Authors: J.V. Roberts
Ruiz holds a spring loaded gate-
door open for us as we move into the next yard. I take point and Katia falls in behind me, swords at the ready.
“I’m kind of itching for a fight
, aren’t you? This shit gets the adrenaline moving.” Her lips are practically on my earlobe, she’s standing so close.
“Actually, no, not really. I’d be okay if we didn’t run into anything.”
“Really? This sneaking around isn’t getting your blood pumping?”
“I didn’t say that at all. I’m a fucking engine room right now
, but it’s definitely not because I’m excited. Terror would be a more accurate description.”
“
Well, if I don’t get a release valve for this pressure while we’re out here, I’m gonna have to take it out on you when we get back.”
My heart pumps faster. My arms and legs tingle. “Jesus, your brother is going to hear.”
“Shit, my brother already knows.”
I stop dead in my tracks.
“He knows what?”
She falls against me and knees me in the ass to get me moving again. “That we fucked.”
“You told him?” The Rabid and the military are suddenly the least of my worries.
“God, no. Ruiz has got a sixth sense though. I know he knows.”
“But, he hasn’t said anything?”
“He doesn’t need to.
” She laughs. “Relax, Tim, I’m a big girl. I can handle my business. Just don’t do me wrong and I won’t have to get him to kill you.” She nuzzles my neck before kneeing me in the ass again.
We continue our trek past
lonely swing sets and leaf covered in-ground pools, which now serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and God knows what else. Lawn chairs are strewn at odd angles, umbrella covered table tops are tipped over onto their sides, and there are broken dishes and cups to match. There’s meat left to rot on the grill, the charcoal now cold and waterlogged. It’s all such a crude photograph of the rich-and-not-so-famous.
Another gate. Another
yard. Another life interrupted.
There’s
a humming sound coming from around the next corner.
A dull throaty racket.
Wet.
Muffled.
Rabid!
“You hear it
, too?” I ask Katia as she races past me through the next gate and crouches by the side of a teal colored palace.
“Yeah, come here, get down behind me.”
Ruiz and Tyrell take up at my back.
“
Biters?” Ruiz asks.
“Yeah, we think so.”
“How many?”
“Don’t know, Katia is checking.”
She moves forward, staying low, working her way towards the corner on the balls of her feet. She sets one of the swords down and steadies herself against the wall.
Deep breath in. Steady out.
She slowly moves her face from cover. A bit at a time. Some cheek. A sliver of mouth. One eye. Just enough to see the three Rabid picking rotten flesh from a blackened and bloated corpse lying poolside.
She slides back into cover and holds three fingers
up. “Save the ammo, I’ve got it,” she says retrieving her sword from the ground and preparing to lunge.
“Okay
, sis, we’ll cover. Tim, you got her back?”
“Yep.”
“Nothing fancy, sis. Just get in and get out.”
“You know me.”
“Yeah, that’s my point.”
She stands and looks back to make sure we’re ready. “On me.” She winks.
Katia goes in, full sprint; the swords glinting in the sunlight, flowing up and down like silver pendulums as she pumps her arms. I follow her, my rifle up, I move left around the other side of the pool to get a better angle on the scene. The three Rabid notice her just before she closes the gap. The closest one stands, its back still turned. Katia uses her momentum and breaks into a pirouette. It’s fast. Her swords move like fan blades. They slice through the neck of the Rabid and send his head toppling to the asphalt. As the body falls, the other two Rabid rise from their meal, blackened flesh still hanging from their lips. One is dressed in a Hawaiian silk shirt and the other in a pair of denim overalls.
Katia could take them both. Right now. Two swords. Two heads. Be done with it.
A little smile dances across her lips. She opens her stance, places one foot behind the other, takes two steps back, and brings the swords up to chest height. “Bring it bitches!” She kicks the decapitated head by her left foot into the pool.
She’s toying with them.
“See, this is the shit I’m talking about, she’s always got to do this.” Ruiz is crouched on one knee beside me, one eye glued to his sight, ready to intervene if necessary. “Be ready in case she fucks it up.”
She times it with perfection. The one with the palm trees on his shirt c
harges at the head of the group. The one in the overalls is not far behind. Katia fakes right, plunges a sword into Hawaii’s chest and kicks down on the back of his right knee as he sails past her, putting him face down on the pavement and leaving her sword buried in his body. The Rabid in overalls swipes at her, slinging black blood and chunks of rotten meat as he lunges for her neck with his teeth. She flinches at the onslaught and steps back, anticipating the next move. He swipes again and she swings up at the same time, gripping the sword with both hands. She slices straight through his wrist. At the top of her swing, she flips the blade around and comes straight back down and opens him up like he’s a Ziploc bag, cutting him from sternum to pelvis. Gallons of thick meaty liquid splash to the ground. His innards dangle there, just above the pavement, like the contents of a broken electrical box. The sight of his guts dragging the ground doesn’t deter the biter. If anything, he charges in harder. His legs immediately get hung up in his intestines. He falls and bucks around on the ground like a lassoed hog, still reaching for her, his teeth still biting at the air. Katia backs away, that little smile still glued to her lips.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,”
Ruiz grumbles, “just finish them already.”
Katia
steps up beside the biter in overalls, plants a boot against cheek, and runs the blade through the top of his head. She turns her attention back to Hawaii, who’s just now pulling himself up from the ground. She buries her boot in the back of his other knee, simultaneously ripping her blade from his chest as he falls. Once he’s on his back, she plunges it through his eye, twisting it back and forth for good measure.
