Authors: Joe McKinney

Mutated - 04 (14 page)

BOOK: Mutated - 04

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“Oh my God,” Avery said. “Niki.”

“Shhh,” Richardson cautioned her. “Not too loud.”

The Red Man held out a hand and one of his soldiers handed him a knife. Then he crossed the driveway to where one of McHenry’s squad was dying. The man was on his back, twitching and moaning, trying to point a finger at Niki Booth.

Two of the black shirts grabbed Niki and pulled her over to the Red Man, who knelt down next to the dying man and began carving one of the ears from his head. Screams echoed over the corn.

Niki tried to turn her head, but the soldiers wouldn’t let her.

“This was Ken Stoler’s mighty rescue party,” he said, holding up the bloody ear. Black blood dripped off the Red Man’s fingers. “Nobody’s coming for you, Niki. You realize that now, don’t you? Do the right thing and tell me where I can find Don Fisher right now.”

Niki said nothing.

“No?” The Red Man held up the ear he’d just cut from the dying soldier’s head. “You know that man, don’t you? I bet you trained him yourself, didn’t you? Well Niki, you have the power now to decide how he’s gonna die.” Then the Red Man turned and flung the man’s ear between two zombies, who immediately fell on the morsel like snarling dogs in a pit. “He can die like that. Or you can tell me where I can find Don Fisher, and I’ll have my soldiers shoot him in the head. It’ll be over in one shot.”

Even from the hayloft, Richardson could see Niki Booth steeling herself against the decision she was forced to make.

She shook her head.

“You sadden me, Niki,” the Red Man said. “You truly do.”

He let out another low, rattling moan, and the zombies who had been waiting at the edge of the corn moved forward like a wave and descended on the dying soldier, whose panicked whimpering had turned to screams once more. They ripped him open in seconds, pulling him apart, leaving nothing but a bloody puddle in the dirt. Richardson nearly threw up watching one of the zombies drag an arm across the driveway and into the ditch, where it started feeding.

Roving camera, he thought. Roving camera. I’m a roving camera. He repeated it in his head again and again, as though in the repetition of it he could force the images of the man’s death out of his head.

A moment later the black shirts were stuffing Niki Booth back in the truck and the whole caravan was driving away, leaving a driveway full of bodies and zombies too wounded to climb into the trucks.

Richardson fell back on his butt in shocked disbelief. Had life become so cheap that it could be tossed aside like that? He turned to look at Sylvia and Avery, but they were as horrified as he was.

They sat that way for a long time, none of them speaking, until they heard a man’s voice say, “Dude, just stay down.”

Richardson glanced at the women.

“Who is that?” he whispered.

Sylvia shrugged.

Richardson leaned forward and peered through the slats. He saw a scraggly looking younger man on the driveway. He was holding an AR-15, but it was obvious from his stance and the way he gripped the weapon that he didn’t know how to use it. Ten yards ahead of him was a zombie, struggling to stand on the one leg he had left. The other was a burned and bleeding stump severed just above the knee. Both the zombie’s arms looked broken as well. Every time it tried to stand, it collapsed in a heap. It was breathing hard, and when at last it couldn’t muster the strength to stand, it tried to pull itself along with its mangled fingers.

“Dude, come on,” the scraggly looking man said. He pointed the rifle at the zombie and pulled the trigger. It jumped in his hands as a three-round burst left the gun, killing the zombie. Then he lowered the weapon and looked around. A dozen more zombies were pulling themselves along with their fingers, inching closer to him.

“That’s the man from the gas station,” Richardson said.

“No,” Sylvia said. “Impossible. He’d have changed by now.”

“It is. Look at him.”

All three of them did. Then Sylvia sat back and shook her head. “That’s impossible . . . Ben, wait! Where are you going?”

C
HAPTER
11

The morning had greeted Nate Royal with a kick in the ribs and something heavy dropping down on top of him.

Nate groaned with the pain.

He tried to roll over, but the body on top of him wouldn’t budge.

“Get off,” he said, pushing the body away. His arms felt limp as wet pasta. There was no strength in them; and even the slight effort of rolling over left him exhausted. With his head spinning and his stomach threatening to rise up his throat, he blinked at the man who had tripped over him and was now rising to his feet.

“Oh shit,” Nate said.

The man was a zombie. He was dressed in soiled rags, his face covered with abscesses and oozing sores. One ear was missing, and that side of his head and the shoulder beneath it was dark and crusty with dried blood. The zombie bared his teeth at Nate, and a stuttering moan escaped his lips.

The moan was answered by other zombies all around them, just out of sight in the corn. Backing away from the zombie, Nate looked around. He couldn’t see through the head-high cornstalks, but even through his fevered disorientation, he could sense movement all around him.

“Christ, not again.”

