Moriah (13 page)

“You know this man?” Red called back, meaning Victor.

“I don’t know him at all.”

Red abruptly stopped in her tracks, halting Victor with her. Riley focused on the woman and her captive but was aware of the four other men fanning out behind Red in the field. The barrels of their weapons were not aimed at the ground. Tommy was there, his shotgun leveled at Riley.

“So,” yelled Red. “It doesn’t matter to you if he lives or dies?”

“I could care less.” Riley shrugged. “No offense,” she called out to Victor. “I want your friend,” she yelled back at Red. “Tommy.”

“Well, you’re not going to get him.” Red placed the Stechkin pistol in the grass at her feet as Riley eyed her warily across the distance. “You’re gonna get me.” Red produced a knife and cut the ropes binding Victor’s wrists. Victor looked surprised and flexed his hands, getting blood back into them. “Go,” Red gave him a push as she sheathed the blade. Victor glanced at the bandaged hand she’d pushed him with and Red saw him look. As he walked away, she stooped to pick up her pistol.

“That’s not acceptable,” Riley yelled to her.

Red looked across the distance separating her from the other woman. “Not acceptable?”

Victor fought the urge to run as he placed one foot in front of the other, moving away from the redheaded girl and towards the woman at the bomb.

“You heard me.”

“Here I am, asshole!” Though Red and the three others were stationary, Tommy continued walking towards Riley. “You wanted me? Well, here I am.”

Little Red held up her hand and Tommy hesitated where he was, looking unsure.

“Yeah, I heard you.” Red called to Riley. “Let me ask you a question before I kill you. Why’d your people set the fire?”

Riley told the truth. “We didn’t set the fire.”

“Well then,” Tommy demanded, “who did?”

As if on cue, the mutant broke from the tree line, roaring a battle cry, swinging a thigh bone over its head. It had what looked like half of a foot growing out of its skull.

“Shit!” screamed Chang.

“Fuck!” Tommy’s eyes went wide.

Victor broke into a sprint, away from the bomb, towards the river.

“Now!” Tris stood, waist deep in the ground, tossing the spider hole’s lid—camouflaged with tufts of dried grass and soil—aside, firing her Calico M960A in one hand.

Across the river, Bruce fired, but Red had already tucked and rolled, the bullet snapping the air above her head.

Riley threw herself backwards towards the bomb, landing in the grass behind it, twisting flat on her stomach, bullets raising plumes of soil around her. She ditched the detonator none too gently and came up with the Taurus, firing the .45 as quickly as she could pull the trigger.

The covers of three other spider holes were tossed off and Dee, Carrie and Kevin popped up, opening fire immediately. Chang yelped, his good arm outstretched, lifted off his feet in the barrage of automatic fire.

Red came out of her roll, flicking her wrist, the blade spinning end over end, catching Victor in the back of his shoulder. He went down with an
Oomph
!

The mutant screamed—a bullet plowed a hole through its side—but the thing did not slow as it barreled across the grass towards the nearest people.

Keith and David, on the ground, were firing back at the four men and women in the earth. In tandem, the brothers rolled onto their sides and shifted their fire to the mutant. Blood erupted from a dozen wounds on its torso and the thing pitched headfirst to the ground. The brothers turned back to their original positions and resumed firing at the people in the spider holes.

Red fired her pistol out at Riley and then started in with the N4, ragged bursts of 5.56mm lead sending geysers of dirt skyward around the bomb.

A dozen zombies broke from the tree line and started to run towards the humans who were trying to kill one another. Behind them, at least twice as many staggered out of the foliage. One of the slower ones had been an obese woman. It spotted a flash of red hair and stumbled mindlessly towards Red.

Having emptied her revolver, Riley pressed herself flat to the ground as bullets from Red’s Noveske pinged and ricocheted off the bomb in front of her.

David and Keith were prone in the grass, the brothers firing side by side.

“Fuck this, D.L.,” Dee muttered to himself, ducking down inside his hole in the ground, bullets zipping by overhead. Maybe the spider holes
hadn’t
been such a good idea.

