The Damned (3 page)

“What about cows, chickens… farm animals, for chrissakes?”

Warren
laughed and shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you, Scotty? When the Rapture, or whatever the hell it was, hit, everything good in the world went away: plants, animals, dogs and cats and all the nice neighbors you used to have—hell, there aren’t even leaves on the trees anymore, just one big nightmare of a world with a passel of scary sons of bitches dying to get their hands on each other.”

Scott wiped a band of sweat from his grimy forehead. His stomach rumbled and
Warren
chuckled. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s see if one of those pricks you gunned down has the same size feet you do. Then we’ll go eat some frigging Spam. My shit’s stashed a couple of blocks from here.”

Scott uncrossed his legs, and leaned forward on hands and knees. He pushed up and the walking stick pounded his temple, sending a blinding flash of pain hammering through his skull as he toppled face forward onto the dirt.

He struggled to a knee and
Warren
laughed.

The cane bounced off Scott’s shoulder and he screamed. He scrambled to his feet and lurched away, his head cradled in his hands. The shotgun lay on the ground but Scott didn’t try for it; all he could think about was getting away from that paralyzing jolt crashing between his ears. The cane whooshed through the heavy grey air and the silver handle found Scott’s kneecap; he hit the dirt and
Warren
mounted him like a child-sized jockey. A fistful of hair in one hand, feet gouging the prone man’s sides, he ripped the bandage from Scott’s head. Eyes wide and wild and pointed teeth as sharp as razors, he called out, “Dog eat dog, baby!”

It was damned embarrassing, being man-handled by a pintsized circus performer, but Scott, weak from hunger, and from the blinding pain inflicted by Warren’s walking stick, could do nothing to stop the little creep from riding his back like some kind of demonic cherub come from the depths of Hell to claim him. He tried to push up when the guy cried out and grabbed his wound, but the pain forced him flat onto his belly, eyes closed against what surely would come next. But nothing happened, other than a startled, “What the hell?” from Warren and a simultaneous
whupping
sound, much like the sound of his grandmother’s broom bouncing off the old threadbare throw rugs she used to hang over the clothesline in her backyard. Whatever had made the noise sent the midget sliding off his back and onto the ground.

Scott turned to see a raven-haired woman towering above him. She wore a light pink halter-top with sequined Playboy-bunny-ears embroidered across its front, cut off just at midriff, the garment so tight it looked as if she had been poured into it. Equally tight cut-off jeans and white Reebok sneakers rounded out her wardrobe. A knapsack hung from her right shoulder. Strapped in place beneath the other shoulder was a leather holster, firmly snuggling the nine millimeter hardware that went with it. She had the trim, muscular legs of a long distance runner. The well-defined contours running along her arms put Scott in mind of the female lead from the old
Terminator 2
movie. Long, straight hair cascaded down and across her full breasts, framing a face that might well have graced the cover of fashion magazines at some point in time, if not for the wide jagged scar running down her cheek—Scott couldn’t help wondering how she had acquired it. Fire burned in her brilliant blue eyes as she looked down at Warren The Rat Boy, the Carny hustler who was obviously was as twisted as Dub and his pack of flesh eating Neanderthal pals.

“What the hell?”
Warren
said again, although it was quite apparent from the leering smile decorating his face that he knew exactly why he was staring up at the wrong end of a shotgun.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she said, and to Scott, “You okay?”

“Not by a long shot,” Scott said. Grimacing, he rolled over and got to his knees, looked at
Warren
, and said, “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Warren
shrugged. He opened his mouth to answer but nothing came out. He glanced up at the woman, who said, “Look at me wrong—flinch and I’ll turn you into dog food.” The shotgun in one hand, she reached the other out to Scott; he grabbed it and she pulled him to his feet. “I saw everything, what you did for that poor woman, the way you cut loose on those freaky bastards, saw it all from the shadows back there. When that piece of shit started in on you, well, I couldn’t just stand by and watch.”

“Well, thanks for that. Don’t know that I did her much good, but, Jesus;
those
guys…” Scott stared out at the fire, and for a brief moment saw the burned and bloated corpse sizzling over it. The flames, which had died down considerably since the goon-squad’s departure, cast an eerie glow on the carnage he’d created. He could feel his stomach twisting into a greasy knot, and even though he was hungry as hell, he couldn’t imagine putting food into it. Something else he couldn’t imagine: going back and slipping the shoes off a dead man. Something he was going to
have
to do if he didn’t want his feet chewed up by rocks and glass and the rough concrete hiding beneath the grey ash.

