Max got stiffly to his feet, looking at his friend beneath him. Stewart grabbed his arm and tugged him towards the door. He noticed there were holes in the front of her fatigues, but no blood. Pulling to a stop at the doorway he paused to look back over Ruben and Bill.
"Wait, Stewart, one second." Max rushed back over to Bill and got down over his body again, he licked his lips and bent down over the wounds in his stomach. With both hands he pulled Bill's shirt apart, eliciting a wearied grunt from his friend. Max put his face to Bill's wound, hovering just over the worst of them, he spit into it. He sent another probe into the wound to see the effect and when he rose there was a slight smile on his face, "Get him out of here, Ruben!"
"What'd you do? What did you do, Max?"
"I think I fixed him, just get him out of here! Get him back to his family."
Ruben nodded, "I intend to." With that he grabbed Bill by the hands and swung him up onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry. By the time Ruben reached the hall he just caught the last of Max and Stewart running through the hole Sentry had made in the wall to get to the warehouse.
Chapter 42 — Katie
Katie fell down halfway across the street. It took her some time to realize she had fallen over, she was lost in the flood of memories. When she finally came to, she found herself lying in the pouring rain trying to piece together the fragments of her mind. 'It's like doing a puzzle during an earthquake. The pieces keep shifting faster than I can get them into place.´ When she came back she found she was crouched over her rifle trying to shield it from the worst of the rain. 'Old habits die hard. Always protect your gun.'
Randy offered her a hand up, which she accepted and he pulled her to her feet. She looked at her hand for a moment, then at Randy. "What'd I miss?" she asked him as she ran over to, and rolled under, a late model Ford.
"Aubrey went inside with her troops, more zombies are trickling in, but they seem to be ignoring the melee in the warehouse and heading deeper into the building. Look at the doorway, there is where they all went."
Randy was sitting with his legs crossed in front of the Ford, he was pointing at a ragged hole in the otherwise pristine warehouse wall that their new angle allowed them to see. "That looks new." Katie said.
Shrugging his shoulders, Randy said, "Yeah, does it matter? Oh, I saw the old guy run around back of the building too. His eyes were closed and he was stopping and going in a strange pattern."
"Strange pattern?"
"Yeah, he would take three steps and stop dead still for a second, then take a few more steps and stop again. Sometimes he'd run twenty or thirty paces before stopping. Sometimes he'd only take a single step. The time he stayed still varied too."
"I don't really care about the old coot. I am surprised one of the contestants for 'best dressed zombie in military garb' of the year didn't put a cap in him though."
"That's just it; I don't think anyone saw him. I mean anyone who cared. Team Aubrey wasn't exactly interested in capping his ass. The others probably would have. I think, but they always seemed to be looking where he wasn't at."
"Weird, but it doesn't matter. How's our team doing?" Katie took a rag out of her pocket and wiped the scope down, then proceeded to give the gun a quick wipe down as well.
"Down to her and her man Kurt."
"Kurt? You know his name."
"Yeah, sure, I went to high school with him."
Katie grunted, "Small world."
"I'm just shitting you. I don't know who he is, I named him Kurt, so I could root for him. He is like, one of the good guys."
"Asshole." Katie lined up her rifle and tried to get a bead on one of the men inside the building. The bright lights were a stark contrast against the dim light made from the approaching storm.
After a moment, Randy asked, "You gonna take a shot or what?"
"They're moving too fast. What's with all these assholes going into the building, but not fighting?"
"How should I know? Just pick a target, even winging someone will slow them down enough for Kurt or Aubrey to finish them."
"Good point. I was looking for a head shot." A split second later Katie's bullet winged the zombie Aubrey was fighting in the shoulder. Aubrey wasted no time, she swung her fist around to shatter the thing's skull and moved on to the next opponent.
"Good shot! Were you aiming for him?"
"Quiet, you!" Katie snarled.
"Sure, sure, the rain and the thunder and the grunting and screaming isn't a problem, but me commending you throws off your aim."
"Randy…." Katie warned. Her next shot took one of Kurt's zombies in the ankle, the zombie stumbled and wheeled away from Kurt, whose attempt at a coup de grace missed by millimeters.
"Shit." Katie chambered another round and missed her target completely.
"That's one for three. You can do better than this."
"Better than you could do." Katie mumbled.
"At this range? Not likely." retorted Randy.
"With this gun? Very likely. You'd be lucky to get one into the building." The next bullet struck the only other woman in the hanger right between the breasts. It knocked her backwards from Aubrey, directly in front of Kurt, who slammed the double sided combat knife up under her chin into her brain.
"That was clean. Go Kurt!" Randy cheered.
"Hey, that was me all the way!"
"Go Katie!"
"Six more. Uh-oh, their peeling an 'A' lister off of Aubrey for Kurt. Kill that bastard!"
"You in love with Kurt now or what?"
"Two versus six, I gotta love the underdogs!"
Katie fired again, twice in rapid succession, hitting the man once and putting another bullet into the wall behind him. Kurt swung his knife in a vicious arc towards the guy's head, but the man he was fighting blocked with his wrist. Kurt's blade severed the wrist easily, but the 'A' list fighter hopped back out of the fight to recover.
Katie was reloading and cursed, "Sure the bastard stops now, I totally could have had him myself!"
"You should have reloaded after the first three."
"Nag, nag, nag."
As she raised her gun to fire again, Katie stopped completely. A man was coming out of the hallway. One of the many slow, shambling zombies reached towards him and disintegrated as the two touched.
"I think the boss monster has entered the building." Randy said, "Shoot his ass Katie!"
Katie was looking at him and immediately became cognizant that he was aware of her too. She sighted down the barrel of her gun and fired at the bridge of his nose. The bullet struck true and rocked his head back…before ricocheting into the ceiling. When his head tilted back down his eyes were glowing white with an inner fire.
"What. The. Fuck." Randy said.
The zombies fighting Aubrey stopped when the man came into the hanger, and Aubrey made quick work of two of them, sending one's head rolling, before smashing in another with nothing more than her fist.
"That's the guy who did all this shit. That's the one who started this!" said Randy as he pointed at the man.
"Yeah, thanks Captain Obvious. Like the pictures at his house weren't enough of a clue. I think his name is…" Katie concentrated, trying to recover a fragment of her lost memory. "Thomas Sentry."
Upon saying his name she felt pulled forward. This was not an urge to move forward, Katie was literally dragged across the pavement out from under the car towards Sentry, many of the zombies in the hanger suffered from the same violation. When she stopped Katie did feel an immense compulsion to move towards the Doctor again. Dropping her rifle she stood up and walked into the warehouse, her duffle bag still hanging from her shoulder.