“Screw this!” Riley tucked her arms in close to her body and rolled on her side to the riot shield, snatching it up, drawing her legs up behind it and covering herself. No sooner had she done so than the opaque ballistic shield began to shake in her grasp as small arms fire impacted it. “Shit!” Riley struggled to reload her pistol and keep the shield in place.

Victor couldn’t reach around far enough to grab the handle of the hatchet that jutted from his back. His adrenaline was pumping and he didn’t know how bad the wound was. He gave up attempting to dislodge the weapon and instead scampered across the field, wanting to get away from his captors and the undead coming up behind them.

Tris popped up and fired at Keith and David with her Calico, forcing the brothers to duck their heads down in the grass. Red turned her fire from Riley to the dreadlocked woman, driving Tris back into the earth.

* * *

“You!” Tommy yelled at Riley, walking across the field, oblivious to the automatic weapons fire erupting around him. He fired his shotgun as he came, pumped, fired, pumped and fired. The shield rocked violently in Riley’s grasp as the buckshot connected with it. It sounded like a handful of gravel was being thrown against it each time Tommy’s 12-gauge boomed.

Carrie fired on the redheaded girl until a burst of fire from Keith sent her ducking back into her spider hole.

The fifteen-inch, double-edged weapon blurred through the air like a Frisbee, burying itself in Victor’s leg. He cried out, reached for it and collapsed. Red knew she was good with a blade but even she chalked that one up to some degree of luck.

As Keith kept up his fire on the men and the women in the spider holes, David turned his aim to the zombies that were sprinting at them. The lead booker’s head snapped back and its body slid through the grass.

Riley gave up on the pistol and gripped the body bunker shield with two hands. She was taking fire from Tommy and Red. She watched Tommy come towards her, pumping his shotgun, bringing it to his shoulder. He was yelling at her, but she couldn’t make out his words over the din. Suddenly Tommy was knocked off his feet, shot down by Bruce across the river. Riley silently thanked Bruce and grabbed up her pistol again.

Tris was pinned down in her spider hole. “Smoke!” she yelled at the top of her lungs as she tossed the first of the three smoke grenades she carried into the field. Tris pulled the pins on the second and third and lobbed those too. Dee, Carrie, and Kevin followed suit.

Flat on his back, Tommy lay in the grass. He’d been hit. Sniper.
Fuck
. He extended the shotgun in the direction of the shooter and fired, knowing the buckshot had no chance of reaching the gunman, much less the river. He just wanted to let the fuck know he was still in this game. Tommy let the shotgun go and drew his pistols.

A score of zombies were staggering across the field towards the firefight. They moaned and walked with arms outstretched, seeing food before them and smelling blood. The obese one watched little Red’s head bob up and down in the grass and made for its intended meal.

Victor pulled the doubled edged weapon from his leg. “Damn it.” He threw the thing away from himself in disgust. Reaching up—his back and shoulder screaming at him—he undid the bandana he wore. He bound the cloth as best he could above the wound in his leg. He still had the hatchet in his back. He could feel it there.

Red had watched Tommy go down—“
Tommy
!”—and turned her fire on Bruce across the river. She fired the N4 and missed, the rounds kicking up dirt two feet from Bruce.

“Whoa!” Bruce twitched involuntarily and adjusted his own aim, finding Red through his sights. He fired and watched through the telescopic sight as his own round went wide.

“Okay-okay-okay…” Bruce kept Red in his scope as he worked the bolt on the M40 A3, preparing his next shot, determined not to miss on this one, the ground around him churning up in a maelstrom of dirt and dust.

“Yes!” Red saw blood mist as Bruce went down.

The mutant with the foot on its head sat up in the grass and growled, a low moan of pain and anger. Three of the bookers abruptly tackled it, flattening it.

Tommy signaled to Red that he was okay. He pointed behind Red to the enormous female zombie trundling her way. Red looked over her shoulder, relieved Tommy was okay. She ignored the zombie, knowing it wouldn’t bite her because of her own wound.

