Safari - 02

Safari

(Mountain Man Book Two)

By Keith C. Blackmore

Edited by Lynn O’ Dell (Red Adept Publishing)

Cover by M. Wayne Miller

Formatted by Jason G. Anderson

Safari (Mountain Man Book Two)

Copyright 2012 Keith C. Blackmore

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

A special thank you to Ken Maidment, Dr. Nassim Missaghian, and Robert Richter.

Prologue

Jackman froze on top of the wall when Puller and Screech blew apart.

Only a moment earlier, the first three men had jumped the wall and dropped behind it. Shots exploded, and they started wailing from the other side of the barrier. Jackman, Puller, and Screech answered the calls for help. They had leaped off the hood of the pickup to breach the gate and wall, avoiding the nails, scrambling up and over when Puller and Screech practically exploded.

Something slammed into Jackman with the force of a truck and flung him back, where he crashed onto the frozen ground. He landed flat on his spine and gasped for air, knowing for the first time what it was like to have the wind knocked out of him. He gasped, straining to get his diaphragm working, but the air merely trickled into his chest while his brain screamed for more. His side sparkled with distant pain, but what was really funky, even better than the trips on mushrooms, was watching the fishbowl slow motion of the rest of the group rushing to get over the wall. From where he lay on the snow-covered ground, feeling the cold creep into his back, Jackman heard Jonathan rage at the men and women to get their asses over the barrier and rush the house. Roxy was in there, and even though Jackman knew Roxy was with Jonathan, he still would not have minded being the one to save that beautiful ass, possibly making her grateful.

Gunshots, like dreamy fireworks, perked his hearing. He struggled to a sitting position. Something was wrong. Something was slowing him down. He looked down at his body.

His lower right side seeped blood in the area where a kidney might be. His coat covered the wound, but the bullet had made a jagged hole in the material just before biting a chunk out of him. A big chunk.

Gasping, he tried to stand. He rolled over, finally getting air into his lungs and feeling nausea taking his guts into a rinse-cycle ride. After another gasp, he got to his knees, grimacing and swaying. More gunshots behind him. Screaming. Jonathan wouldn’t be too happy if Jackman didn’t get his ass into the fight, but his ass had been
shot
. How the hell could he fight when he was banged up? He pressed a gloved hand to his wound, and the contact took his breath away again. He swooned and saw black stars for an unknown amount of time. Getting a hand up via the tire of the nearby pickup, he stood and leaned heavily against the vehicle. He was all alone on this side. The sky blinded him. How had the sun become so bright?

And why was it so quiet all of a sudden?

A feeling of dread washed over him, and he felt the need to retreat, to beat his ass back to the city. If the others were still alive, they’d be hollering. But they weren’t. And
damn
if his side wasn’t really starting to sing. Blood ran down his leg and spattered the snow, frightening him with its bright thickness.

Taking deep breaths, Jackman considered the pickup he leaned against. He wouldn’t drive it, however, because it was Jonathan’s rig. All told, five cars and one motorcycle were parked along the wall. Three of the cars had their tires punctured by nail-studded planks set into the ground. Jonathan had stayed on the mountain road, bypassing the crude, but effective trap. Rup on his motorcycle and Cleaner in his Dodge pickup had hung off Jonathan’s ass all the way up to the wall, avoiding the damage as well. The pair of empty trucks were lined up before the gate as if expecting it to open.

With blood soaking through his glove enough to make it feel squishy, Jackman lurched to the second pickup. He opened the door and hauled his bleeding body in, taking great gulps of air to fight off the nausea. He thumped his forehead against the wheel and let out a muffled curse. He cringed when he inspected his wound again. It was bad. Really bad. But if he could drive away, all would be fine. He had no real proof that things
would
be fine, but he felt it. He turned the key and the engine started. The door remained open, but that didn’t worry Jackman. He pressed his wound again, not bothering to look at it. With great concentration, he put the truck into reverse. Blood ran down his side and covered the seat. He made the first of a two-point turn and heard the tires abruptly hiss and deflate as they rolled over more of the nails. Groaning, he shifted the truck into drive and eased the machine back down over the road. The door bounced, but didn’t close.

Not sure how he did it, he reached the bottom of the mountain. In a daze, he slowly drove through the gate they had found and smashed through earlier. He turned right and kept his speed constant. Jackman peeked up over the leather-bound steering wheel, his forehead tapping the wheel’s upper curve in a slow cadence. He took a breath, and the pain made him bare his teeth. Every movement seemed heavy, and he barely had the strength to turn the wheel. The truck moved on for meters, slowing as Jackman had to concentrate on pressing on the gas. Seconds later, he wasn’t sure if his foot was on the accelerator or not. His wound didn’t hurt so much anymore, but he felt cold. In fact, he was freezing. He reached out to close the door, missed, and tumbled from the cab of the truck. Sparkly white rushed up to meet him. He broke his nose on the cold pavement, a quick
squish
like an eggshell mashing on one side. A second later, the rear tire missed crushing his heel by a hair. Somewhere, a soft crunch of metal on metal reached his ears, and he wondered what it was.