“Anyway,” she said. “I’m Lila.”

“Scott.”

“What’s your story, Scott? What’re you doing out here barefoot, and what happened to your
head?
”

“I had an accident.”

“Accident, huh?”

“Tell you the truth; I don’t really know what happened. I woke up a little while ago in a rehab center full of dead people, came out of the place and saw some freaky looking thing squirming down the sidewalk like a human slug. Then I happened across this mess.”

“Well,” Lila said, nodding at the fire, “let’s go over there and see if we can’t find you some shoes.”

Scott sighed, and Lila said, “What about him?”

“Who, the slime-ball who just attacked me for no reason whatsoever?” Scott looked on in disgust at the midget—the snick-snack of the weapon snapped his head back to Lila, who put a foot on
Warren
’s chest and forced him flat onto his back.

“Open your mouth.”

Warren
said, “
What?
”, and Scott said, “What’re you
doing?
”

Lila pushed the barrel into
Warren
’s face and he grabbed it. He tried moving it away but she forced it against his tightly drawn lips. “Open.
Your.
Mouth.”

“Look,” Scott said.

Warren
, his small hands trembling against the cold steel shotgun barrel, said, “Please.”

“What do you think he was about to do when I booted him off your ass?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t either, but it sure as hell wasn’t anything good.” Lila slid the barrel past
Warren
’s jagged teeth, and the dwarf began to gag, hands still gripping the barrel as she said, “We let him go, we’ll live to regret it.”

“Don’t,” said Scott. He’d seen enough bloodshed in the last hour to last him a lifetime—the last thing he wanted was to watch
Warren
’s head explode in a hail of blood and brain and pieces of skull. No matter what he’d
done.
“Please, you can’t. It’d be cold blooded murder.”

“About as cold blooded as what he was going to do to you.” Lila wiggled the barrel and
Warren
grunted. “Huh, little man?”

“Food,”
Warren
stammered around the barrel. “I’ve got a… food stash… and supplies.”

“Probably some pals to ambush us when we get there too, huh?”

“Nuh uh.”

“Like I said, we let him go he’ll pull some kind of shit. Let him go he might come back and kill the both of us.” Lila, who had wrapped her finger around the trigger, said, “Sorry, little man.”

Lila pulled the trigger and Scott shouted, “NO!
”,
gasping as the hammer fell onto an empty chamber and a piss stain bloomed across the front of
Warren
’s pants.

“So much for that,” said Lila. She lifted the shotgun and
Warren
let out a long sigh. Then she pulled her foot away from the midget’s chest, stepping back as
Warren
sat up, gasping for air. “We’re going to get him some shoes. Then we’re all going to see what kind of supplies you’ve got stashed. Oh, and if you try anything stupid—” Lila slapped the pistol nestled beneath her armpit. “—this one’s fully loaded.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Warren
said as he got to his feet, brushing dirt off the back of his pants leg.

“Try something and you’ll find out.”

Lila handed the shotgun to Scott—what good it would do them now, he didn’t know, but he took it just the same. No telling what they might run into out here: empty pawn shops, abandoned police cars. Maybe there would be some shells back at the house of death Scott had woken in earlier in the day. Maybe they’d find a box of them under the corpse he’d stumbled over on his way out of the place.

If he could force himself to go back there.

They crossed the street to the fire pit, Warren in front, Scott and Lila side by side behind him. The fire was almost out now, and Scott could see things scattered amongst the dying embers: here a charred foot, there a blackened piece of skull, fragments of bones bleached ash-white by the fires; some pieces scorched black. Next to the smoldering pit lay the discarded bats, beside a guy with half a head—the first lunatic Scott had blasted, a gory mass of shredded brain plastered against the jagged remnants of his skull. Smoke rose from one of his booted feet, which lay across a pile of glowing embers.
Warren
stopped beside the guy, got down on hands and knees and started rifling through his pockets. Moments later he stood back up, empty handed.

“Goddamnit,” he said.

