Good Intentions 3: Personal Demons (24 page)

“How do I know you’ll let us go?” Rico asked. “You’ve already said our trust didn’t mean a damn thing to you. Why should we deal now?”

“You have few other options,” said Yusuf. “Explain yourselves fully or die. Insult me and I will let the ghuls devour your flesh and cast your bones out into the desert. Tell me what I want to know and I may release you. Tell me things I do not expect, and I may even allow you to take water when you walk out of here.”

Ghuls. Gotcha. Not zombies. As if I know the difference. Keep talking, guys
, Alex thought as he slipped up to the armored Humvee.
Keep talking and don’t get crazy
.

Thankfully, the door opened without a fuss. He crawled in, pushing aside a little gear and ammo. With the door shut behind him, Alex contorted and climbed around up into the turret. Though the vehicle sat partially hidden behind a wall, the turret offered a decent line of fire on Yusuf and the mob of ghuls. He kept his head low as he looked over the weapon.

Oh god you’re practically the same gun
.
Ammo’s loaded into the receiver, safety’s off.
A gentle tap of the box of ammo attached to the machinegun suggested he had a full load ready to fire. He could swivel the gun easily enough. Alex turned his eyes back to the scene in front of him. Yusuf’s height at least put him into a clear line of fire above the prisoners.
A gun could be completely pointless against this dude
, Alex figured, slowly turning the weapon.
But if I’m gonna fight a monster, at least I’ve got a monster of my own
.

“The desert is vast and dangerous,” said Yusuf. “Your spies and satellites cannot see through the smoke. No one else knows you are here. Your survival depends entirely upon my mercy. Give me a reason to let you live.”

Alex answered Yusuf’s challenge with a stream of bullets. The flash of tracer rounds drew an orange line from the machinegun’s barrel to Yusuf, but the real proof of Alex’s accuracy came from his target’s instant reaction. Yusuf cried out in surprise and alarm, jerking backward with his arms up to defend himself. Small gouts of fire erupted from his red skin where the bullets struck. The giant practically bled with flame as Alex hammered him with a second burst and then a third until Yusuf quickly faded from sight. In another breath, Yusuf was gone.

“Get down!” Alex shouted as loud as he could. “Get the fuck down!” As he expected, he now had the full attention of every ghul in sight. Most of them rushed straight for him in a mob. Alex opened up with a longer blast, sweeping to the right of the soldiers now lying on their faces. Given the enemy’s close ranks and the lack of cover, Alex saw exactly the instant carnage he’d hoped to inflict. The machinegun’s powerful rounds cut through one ghul after another. Blood and bone flew everywhere.

Four seconds of gunfire wiped out much of his opposition. Alex glanced to his left, knowing he still had plenty more to deal with. He saw an even bigger problem than the risk of hitting the men he wanted to save: some of the remaining ghuls fumbled with their rifles. A few had them up and ready.
Not zombies!
Alex thought with alarm. He ducked to avoid wild return fire.

The armored Humvee rattled loudly with the impact of round after round. Many more bullets flew high or wide. Some of the ghuls aimed their weapons with wounded arms. Others shambled along on shaking legs. None could match the skill their bodies had learned in life, though poor marksmanship wouldn’t make a man’s skull any less susceptible to bullets.

Alex swung the .50 to the left, deciding to focus on targets that posed no risk to the soldiers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several of the men scramble to their feet to join the fight.

Though the ghuls had held them down for Yusuf, they apparently hadn’t done much of a job at disarming their prisoners. Dwayne grabbed one ghul from behind and plunged a knife into its throat. Rico drew a small pistol from an ankle holster, unloading it on the two ghuls nearest to him. The living quickly claimed better weaponry from the dead.

All of that worked out as Alex had hoped. He held no illusions about taking on every enemy alone. As he suspected, all these guys needed was a break and a distraction to turn things around on their captors. Once back on their feet and armed, the men could fight for themselves, could make a run for the Humvee and escape…or, as it turned out, they could split up into a mess.

“Carter, Dwayne, secure the objective,” Rico called out, pointing to the closest ruined building. “Austin, Wes, cover me,” he ordered.

