Mutated - 04 (31 page)

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Authors: Joe McKinney

BOOK: Mutated - 04
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“Is that the Red Man?”
“Yeah. You see behind him? I think that’s Avery and Sylvia.”
He looked from the field to Niki. “Why would he have them up there with him?”
“Because he wants me.”
“You? Why, because you know where Dr. Fisher is?”
She stared through the rain at the Red Man, thinking back to the streets of St. Louis. He had her facedown on the pavement, his face inches from hers, his breath hot and foul, the stench of rot strong enough to make her gag. She remembered his hands moving over her butt, cupping the tops of her hips, gripping them like handlebars. The thoughts going through his addled mind had been obvious from the way his fingers trembled, the way his breath hitched in his throat. The virus had chewed his brain to a honeycomb, it had cracked his skin and swollen his joints, but it hadn’t killed the desires that lurked within him. Or perhaps his loneliness.
“Is that why he wants you?” Nate said. “Because of Dr. Fisher?”
She stared through the rain at Loren Skaggs, the Red Man, and hate swelled up inside her.
“Yeah,” she said. “That, too.”
Nate didn’t respond. He didn’t understand. That much was obvious from the vacant look in his eyes, but that didn’t matter.
“Nate,” she said, “he has to die. We have to kill him. Even if we get away, even if we manage to get to Dr. Fisher and deliver the cure and move halfway across the country, it wouldn’t matter. He’d come for us. He means to turn us all to be like him, to serve him. As long as he walks this earth, he’s going to continue to be a threat. He has to die.”
Nate nodded.
“I’ll go,” he said.
She laughed. “Don’t be stupid. I’ve seen you fight. You’d make it about thirty feet before they munched you.”
“Yeah, and how far will you make it?”
That stopped her, the way he said it, like he was mocking her.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. How far would you make it? Look at all those zombies out there. There must be a thousand or more. What are you going to do? You would need a hunting rifle to kill him. Or you could wade in there like you always do. You could probably kill a bunch of them, too. You’re good enough. But all it would take would be a bite, or a scratch. Even a spatter of blood in your eye would do it. Before you know it, you’d be one of his slaves, groveling at his feet all day. But not me. I can wallow around with ’em all day long and it won’t hurt me. I’ve been bit and scratched by them so many times I’m practically one of them.”
He took a deep breath and climbed down from the ledge.
“It has to be me.”
He was right. She hated to admit it, but he was right. Like it or not, he was their best hope. He was their only hope.
“We have to get Avery and Sylvia away from him. Promise me, Nate, you’ll do that?”
“I’ll try,” he said.
“No. Don’t try. Promise me.”
He paused for a long time, but then he nodded.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said.
“What?”
He reached into his pocket and took out a Ziploc baggie and held it up for her to see. Inside was a flash drive attached to a lanyard.
“Is that . . .” she asked, eyes wide.
He nodded. “Can you get this to Dr. Fisher? The doctor who worked on me said this contained everything someone who knew what they were doing would need to work up a cure.”
She took it from him. She tried to speak, but her throat wouldn’t work.
“I’ve seen what’s on it,” he said. “It’s a bunch of chemistry drawings and stuff like that. Looks like a bunch of math.”
“I can’t believe it’s real,” she said. “I’ve wanted something like this for so long.”
“You can get it to Dr. Fisher?”
“I will,” she said, nodding slowly. “I’ll get it to him.”
“Wish me luck.”
She nodded. “Good luck,” she said. “I’m gonna work my way down to the river. I’ll look for your friends, but if I can’t find them I’ll steal us a boat of our own.”
“I’ll look for you in the river.”
“Count on it.”
C
HAPTER
25
Gabi started shooting before Jimmy made it up to the flybridge. He glanced down through the rain and saw her directing concentrated fire on the men who had spotted them.
She moved aft, stepping through wet puddles of blood and mud and ropes of guts left behind from the zombie attack early that morning, right out onto the open part of the deck.
“Gabi, get behind cover!” he shouted.
She didn’t bother looking back at him. “Get us out of here!”
He hit the ignition and the Cummins diesel fired up with a cough, sending a tremor through the boat. “Thank you, baby,” he muttered to the boat, stroking the navigation console. God, he loved this boat.
He fed the throttle and a thick cloud of black smoke rose up from the engine. For a moment, it obscured Gabi from his view. When the smoke cleared, she had sighted her rifle on another of the Red Man’s boats, this one less than fifty yards to starboard. The men who had first spotted them were dead, one of them bent over the railing, his fingertips dragging the glassy surface of the river.
“Let’s go,” Gabi shouted. “Come on, Jimmy, get us moving!”
