Desert Angels (28 page)

He could not have guessed the real meaning behind the mutant's cheerful expression. Or what immediate consequences it was about to have for Jack Calisto.

* * *

Jack crashed into a wall, his head ringing out, an instant later informing the rest of his body that a leg had just been broken. Racked with pain, his vision a white and yellow tabloid of shock and surprise, Jack struggled to focus in on his attacker. Focus was not what Jack needed at the moment; he felt a good solid ax or bazooka would be a fine alternative. Or even a good strong stick.

The Stiffer just eyeballed Jack for a few seconds - and this time, Jack was sure, it was smiling at him.

Laura moaned, half on, half off the sofa, her head rolling from side to side.

The Stiffer, practically on top of the girl, reached down and picked her up.

"No!" Jack screamed, finding the strength somewhere to throw himself forward like a mortar.

The Stiffer was caught off guard. It dropped the girl as Jack's full weight plowed into the giant zombie's midsection, sending both man and monster tumbling backwards. Laura, now conscious enough despite her pain to realize what was happening, crawled her way into an inconspicuous corner.

Again, Jack found himself airborne.

The Stiffer growled with fury, angered further by the impudence of the puny human that had presumed to treat it like a laboratory specimen. It roared and padded over to where Jack had crumbled.

A thousand miles away, Jack noted that his arm had just been fractured. Infinitely closer was the clear fact that unless he found some kind of weapon, fast, he was going to die. It also occurred to him that the Ball Job was getting closer and could be expected to ignite any second.

So many cheerful thoughts converging at once did not preclude the more terrifying concept of leaving the Stiffer alone with Laura.

Which is exactly what would happen if he did something dumb and got himself killed.

Explosions and gunfire pounded from outside the Dome. Jack could hear screams, some of panic, some of pain, some belonging to Gleeson giving orders. The Maddogs had begun their attack – and Eden, as Jack had feared, was about to suffer its cruelest battle.

Jack's good hand tightened around something hard and circular. Chancing a look downward, he could see a piece of detached piping, shattered from one of the Dome's ventilation systems by the force of Jack's helpless and careening body. The Stiffer lunged forward, and Jack responded with pipe in hand.

The metal caught the Stiffer in the teeth, shattering a few fangs and causing blood to fountain everywhere. The Stiffer howled with rage and pain. Jack, restricted to hopping, tried to get past the Stiffer and move toward the door in order to seal off all entrances and exits to the Dome. Much as he hated to be trapped inside with the Stiffer, he felt this was a preferable alternative to being vaporized by the Ball Job's ultimate fireball, which he guessed to be only a few seconds away.

He never made the door.

The Stiffer brought a surprisingly large arm around full circle and caught Jack in the ribs. Crippled, Jack folded onto himself in a ball, screaming as the wind blew out of him. The Stiffer delivered a vicious kick to Jack's back. White pain made the world look suddenly sunny and blind. Jack fought for consciousness, feeling the Hound of defeat and death only seconds away. He had lost his pipe. His insides were on fire, and his appendages dangled uselessly.

The Stiffer assumed its good natured grin once more. The thing inside thought: Let the good times roll!

It was tired of playing around. The smile disappeared as the Stiffer moved slowly forward for the kill.

* * *

Most of Laura was involved with the very personal act of dying. It was a confusing business, full of colors, sounds, memories, failed hopes and surprising revelations, now made more confusing by the violent circumstances surrounding her. Death, she concluded deep within her suffocating brain, was something that really demanded complete concentration, lest all the details and challenges be missed.

She would have reluctantly agreed with Mathias; death was indeed a bitch.

If only it could be done in peace.

The distractions in her immediate vicinity, however, forced Laura to surface again to the painful levels of consciousness.

When she opened her eyes, it was to catch Jack flying into a wall, making a horrible squelching sound as he hit it. The thing stalking him was somehow not too surprising to see; it was as if she had always known that the Stiffer had this final scenario in mind.

Surprise, Jackie and Laura! From the Horny Host of Hell himself, we're bringing you this last round of good times – just to let you know how we feel about you! Enjoy!