Lila said something, but Scott barely heard it, something about ‘what’d you expect’. He stared down at the creep’s blown-apart skull, wondering how everything could have gone so wrong. None of it made any sense. One minute he was driving down the expressway, and now this, wandering barefoot through a nightmare landscape of death and destruction, where two-legged beasts turn women into smoldering slabs of food.

They made their way to the last two miscreants Scott had sent tumbling to their deaths. Bypassing the guy with a bleeding stump where his knee should’ve been, they went on to the next, to the one with a fist-sized hole chewed out of his back. Scott was glad. He knew what the shotgun had done to the other guy’s head. It was bad enough to have the image burned into the back of his eyeballs—the creep’s smile as Scott stood over him, the way his entire head exploded when he pulled the trigger—he didn’t need another look at the horrible mess he’d made. But he couldn’t escape the nauseating stench as they walked past him, the thick copper taste that settled in the back of his throat, the rotten-meat smell that filled the air around him.

“Bingo,”
Warren
said as he knelt down to remove the guy’s shoes. They were black Nikes, and it took only a moment for the midget to untie them and pull them off his feet. “Sit down, man,” he told Scott, and then handed him the sneakers when he sat.

“Want his socks too?”

“No way.” Scott slipped his bare foot into the shoe. It was a couple of sizes too large, loose, but not uncomfortable, not really, and when both were on his feet and the laces securely tied, he was glad to have them. He stood up and so did Warren, and together with Lila they left the gruesome scene behind, Warren in front, Scott and Lila behind him, Scott carrying the useless shotgun, hoping like hell Lila’s firearm would serve to keep them safe and secure.

Scott heard it first.

They had crossed the street and were moving past the burnt-out shell of a car when a sound grabbed his attention, a low orgiastic moaning more befitting a late night session of lovemaking than something that should’ve been coming from behind an old abandoned automobile. A shiver of dread rolled up his spine as he said, “Jesus, what the—”

“Behind the car.” Lila stepped to the rear bumper, took another step and said, “Oh, fuck!” Her eyes narrowed and her left hand shot up to her mouth, but it did little to mask her apparent revulsion as
Warren
ran to her side.

Scott, who had followed close on
Warren
’s heels, looked down and gasped.

Sitting on the sidewalk with its back against the car was the runt of a creature Scott had encountered on his way out of the rehab center. It had ripped the pants from the missing lower leg of the slain behemoth who had lost his head to the roaring shotgun blast, and was tearing chunks away with its broken and busted teeth, slurping and moaning and gnawing and chewing as Scott stood before it, a look of stunned disbelief etched upon his face.

The creature looked up, its scorched and tattered rags barely covering the three-foot-long torso supporting its hideously misshapen head. “
What?”
he said.

Lila tugged loose her pistol, and
Warren
said, “No!” She leveled it at the flesh-eater and he grabbed her wrist. “No, don’t. They’ll hear it and come after us!”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she said, holstering her weapon and looking up the street in the direction Dub and his boys had carried off their disgusting bounty.

The creature went back to his meal, and
Warren
said, “Use a knife. You got one, don’t you?”

“Damn right I do.” Lila pushed a hand into the knapsack hanging off her shoulder, pulled out a sheathed hunting knife and slid the blade free.

Scott said, “What in the
fuck
are you doing?”

“What do you think?”

“What, you’re going to
kill
it?”

The creature looked up when Scott said, “You’re going to butcher the damn thing?” It took the chewed up limb from its bloody mouth, and said, “Hey, what’d I ever do to you? Ain’t it enough what I already been through with this shit? You think I
wanta
be like this? I didn’t ask that goddamn fireball to nail my ass. I didn’t volunteer to have my face burnt halfway off and my legs melted together. The fuck am I
supposed
to eat?
Dirt?
Gimme a break here!”

Scott looked at Lila, whose eyes had not moved away from the object of her scorn.

“He’ll give us away,”
Warren
said.

“Said the kettle to the pot,” said Scott.

“We gotta kill him. Those big bastards come back, he’ll tell ‘em—”

“What? What’ll he tell them? That he saw us walking through here? So what? We’ll be long gone by then.”

“Long dead if they find us,” said
Warren
, and Lila said, “We can’t chance it.”