Nate tripped over a backpack on the ground, and for a moment couldn’t place it. The fever still gripped him. His body felt achy and weak, his head in a fog. But he remembered walking up by the river and finding the family that had taken care of him gone, their campsite cleaned of everything but the backpack at his feet. He remembered picking up the backpack and walking most of the day. The smoke and the smell of roasting meat had brought him to this place. He’d hoped that it was the family who had gone off and left him. But he hadn’t been able to make it all the way. He got lost in this cornfield in the dark, and when he tripped and fell, he just stayed there, unable to get back up.

But he had to move now. The zombie brought its hands up and started clutching for him. Its moans were becoming louder, more insistent. And other zombies were answering it. Nate looked over his shoulder and saw movement in the corn.

The zombie put its hand on Nate’s arm. He felt pressure from the thing’s fingernails.

“Get off,” he said, and yanked his arm away.

The zombie stumbled forward and fell face-first at Nate’s feet. Nate backed away quickly. The zombie was on top of the backpack and Nate reached down and pulled it out from under the zombie. And as the bag came away, a can of green beans fell into the dirt between them.

The zombie was trying to get to its feet. Nate tossed the backpack aside and scooped up the can of beans just as the zombie turned to face him. Gripping the can with both hands he swung it down on the zombie’s forehead. The edge of the can struck the thing’s forehead and bounced off, and Nate, who with his fever could hardly keep his balance, went tumbling after it.

He landed painfully, his hands bunched up underneath him. Nate heard a moan and rolled over. The zombie’s head was haloed by morning sunlight, but Nate could still see the enormous gash across its forehead where the edge of the can had cut it. Fresh blood was streaming down the thing’s face, getting in its eyes. It was reaching for him frantically, its moaning coming in a quick, animal-like snarl as its fingers tore at the stalks of corn all around it.

Nate clambered away on his hands and knees. The zombie was right behind him, stepping on his feet, its fingers at the small of Nate’s back.

Nate gave the zombie a kick in the knee and rolled to one side, and when he did he saw a stick about as long as his arm in the dirt. He picked it up and climbed to his feet. The zombie was turning toward him, its face covered with blood. Nate took the stick in both hands and stabbed the zombie in the face, catching it in the eye and causing it to fall to the ground, where it rolled over onto its side, twitching as if it had been electrocuted.

Watching it, Nate let out a long sigh. He felt like he had to throw up, but as soon as he bent over, he saw more of the infected crashing through the corn, coming his way.

“Damn it,” he said. He didn’t have the energy for this.

There was a farmhouse behind him. He turned and staggered off in that direction.

Nate was aware of noise, but his fever-addled mind couldn’t pick it apart. He couldn’t identify it.

But he could hear the zombies moaning behind him. There was no confusion there. A bite from one of the zombies wouldn’t hurt him—not a small bite anyway—but if they caught him there would be no way in hell he’d be able to wrestle with them. Two or three of them would be able to pull him apart, and his immunity couldn’t help him with that.

The noise was growing louder. He could hear men screaming. And was that gunfire he heard? It sounded sporadic. Panicked.

Something invisible whistled past his face. The next moment, the air seemed to come alive around his head. A high-pitched sizzle, like the sound of an angry swarm of bees, enveloped him. Stalks of corn and leaves were exploding, filing the air with floating bits of plant matter.

Bees?
he thought.
Oh shit, bees.

Nate swatted at the air, trying to wave away the dark specks floating all around him. Between the noise and the fever and the floating bits whirling around him, he felt disoriented. He stumbled as he turned, trying to find the farmhouse but suddenly unable to do so.

Someone ran in front of him—a man in a gray shirt and black military style pants. He was carrying a black rifle. Nate caught a flash of him before the darkness of the corn swallowed him up.

“What the . . . ?”

Nate turned around again, and this time he could see another man, dressed just like the first soldier who had sprinted by him, firing at a pair of zombies. Both zombies went down, but not before a third stepped out of the corn next to the man and tackled him to the ground. The zombie ripped into the man’s throat, spattering blood all over the corn as the soldier’s body twitched and convulsed under the attack.

Nate could only stand there and stare at the ferocity of the attack.

Thankfully, the man’s screams were cut short by gunfire.

He had wandered into a full-fledged battle, Nate realized. Looking around, he could see men in gray shirts and black pants fighting the zombies pouring out of the corn. Bullets continued to fly, but the soldiers had lost control of the situation. Even Nate could see that. The zombies had broken through their lines and now the soldiers were on their own, firing at random into the corn, swinging their guns like clubs when their ammunition ran out, dropping to the ground beneath a hail of hands and teeth, their shrieks rising into the air unheeded.

Nate was nearing the edge of the corn. Beyond it, he could see a dirt driveway that led between the farmhouse and its barn. A few of the soldiers had managed to make it there already, but they were dying just like the others still stuck in the corn.

One of the zombies moaned behind him and Nate turned. It was the same zombie he’d gouged with the stick, and he could still see its blood and dirt–stained end protruding from the eye.

A sickened groan escaped Nate’s lips.

“No,” he said. “Dude, stay down.”

He was about to rush forward and push the zombie down when one of the soldiers stumbled out of the corn next to him and opened fire. The bullets whizzed past Nate’s head and thudded into the zombie with the stick in its eye. The zombie convulsed and fell to its knees.