Tired
, Jackman thought. So tired. He lay on the road and took a breath, tasting the asphalt tar. Groaning, he rolled himself over onto his back and stared up at the sun.

The sunlight made him shut his eyes, and the darkness pulled away his consciousness. Images flooded his mind, of coming to Nova Scotia with the gang of self-styled road warriors, looking for sparsely populated areas and a safe place to live.

A sound, like the soft expulsion of air from a tire, came from somewhere near him. The noise didn’t rouse Jackman enough, however, to open his eyes. Blackness dragged him away again, and he relived times in the camp, sitting around open fires, talking and joking with the others.

Something nudged his boot.

Jackman opened his eyes and snarled against the light. Dark figures stood like shadows around him.

“Hey.” Jackman sighed, still feeling someone messing around with his boot. “Hey, help me out will ya?”

The shadows stood for several moments before one dropped to its knees. Jackman detected a smell, rancid and breathtaking. Who
were
those fucks, and what had they bathed in? That thought made him smile.

Fingers brushed his face, and the kneeling shadow lowered its head. A solid grip formed about his chin.

“Don’t need no mouth to mouth, man,” Jackman moaned. “So just––”

The shadow descending upon him opened its jaws. Gray skin flecked with black. Shards of teeth gleamed. More hands touched Jackman’s body. He felt his coat being ripped open, exposing his wound.

“Da
fuck?
” Jackman blubbered in a growing panic, wincing from the overwhelming stench of decaying flesh.

A mouth found his gunshot side and bit into it. He felt teeth and fingers claw into his wound, widening it, making the blood bubble up. The new pain shoved his senses back into his skull, and Jackman had a final, terrifying moment of clarity. Zombies were on him. A
lot
of zombies. He tried to move, but they were on his legs and on his arms, pinning him to the ground. They crowded in, blocking out the sunlight, covering him in rancid-smelling shadows. They jostled with each other for a piece. Jackman glimpsed ever-widening jaws as one of the creatures lowered its face to his. Filthy hair swung into his eyes. The zombie’s maw covered Jackman’s mouth, muffling his screams, before finally biting down on his tongue.

1

Gus could watch Roxanne for days, feeling her naked form pressed against him under the sheets, her hair splayed out behind her like a wild, overflowing river. He studied the smooth curves of her face and her long lashes as they fluttered in dream. Listening to her little breathless snores, Gus felt a twinge of happiness. He was one lucky bastard. He’d had to become the last man on Earth in order to find her, but she was worth the wait. He reached over and caressed her cheek. The space between her eyes momentarily wrinkled, and he smiled. He touched her again, and she moaned.

The moan became a scream.

Roxanne’s eyes flew open, and her hands pawed at his face. He wrenched away from her just as she threw back the blankets. Two bloody holes in her body drooled blood, soaking the sheets. He panicked and reached for Roxanne’s rapidly paling face. She snarled and bit on his forefinger––

With a violent shiver, Gus opened his eyes. Darkness filled the living room. He blinked, feeling the savage ache where Roxanne, the real one, had smashed him in the mouth, face, and body. The alcohol daze had deserted him, and the pain gnawed on his nerve endings like little fangs. He hitched a breath, regretting it instantly as the cold air once again pricked his broken teeth like needles. Lifting a hand to his face, he realized he still held a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Uncle Jack,” he muttered, keeping his lips close together to keep the air out of his mouth. It was a lost cause because his nose was still clogged with a combination of blood, bone, and mucous. He moaned wearily and looked around the room. Bodies lay like dark and gruesome lumps of coal. The wind sang through the broken door, a lonely sound that rose and fell.

Roxanne.
He felt a bolt of loss skewer him through his core. True, the bitch had tried to kill him, had succeeded in kicking the living shit out of him, and had brought the rest of the gang to his doorstep. It hadn’t been a fair fight. He had superior firepower with the Ruger pistol and the Benelli shotgun. They only had, at best, ordinary hunting shotguns. They’d had the numbers, though, for all the good it had them.

Gus had killed them all with no regrets.

The funny thing was that he had never thought he had it in him to kill another living human being. Killing the dead was scary, but they weren’t living people. They were
unliving
, and as frightening as they were, it still felt somewhat
noble
to put them down for the last time, as though he was releasing them from some unspoken hell of reanimation.

Sadly, he felt only a lingering guilt about putting down the living. He thought he should feel more
—Thou shalt not kill
—but the truth of it was that he didn’t. They’d tried to kill him first. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Or maybe he had just stopped caring after the fiasco with Roxanne.

A deluge of images filled his head, painful memories, all ending with her knee smashing into his face. If he had the choice, he would take the physical pain over the ache she’d left him with, a cocktail of loss and yearning with a generous dollop of betrayal. It wasn’t as bad as losing Tammy, but it was the most… recent.

Grunting, he got up off the sofa, hearing the slosh of Uncle Jack in his fist. Gus paused and studied the bodies scattered about the living room. They were still there. That was a good sign. He knew they were living, breathing people when he killed them, and they stayed where they were put down, so that was one variable to rule out from the ongoing puzzle of the disappearing dead. Only the
un
dead seemed to vanish.