She had to wait until they moved; the state they were in, they’d shoot anything they saw.
Not good.
About ten minutes later, she saw them crawl up towards the front of the garage, moving beneath vehicles on their bellies like lizards. They were uncomfortably close when they re-grouped.
“There’s only four of us,” a voice said. “That’s all.”
“We had thirty guys here,” another said, his voice breaking with stress. “They… they can’t all be dead.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Shit.”
“Don’t be such a pussy. This is what you trained for.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Lock and load. Let’s do this. We don’t have a choice.”
“The radio—”
“Piss on that,” the first voice said. “We’re transmitting, but they’re not receiving. Stupid pricks are jamming the secure channel, too.”
“I knew this would happen.”
Ruby Sue was grinning at the exchange.
It was somehow satisfying to see the military hamstrung by the situation, too. If Johnny was right, they had created it, so let them suffer along with the rest. It was only fair, wasn’t it?
She crept towards the front of the truck, bare inches now from the dead soldier. She looked down at the raw meat of his face glistening in the moonlight. It didn’t bother her; nothing seemed to bother her anymore. There was something lying by his side. Something dark and shiny. She touched it. Metal.
Jesus, it was his rifle. His M-16.
Carefully, she picked it up.
She’d never fired one before. It was remarkably light, fitted with a bayonet. The barrel was short and ribbed, the magazine jutting from beneath banana-shaped. She stuck her Colt in the other pocket of her jean jacket. The soldiers were standing up now, approaching a door which read EXIT in glowing red letters.
Breathing hard now, more out of fear and apprehension than any exertion, she moved soundlessly to the front of the pump truck. She aimed at the silhouettes, no easy task with her sprained left wrist. They were still arguing as to whether they should go into the building proper or escape out the back way.
“I got a better idea,” she said under her breath.
She pulled the trigger.
The M-16 came alive in her hands, the bullets going everywhere but where she’d aimed them. The rocking motion of the rifle sent knives of pain into her damaged wrist. But then, in a split second, beyond pain, she had the rifle under control, pressing the stock into her shoulder where it rode easily. Shell casings rained in the air.
The soldiers instinctively went down low, but not fast enough.
They were clumsy in their spaceman suits.
She hit two of them and then a third as he opened fire in her direction, taking out his aggression and terror on the windshield of the pump truck. He screamed as bullets ripped through his face shield. The last soldier tried to scramble away, but she shot his legs out from under him. He screamed and started shooting in every direction.
By then, she was on the other side of the vehicle.
She drew a bead on the solder’s head and let go with another burst. He went down face-first.
She waited then.
She could hear one or two of them moaning, whimpering, begging for help.
Here comes your fucking help.
She walked over to them, nearly slipping on all the brass scattered over the floor. She couldn’t see their faces in the hoods, but she could see that there was no way they could get to their rifles. And that was the most important thing.
One of the soldiers held bloody, gloved hands out to her.
She swatted them away with the barrel of her 16. “Welcome to the jungle,” she told him and rammed the bayonet into his chest continually until he quit writhing and screeching and her arms were sore and his blood was spattered over her in a fine, coppery mist.
She took the man’s rifle and slung it over her shoulder.
He had some sort of ammo pouch with him. In it were three smooth-bodied grenades and two others shaped like blunt cylinders. She shouldered the sack, stuffed her pistols in there and some more magazines for the M-16s. It was heavy by then and bulging, but she was ready for war.
She stepped into the corridor on the other side of the fire door.
It was empty.
Too bad. She liked using her new rifle. Liked the way it put out the rounds. She wished Joe were here, though. For many reasons, of course, but mainly because he’d been in the service and he knew how to load these things.
She supposed she’d figure it out, though.
The walls were cement block painted an ugly piss yellow. She went through the first doorway she found and into a bank of offices. Fluorescents were on overhead. A few of them, anyway.
The rabids had been through here.
There was no doubt of that. Desks were overturned, computers shattered into plastic shards, phones ripped from walls. The floor was littered with papers and file folders.
She found a cell phone, but all she got was static on it.
She moved to the end and around a corner. More of the same. A framed sepia photo of the municipal building, probably taken back in the 1920s or ’30s was shattered on the floor. It looked like somebody had vomited on it. The only constant was the smell of urine, as if the rabids had gone through here and then marked their territory like dogs.
Nothing else except the woman.
She was sitting in a swivel chair up against a bank of file cabinets. She was naked save for a pair of orange knee-high socks. There was a bullet hole in her forehead, a few of them in fact. Congealed brains and blood trailed down her face onto her chest. There was a rose tattoo on her left breast. Her legs were spread wide, her cold sex on grisly display.
Ruby Sue looked at her for a long time. “There’s no dignity in death in this fucking town, sister,” she told the corpse.
What she was most perplexed by was the woman’s position in the chair. It wasn’t the position in which someone would sit in a chair—her ass was down low, almost hanging off the seat, her back had slid nearly to the bottom of the backrest, head slumped forward. Maybe she had been killed and slid down like that, but it didn’t fit: Why were there no bullet holes in the chair? In the file cabinets behind her?
No, she’d been killed somewhere else and put there.
But why? And by who?
And then Ruby Sue saw the dried patches of clear material around the woman’s vagina and thighs. She’d been laid out in the chair like that so her body could be screwed. That’s what it was.
And although Ruby Sue had gone deep cold inside now, she still found it sickening.
And that’s when she heard them coming up behind her.
She wheeled around with the 16, but never even squeezed off a shot.
The rifle was snatched from her grip and sent spinning across the office. Two naked men—rabids—stood before her. They were giggling, drool running down their chins. Their yellow glaring eyes were swimming with a ghastly hunger.
They tried to speak and succeeded only in making morbid gurgling sounds like bad plumbing.
She did not panic.
This was no place for someone who couldn’t keep their head. The two of them held her by the arms now and with their huge, erect penises pressing against her like missiles, there was no doubt what they had in mind. They’d rape her. Then kill her. Then keep raping her until there was nothing left.
The M-16 she had around her shoulder was stripped free now.
But not the ammo pouch. There was still hope.
Use your head, outsmart them.
They threw her roughly atop a desk.
So much for foreplay.
One rabid held her head down by the hair, brushing his frigid, damp penis against her face. The other began ripping her pants off. He didn’t bother with niceties like zippers and buttons. He yanked them down with savage force, the button popping and sailing away. He tore everything away.