. Before
Bigbelly
could fire again,
Blueeyes
was on him. He lunged forward and knocked the weapon from the larger man’s hand while burying his knife wrist-deep in his bloated midsection. Before Bigbelly could react, he stabbed again.
Blueeyes
held him upright while stabbing and shoving him back into the open door. 

I didn’t see what happened next, only heard it. There was a gunshot and then another, a flash of light. Someone screamed. Something shattered. A roar of thunder hid the rest. It was a minute before Blueeyes emerged, jacket soaked in blood, beard stained red. He looked at me, looked past me. Without a word he moved to the body of the old woman.

I didn’t know what to say. “A-are you…?” 

With one hand he snagged her by the hair, lifted her head. With the other, he drove his knife through her skull.

I froze.

“Everything comes back, Megan.” He stepped over the corpse and moved to the body still hogtied in the mud. It was a man, younger than the others, alabaster skin, red sores along his arms.
Blueeyes
put his fingers to the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. When he found none, he put a knife in his brain. “
Gimps, howlers, biters
…we all come back as something.”

I wanted him to yell at me. I wanted him to scream and leave me there, alone in the mud, alone with the dead. He didn’t. Instead he helped me up, knocked the globs of mud from my jacket, turned my face up, and let the rain wash away the filth. He should have smacked me, should have put his knife in my skull as well. I wanted him to. It would have made things easier. I told him I would never mess up again. I lied. He didn’t even shake his head.

He barely looked at me.

When
Blueeyes
finally spoke, it was to the night, to empty space. “We need to take what we can from the house…need to be quick about it. Gunfire will have riled up anything nearby, rain or not.”

I followed him inside without a word. The house was a mess, blood everywhere, broken glass and snapped wood. A pot of still steaming liquid had spilled onto the floor, soft steam rising from the puddle. In the corner a man’s body was bent over a table, chest gushing blood, a knife wound between his eyes. A few feet away lay the corpse of the man we’d seen earlier in the day—at least, I think it was. It was contorted in such a way it was nearly impossible to tell. The upper half of his body was soaked in blood, his face a mess of meat and shattered bone. When the smell hit my nose, I retched. It was awful: decaying meat and sweat, exhaustion and hopelessness. I plugged my nose. It didn’t help.

Blueeyes
retrieved a satchel from a hook on the wall and tossed it to my feet, keeping a similar one for himself. “Fill it with whatever you can. Quickly.” 

I didn’t know what to take; I didn’t want to touch anything. Everything was jumbled, messy, coated in grime. I pulled my jacket over my nose, hoping to disguise the smell. That didn’t work either. There were knives everywhere, every shape and size, dried blood and dulling blades. My eyes began to hurt: something in the air, acrid, disgusting. I grabbed what I could and tossed it in my sack, figured
Blueeyes
would sort it out later. Near one of the windows I found a box of bullets, near the other a handgun. It was sticky; when I dropped it in the satchel, it clung to my fingers. Everything was sticky. In the back of the room there was a doorway with a frayed piece of fabric doubling as a door, gently swaying in the breeze. I moved toward it.

“No!”
Blueeyes
shouted from across the room, stopping me in my tracks. He pointed to another door across the room. “Nothing in there we need. Grab what you can from the kitchen. Meet me back here when you’re done.”

There wasn’t much in the kitchen: a few empty pots, edges charred with bits of blackened meat, each smelling worse than the last. A pile of tin cans in the corner offered nothing; the insides were bone dry, been empty for a while. The cabinets had even less: a few spoons, a couple forks and little more. With nothing to show for the trip, I returned to
Blueeyes
. His pack was significantly fuller than mine, stuffed with bladed edges and a few articles of clothing. A shotgun and a rifle hung from his back, straps crisscrossing his chest. A machete dangled from his belt, wrapped in leather, and bobbed when he walked.

He spotted me the moment I entered. “Food?”

I shook my head.

“Damn it.” 

A few minutes later we were done. Thankfully, there was nothing remaining to take; we had all we could carry.
Blueeyes
pulled the hood over his head, heading for the exit. “Come on. Need to get moving.”