The
Sugar Jane
gained speed slowly. The first boat was dead in the water, but to back away from the dock they’d have to go right between two larger trawlers. Jimmy could see black shirts aboard, but couldn’t count them. Not through the smoke and rain.
He glanced down again at Gabi. It scared him that she was so out in the open, so exposed, but there was nothing he could do about it. This first maneuver was going to put her even more in harm’s way.
“Okay, coming about,” he called down to her.
She didn’t acknowledge him. She went down to one knee and resumed firing, her bullets tearing up the trawler just off the starboard bow.
Jimmy cut the wheel hard to starboard and the
Sugar Jane
began to rotate, the bow swinging around toward the shore.
He saw the little speedboat just as they started firing. A bullet hit the navigation console in front of him and peppered his face with bits of burning fiberglass and wood splinters. Jimmy flinched away from it, shielding his eyes.
There were three men in the little boat.
“Piece of cake,” he muttered.
He grabbed his AR-15 and sighted it over the railing. Despite the rolling of the boat and the driving rain he managed to fire off three quick rounds, one of which struck a black shirt with a handgun and dropped him. The remaining two black shirts ducked down behind the gunwale, but their boat offered little in the way of cover, and as the
Sugar Jane
continued to swing around, bringing the flybridge directly over their position, Jimmy had a clear shot. Six shots later all three men were dead.
But the
Sugar Jane
was still coming around and Jimmy had to drop his weapon to correct the steerage back on course. He reversed the engine and started feeding throttle as fast as he dared. She was a temperamental boat these days, and too much throttle would almost certainly cause the engine to sputter and die, dooming them both.
Ahead, two of the Red Man’s larger boats were barreling down on them, hoping to box the
Sugar Jane
in before she had a chance to pull away from the angle created by the pier and the shore.
Jimmy saw only one way out.
He said a silent prayer and pushed the throttle as hard as it would go, grimacing at the straining groan of the Cummins behind him. The first boat, with its dead crew, was still a good seventy feet from them. Jimmy turned the
Sugar Jane
to pass across its bow, a maneuver, he hoped, that would force the second of the two approaching trawlers to pass across its stern. It would give them some cover and take the boat out of the fight. At least for a moment.
That would just leave the other trawler, and Gabi was already laying fire down on them.
He held his breath as the dead boat loomed closer, ignoring the rain driving into his eyes and the occasional bullet that smacked into the walls of the flybridge. Jimmy was intent on gauging the pass, aiming to put the tip of the dead boat’s bow just inches off the
Sugar Jane
’s starboard side, and he didn’t hear Gabi’s screams until they’d reached a desperate pitch.
When he whirled around she was curled into a fetal ball against the port side gunwale, her rifle tucked under her. Six or seven black shirts were pouring down fire on the
Sugar Jane
’s stern, chewing up the hull and filling the air with splinters.
He grabbed for his rifle to return fire, but stopped short. Not far from Gabi’s head was the upturned box of M67 grenades, the contents now spilled out like billiard balls across the deck.
“Gabi,” he yelled, “throw me a grenade.”
He couldn’t tell if she could hear over the rain and the rattling cough of the rifles.
“Gabi!”
But she was already moving. Without getting up she lunged across the deck and caught one of the rolling grenades before the motion of the boat carried it away from her. Then she rolled over on her back and threw it up at Jimmy.
He caught it like an egg. These things had saved their ass more than once and he had a great respect for their power.
“Stay down!” he yelled to Gabi.
Then he turned the
Sugar Jane
hard toward the trawler and pulled the pin on the grenade.
The sudden move surprised the black shirts and for a moment they stopped firing, a few of them backing away from what looked like an imminent collision between the two boats.
Jimmy waited until they were almost even and hurled the grenade. It smashed through a window and exploded inside the cabin with a muffled roar, throwing the black shirts into the water, their bodies trailing smoke. An instant later the trawler was a churning ball of black smoke laced through with orange tongues of flame.
“Got him!” Jimmy shouted. “Damn straight!”
“Jimmy!” Gabi said. “Starboard side, we got trouble!”
He glanced that way. Its captain wasn’t as foolish as Jimmy had hoped. He hadn’t been fooled by Jimmy’s attempt to put the dead vessel between them. Instead, he’d come to a full stop and rotated back to starboard, so that now, as the
Sugar Jane
picked up speed to flank the trawler, she was presenting her bow full-on to the black shirts’ vessel.
Gunmen were already moving into position, low-crawling toward the point of the bow with rifles up and pointed downrange.