Laura watched the Stiffer move. Jack, she could see, was being slowly murdered. She had never seen him so helpless and beaten.

She moved her eyes around the room, each one feeling like it weighed a ton. Ten feet away, in Jack's gun rack, was a single, grenade launching rifle; a favorite, custom made item that Jack had created from scratch. It was loaded, she could see, a full magazine of heavy armor piercing shells attached to the firing chassis.

Manna from heaven, her feverish brain promised; a veritable treasure from the gods. Laura shook her head painfully.

She knew the gods had died a long time ago.

She oozed along the floor. Slowly, so as not to catch the Stiffer's malignant attention. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, not the least of which was her own pummeled body. Ten feet might just have been ten thousand, because every inch was a trek of agony and Herculean effort.

The Stiffer had taken no notice of Laura, though it had not forgotten about her completely. Jack could not have known, any more than Laura, that the Stiffer was at it's most vulnerable; so busy was it concentrating its mental energy within the Growler's body, as well as conducting personal hostilities with Jack, that the entity within the Stiffer was, in fact, overly preoccupied. Impatience for victory and death was making it hurry. That old sloppy streak was showing through again for the demon inside.

Had it been only slightly more alert, the Stiffer would have noticed the girl to his rear snaking herself along the floor toward Jack's grenade rifle.

But the Stiffer's eyes and thoughts were filled with blood. It was also filled with anger, since it had experienced some surprise in Jack's pipe-wielding attempt at braining it, and suffered considerable periodontal damage as a result thereof.

Immortal it may be, the demon Stiffer thought venomously, but pain was pain and
nothing
– except the dead – were free from that.

It continued to move relentlessly toward the far wall where Jack lay, semi-conscious and exhausted.

Laura reached the gun rack, near the outer hatch. Her fuzzy vision also recognized the distant shape outline of the Ball Job, moving off the furthest dune in the horizon, directly for the Dome.

* * *

Gleeson fired into the mutant horde, along with ten of the stronger men of Eden, Brandon, Jim Rosen and Gus included. Except for these courageous few, the remaining population of the encampment was snuggly hidden in the Dome shelter for the second time in 24 hours.

The mutants were still bad fighters, even with reinforcements, but their poor skill in battle gave Gleeson little hope for some kind of effective retaliation or defense. The Maddogs now had heavy artillery. Gleeson glared at the tanks, roaring downward from the high ridge that marked the boundaries of Eden's borders.

He also noted the newest addition to the Maddog foot-soldier contingent.

They moved almost rhythmically, not quickly, not passionately, like the growling Maddogs. And they were not quick to fire needlessly from distances that would assuredly fall short from their targets. Gleeson and the others were

fortunate in dispelling the first wave of Maddogs, being the better fighters and the more discriminatory.

Gleeson took aim at one of the strange, sallow looking soldiers that followed this first, noisy group of Maddogs and fired. A direct, bloody hit to the man's heart did not slow him up. Gleeson squinted, not believing what he was seeing.

He fired again, as his men were similarly doing. The soldier took another bullet in the chest, but remained standing, expressionless. Maybe just a tad perturbed, the soldier's eyes seemed to say – but Gleeson couldn't tell for sure. More of the same kind of soldier, raggedy, white and lethargic marched closer and closer, deflecting –
no
– ignoring the bullets assaulting their bodies from the Eden defense force.

Gleeson swallowed and put his hand up.

"Fall back!" he yelled, though his men needed no urging to do so.

"What are they?" Gleeson heard Jim Rosen yell from his left.

"Fucking zombies," was Brandon's reply, lost in gunfire.

"Bad apples," Gus snorted laconically and retreated at Gleeson's side.

The corpse soldiers, as they moved nearer, raised their weapons and fired.

Jim Rosen yelled out and slid into the sand fifty feet from the Dome. He clutched at his throat, now a shredded trunk of blood and flesh.

"Jim!" Gleeson yelled, running a beeline backwards.

But Jim Rosen was dead by the time Gleeson got to him.

The zombies continued firing. Gleeson snarled and ran back toward Brandon, Gus and the other Edenites.

