Moriah (15 page)

“That…” Tris panted, “that it? That…all you got?”

Red cried out in hatred and rage, thrusting the Robbins of Dudley Trench dagger into Tris repeatedly, her teeth barred, spittle flecking her lips.

Tris punched Red square in the face, breaking the girl’s nose. Red’s eyes clenched shut automatically and she felt Tris grab her by her head. Tris snatched one of Red’s own sharpened chopsticks out of her hair and Red forced her eyes open in time to watch the stick plunge into her shoulder.

“Bitch!” Red cursed Tris, but Tris had already stolen the second chop stick from Red’s hair and made to ram it through the girl’s eye socket. Little Red’s speed nearly defied physics. With her wounded hand, she palmed the elbow of the hand Tris gripped the chopstick in, pushing it up and towards the black woman. At the same time, she cupped Tris’s hand with her good palm, driving the chopstick through the black woman’s throat.

Tris blinked, shocked, the chopstick run through her neck. Her hand was still clasped around the instrument.

“That’s it, grandma.”

* * *

Victor was out of bullets. He didn’t want to be eaten by Zed. He had the bomb. He’d blow them all sky high. He wondered if anyone had gotten away. He hoped so. They’d come back to get him, to free him from his captors. They’d come back for him. Tris hadn’t left him out here. He was thankful for that.

Where was the detonator? He looked. There was a pistol he didn’t recognize in his hand. Where had he gotten it? Its slide was locked open. Victor knew that meant something but he couldn’t remember what. He felt sluggish. Somewhere close by, a zombie moaned. There was a pistol in his hand. Hadn’t he just noticed that? There was a box in his other hand. The detonator. He knew it was the detonator.

Victor told his thumb to close over the button and push it, but Victor’s body wasn’t listening to him anymore. He closed his eyes, thinking he’d open them and try it one more time, but once he closed them they did not open again.

* * *

“That’s it, grandma.”

Red stared into Tris’ eyes and grinned triumphantly, her teeth bloody. This woman was finished. She brushed Tris’ hand off the chopstick and gripped the utensil herself. “You’re done, bitch.” Red pulled the chopstick from Tris’ neck and a jet of blood squirted out. “Done. You hear me?”

Red wasn’t prepared for Tris’ next move. The dreadlocked woman snatched the chop stick out of Red’s hand and thrust it back into place, skewering her throat through the already-opened wound, choking off the squirting crimson.

Red stared at the woman in disbelief and incomprehension.
This
was one crazy burnt bitch.

A hand gripped her shoulder and Red shrugged it off as she turned, facing the zombie that had come up behind her.

“You don’t want me,” she told it, feeling woozy.

Dozens of zombies had gathered around them.

The sickle blade caught Red in the clavicle from behind, sinking six inches into her upper chest. She screamed in shock and agony as Tris yanked on the handle, spinning the girl around to face her.

The zombies groaned about them.

Tris’s face was burnt and scarred but her eyes were clear. She grabbed Red with her free hand, pulling the girl close, hugging her to her own body.

“You…” Red tried to speak.

When Tris opened her mouth to respond, blood poured out.

One of Red’s arms was free but it hung at her side, useless, her palm run through. As Red watched, Tris reached up to her mouth, her bloodied teeth clenching down on the cotter pin of the grenade she wore around her neck. Tris yanked the pin free with her teeth and spit it away with the last of her strength as the handle flipped off.

Red felt the fingers of a zombie brush against her hair.

As Tris’ legs gave out, the two women went to the earth as one, the undead piling on top of them.

Their bodies muffled the grenade blast.

* * *

They found some shallows and crossed the river, Riley and Kevin on either side of Dee. When their feet touched firm ground they continued their awkward five-legged walk several meters, until, finally overcome by their wounds and exhaustion, the three of them slumped together on the ground, breathing heavily.

“What should we do?” Riley asked.

“I think I’m going to lay here and bleed,” Kevin answered.

