Vindicta, p.21
Vindicta, page 21
She slammed on the breaks—Storm narrowly avoiding colliding with the tailgate— and unlocked the doors. He jumped in and she took off before the door was even closed.
“Thanks, Bubba. Battery was dead,” he said, tossing his bag into the floor and pulling his seatbelt on under his rifle.
“Not you too,” she groaned.
He flashed her a quick, manic grin.
“That was close. Too close,” she said.
“The fuck was McCain thinking?!” he yelled.
“It was an accident,” she said. “A stupid one.”
“We can’t afford to have shit like that happen,” he complained, running his hands through his wet hair and glancing back at the dealership.
She didn’t spare a look back at his awed curse, she was too busy concentrating on swerving around the roadblocks and the impromptu doomsday demolition derby that seemed to have happened here.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he murmured. “There’s a whole crowd of them gliding down from the trees and swarming the dealership. They’re fucking tearing the place apart.”
They took the same route back, and by the time they had pulled up to the more remote auto parts store, her heart rate was mostly normal.
They jumped out and Storm just looked at them and shook his head. He pulled out a list from his pocket as McCain stood watch.
“Kate, load up as many gas cans as you can into the back of the SUV. Then get as many of these batteries as they have in stock.” He tore a strip of paper from the list and she looked at the battery numbers and nodded.
“Reed and I are going to get oil, spark plugs, and the rest of this. McCain, you’re on watch.” Storm went into the store first and she followed.
“And don’t push any fucking buttons,” Reed muttered as he followed her in.
McCain flipped him off.
The store was dark and intact. She assumed that most people concentrated on looting the grocery and liquor stores in the early days—luckily for them.
“We’ll be back here. Batteries are over there and gas cans are in the middle back there,” Storm said, pointing.
She went for the gas cans first. She let her rifle hang on its sling and filled her arms with the cans.
She went back and forth, working in silence, and occasionally passing the men as they carried out jugs of antifreeze, oil, wiper fluid, and other mysterious vehicular liquids. When she started on the batteries, they had graduated to carting out boxes marked only by enigmatic abbreviations and numbers.
She wondered if it would be a good idea to learn vehicle maintenance and repair or just a waste of time. Gas wouldn’t stay good forever, and then they’d be on foot…which was a scary thought.
She had emptied the battery shelf of the type that Storm had specified but there were still plenty left and she was still waiting on the men to finish. She flipped through the book and looked up the vehicles they had. Some of the batteries on the shelf were compatible and she loaded them into the cart. There was an aisle of wiper blades and she looked up the type for those too.
She took them all.
On the last trip out, she took a fistful of pine tree air fresheners. The guys could get pretty rank.
◆◆◆
They pulled back in the drive and saw that Charlie Two had returned…with a surprise.
“Why the hell is there a luxury RV sitting in my driveway?” Storm complained, staring at the behemoth with his hands on his hips.
It was a nice RV.
It looked custom-made and extremely expensive. She wondered whose idea it was and if they realized how much diesel that thing was going to suck up. She bet it wouldn’t make it ten miles before they hit a pileup and had to leave it behind.
“Are those solar panels on the roof?” she asked, standing on the running boards for a better look at the top.
“Looks like it. That’s pretty cool. Wonder how much power those generate?”
“Come on. We need to eat and then make another run to the grocery store. We’ll need a couple of tarps unless this rain lets up,” Storm said, as they passed into the garage. “We’ll roll out at 1300.”
Kate passed into the kitchen and Jen came rushing through.
“We’ve got problems. Where’s Storm?” she asked without preliminaries.
“I’m here,” he said, coming up behind Kate. “What’s going on?”
She led them, still dripping wet, into the great room where the men were resting.
“They’re bleeding,” she whispered to them with her back turned to the ill men. “It’s sluggish, but it isn’t letting up. I don’t know what to do.”
“What does Santiago say?”
“He didn’t know much. Said maybe low platelets, thrombocytopenia from the radiation sickness a few weeks ago.”
“Is there any medication we can give them?” Storm asked with a frown.
“Prednisone, but he wasn’t sure how that would affect them—what the side effects might be from the cell damage. Maybe antibiotics too.” She shrugged. “He’s not a doctor. He’s doing his best using what he’s learned from his father and veterinarian textbooks. He said there’s no way that he will do a transfusion.”
“Maybe we can get some medical texts somewhere?” Kate asked him.
He shook his head. “Too dangerous. The library is in the middle of town. The hospital is a no-go.”
“So we either give them the meds or wait it out?” Kate asked.
“Pretty much,” Jen said.
“Okay, give Santiago the go-ahead if they want to try the treatment. It’s up to each man,” Storm said.
She nodded and started up the stairs to find Santiago, but she paused on the bottom step. “Also, Kim’s gone. Joe’s fit to be tied.”
“What?! Where?” Kate asked.
“Nobody knows. She left a note, kind of, and said she’d be back. The guards patrolling the perimeter let her go.”