I was happy to leave. I regretted going there in the first place, for leaving the way I had, for failing my
friend
yet again. I didn’t ever want to come back. 

Blueeyes
stopped suddenly in the open doorway and planted his feet. He reached behind him and put his hand on my head. “Back inside.”

That’s when I heard it, a growl. It was deep, guttural, and noticeable even over the pounding rain. I recognized it immediately. As
Blueeyes
shoved me back into the house, I gazed past his leg and into the yard. 

Three
howlers
gazed back.

 

10.

They were massive, mountainous bodies heaving, wet hair plastered to taut muscles, steam rising from their snouts. The largest of the three barked and bared its teeth, red eyes glowing in the moonlight. Its head lowered. Its back rose. Its upper lip quivered.

When it took a step forward,
Blueeyes
shoved me in the chest. “Get inside!”

He hit me hard, knocked the wind from my chest. The blow threw me back, sent me sliding across the floor and under a table against the far wall. The
howler
charged.
Blueeyes
retrieved the shotgun from his back, cocked, and fired. I’m not sure if he hit it. Everything happened so fast. The monster yelped and leapt out of range, enveloped by shadows.
Blueeyes
ducked inside and slammed the door behind him. Immediately, his hands went to the locks, all six, fingers working frantically. He’d secured three of them when a
howler
slammed into the exterior. The weight of the beast bent the thick wood inward, splintering the frame, nearly snapping it in two. The creature crashed into it again, barking at the lightning, biting at the doorknob. While the house was disgusting, it was also fortified. The door had been custom made, thick and sturdy; it could take a beating. The
howler
hit it again. 

At least we hoped it could take a beating.

A window on the opposite side of the room exploded,
howler
paws smashing wood and glass, flinging debris. Claws snagged the frame and dug in. When the beast pulled the paw back, it took a section of the wall with it.
Blueeyes
moved to the exposed window, raised the shotgun, and fired again. The attacking
howler
yelped, barked, and scampered away. The door bucked again. Another window shattered. A wall on the opposite side of the room bent inward. They weren’t giving up, smashing into anything they could, fueled by hunger and animalistic rage.
Blueeyes
moved to the partially collapsed window. He wedged his shotgun through an opening in the debris, firing blindly into the night. The door cracked and shuddered; the hinges snapped loose and fell to the floor. A single red eye stared at me through a newly formed opening between the door and wall, eyelids narrowed. When its pupil dilated, I shivered. When it snarled, I leapt to my feet and scurried to
Blueeyes’
side. The house was collapsing around us, walls twisting, rusted nails showering our feet. The snout of one of the monsters ripped through the debris of the window amidst a maelstrom of dust and splinters. Jaws snapped at the air, spittle flinging from hungry lips.
Blueeyes
raised his shotgun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Out of ammunition, he cracked the beast on the snout with the butt of the weapon and opened a wound on its nose, blood spewing. The head of a howler crashed through the door. A bloody paw reached in and peeled away shattered bits of wood, creating an opening. A wall began to buckle, bits of debris trickling from above. They were going to get in. We couldn’t’ stop them. 

Nothing was going to stop them.

Blueeyes
wrapped his arm around my waist, lifting me into the air, and headed for the fabric
door
he’d told me to avoid. It was dark inside, lit sparsely by mostly burnt candles. In the center of the room was a steel table drenched in fresh blood. A crudely assembled drainage system ran along one side, leading to a blood filled bucket underneath. Sprawled on top of the table was the old man from the yard.  One of his legs was gone, cut cleanly, pale bone peeking through a stump of lumpy meat. His chest was sliced open, ribs peeled back. On a counter against the wall, in a bowl soaked in blood, were his intestines. My stomach lurched. If I had the time I would have thrown up. 