Nate, for his part, turned to watch the soldier run out of the corn and into the driveway, and right into the path of two big black trucks. The soldier turned his rifle onto the men in black pouring out of the trucks, but he wasn’t fast enough. One of the men got off a burst of fire first and hit the soldier in the gut. The man collapsed into the dirt of the driveway and rolled over, groaning, unable to get back up.

Nate recognized the men in the black shirts right away. They were the same men who had chased him from the gas station. Recognition went through him like an electrical surge. He backed up from the edge of the corn and knelt down.

As he watched he realized that the sounds of the fighting were gone. There was no more shooting, no more screaming. The only noise came from a warm breeze whistling quietly through the corn and the faint murmur of groans from the wounded.

How did they find me?
Nate thought.
Jesus. It’s me. They’re here for me.

“What do I do, Doc?” Nate said. “Come on, Doc. I need some help.”

Kellogg stepped through the corn, bits of floating leaves drifting through his form. He knelt down next to Nate, studying the events playing out in the driveway.

“Looks like you got yourself into a mess,” he said.

“Just tell me what to do, Doc.”

“Stay down. Keep quiet. If they see you, run back into the corn.”

“I can’t run, Doc. I’m hurting really bad.”

“Then keep your head down and hope they don’t see you.”

A flash of red caught Nate’s eye and he looked up. The Red Man, the same one who had tried to infect Nate by sticking his finger in Nate’s mouth, was getting out of the truck and walking over to the gut-shot soldier.

“What in the hell . . . ?”

“That right there,” Kellogg said, “is trouble. Bad trouble.”

The Red Man looked down at the wounded man, then turned back to his truck, where two men in black were leading a pretty girl in handcuffs to the middle of the driveway.

Despite his fear and his fever, Nate tilted his head to one side in appreciation. The girl had a nice shape, even in those military-style pants.

One of the black shirts handed the Red Man a hunting knife. Without flourish or hesitation, the Red Man knelt down next to the wounded man and sliced his ear off. “This was Ken Stoler’s mighty rescue party,” the Red Man said to the handcuffed girl. He showed her the ear, the blood dripping from his hand. “Nobody’s coming for you, Niki. You realize that now, don’t you? Do the right thing and tell me where I can find Don Fisher right now.”

Don Fisher, Nate thought. Holy crap.

“Doc, what’s going on?”

“Quiet, Nate.”

“No?” The Red Man held up the ear he’d just cut from the dying man’s head. His eyes were locked on the pretty girl’s face. “You know that man, don’t you? I bet you trained him yourself, didn’t you? Well Niki, you have the power now to decide how he’s gonna die.” Then the Red Man tossed the ear to a couple of waiting zombies, who tore into it like they hadn’t fed in days. “He can die like that,” the Red Man went on. “Or you can tell me where I can find Don Fisher, and I’ll have my soldiers shoot him in the head. It’ll be over in one shot.”

Nate had no idea what was going on, why the Red Man was trying to bargain with this girl, but he could tell the girl was tough. She clearly knew the dying man. The way she looked at him, it was obvious she had known him for a long time. But when she straightened her back and shook her head at the Red Man, there was no hesitation.

“That one’s got some grit,” Nate muttered.

“Quiet, Nate,” Kellogg said. “Just watch. Don’t get involved. Whatever that is, it isn’t your fight.”

The Red Man said something to her after that, but it was drowned out by the dying man’s screams as the zombies swarmed over him.

The next instant, the Red Man’s soldiers were pushing the handcuffed girl back into the truck. Then the trucks lurched forward, gravel popping beneath their tires, and they were gone, leaving only a slowly settling cloud of white dust and the muffled groans of the dying.

“Doc, what just happened?”

No answer.

“Doc?”

But Kellogg was gone.

Something rustled in the corn behind him and Nate turned. It was the zombie with the stick in its eye, crawling now, its bloody hands almost close enough to tighten around his ankle.

“Goddamn it,” Nate said. “Dude.”

He walked crookedly out onto the driveway. The Red Man’s trucks were a long way off, almost out of sight.

Nate breathed a sigh of relief.

Turning, Nate saw the bloody mess on the driveway where the gut-shot soldier had died. There was little left but a hand here, and a foot with part of a leg still attached over there.

But his rifle was still there.

Nate walked over to the gun and picked it up. It felt light in his hands. He wasn’t quite sure how to hold it, but he could see the selector switch on the side of the gun was set to BURST, and he knew that meant it would fire a bunch of rounds at a time when he pulled the trigger.

He sensed movement behind him. It was the zombie with the stick in its eye again. It had managed to crawl out of the corn and onto the driveway, its fingernails tearing off its fingertips as it pulled itself toward him.

“Dude, come on,” Nate said.

Nate was exhausted. His head was swimming from the fever, but he forced himself to focus. He leveled the rifle at the zombie and pulled the trigger.

BOOK: Mutated - 04

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