Across the river, hidden from them in the smoke, a zombie stumbled out of the fumes and stooped above Victor’s body and the bomb. It had scented Victor’s blood from a distance and worked its way through the haze and growing heat. The creature looked down on the human being and was disappointed. This man was dead.

“Well, look who we got here…”

Riley and Dee sat up. Five meters from their position, Cosmo and four of his children stood in a line, one of the most disturbing sights either Riley or Dee had ever seen.

“I don’t want to see this,” Kevin lay where he was, an arm over his eyes. “Do I?”

“…only question, now,” Cosmo continued, petting Fred Turner’s stuffed cat, “…is who we gonna kill first?”

One of Cosmo’s kids started to laugh and shake uncontrollably as it did so. The man-thing clutched a machete and had a sizable fluid-filled lump growing on its back.

The zombie across the river reached down and touched Victor’s body, prodding it. The man was definitely dead. There would be no eating this one. In its own way, the creature was disappointed. It pried the detonator out of Victor’s hand, curious.

“Yeah,” Kevin had sat up with Dee and Riley and was staring, eyes wide. “I don’t want to see this.”

“Can we fuck ‘em first, dad?” a mutant with a spiked club asked.

“Yeah, I think we can do that.”

One of the mutants tittered and clapped its hands in anticipation while another began unbuckling its pants.

“Eeeny…meeny…miney…moe,” Cosmo had taken his hand from the stuffed cat, moving his finger from Dee to Riley to Kevin and back. “Grab a piggy…by the…toe…”

The zombie stared down at the detonator in its hand. It was a square box with a cord running out of the bottom. The undead had no idea what the contraption was. But the bright red button in the center of the detonator interested it.

“Hey, anybody seen my sister Mergatroid?” The mutant with the spiked club glanced around. “She was standing over here a minute ago…”

“…if he hollers…let him go…my mother said…to pick this one…”

A whistle sounded off to the side. The mutants, their father, and the human beings seated on the ground turned as one.

Bruce stepped from behind a tree. His upper arm and shoulder were heavily bandaged, the gauze stained red. In both his hands he held the MM1 multi-barrel grenade launcher.

“And
you’re
it, bitches!” He cried, firing the HAWK. Dee flung himself back, his outstretched arm driving Riley to the dirt with him.

The buckshot rounds pulverized flesh and bone and severed limbs from torsos. A few quick yelps were cut off abruptly as projectile rounds hit their targets. Remains showered down from the sky in a red vapor. The more solid pieces thumped to the earth, streaming bits of bloodied flesh and clothing. The stuffed cat was thrown clear, head over tail.

When Bruce stopped firing, Dee and Riley sat back up. Kevin had remained in a seated position the entire time and blinked through the mutant viscera and body fluids that drenched him.

Something struggled to right itself amid the scattered body parts and ruptured torsos. Something that had survived.

Dee pushed himself off the ground with the barrel of his FN-FAL, standing unsteadily on his one good leg. He cranked up the chain saw mounted under the barrel of his rifle and hopped forward to the quivering mass. His jaw clenched, he plunged the whirling blade into whatever was moving. It squealed in agony as blood jetted, Dee sawing into the misshaped heap.

When he was satisfied that nothing else stirred, Dee silenced the chain saw.

“That was…” Kevin, sitting there, was at a loss for words.

“Hey,” asked Bruce. “Anybody seen Tris?”

The concussion from the bomb’s detonation knocked those standing flat.

There was a ringing in Riley’s ears. She stared into an autumn sky clear and blue.

When she could, she sat up. She put a hand to her head and groaned. That had not been pleasant. Around her, Dee, Kevin and Bruce were righting themselves, rising.

“Think that was Tris?” Kevin asked Bruce. He yelled because he could not hear himself very well.

“What?” Bruce rasped back.

Across the river from them, a smoking hole was all that was left where the bomb had been. Pieces of zombies littered a meadow scoured of all life. The force of the blast had knocked down trees and blown out the advancing flames.

