Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (24 page)

Mason disregarded the kid entirely. He scooped Mackenzie into his arms and sprinted into the kitchen, then he settled the girl into a tight recess on the far side of the counter and shouted over the bedlam, "Wait right here!"

"No, Mace!" She pleaded, "Don't leave me!"

She reached out for him, and he took hold of her hand, then he dropped down to his knees and reeled the girl into his arms.

"I'll be right back, I promise," he assured her, "Trust me, Mack."

Reluctantly, she let him go, then she nodded nervously, wrapped her arms around her legs, and drew her knees up under her chin. Before Mason had the chance to reconsider, he left her there and tore back the way he'd come, straight toward the invading swarm. He saw the kid scrabbling backward, squealing in utter panic, but when the kid back-crawled into his path like some sort of lame cockroach, Mason leapt over him like an olympic hurdler and continued on to his real objective. His bag and pikestaff were laying in a pile near the window. and either was worth more than a thousand mewling little punks.

Two creepers were between Mason and his objective, but he didn't hesitate a moment. The bag was important, but that big chunk of cast iron was absolutely vital, so he lowered his shoulder like a linebacker and ran straight at the creatures. He caught the first squarely on the chest and sent it spiraling through the air in a tangle of arms and legs, then the other creature came at him with claws out and teeth gnashing, and Mason lashed out a foot, kicked its legs out from under it. The creeper dropped it to its knees, and before it could recover, Mason levelled another kick to its head as if he were intent on sending a football into the end zone. His foot connected with the creature's chin, and the thing was driven backward, slamming the back of its skull on the floor with a sickening
keerack!

He grabbed up his pikestaff just as a blur of movement clouded his peripheral vision. Without wasting precious milliseconds in identifying the threat, he stabbed at the movement with the back end of the weapon and felt a satisfying shudder reverberate through the staff. He spun on his heels and swung again, trusting his senses that another one was there, and sure enough, once his eyes caught up to his actions, he saw a young female collapse to the floor, the side of her head shattered to dust.

He cast a quick glance to the breach and saw creepers pouring through in a flood. Some tore themselves open on the jagged shards of glass at the edges, and the odd one stumbled over the low threshold, but on they came. There may have been a dozen inside already, but it would be triple that in another minute. Even with the attention of the swarm divided between him and the kid, Mason knew that every second he spent fighting the things put him one step closer to being cut off and surrounded. He took one more swing at a creature who stumbled too close, spared a few seconds to collect his knapsack from the floor, then rose to lunge at another creature that wandered into his path of retreat. As the better part of its forehead ripped away, there was bestial howl from without, and Mason's attention was back on the breach.

Apparently, the kid's screeching was louder than he'd thought, for no fewer than three wilders were tearing across the road toward the restaurant. All three arrived at once and ploughed into the back of the slow-moving swarm, but as soon as the mass of bodies proved themselves a hindrance to the wilders' progress, they began to tear through them, clawing them aside with all of the nicety and comportment as a family of bears ripping into a beehive. And all the while, the objects of their rage made no protest. The creepers were bloodied, bashed and beaten, but those that weren't incapacitated struggled slowly back to their feet and resumed their slow plodding gait, filling the space behind the wilders like soil backfilling a tunnel.

Mason was clearing a path back to the kitchen when the first wilder broke through the crowd and came at him. By now, he was able to switch gears in an instant, so the pikestaff was on his shoulder and off again in a heavy swing before the creature could cover half the distance. The leading edge of the weapon caught the thing mid-stride just above the temple and cracked its skull open with a spray of blood, and as the thing dropped to its knees, Mason brought the weapon around and down, delivering another blow that split the creature's skull down to the bridge of the nose like a hot knife through butter.

As the creature slumped lifelessly to the floor, a young female wilder broke through the swarm and came at him in a headlong charge. Mason had been lining up a swing to remove the head of one little old creeper who had drawn too close, but the little man was suddenly shouldered aside, and Mason shifted targets in mid swing. A little dip of the shoulder and a pivot in the hip, and the club bypassed the little creeper and smashed into the side of the wilder's long, elegant neck. If he'd had the means to sharpen the weapon, the powerful blow would have removed the creature's head completely. As it was, the neck folded in like an accordion, ear slammed against shoulder, and the wilder collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.

He was taking too long. He'd intended to grab his weapon, run back to collect Mackenzie and make for the back door, but the swarm was coming so fast! Even now, there were three others within striking distance, but for every one he dropped, two more arose to take its place. He was never going to get ahead of it. He had to go.
Now!