Blueeyes
kicked open another door at the far end of the room and lunged inside as the roof collapsed. The rear of the house had taken a beating and couldn’t handle anymore. An entire wall gave way. Structural beams cracked, snapped, and broke in half. The roof slid over the dismantled section and crashed into the backyard.
Blueeyes
dropped to one knee, engulfing me in his arms, sections of the ceiling threatening to bury us. I smelled smoke, the familiar glimmer of fire from the butchering room we’d left behind. 

That’s when I heard their feet, the grotesque tapping of
howler
claws on what remained of the roof over our heads. 

Blueeyes
dropped me to floor, pressed my chest to wood, and screamed over the madness. “Stay here! Do not move!”

My hands went to my ears, my eyes closed, and my head nodded.

Bent over, roof collapsing around him, he shuffled through the spreading fire and into the room with the old man’s corpse. A wall of smoke engulfed him. The
howlers
screamed, jumping on the failing roof, gnawing at shingles, flames rising around them, thunder cracking the sky. The door to the butchering room collapsed the moment
Blueeyes
returned. He was holding something. A cloud of debris, black smoke, and dust rose from the ashes, swallowing us. When I inhaled, it filled my lungs, spread out. I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t breathe. It was too much. It was happening too quickly. I couldn’t think straight, too many noises, colors. The smoke cleared for just a moment and I realized what
Blueeyes
had in his hands. It was a leg, the old man’s leg. He dug into his satchel, felt around, retrieved a single stick of dynamite. He tied it to the severed limb with fabric ripped from his shirt. The roof moaned, moonlight peeking from an opening near the corner,
howler
eyes glaring.
Blueeyes
slid across the floor, flames crackling, clinging to his jacket and singeing his beard. He used the inferno to light the dynamite’s wick, cooking flesh in the process. The roof buckled and a flaming support beam crumbled to the center of the room, further spreading the blaze. His jacket on fire,
Blueeyes
charged toward the opening in the corner and flung the flaming leg into the night. 

The
howlers
took the bait. The monsters caught the scent of blood in the air, chased it like the animals they were. One of them captured the flaming appendage in flight, landed in the mud and chomped down. A second knocked the first aside, taking an end for itself.

Blueeyes
laid his body on top of mine and smashed me into the floor, covering the back of my head with his chest. 

I never heard an explosion. It rattled my ears. I felt it in my teeth, behind my eyes. My body vibrated, hummed, indescribable heat engulfed me. Surviving the aftershock was too much to ask of the already decimated house. The inferno had done its damage. The walls popped and snapped, began to crumble.
Blueeyes
scooped me up again, wrapped me in his arms, and lowered his shoulder, heading for a collapsing wall nearest us. Burning wood ripped, crunched and exploded, bathing us in embers. When we hit the ground, we rolled, sliding on wet mud past bits of flaming debris and chunks of cooked
howler
meat. I slipped from
Blueeyes’
arms, mud in my face, embers sparking my hair. I’m not sure how many times I spun. It was a lot. The world turned upside down, flipped left and right. Everything meshed together, a blurry mess of images. When I finally stopped, I still felt like I was moving. My head was pounding. Everything was sore, every inch of me throbbed. Blood trickled down my face, originating from an unknown source somewhere in my hair. When I tried to move my neck, I couldn’t. When I tried to move my fingers, they refused. Instead of breathing I belched smoke. 

For a moment I thought I saw
Blueeyes
stumbling around, hand on his head, a vaguely familiar silhouette against the madness. He disappeared. The back of my eyelids ate him, folded him into black. Everything disappeared. I couldn’t stay awake, couldn’t keep my head up. I wanted to. I couldn’t. It all felt so heavy. Everything was made of lead, refusing to bend. 

When my eyes finally opened I was barely aware. Everything was shifting, blurred, watery. For a moment I saw
Blueeyes,
machete in hand, swinging at a fiery
howler.
One of them had survived. The creature’s face was engulfed in flame, barking smoke, spitting liquid venom, steam rising from its back. If it hadn’t been so terrifying it
might
have been beautiful. A yellow-red blur of crackling combustion, the
howler
hit
Blueeyes
with its paw and knocked him to the mud. He dropped his weapon.

BOOK: Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan
10.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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