Aw, really?
Alex thought. The only objective he had in mind was escape. Unfortunately, he couldn’t shoot and drive at the same time. He watched two of the soldiers plunge into the ruins at Rico’s command while the apparent leader of the group knelt over their fallen comrade. Alex couldn’t fault him for that. Maybe he was making one last verification of Bryce’s death. Maybe he wanted to grab the poor guy’s dog tags or something.

The situation didn’t offer Alex much time to watch. Movement drew his gaze to the left of the group. More foes appeared, shuffling and scrambling on mangled limbs and dead flesh. A few fired their weapons with all the same poor marksmanship. Alex turned his machinegun on this new threat and hammered away. The .50 cal shattered masonry and bodies alike with each pass, quickly kicking up a cloud of dust along with its destruction.

Risking a glance to his right, Alex saw the others were now on their way to the Humvee—and then yelped as strong, impossibly hot hands against his leather-clad shoulders yanked him halfway out of the turret.

Yusuf dropped Alex on his back against the Humvee’s roof. The literal fire in the monster’s eyes said plenty about his mood. All the wounds drilled into Yusuf’s flesh by the machinegun had vanished. He looked entirely whole again.

He also suddenly looked quite surprised. Rather than finishing Alex off, Yusuf hesitated. “You are not with these men,” said the angry giant. “Why have you come here?”

Gunfire continued nearby. Men shouted. Smoke kept spiraling into the sky. Alex forced himself up, rolling and rising to his hands and knees to face the red monster. He shook his head to clear it. “What was the question?”

“Get down!” someone shouted. Alex dropped as Rico leaned around a ruined wall nearby to fire his captured AK. Yusuf soaked up the bullets with less trouble than he’d had from the machinegun. The red giant made a wide, sweeping gesture with one arm, conjuring an arc of fire that roared out over Alex’s head. Rico dove back behind the wall to avoid the flames.

Yusuf slammed his hands together, creating a loud gust of wind that blew ghuls and soldiers alike off their feet. Already practically on his belly, Alex felt the rush of air but suffered no harm as it passed. He rose to a crouch.

“Why are
you
here?” Yusuf asked again.

“Have we met?”

“No. I recognize the blood on your hands.”

The blood on my…?
Alex wondered. It could only mean one thing. He decided to go with it. His hand reached back to his collar, snatching the gladius free from its sheath. “Then maybe you ought’a step the fuck back, buddy,” he suggested.

Yusuf’s fiery eyes narrowed. “You cannot harm me with such ordinary weapons.”

Don’t back down now
, Alex thought. He nodded with all the confidence he could pour into his bluff. “That’s what the other guy thought.”

The staredown lasted for a heartbeat, then another…and then Alex took a single step forward. Yusuf floated back out of reach.

“Keep steppin’, asshole,” Alex warned, hoping to God this would work.

Yusuf raised his hands in a dramatic motion. Alex flinched, expecting more fire or wind or some other awful magic bullshit. Instead, Yusuf faded from sight as he had before. He thought for a split second his ruse had worked.

Then a faint green mist spread over the ruins. “Aw, shit,” grunted Alex.

Corpses all around moved once more. For every ghul blown apart with the machinegun, another now rose. Some came from the blasted buildings. Others crawled out of the burned and overturned vehicles nearby. One crept around from the dumpster—not the one he’d slain with his sword, but rather the body it had been chewing on.

“Get in the truck!” Alex shouted at the soldiers. He rushed back to the turret. “We gotta bail.”

“Who are you?” replied one of them.

“I’m an American with a machinegun and I’m not tryin’ to eat you. What more do you need to know?”

“Rico, we got it,” called out Dwayne. He hustled back with Carter beside him with a long box in a black cloth tucked under his arm. “Objective secure.”

“Not all our objectives,” pointed out Austin. “Bad guys are still moving.”

“Dude, get the fuck over it,” Alex snapped. “This isn’t the kind of fight you win. It’s the kind you escape.” As if to punctuate his point, a bullet ricocheted off the Humvee’s armor. Alex ducked reflexively. He saw entirely too many targets to choose from in almost every direction.

“Rico?” asked one of the soldiers.