He spun on his heels, bowled over one last plodding thing in his way, and raced back to the kitchen. Behind him, the kid was screaming like a little girl and trying to back through a row of tables on his ass, but Mason paid him no heed. He rounded the counter at a run, gathered Mackenzie into his arms, and squandered another second to cast one last fleeting glimpse at where he'd just been.

The swarm had split roughly in two, and both halves were moving with astounding speed. One faction was surging toward the kitchen after a retreating Mason, and the other closing in on the kid. Even surrounded so completely, the kid might still have been able to get away if he'd just cut himself loose from the chair and run, but the fool was so consumed by terror that all he could do was scuttle away on his backside, inch by fumbling inch. Consequently, when the last of the wilders finally ripped through the swarm and came at him, the outcome was inevitable.

The kid raised his pathetic knife at the last moment and managed to impale the wilder through the chest as it fell on him, but with two hundred pounds of dead weight pinning him to the ground, the swarm quickly caught up. The first to reach him was a gray-haired old creeper in a bloodied housedress. She dropped clumsily to her knees and unceremoniously sunk her teeth into his abdomen, tearing it open to expose a tangle of intestines, and as the kid's scream turned into a blood-curdling shriek, a second creeper fell across him and began tearing great swathes of flesh from his chest with its claws. Then a morbidly obese male clad only in soiled underwear stumbled over the female and dropped bodily across the kid's legs. The creeper's fat jowls quivered as its mouth gaped wide, then it closed its ravening jaws directly around the kid's crotch and began to feed.

Ignoring the shrieks, Mason carried Mackenzie through the kitchen to the back door. He lowered her to the ground and felt her hand slip into the small of his back to grab hold of his waistband, then he brought up his club and flipped the dead bolt. With the swarm closing in, there was no time for finesse. He flung the door open, hurled both of them into the alley, and slammed the door shut behind them.

CHAPTER XXVII

Mason was convinced that one of these times he'd leap from a fire and land someplace safe. Now, he wondered if there was anywhere in this hellscape that wasn't ablaze. A dozen or more creatures were waiting to greet them as they burst through the door, and the swarm was growing by the second.

"Stay close, Mack!" Mason ordered, reaching around rudely to shove Mackenzie tight against his back, "This is going to get rough!"

He waited just long enough to hear her call out, "I'm good, Mace!" and then he cut loose.

With no more walls or ceiling to restrict his swing, he could finally use his new weapon to its full potential. He was a strong man, and the big chunk of cast iron was heavy. Together, they combined to produce a simply awesome amount of force. It seemed to take forever for the big slab of metal to start moving, but once in motion, it built up such an astounding amount of kinetic energy in such a short amount of time that the results were positively devastating.

The first head it encountered was blasted into atoms and sprayed across the alley with no discernible loss in momentum, so Mason continued the swing in a circle over his head and brought it down directly on the crest of the next creature's skull. The force was such that the pikestaff buried itself halfway through the creature's head, and the creature itself was nearly pounded into the ground like a spike. Mason immediately pivoted in a tight 360 degree circle to build up as much momentum as he could and levelled the weapon at another creature. The thing's skull split open like spoiled fruit, and the weapon continued on to catch an old, emaciated creature just above the neck line. This time, the dull edge of the pike-staff tore through a lean neck, neatly cleaved ligament from bone, and a detached head was launched against the side of a nearby building like a line drive into the center-field bleachers.

But the fight had just begun. Creepers were closing in from all sides, and Mason couldn't stop long enough even to take a breath. Knowing that he was fighting for more lives than his own, he kept the weapon moving, clobbering, clubbing, and hammering, all the while advancing step by step toward the perceived sanctuary of Market Street. He turned, he pivoted, he spun, he dodged, and he lunged, and for every move he made, Mackenzie stayed right with him. She kept a firm grip on his waistband, and she danced and skipped and hopped and flitted; anything she had to do to stay connected to Mason while not hindering his movements. They were a team, but they were more than that. They were one. Only by working in such perfect, flawless concert did they manage to fight on. As they inched their way toward the end of the gauntlet,  one after another after another of the horrible dead things fell away, and it began to look like they might actually have a chance.

