THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse (29 page)

T
hat’s not thunder.

“You hear that?” I say.

“What?” Gitmo laughs. “You hear another fire truck I need to blow up?”

But the screams from the other end of the lot, where the rest of Tracy’s
vatos
are organizing the new trucks, indicates they see the helicopter coming in ahead of the storm front, a shiny black speck against the deep bruise of the sky. Gitmo turns slowly—he’s so terrified he doesn’t want to look. When he turns back around to face me he’s whiter than a Goth. “You need to make a decision,” he says.

“
No, cuz, this one’s on you. You need to figure out whether you’re going to try and take out that chopper with your launcher, or if you’re going to try and hide everyone. If they’re really looking for you in the barrio and you’re not there, what’s to stop them from a little search-and-destroy?”

“I’m not
gonna ask you again!”

“Do what you have to do. I’m going home.”

My hands rise to my panga and Glock. All they have to do is squeeze their triggers. As the sound of the helicopter grows louder I wonder if I’ll feel the bullets rip through me or if I’ll get lucky and die immediately….

24

The men
at either end of the line flanking Gitmo fall. Before the ones standing next to them can turn their heads to look, they fall, too. The rounds obliterate their faces in such rapid succession it gives the illusion of happening all at once. I drop to the ground in time for the next two to meet me on the hot asphalt.

T
he seventh
vato
has enough time to get his pistol aimed at what he hopes is the source of the gunfire when his head snaps back. Gitmo is fumbling with the M4 hanging at his back by the strap. He takes a slug to one shoulder, then the other. Not square on the shoulders, but grazing. Enough to make the son of a bitch hurt.

I hear footsteps crunchi
ng behind me. Gitmo raises his hands, tears now fat and hot in his bulging eyes. “Aw, come on,” he says. “We don’t have to do this!”

I glance over my shoulder,
then roll back to my feet in time to get out of her way. At first I don’t recognize her in her khaki Great White Hunter shorts and blouse, complete with matching bush helmet. The surgical mask she’s wearing against the soot isn’t helping either, but that’s definitely a woman in that outfit. And who else can handle such a ridiculously long-barreled pistol with a suppressor? It looks like a Klingon Wild West sidearm if the Klingons had a Wild West phase. The bright chrome gleams even in this corrupted sunlight. Especially as she steps towards Gitmo and raises the suppressor to press it to his cheekbone. The sizzle is horrific; I can hear it even over Gitmo’s shrill screaming.  Christ, aren’t we all sick of the smell of burning flesh already?

Rebecca turns to me, pulls down her mask. “Mr. Grace. Mr. Gutiérrez here is my final assignment. Given
your relationship with this dirtbag, would you like the honor of completing my mission?”

I look
at Gitmo when I say, “No. I’m good.” I turn to Rebecca. “Besides, a macho dumb-ass like him would resent it more for being killed by a woman. Even if she is the best sharpshooter in Saline County, Kansas.”

“Try, ‘First in Class’ at
Quantico,” she says flatly, her silvery eyes flashing in the shade of her brim. Her eyes still on mine, she lifts her pistol again and shoots Gitmo in the face. The muzzle is so close he falls with a circle of powder burn arcing about his brow and just beneath where his nose used to be.

Rebecca glances towards the approaching helicopter
. Black, two rotors. A Chinook? My son Jack could tell me if he were here. “I need to get something from your truck,” Rebecca says, her eyes on the helicopter.

“Sure.” She
’s already on her way before the syllable leaves my mouth. The sight of her taut, perfectly rounded backside as she climbs up and leans into the cab is a divine gift in a day full of hella-fugly sights.

Reb
ecca emerges with the flare gun. She’s hanging off the doorframe with one hand when she fires the gun into the air. A hot pink ball of light ascends into the yellowy air. She tosses the gun back into the cab and swings over into the flatbed of the Big Yellow Truck.

The dual-rotor
chopper angles towards us, coming in low. Low enough for me to see the man standing in the open door, in all-black battle-rattle, black aviator glasses, black flak helmet, the works. The chopper slows to hover and the wash is ferocious but Rebecca is signing something to him. She indicates the general direction of the women and children and the young men shepherding them. The man nods, signals to the pilot, and the chopper roars off across the city, towards the brown-black columns of smoke towering from the east.

“They’re coming back to get Tracy and his people?”

Rebecca looks at me as if that’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. “I scratched off those punks long before I got to you. There’s no one left but a couple of dozen scared women and children and maybe a handful of teenage boys trembling under the SUVs in the northeast lot over there.”

She swings back around from the flatbed to the cab, reaching through the door for the pistol she’d tossed to the seat while reaching for the flare gun. “It’s going to be a while before this thing cools down,”
Rebecca says as she emerges with the chrome beast. “A good thing we’re here because I’m tired of carrying this thing on the bike.” Rebecca looks at me. “You know the snipers in the fields left once the mansion got overrun. Kerch called them back as soon as his back lawn started filling up with the dead Brick sent over. You guys could have left out that north road. You’d be halfway home now.”

“
Goddamn it!”

“
Oh, calm down. You’re not the one who had to race a mountain bike through toxic fumes to catch up! It’s okay, though. I’ll take the liquor truck back, and be a big hero for the Death’s Head bully boys.”

“Back where?”

Rebecca’s eyes flash. “Where I come from. Anyway, I saved these clowns for last. I knew Brick was going to give me trouble. It was worth it for this sweet custom Desert Eagle of his, though.” She runs a finger down the long barrel. “These 14-inch jobs usually only come in black. I’d have loved to found out where he got it but he wouldn’t stop screaming after I fed his dick and balls to a walker. The look on his face, though…oh, it was just
precious!
”

“Sorry I missed it.”