As she saunters over to us
, her smile spreads as she twirls the black blood from the edges of her swords.
“Did you forget what we’re out here for?” Ruiz
props his gun back over his shoulder, following Katia with an expectant glare as she moves to the grass behind him to finish cleaning the blades.
“Girl has to take fun where she can find it,” Katia says as she scrapes the muck from one of the blades into the grass using a boot heel.
“Some kind of fun.” I watch her, still a little shocked by the joy she seems to get from the kill.
Ruiz gives up and shakes his head. “Alright
, kid, get up there on point. We’ve still got a job to do.”
We exit the yard and
crest a small hill,. We weave our way through some transplanted shrubbery and come face to face with a brick wall.
“This is it,” Ruiz says, running up beside me, his knees unnecessarily cocked. The wall is over seven feet tall, easy. There’s no
t a chance of his head breaking cover.
Katia and Tyrell join us by the wall.
We gather in tight.
“
Okay, guys, we’ve got to do this right. I want all of us going home when this is done.” He checks us to make sure we’re with him. “Tim, you pulled short straw, so you’re first over; make sure the coast is clear.”
I nod. Numb to the idea.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m most likely going to catch a bullet in the face or a set of teeth in the jugular.
“After that
, I’m going to boost Katia and Tyrell over. Then, Tyrell, you’re going to pull me up and over. Got it? Don’t fucking leave me hanging down here.”
“I gotc
ha, boss, I gotcha,” Tyrell says.
“Okay,” Ruiz pulls a rough sketch from one of his pockets
, “if our scouts are right, there should be some pretty good concealment on the other side of this wall; shrubs and shit. Then there is a small side street and then our checkpoint.” His finger dances across the crude pencil drawn portrait of our target. “We’re going to be coming up behind the gas station. That should give us concealment from the balcony sniper across the way as well as the street crew. Katia, you’re going to take the access ladder on the back of the convenience store and quietly bring down the guy on the roof. You take up his rifle and you get ready to cover us, clear on that?”
“What if he’s doing circles up there and sees me coming, then what?”
Ruiz hesitates. He clearly hasn’t planned for that. “Well, then, you run zigzags, we’ll do our best to cover you and get you out of the hot zone.”
“Comforting.”
“Hey, it’s what we’ve got. We’ll scope it out when we get on the other side and try to get a feel on things.”
She nods. “
Well, if it’s what we got, it’s what we got. But just know, I’m no expert behind the scope, just letting you know now. So, if you get your asses in a bind and need close support, be aware that I’m as likely to dump a bullet in you as I am them.”
“Yeah, well,
let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that. We do need you to nail the sniper on the hotel balcony across the street. Or, at least keep him pinned down until we can get close enough to do the deed ourselves. Also, if you can plant a round in the asshole on the .50, that’d be super.”
She nods. “I’ll do my best.”
“The rest of you, it’s pretty basic. We move in, keep our shots tight while she covers us from up top. Everyone clear?”
“Clear.”
“Roger dodger.”
“Let’s get this shit done and get back.” Ruiz stands and backs up against the wall. “Up and over, Tim.”
Here it is. My final moment. I’d survived all this to become target practice for some trigger happy pawn in dirty fatigues. I suppose there are worse ways to go, hell, I know there are, I’ve seen em’ first hand. I just never pictured myself going out like this. It’s a glorified version of Whac-A-Mole. Except, there’s no mole here. Just my head. Rising up like some metal target in a carnival shooter. No BB’s here, no pellets, no cushion coated plastic mallets; just 5.56mm rounds traveling at 4,900 feet per second. They’ll split my head like a melon. At least it’ll be quick. A blink to black rather than a fade.
“Hold
my rifle?” I extend it to Katia.
“You really need a sling.”
“If I survive this, I’ll consider it.”
I rest my boot in
Ruiz’s palms and set my hands against the wall. In one quick motion, he sends me sailing up, past the surface of the wall, at rocket speed, my hands frantically looking for something to hold onto. Before I can find a grip, I’m cresting the top. I throw my arms over the edge and hold myself there.
Waiting for it. Waiting for the blackness.
Will I hear the shot before the lights go out?
Probably not.
Nothing happens. I just hang there. The wind pounds my face, threatening to rip the hat from my head. Thick trees lay before me with overgrown shrubs crowding their base. They rustle in the wind like paper chimes. Speeding up and slowing down as each gust surges and peaks, surges and peaks.
I throw a leg over, straddling the top as I reac
h an arm down to retrieve my rifle. Katia passes it up to me, straining on the tips of her toes. With my rifle in hand, I slide both legs over and take the plunge. I hit ground harder than expected and launch myself into a roll, coming to rest on my stomach, rifle splayed out beside me.
I can see the
back of the store through the brush along with a few lifeless gas pumps sitting towards the edge of the front parking lot. There are two thin lines of smoke casually rising from the other side of the building.
Campfires? Boredom induced anarchy?
Who knows?
We’ll find out soon enough.
The coast is clear. Crystal clear. There isn’t another soul stirring as far as I can tell. The roof of the convenience store seems void of life. There is a giant metal HVAC unit posted up in the center. Our sniper is probably on the other side of it, bored to tears and cold as hell.
Katia lands beside me like a
ninja. Perfect form. Knees bent. Arms out slightly to her side. The girl is pure ghost. She steps over and drops to her stomach next to me.
“Where am I going?
” she whispers.
“See
right there, backside of the building on the other side of that dumpster? That ladder is your way up.”
“See anything yet?”
“Just that smoke, they got something burning.”
“Meh,
probably a barrel fire. I call dibs.”