As he ploughed through the ranks of creepers, a wilder appeared at the far end of the alley, undoubtedly attracted by the sounds of the battle. With a big mane of hair flowing out behind, and a thick wedge of beard framing its gnashing jaws, the creature charged at Mason with the speed and fury of a bull. Mason had just used his weapon to pound a young male into the ground, and with no time to regain the club's momentum, he quickly planted one end of the thing against his foot and held the shaft outward at an angle. A fraction of a second later, the wilder slammed into the cast iron bar at such a speed that its entire frontal bone tore away like the top of a soft-boiled egg.

The creature slumped to the ground in a lifeless heap, but there was no time for Mason to admire his handiwork. They were surrounded and more were coming.
Many
more. Most of them were the slow and stumbling creepers, but the longer the fight raged, the more wilders were drawn in. And whenever they were, it was up to Mason's early warning detection system to keep them both alive.

"One from the right!" Mackenzie hollered, tugging at the back of Mason's jeans as if it were the pull-rope of a church bell.

Mason began his swing as soon as he heard the alert, and a wilder appeared around a corner just as the massive weapon crossed its path. The creature was thrown against the fence, its neck shattered into dust, and Mason stepped into a pair of creepers, sweeping the legs out from beneath one and slamming the club down on the other one's skull.

"Behind!" The girl shouted, then she ducked out of the way, and Mason wheeled around in full swing to connect with the cranium of some creature whose presence he barely had time to register before it was turned into goo.

"From the left! One fast, one slow!" Mackenzie cried out then, so Mason stepped back from a big creeper to give himself room to maneuver and swung away blindly. A wilder rounded the corner just as the weapon intersected its path, and the heavy cast iron thundered across its midsection, pulverizing its ribs and exploding its heart in its chest. Mason continued the swing up and over his head, and brought it down just as a young, snarling wilder no older than Mackenzie tore into view. The power of the blow effectively crumpled the boy into an unrecognizable heap of skin and bones, and Mason ended its gurgling death throes with a downward thrust between its eyes.

By the time they were halfway up the alley toward Market Street, this remarkable team had left a trail of devastated bodies behind them. Twenty or more lay dead or crippled in their wake, and for the second time is as many days, Mason was silently glad that Mackenzie couldn't see. They were both spattered in blood and gore, and the ground literally ran red. And still there was no end in sight. Even if they made it out of the alley, there was no telling what was waiting for them ahead. For all he knew, Market Street might be as thick with the dead as this place. In fact, the entire
planet
might be just like this alley. From here on, existence might just be a constant slog, battling from one mutilated corpse to the next.

Mason took a single moment to reach a gentle hand back to pat Mackenzie's side, then he brought the weapon back to his shoulder and continued the carnage.

Hard swing….now! Skull crushed. Okay, now a downward tilt. Legs obliterated. Good enough. Two steps forward to leave it behind, an upswing to another’s chin to knock it to its knees, then a kill shot to the skull. Mack calling…..one coming from behind! Quick one-eighty and a lateral swing. Good strength, but too low. Body shot. Knocked sideways and shattered arm, but not down. Continue the swing up and over so no momentum is lost, step back so the fucker can't get inside the turn radius and aim higher. Perfect! Square to the head! Spin around, make sure Mack's still attached, and continue on. Eight between us and the corner. Who knows what beyond?. Fight your way to the corner and see. It couldn't be worse than here. Get out of this gauntlet, and deal with the next gauntlet when you're there…..

They were twenty feet from the corner, and Mason was rapidly running out of wind. Another shout from Mackenzie spun him around, and the weapon connected with the side of a wilder's head, but it took another two blows to finish the thing off. As strong and fit as he was, it was clear that Mason's strength was ebbing.

Too much booze….too many cigars…..too many
goddamn
dead things!

This couldn't keep up. He needed to rest. Every blow was being delivered with a just a bit less impact. A blow that would have turned a skull to pulp a few short minutes ago now only knocked a creature sideways, then more energy had to be expended to finish it off.

Too much…..too many…..

"From the left!" Mackenzie shouted, tugging at his waistband.

He brought up the weapon, but now it rested on his shoulder for a fraction of a second before being swung. And when at last it was launched toward the oncoming wilder, it succeeded only in stunning the thing with a middling blow across the top of the skull. A swath of scalp tore loose to flop against the creature's cheek, but the beast quickly righted itself, growled, gnashed its teeth, and came at them once again. Nearly spent, Mason stepped back and lifted a foot. The creature tripped over the obstacle and splayed facedown on the ground, and it was all Mason could do to hoist his weapon and let gravity drag it through the back of the things head before it could clamber back to its feet.