“Don’t get me wrong. That was one moment in one long stretch of tedium. Like most wannabe super-badasses Brick was surrounded by wall after wall of goons. I had to come up with different ways to kill them just to keep myself focused.”

“Oh.”

“My favorite was their silly little command center. I shot the hands and legs of eight of those fools, then killed the last one with a shot to the heart. Then I locked the door behind me. I got one of their webcams and set up a video stream to go straight to my phone. I’m curious to see how long it took for the one I killed to turn. Of course, the looks on those poor crippled little boys’ faces—mmm! So
hot!
”

“
So the area’s pacified? We can drive around and not get shot at?” I say, looking towards the stormy horizon.

Rebecca’s eyes follow mine and she nods. “
That was the mission. Neutralize Brick, Gitmo. Liquidate their soldiers so they don’t fall in with other wannabe warlords, wherever they are.” She smiles as if laughing at a private joke. “Just honest refugees out here now.”

“How about Kerch?”

“First order of business. You thought he fed some dinner guests last night; well, he had some people over for breakfast. In bed, no less. Of course, I’d tied him to it. Getting the guests up through the garage elevator and into the main part of the house, that was the challenging part.”

“
Great. Another mattress ruined.”

“They’ll fly in another.
We’ll make a training exercise of it for the junior Death’s Head crew. Find a deluxe mattress place and shoot their way in and out for a king-size luxury pillow-top. I might insist on going with them just to piss them off. Funny you should bring that up, though. I thought you liked your ‘patron.’”

“It’s not a matter of like or don’t-like. I’m just trying to get home.”

“Yeah, like you were driving real hard to get there last night.”

“More than you’d know.”

Her Desert Eagle comes up in my face. I try not to blink at the heat still coming off the suppressor. “What do you think I know?” she says.

And all of a sudden it’s very easy not to blink. I can feel the blood slowing down inside of me.
Heating up to match that suppressor just an inch from my right eye:

“
That’s it, Rebecca. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. And I don’t care. All I know is that I was jumping through hoops long before this all got started. Now I’m hundreds of miles from my home, my wife’s sick and dead, my children are God knows where—and you want me to jump some more? You’d think a man could catch a break after everything collapses under the weight of its own bullshit! Instead I’m being sucked into crap by total strangers who think their drama is the only drama that matters in a whole planet full of people suffering and dying!

“
If this is life after the apocalypse, fine. Be the Queen Bitch of this fucking hell! But don’t expect me to beg for my life. I’ve sat across the desk from many a sadistic little HR cunt who wanted to make the big bad old man who reminds them of Daddy squirm.

“
So go ahead, pull your trigger! You’re dealing with another kind of trained professional here. One who sees you as nothing more than a stupid-bitter piece of ass who’s really handy with her substitute penis. Fuck me, then. Fuck me good and hard, you sick whore!
Do it!
”

Her eyes narrow at me beyond the barrel. She’s got the thing right in my eye but I refuse to look at it.
Thunder rolls in the distance, a long rumble culminating in little booms like some drunken giant stomping across the uneasy prairie.

As the rumbling fades,
Rebecca pulls back her weapon. That ridiculous 14-inch barrel against her shoulder, she says, “It would seem you and I are a lot alike, Mr. Grace.”

“
Like hell! When you kill, you’re killing the same man over and over again. I’m killing
all kinds
of people!”

The corners of her mouth turn up in a joyless smile. “Yet you wouldn’t kill Kara.”

“Kara who?”

“
Kara McConnell. The girl from this morning. Who wouldn’t have looked twice at you if she didn’t need someone, anyone, to save her soft, worthless life. You actually felt bad for her!”

“For God’s sake, she was just a child!”

Rebecca laughs bitterly. “Not quite. Certainly not how the Powers That Be saw her and her girlfriends, which is what got Emory Kerch taken out of the picture.”

“So my hatred isn’t pure. Is that it? You’re shaming me for that?”

“Worse.” Rebecca brings the Desert Eagle away from her shoulder. “Mr. Derek Samuel Grace, for the crime of Gross Sentimentality, I, Queen of Hell, hereby condemn you—to live!” She taps me on either shoulder with the barrel, careful not to touch me with the still-hot suppressor.

“So I’m finally free to go?”

“Silence! For the ancillary crime of Giving a Shit, I, Queen of Hell, curse you with
success
. That you may suffer for it. Which, for the most part, you already are. Therefore I wish you more success. Lots and lots of success!” After tapping me again on the shoulders Rebecca pulls the muzzle back until the suppressor is level with my cheekbone, as if she might do my face like she did Gitmo’s. I hold her stare. Rebecca once again rests the Eagle on her shoulder.

“Success for me, right now,
” I say, “would be to hit the road and never interact with another living human for the rest of my natural life.”

“And that, Mr. Dead Silencer, is the one thing you will fail at. You can’t escape the world.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Rebecca, the world ended about a week ago!”

“Not at all.
It was just
born
.” She smiles coldly. “It’ll take a while to find its feet but believe me, in one more year or so you might wish I had killed you.”

“If it ever comes to that I’ll be happy to handle it myself.”

“You think you’re free because civilization has collapsed and it’s every man for himself. What if I told you this was all deliberate? That everything is going more or less to plan?”

“I’d say it’s
a hell of a plan. Sweeping off the game pieces and setting the board on fire.”

“If I tell you any
thing more I’ll be under orders to kill you. Just know that the reset has been pressed. If the Powers That Be are taking their time reasserting their authority, it’s because they like the idea of the strong and clever culling the weak before they step back in.”

“
Huh. Okay. Can I go now?”