"Claudia, no!" cried one of them. This was the kind of fury that Earl had warned me about. Her face had extended into bloody jaws. Golden predator eyes locked on them and lurched forward.
Both of the cultists jerked as projectiles ripped into them through the doorway. Franks had used the lull to his advantage. The werewolf leapt on top of the nearest and sunk her teeth into his throat, taking them both down in a jumble of arterial spray. They crashed into the 56" flat-screen and tore it from the wall.
I slipped in the warm blood, trying to find traction to rise. The werewolf looked up from her victim, the part of her mind capable of rational thought surely remembering that I was the one who had killed her boyfriend. I slid toward the pool table, latched onto a handful of felt and pulled myself up. Grabbing one of the solid balls off the table, I cocked my arm back and launched it at her. It hit her in the snout. She yelped, and I immediately chucked another pool ball. This time I missed.
She slunk forward. I grabbed the only other weapon that was in reach, a pool cue. It looked so skinny and feeble, but it beat harsh language. I raised it overhead and brought it down with a bellow. It snapped in half.
The werewolf was not amused. She stood upright, and now with her warping bones, she was my height, but gangly and misshapen. I held out the broken haft, ready to stab. Frothy bubbles blew from her nostrils as she backed me into the corner. Her silver mane was streaked with red. She closed in, instinct demanding to rip me to bits.
"Bad werewolf," Franks said from the entrance. "Sit."
The werewolf swung her head to assess the interloper. I slammed the jagged end of the pool cue into her throat. It was like a blood explosion. She howled in sudden agony, claws flying to the wound. Franks raised his Glock and calmly put a single round of silver 10mm through her brain, ending the scream forever. She collapsed.
"Stay…" Franks walked up, assessed the body, then fired two more rounds into the corpse, just to be sure. "Good werewolf."
I was out of breath and covered in dripping blood. "Was that your idea of a joke?" He cocked his head to the side, inscrutable as ever. "Never mind. What took you so long?"
Grant answered that. He came running into the room, smoking Uzi in hand. "Help me barricade the door!"
"From what?" I asked.
Something gigantic roared outside. "That! Hurry!"
Franks got on one end of the pool table that had to weigh a ton, lifted it with a grunt and started dragging it across the floor. I threw my shoulder into the other side and shoved. Muscles straining, we got it next to the door, moved to one side, heaved, and tipped it over with a crash. We shoved it against the entrance.
The table shook as the giant beast collided with the doorway. The impact shook me to the bone. "What is that?" I shouted.
"I think it's a zombie bear," Grant said as he reloaded the Uzi, putting his shoulder against the table to help hold it.
Franks braced himself against the table. "Armored zombie bear," he corrected.
"I tried to shoot it in the brain, but it's got a helmet or something," Grant shouted. The creature crashed into the table again, sliding all three of us back a few inches. "A helmet! Who puts buckets on zombies' heads? That's not fair! Where's the ward?"
The werewolf had been the leader. I hurried from the table, slipping on the bloody tile. The silver-haired woman was facedown. Her clothing was hanging in tatters. I had no idea what the stone looked like, but I assumed it was substantial. There was a black satchel on the floor. I ripped it open and my hands landed on something hard and cold.
It looked like a perfect granite sphere, about the size of a Magic 8 Ball. I rolled it over in my hands and discovered that there was a row of archaic letters carved into it. It looked like gibberish.
"Make it go!" Grant shouted. The zombie bear was crashing rhythmically into the table. My companions were sliding back against the relentless hammering.
"Turn it on," Franks ordered. A massive limb erupted through the center of the table. It was hairless, pink exposed muscle, with steel spikes bolted onto the end of the paw in lieu of regular claws. The paw swung about, searching, then jerked back out when it didn't catch us. Franks poked the muzzle of his Glock through the hole and cranked off half a dozen rounds. "Turn it on now!"
I touched the letters. Somehow, they turned like a combination lock. The letters were old-fashioned and spelled nothing. I randomly swiped my fingers across them, and they spun, symbols magically materializing on the smooth stone, spelling more nonsense. "I don't know how!" Earl had said that it needed to be tuned for a location. The cultists must have moved the combination when they picked it up.
The zombie bear had a running start this time. This time the table blew right in half. Franks and Grant were sent sprawling. I dove for the AK-47.
The beast was gigantic, big as a friggin' cow, hairless and pink, corded muscles bulging, with bands of steel and spikes welded together across its body. It was already riddled with puckered bullet holes, but showed no indication that it even knew. The head was an armored monstrosity, battleship plates bolted together into an armored box, then laced in razor wire and scalpel blades.
It was blind.
Now inside, it shuffled forward, clumsy limbs tearing rusty holes in everything, a snorting noise echoing from inside the helmet as it smelled us. It couldn't bite, but we were sure to be crushed or cut to ribbons as it stupidly tried. I hoisted the AK, jerked it to my shoulder, and fired at the helmet. The gun was set on full-auto, and the 30-caliber bullets bounced off in sparks and fragments. The best way to take out zombies was to destroy the brain, and that didn't look like an option here, not to mention it was covered in blades and weighed a thousand pounds. Catching my scent, it lumbered at me.
Franks intercepted the bear. He had his fighting knife in one hand and a grenade in the other. He dodged under the swinging blades, cut a long gash between the monster's ribs, then slammed his fist through the gap, sinking clear up to his shoulder in organs. It dragged him along toward me. "Back," Franks ordered, jerking his gore-stained arm out of the hole with a disgusting squelching noise and falling away from the deadly legs. The grenade was gone. The zombie bear's roar reverberated inside the helmet. I sprinted down the hallway.
The explosion was muffled inside the bear carcass. When I opened my eyes, a red cloud filled the recreation room. It was literally raining meat. Bits and pieces fell from the ceiling with wet thumps.
We certainly wouldn't be using the rec room anytime soon. The armored zombie bear had been blown apart. The head and shoulders were filling the bullet-riddled doorway. The head was still moaning, but it didn't have any limbs to drive it. I kicked the box.
Franks stepped out of the blood cloud. He was entirely coated in a viscous red slime. He was terrifying to look at, but I'm sure I didn't look much better. "Jefferson, get weapons. Pitt, ward."
I tossed him the ball. He caught it with one hand. The noise from the compound indicated that there were more of these things out there, and MHI was responding with explosives, lots of explosives. Franks scowled as he studied the letters. Apparently he was as stumped as I was.
"Let's get to a more defensible position while we figure that thing out," I suggested, jerking my head back the way I had come.
Franks put the ward stone to his ear and shook it. "I hate puzzles."
Chapter 16
The most defensible rooms in the barracks were the bathrooms. There was only one entrance and no windows. If the cultists had grabbed this instead of the rec room, we wouldn't have been able to dislodge them. We took the women's instead of the men's because it was on the side away from the main building, where the undead seemed to be focusing their attention.