Eight yards. No, make it ten. Thirty feet to the corner. Once they were out of the gauntlet, things
had
to get better. They
had
to. Only two dead things between here and there.

Swing away, Mace, swing away…..

One creature collapsed with a shattered knee, and the weapon was back on Mason's shoulder. Panting heavily, he stepped into the last hurdle, and it was all he could do to plant a hand against the creature's chest and shove it backward. Fortunately, the creeper tripped over its own feet and fell to the ground, and Mason gathered enough strength to drop the point of the weapon on its head. The skull cracked like an egg, but the creature wriggled beneath the staff like a wounded fish at the end of a spear. Mason leaned his weight against the staff, and felt it sink in, inch by inch. At last the creature stopped moving, and Mason pulled the weapon free with a wet, gooey
shhhluuuk!

The corner. Market Street. They were there!

But no sooner had they arrived than Mason's heart sunk into his chest. As if his worst imaginings had come true, the place was a veritable thoroughfare for the dead. The street was wide, but it was as dense with walking corpses as any place Mason had yet seen. His first inclination was to turn back, but he took a moment to pick out details, and the more he regarded this new environment, the more potential he saw. Yes, there were exponentially greater numbers of the dead here, but there was also more room. Room to move, room to side-step, and room to run. And there were abandoned cars everywhere to duck behind or block a creature's advance. And there were escape routes everywhere. Doorways and side streets and alleyways all along Market Street. It wasn't all bad, considering.

Actually
, Mason finally decided,
this isn't bad at all.…..

But then came a sound that made Mason reconsider. It was a car. No, bigger than that. A truck? A bus, maybe? Hell, it sounded like a tank!

And then he saw it, coming from the north with all of San Francisco's towers as a backdrop. It was a supersized pickup; something out of a redneck's wet dream. It was a Ford F350, as far as Mason could tell, but heavily modified. It sat high above the roadway on big, fat, knobby tires and had an array of floodlights all along the top of a chrome roll bar. With the amount of clearance under the chassis, the thing looked like it could roll clear over a normal car with room to spare.

Mason had always been a firm believer in the 'big truck, little penis' school of thought, so it didn't surprise him to see three big, burly, good ol' boys in the back of the thing. These Duck Dynasty rejects were standing shoulder to shoulder, one meaty hand on the roll bar and the other on a piece of heavy artillery. Mason was no expert in firearms, but even he could recognize the curled, banana-clip magazine of an AK. He didn't know what the others were, but they all looked like what Schwarzenegger might brandish in any of a dozen of his movies.

Mason reached back for Mackenzie's hand and brought her around beside him with a cautionary, "Shhh….," and scooted her off to a nearby storefront. He ducked her down below a bush and pulled his pistol from his waistband before dropping to his knees beside her.

"Danger, Mack,….." he hushed, "Stay still."

The girl dutifully crouched into a tight ball against Mason.

"People?" She whispered nervously.

"Yes," Mason hushed, "With guns."

"Dangerous?"

Mason cradled her head against his chest and watched the vehicle approach through a gap in the bush.

"They're
people
," he said simply.

The pickup was close now, only a block away, and coming at a slow roll. These were no survivors looking to escape the city. If so, they'd be hauling ass. These good ol' boys were crawling along in a big, little-dick monster truck bristling with guns. The massive engine was growling, the exhaust manifolds were roaring, and if that wasn't enough, music suddenly started to blast from massive speakers set behind the bulkhead. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mason actually recognized the song. There was Angus Young's guitar riffs like a chainsaw on metal, then the flame-thrower voice of Randy Johnson rising above it all, chanting,
"Thun-der! …..Thun-der!….."

A loose swarm of creepers was already stumbling and bumbling toward them from all directions, but the bizarre caravan was making such a din that wilders couldn't help but be attracted to it from far and wide. They appeared from every side street and from the mouths of alleys and from parking lots and open doorways and from everywhere at once, tearing through the ranks of the dead as if they were standing still and charging headlong at the monster truck, howling with rage.

"I was caught in the middle of a railroad track…. .I looked 'round and knew there was no turning back….."

Within a handful of seconds, twenty or more wild, growling things converged on the vehicle. They came at a manic run, slamming against the sides of the truck and clawing up at the humans standing in the back.

"My mind raced and I thought, what could I do? …..But there was no help, no help from you….."

What came next was almost predictable. The monster truck stopped, guns came up, someone gave a signal, and the ensuing fusillade was nearly loud enough to drown out the blaring music.