Jimmy realized he was stuck. His only hope now was to outrun them, but the
Sugar Jane
was already at full throttle and her diesel engine starting to sputter and smoke. They were making maybe eight knots, but the Red Man’s trawler was almost certainly capable of more.
“Jimmy?” Gabi called up to him.
He locked eyes on her. Her mouth was set in a tight line, her stare unblinking. He returned her gaze, unwilling to look away.
“You be ready with one of those grenades,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“They’re gonna catch us,” he said, “so I’m gonna let them.”
“What?”
“Just be ready.”
Bullets smacked into the flybridge and Jimmy ducked down out of sight. He just needed a few more seconds. A few more . . .
He rose up just enough see over the railing. As he suspected, the trawler was gaining on them. Its captain had her at full throttle, aiming to close the gap enough for his shooters on the bow to fire down into the
Sugar Jane
’s stern the same way Jimmy had done against the little speedboat closer to shore.
“That’s it,” he muttered. “Closer, closer . . .”
He reached up and pulled back on the throttle, bringing the
Sugar Jane
to half speed. The diesel coughed and sputtered, but kept working.
The
Sugar Jane
eased down slightly in the water.
At the same time, Jimmy shouted, “Now, Gabi! Give it to ’em!”
She rose up on her knees and tossed her grenade at the surprised black shirts on the trawler. They were gaining too fast now to turn away. The grenade hit the pilothouse, bounced forward, and rolled down into an open hatch leading to the forward hold.
The explosion blew a massive hole in the port bow, killing two of the black shirts directly above it and flooding the hold with river water.
And still the trawler sped forward, unable to check its forward momentum. The bow ducked toward the water and continued to drive down, going lower and lower until the boat slowed to a stop and gradually began to sink. Within seconds, most of its bow and pilothouse were underwater, only its stern jutting up at a sharp angle from the plane of the water.
Jimmy watched it as they pulled away, his chest heaving, and he almost allowed the warm glow of victory to overtake him. But Gabi was rolling around the deck, holding her arm.
“Gabi!”
He rushed down to her side and lifted her up, her head on his thigh. Smoke was seeping up through the seams of the engine compartment and the engine was making a series of consumptive coughs. Through the rain and smoke he peered at her injury. It didn’t appear too deep, but it was bleeding a lot.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“I know, just let me work.”
He took a soaking wet handkerchief from his back pocket and tied it around her upper arm, as close to the shoulder as he could manage.
“Tight?”
She was grimacing from the pain. She nodded, unable to speak.
“We’re in trouble, baby,” he said.
“No shit,” she gasped.
He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “That’s my girl.”
It was hard to tell if that was rain or tears in her eyes. He suspected tears, even though she too tried to laugh.
The engine’s coughing turned to a series of loud knocks, like some little gremlin was inside there banging against the hull with a hammer. Suddenly billowing clouds of black smoke poured up through the engine compartment seams, enveloping them both and causing them to hack.
The next instant, the engine died.
Through the smoke and rain, Jimmy could see the rest of the Red Man’s fleet racing toward them. They had been stuck on the opposite side of the pier and he had hoped that that would buy them the time they needed to escape, but it was obvious now that was not to be. A lot of water had passed under this boat of theirs. It had been their home, their refuge, their one solid link to the dream of Mexico they both shared. And now, quite possibly, it was going to be their coffin.
“I’m out,” she said.
For a moment, he wasn’t sure what she was talking about, whether her rifle or some deeper reserve of her being, but then she held up the rifle and the empty magazine.
He should have known.
“Wait here,” he said.
He went forward into the cabin and looked around for the last time. He saw the pictures of their daughter and their granddaughter broken on the floor, crushed by muddy boots, the sheets torn from the bed, the cabinets hanging open. They had searched it, rifled it, but they hadn’t changed it. For him, the substance of this boat was always there, even as it filled with smoke and the sounds of the Red Man’s fleet and his screaming black shirts bore down upon him. He took Ben Richardson’s backpack from the bed and pulled off the cushion and exposed the hidden compartments he and Gabi had secreted there. He pulled out two more of the ARs and a handful of loaded magazines and brought it all aft to take his position next to Gabi.
She looked down at the stuff he’d brought forward and nodded, a pained smile crossing her lips.
“Not gonna give up yet, huh?”
“Never,” he said. “Not while I’ve got you next to me.”
She smiled again, and this time it wasn’t laced through with pain.
With his help, she pulled herself to her feet. Her left arm was hanging by her side. But she still looked like the mama bear he knew her to be, always ready for the fight.
Thick clouds of acrid-smelling smoke swirled around them as they turned to face the oncoming fleet.
He reached down and took her hand, and together they waited.

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