“Wes, you’re driving,” said their leader. “Let’s go.”

They piled into the truck. Alex swung the machinegun around to blast the nearest group of ghuls. The Humvee’s engine roared to life, giving him a sense of hope until a sparkling wave of red light swept through their surroundings. The light faded almost as quickly as it had appeared, but it lingered in the eyes of the ghuls. Red sparkles ran down their broken limbs. In an instant, much of the mob went from limping and shambling to the energetic run of living, unharmed men. Others took up kneeling positions to aim and fire their rifles.

The last soldier through the Humvee’s doors cried out as he fell to the ghuls’ sudden improvement in their marksmanship. More bullets bounced around in the vehicle, filling Alex with terror. He fired back, having no better option than to stand in the turret basket and hope nothing hit him.

The driver didn’t wait for the others to slam the door shut. As soon as they had their comrade halfway inside, Wes got the vehicle rolling.

Movement gave Alex a boost of hope. The armored Humvee’s slow acceleration quickly put that hope into perspective, but as long as nothing killed the engine, Alex would take what he could get.

He felt a sharp thump, followed almost immediately by a jarring upward lurch and collapse like running over a speedbump. With a glance to the front, Alex realized the speedbumps were organic. One ghul after another bounced off the bumper or went down under the Humvee’s wheels.

More waited at the broken gate up ahead. Alex sprayed urgently with the .50. Unlike reasonable living people, the ghuls held their ground rather than scatter for the machinegun fire or the oncoming vehicle. Alex partially cleared their path, blowing more wood and steel off the gate along the way, but he couldn’t get all of the ghuls.

Some of them shot back. The handful without guns charged forward.

For most of the ghuls, their last stand at the gate didn’t work out. The Humvee blew straight through every barrier. A few leapt up in time to cling to the vehicle by way of hooking their arms through the shattered windows on either side or through even crazier means. One managed to clear the top of the hood, rolling straight into the windshield. Another hung from the corner of the hood through unfeeling tenacity, taking the full brunt of the gate on its back as the Humvee rammed its way out of the compound. Alex saw glowing red rage in its eyes as it glared back at him, and then nothing when the Humvee plunged into the swirling black smoke surrounding the area.

Thankfully, the darkness didn’t last. For a brief moment, Alex couldn’t see anything, nor could he breathe. Then he found himself nearly blinded by the full light of a nearly cloudless day. Wincing, Alex spotted a few small plants dotting the landscape here and there, but for the most part he saw only desert for miles around.

He still heard shouting and a few pops of gunfire, too. The ghuls hung on. The men inside the Humvee tried to fight them off. Alex shared their fright as the ghul lying against the windshield threw one hand over the corner of the vehicle’s roof and then the other to pull itself up.

Alex swatted the ghoul hard with the back of his fist. While the dead man may have felt no pain, the weight and force of the blow still knocked the ghul away. It lost its grip on the rooftop and fell away into the dirt upon the next solid bump.

The soldiers quickly shot and battered away the others that hung from the Humvee’s sides. Alex spotted the last ghul still clinging to the hood, its red eyes staring at him as it tried to climb up over the side. The .50 was clearly the last weapon Alex wanted to use for this task, even if he could have turned it that low on its mount. Instead, he drew the .45 from his jacket and took careful aim before he fired.

His first shot went high. His second struck the ghul squarely in the head, but that only made Alex feel worse as the dead thing still hung on. “Aw, gross!” he complained, looking away from the gruesome visage staring back at him. Alex forced himself to suck up the nightmare fuel as he aimed and fired again. He missed with yet another shot because of the bumpy ride. His fourth bullet ricocheted off the armored hood of the vehicle and into the ghul’s ruined face. It slipped from the hood to fall under the Humvee’s wheels.

The gunfire ended. No one shouted. Alex took in his surroundings again, watching the desert for more demons or ghuls. At this point, he half expected dinosaurs, too. Instead, he saw only low hills of sand, rocks, and scattered scrub plants. The Humvee rolled along a relatively flat dirt road. Thick plumes of black smoke rose from the ruins, hardly matching the obscuring tornado he’d seen from the inside. Even now, the smoke seemed to be dying off.