Brandon suddenly had an attack of Garbo; as shots sprinkled around her, Garbo held her assault rifle and just stared at it, frozen solid.

Gleeson, who like the other Edenites, was by now well familiar with Brandon's bizarre transformations, dived into the sand and crawled toward the panic-stricken nurse.

But again, Gleeson was too late. Brandon's chest sprinkled with red; he buckled to his knees and turned to regard Gleeson.

Even at the last, Garbo was the strongest personality. And perhaps the most courageous.

"Here's lookin' at you, kid," she slurred and died in his arms.

Gleeson hugged the body of Brandon close to him, crying for the first time since his wife and children had died.

"Back to the shelter!" he screamed to the remaining soldiers at his side. He did not believe that the Edenites would stand a better chance in the shelter; in fact, trapped in those confines assured their destruction. But against this new kind of enemy, Gleeson reasoned, any kind of deterrence seemed useless now.

Gus plodded toward Gleeson, his foot badly mangled by gunshot.

"We'd better move it, son," Gus said and pried Gleeson's hands off of Brandon's corpse. Gleeson nodded and followed.

Hopefully, Gleeson looked toward the Dome. Perhaps, Jack Calisto would again delve into his bag of miracles and save the day.

Gleeson, of course, did not know that Jack was having troubles of his own at the moment, and was in no position to help anyone, least of all himself.

An explosion shook the ground near Gleeson; turning, the hunchback could see that his companions lay scattered, in pieces, vivisected by the exploding shell nearby. Only Gus, a little bit ahead of him, near the Dome's cellar doors remained intact. Gus was looking at him with enormous pity.

Gleeson was surprised to see such an expression on Gus' face.

Most surprising of all, though, was his own ability to keep moving. He looked down at his legs.

Blown off, his legs gone, Gleeson was resting on his trunk, his insides rapidly escaping through a chewed up portion of his hip. Oddly, there was no pain, and Gleeson for a moment just stared dully at his masticated body.

The last thing he did see was the strained face of Laura peeking out the hatch entrance of the Dome. Her eyes met his, the dead to the dead, in a final expression of farewell. In both eyes, there was a noticeable absence of fear, simply resignation. Gleeson hadn't known Laura well, but his final thought, as he toppled forward, was that he wished he had.

SEVENTEEN – THE GOOD FIGHT

Laura watched Gleeson die then reached up to a small box attached to the wall, just below the hatch activation switch. She pushed the one small red button on the box with all her might.

The Dome suddenly began to throb, as the giant lead doors and outer walls began to vibrate. The hatch began to close slowly.

The Stiffer turned to face Laura, barring its large, broken fangs menacingly. Jack tried to move, failing the first time, then successfully rising to one knee the second time around, while the Stiffer momentarily focused its malignant attention on Laura.

Laura pulled the gun to her chest, cocked the firing mechanism, and struggled to point it at the Stiffer.

The Stiffer walked forward and stopped.

And it began to change.

Shedding its skin like a snake, the Stiffer, within seconds, began to take on a different form. Flesh and tissue seemed to melt off the heavy bones, sizzling as it hit the lead encased concrete floor. Gradually, what inhabited the Stiffer, transformed into its true shape.

It looked like a comic book pictorial of what a demon was supposed to be; high cheekbones, tapering off to a full-lipped mouth that housed two enormous incisors, large enough to be called tusks if the mood was right. The heavy muscular arms of the Stiffer were now replaced by reptilian appendages, scaly and sinewy, finishing off with hands that were distinctly claw-like, as if they had been liberated from some giant eagle and pasted on to the out-of-place serpentine arms and legs. Most striking of all, as they had been even in Stiffer-form, were the eyes. Two charcoal red pits fire stared down at Laura, hateful and menacing.

Laura found the strength to aim her gun.

The demon laughed, a laugh from hell.

She fired.

The Stiffer, or whatever it had become, was lifted off the ground and knocked on its backside. It sat there on the floor for just a second, a baffled expression on its face. One claw went to its midsection, feeling the outline of the gaping hole that Laura's discharge had produced. Laura felt faint, though she was able to cock the weapon once again.