“Shit.”
Kate was sure that Joe wasn’t taking it well at all. The last time his wife left, she’d turned into a freak. Sure, a sentient freak, but still…not normal anymore. Who knew if she’d really be back?
Wes was probably upset too.
Storm put a hand on her shoulder. “Go get some lunch and rest a bit. I’ll get Bravo team to unload. We’ll still roll out at 1300. I’m going to have a couple of the civvies come with us. It’ll be good for them.”
“Will it really?” she asked dryly.
“They have to learn sometime. We can’t keep protecting them. They need to learn to protect themselves. Some of the men have already had run-ins with the freaks, but the rest have been sheltered. Mike could still be alive right now if they’d taken action. It has to end.”
“Roger,” she said with a small tilt of her lips.
He tugged gently at the bottom of her braid and grinned.
Well, it was actually more of a squinting of the eyes and a quick flash of teeth, but for him, it was pretty much a grin. She wondered what she would have to do to get a real smile from him, like the one in the photograph with his wife.
She washed her hands and took a bowl of soup from the large pot on the propane stove, and a slice of the bread that someone—probably Jen— had made. She ate at the table with a silent Wes and a blank and emotionless Joe.
Joe was someone that truly frightened her. Storm was scary, sure, but Joe…there was something about him. That man had seen things, done things, and probably survived things that they could only speculate at.
“How do you do it, Joe? How do you block it all out?” she asked, nibbling on the bread.
She’d had her own way of blocking things out, back right after her mom had died, but it had been hard to maintain that barrier in the face of all the friends she had unwillingly made. It was hard not to care when you had assholes making you care.
Freaking Red.
She scowled at her soup.
“Send it to the kill box,” he said.
“Kill box?”
“A place you send every unwanted thought and emotion, then you blast it all to hell with everything you’ve got until it doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Sounds…violent.”
He grunted and stared at the map, perhaps memorizing routes or perhaps not thinking of the map at all.
“You know this whole thing is just a guerilla war. That’s all. Just another in a long line of them.”
“Except the enemy are mutant freaks who want to eat us and don’t exactly think like normal human beings,” she said.
“They don’t want to eat us,” he said. “They only want to rip our heads from our bodies and kill us.”
“That’s not exactly better,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but isn’t much different than the enemy I’m used to dealing with.” He was entirely serious and she grimaced. “Probably why your guys over there are taking this so calmly.”
“We never exactly won any of those wars,” she said.
“Maybe not, but we’ve helped a hell of a lot of people, learned a fuck-ton about human nature, and as long as the fucking spooks don’t get involved it won’t get complicated.”
“Yeah, fucking spooks,” Wes said, sipping his warm soda.
“Boy,” Joe warned.
Kate bit her lip to keep her smile hidden.
“You think the CIA is still operating?” she asked.
“As long as two people are left alive, one of them is guaranteed to be a spook,” he said in disgust. “Wouldn’t be surprised if they were a part of all this. You can bet they’re still around. Take it to the bank,” he spat.
“Guess you aren’t a fan of them then?” she asked.
“Hell no. I’ve seen too many ops go bad because of their involvement. That secret squirrel shit practically guarantees a burned mission. Too many switch-hitters.”
She nodded. “Thanks for the intel.”
He stopped her before she got to the stairs. “Kate, if there’s a coup going on out at Fort Carson you can bet they’re involved somehow and it ain’t like the movies. It’s not all American flags, soaring eagles, and freedom. Some bad people are running the show, always have been, and it could go south in a hurry,” he warned. “In fact, it probably will.”
“Believe me, you can’t have my brother and not have heard some of the more crazy stories about the government,” she said.
“Just because they sound crazy doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”
Red came into the room. “That’s true.”
“Are you all conspiracy theorists?!” She rolled her eyes and went upstairs to change into a dry shirt.
“It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true!” Red called up after her.
Chapter Nineteen
Blackened Waters
Kate- Past
“Pull up to the front and flip around so we can leave in a hurry if we need to,” Kate told Dana.
“Yes, ma’am,” the younger woman said, and Kate couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or respectful.
She let it go…this time.
“Remember what Storm and Red said,” she told the occupants of the truck. “Keep watch all around you. Never let your guard down. Stay silent. Don’t use your rifles unless you absolutely have to. Silence is our friend and it’s what keeps us alive.”
Kate had been paired up with Patricia, a thirty-nine-year-old former cosmetologist; Steven, a former store manager who still sported bruises; and Dana.
It promised to be an interesting mission. They were gathering more food and paper products from the grocery store, with Kate leading her team.
Storm had Rob and Allen, the mechanic and the electrician respectively. They seemed proficient enough.
“Dana, watch our six,” she said as they got out. “Wedge formation.”
She took the front as Steve and Tricia fell in behind her. She wasn’t sure about this whole formation business. She preferred to do her own thing, but she’d give it a shot if it would make them safer and more effective. Joe and Storm had given them all a little class on it and the Army used it for a reason.