Dee slung the FN-FAL across his back and checked the load on his Python. His foot and leg hurt like hell. He could feel blood pooling around his toes. He half sat, half fell back on his butt, and got to work removing his boot.

“Let me help you.” Riley unknotted the laces and started to pull them from the eyelets.

“Thanks.”

“You think that’s it?”

“Yeah, Riley. I think that’s it.”

In the scorched grassland past the river, a head lay smoking amid the ruins. A stub of vertebra jutted from its neck. The eyes were open and darting about, lucid and aware. The head opened its mouth and moved its jaws, but no sound emerged. Though it was burned from the explosion, the tattoo that covered almost half of its face remained clearly visible. The head waited there, amidst the singed and blackened grasses, beneath the azure skies.

“Oh, man.” Kevin touched at his side where Red’s karambit had bit into him. “We’re all fucked up.”

“What?” Bruce yelled back at him.

“We’re all fucked up.”

“Say that again?”

“You’re deaf.”

“What?”

“The explosion!” Kevin raised both hands, mimicking an eruption. He pointed to his ear. “You’re deaf!”

“You can’t hear me?”

“My foot is…” Dee stared down at the mess at the end of his leg. Riley had removed his boot and cut off his sock. The bottom half of Dee’s foot was a busted, bloodied mess.

“Bruce.” Riley called to the deafened man who stared without blinking around them. “
Bruce
!” When he didn’t acknowledge her, she turned back to Dee. “I’m going to go down to the river and get some water to clean these wounds.” She motioned from Dee’s foot to Kevin and Bruce and their assorted injuries. She raised Dee’s foot by the ankle and placed it on a rucksack. “Keep it elevated and wait here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dee promised. “Can you see if you can find my jacket? I left it in my spider hole.” He watched her go. “Hey, Kevin.” His friend was soaked from head to toe with blood and bits and pieces of things. “You okay?”

“I’ll be okay, I think.” When he shook the body armor he’d stripped from his torso, small gobs of lead dropped from it. “Look at that. Damn.” He tossed the armor away. “Bruce got hit in the shoulder pretty good. And he’s deaf.”

“What?” Bruce looked puzzled.

“Just ignore him,” Kevin counseled. “I’ve got to get down to the water, wash this crap off me. I’m covered in…” He looked over at the pile of steaming entrails and flesh.

Dee studied the bloody wreck at the end of his ankle before laying his head back in the grass. He watched the sky while Bruce sat nearby with a blank look on his face. A cotton-like cloud had just entered his field of vision when Riley returned, wet and lugging an assortment of equipment.

She washed his foot and cleaned it as best as she could. “If my friend Troi was here, she’d know what to do.” There were no bones coming through Dee’s skin, and Riley thought this was a good sign. “She worked in a hospital.” When they were kids, Anthony had broken two toes and the doctor had sent him home as he was, explaining that a toe would basically set itself so long as you didn’t go out of your way to aggravate it. She wondered if feet were the same way. Riley packed Dee’s foot with gauze and bound it with elastic wrap. His leg was another matter. She couldn’t tell if it was truly broken without x-rays.

“You’re next,” she motioned to Bruce. When he asked her
what
, she waved him over.

Kevin returned with a couple of rifles and two overstuffed packs over his shoulders. He was wet and clean, his skin red where he’d scrubbed it. “Here.” He set his load down. “I gathered what antibiotics and all I could.”

Riley told him, “This is good,” and looked at a package of medication she had never seen before. “What’s this?”

Dee looked at the label. “An anti-inflammatory.”

“You’ll need some of these. Where did you guys get them, anyway?”

“There’s places out there,” answered Kevin. “Societies and cities like where you’re from. They’re producing things. Think we got those out west.”

Riley nodded, filing this information away for later. She’d spent her entire life in New Harmony. Of course she was aware of the existence of other civilizations but she had never visited any or met anyone who had. Perhaps, she corrected herself, Krieger had, though the guide hadn’t been too communicative during his time with them. No, that wasn’t true either. Krieger had spoken at length with Troi a couple of times that Riley knew of.