“Oh, shit!” A bullet careened off David’s helmeted head. He reached up and touched the helmet he’d taken from Victor. “Oh, shit,” he repeated, relieved.

As black smoke ballooned from the tree line—driving more zombies before it—the grey smoke from the hand grenades wafted across the field.

Riley had scrabbled over to her CETME on the soles of her feet and a palm, doing her best to keep the shield in place with one hand. Incoming fire continued to spark off the casing of the bomb in front of her. She took up the semi-automatic rifle but had difficulty bracing it with one hand.

The obese zombie reached Red and bent down over her. She hadn’t expected it to get so close but just as suddenly it lost interest and stood, beginning to lumber off.

“Wait!” Red sprang up, onto the rotund creature’s back. She was small and the zombie was elephantine. Its ass jutted out behind it like a shelf, and Red found her footing there as she sank the curved edge of the karambit deep between its shoulder blades, right where its neck met its clavicle.

The zombie tried futilely to reach around to the diminutive redhead on its back. Red jammed the barrel of the Noveske Diplomat N4 under the zombie’s right arm. She leaned over the undead’s meaty limb, peering through the smoke and haze, and fired the N4 with one hand, the other gripping the karambit like a pommel.

“Down!” Tris screamed.

The earth in front of Dee churned up in a spray of soil and grass and he barely had time to fling himself to the side, a 5.56 mm round catching him in his boot.

“Shhiii—Sugar!” Dee lay on his side, cringing at the pain in his foot.

Tris—out of her hole and stalking through the smoke—fired the Calico at the zombie on which Red perched. The undead absorbed the 9mm rounds, its torso shivering with the impact, fat rolls jiggling. Red swiveled the barrel of the N4 and sent a stream of lead at Tris, but the black woman had already found cover in an abandoned spider hole.

“Tris!” Carrie crouched in the grass and fired her submachine gun. Red’s zombie turned towards her, the barrel of the N4 pinned between its arm and torso tracking her movement as well. Carrie went flat as the bullets from the Diplomat sheared the grass above her.

Tris hopped up and fired out what remained of the Calico’s 100-round box magazine. As the zombie shifted in place from one foot to the other, disintegrating under the hail of lead, Red appeared over its left shoulder, her left arm hooked around the beast’s arm, her hand filled with the Stechkin APS, the 9mm cracking.

Carrie and Riley fired on the heavyset zombie as one, heavy booms from Riley’s CETME punctuating the chatter of Carrie’s SMG. Tris dove to her left—out of Red’s limited field of fire—and came up with her 9mms in both hands, discharging them. No sooner had she done so than she spied muzzle flashes through the smoke and haze and dropped, the brothers firing on her.

The obese zombie shuddered, driven back a step as it absorbed rounds, and collapsed onto its knees. Red flung herself from its back at the same time that a 7.62mm round caught it between the eyes. The creature flopped to the dirt, unmoving.

* * *

The mutant with the foot in its head stood up in the smoke. Pocked with bullet wounds and bleeding from numerous bites, it had a vacant look in its eyes. In one hand it still gripped the thigh bone.

“Tommy!” Red’s voice was nearly drowned out in the bedlam. “Stay down!” Tommy had pulled back the slides on both pistols as he lay in the grass and waited for his chance. When he thought he’d found it, he rolled onto his side and stood, ignoring the pain in his side where the sniper had got him.

“Damned smoke,” David said to his brother. “Can’t see the black woman.”

“She’s there.” Keith swapped magazines in his AR. “She’ll pop up again.”

“Brother, you know this helmet saved my life?”

“That’s good, then.”

Another mutant broke from the trees, racing across the field. Its hair hung down to its waist and it waved a nail gun as it ran.

Riley spied Tommy through the small, armored sight window of her shield. He was walking across the flatlands towards her once more, firing a pistol in each hand, his bullets and those of others bouncing off the ballistic shield. He was screaming at her as he came, and she still couldn’t make out whatever it was he was saying. Riley huddled under her cover and watched Tommy die.