Storm waved Bravo team to provide security at one back corner of the grocery, and his team took the other. Kate would be taking her team in to clear the building—again—and load up supplies when they finished. She was sure the only reason Storm was allowing her team to clear was because they had already cleared it a few days ago.
Storm gave her a nod as they approached the entrance and she switched on her headlamp and took her team inside.
“Stay alert,” she murmured, keeping her rifle ready.
There was always a chance some freaks had pushed in through the door. Tricia made a disgusted noise at the smell of decomposing meat coming from the back of the store. Kate didn’t tell her that it was partially animal meat and partially the corpse of the freak Kim killed the last time they were here.
She’d find out soon enough.
They took the far wall, where the bread and other dry goods had been stocked before the collapse of civilization. The aisle was clear until they got to the back, where a small black swinging door waited.
Kate peered through the window and motioned for Dana to stay right outside the door and watch the rear. She nodded and Kate led Steve and Tricia inside.
The back room was long and congested with baking racks, ovens, refrigerators, freezers, and other industrial equipment meant to keep a grocery up and running. It made for a lot of places for freaks to hide. She led them through the dark room, wishing they had thought to open up the back doors to let in some light. The smell was terrible, but it was a minor annoyance.
The dark was worse.
She heard the harsh breathing of the others behind her and wished they would shut up. She gritted her teeth and moved forward. A sharp metallic gonging broke the silence and she whipped around and looked at Steve as he stared at the rolling metal table that he'd hit with the rifle buttstock.
She took a deep, calming breath and turned back to the front.
A door on the far side of the wall was covered in warning stickers. The electrical panels and other equipment inside promised instant death by electrocution, but since the power was off she figured it was safe enough. They needed to clear the building entirely, and that meant everywhere.
She twisted the metal knob and pushed the heavy door open, surprised at how large the room was inside. It was rectangular, with a pan-handle-shaped hall branching off in the black obscurity of the back corner.
She stepped lightly, making no more sound than the slightest whisper of her boots over the somewhat sticky floor. Underneath the prevalent rotting meat smell, there were maintenance shop odors of PVC-coated electrical cables, grease, and dust.
They were swallowed up in the dark room and she licked her dry lips.
She didn’t like the way the red lens of the headlamp gave away their positions, but without it, she wouldn’t be able to see anything.
A very slight noise—a click—came from somewhere ahead. She held up a fist at the corner, and her teammates froze.
She steadied herself and raised her weapon as she rounded the corner.
It was clear.
There was a trashcan, overflowing with dark-stained paper towels, and a mop bucket in the corner, but no enemy. She paused there, eyes wide to see better and ears perked.
Another click and the flash of something tiny in the air.
She moved forward, the red light making the space seem more forbidding than it might have otherwise been. She was aware that Storm’s team and the others were waiting for her to clear the building. She needed to move safely, but also swiftly.
She reached the place where she saw the flicker and knelt, one hand still holding the grip of her rifle.
A small, slim, oddly-shaped disk rested in the dust and she used her sweaty fingertip to pick it up. She brought it closer to her face and couldn’t make sense of the thing. She clicked her light over to the white lens and squinted at the sudden brightness.
The flake shone strangely against her finger—iridescent and clear at the same time— and a deluge of horror flooded her mind.
Another click, then another. More flakes.
Scales.
She’d screwed up.
She panted and backed away, trembling, as she looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t have time to warn the others before the infestation of devils sprung toward her. She didn’t think as she squeezed the trigger, firing twice before they took her to the ground.
She heard screaming and felt the scaly, muscular limbs burning against her unprotected arms and neck. One appendage pressed against her throat and the choking weight made her mind go blank with fear.
More gunfire blasted her eardrums in the small hallway, and the muzzle flashes illuminated a nightmarish montage of claws, legs, and teeth. The worst were the eyes.
The eyes gleamed in the light, and their frantic shrewdness and brutally clear motives were reflected.
Hatred. Intense hatred.
This wasn’t animalistic instinct. This was rage. Fury. Cosmic loathing.
Splatters of fluid struck her face and neck and the pressure was gone from her throat, but her legs and torso were still trapped. Lights shone in her eyes, blinding her and she dared not fire the weapon again.
She felt grasping claws along her body and pulled her knife from her side.
The weight sprung off and she jerked the blade up just in time to impale the reptilian freak as it reached her face. It smothered her with its tainted blood and infected flesh and she twisted and writhed in a parody of its death throes as she tried to escape it, finally scuttling away from the demented thing with the help of a hand jerking her back by the belt.
She gasped and spat the hideously acidic blood from her mouth as the person picked her up and sprinted through the back room to a door that must have been propped wide open. The fresh, cool air was blissful and she gulped it in while trying not to puke from the vile taste in her mouth.
Her eyes, coated with the black gunk, were wiped with something wet and she flinched. “Hold still.”
It was Storm, of course.
