And Ruby Sue, despite the almost phobic horror that trembled in her, did not fight. If she fought, she knew, they’d hold her arms down and she couldn’t have that.
Her pouch was still at her side, the strap wedged around her shoulder. They didn’t seem to be concerned about that.
They were pawing her with their contaminated fingers.
That shouldn’t have mattered, but it didn’t.
The man holding her down leaned in close, a slimy grin stitched across his bloodless lips. A thread of germ-rich drool broke across her face like a spider web. It was cold and gelatinous like old snot, but its touch made her skin feel hot. Waves of nausea rolled through her. She needed badly to vomit, to scream, but since she wasn’t about to lose control like that, she did nothing.
She steeled herself, internalized it all.
The rabid leered at her with a lewd, degenerate mockery of carnal need.
She laid there motionless, her right hand inching slowly to the pouch.
He pushed her legs apart with the hands of a man who’d just handled frozen meat.
Her fingers brushed the pouch.
His breath was rancid, his penis hard against her thigh.
Her fingers slipped into the pouch.
She felt his cock press against her sex.
He started to giggle. A wet, horrible sound. The laughter of the criminally insane.
Her hand closed around the butt of the Browning .380.
The head of his penis found where it had to go.
It slid roughly into her and she gasped.
With a quick, economical motion, she brought out the Browning and shot him in the face. His nose exploded in a spray of blood and he fell back, screaming and clawing at the air in front of him.
The other rabid went into instant action.
He literally pulled Ruby Sue off the desk by her hair and tossed her through the air. She tumbled across another desk, taking the blotter and lamp with her. Her knees cracked the desk and her head cracked the floor. The Browning slid away.
The rabid came right at her.
He kicked her in the belly with enough force to knock the wind out of her. He aimed another for her face, but she darted back quick enough so it only caught her shoulder, flipping her over on her back.
But she still had the pouch.
The rabids came on.
The one with the hole in his face knocked the other out of the way, lurching forward, baying like a hound, spraying blood from his mouth.
She brought out the Colt Python.
It was heavy in her hand. She pulled the trigger and it went off like a cannon, the recoil almost throwing the weapon from her hand. It blew another hole in the rabid, this one right in the center of his chest. He flew back, dead before he hit the floor.
The other one came on and she shot him in the throat, the side of his neck pulverized. He went down, dying, but refusing to go quietly. His fingers wriggled in the air.
Ruby Sue pulled herself up, pressing her wrist against her side. Her right hand, the one that had held the Colt, was numb from the recoil. She slid the weapon back in her pack and retrieved the Browning.
The rabid with the gored throat was up on his knees, head hanging to one side, blood gushing from the ruptured tissues. She put another round in his head and he went down and stayed down.
She went to her knees, vomiting, then began to cry.
But not for long. She found her pants, hitched them up the best she could and found her M-16. The spare one she couldn’t seem to find and didn’t want to take the time. She could hear gunfire again, the poppings of automatics. Sounded like it was both outside and inside the building. She could smell smoke and not just the acrid stink of her own cordite.
Was the fire that close?
She ducked back into the hallway and someone came running at her.
At her and past her.
It was hard to tell whether it was a woman or a man.
Just a figure completely engulfed in flames, stumbling up the corridor, bounding off the walls, making some high-pitched whining sound. The smell of cremated flesh was sickening. The figure made it to the fire door and actually tried to work the handle futilely before dropping into a smoking, roasted heap.
The fire didn’t do that.
The soldiers had flamethrowers.
32
They were moving up the stairs to the third floor.
Johnny was leading the way in a low crouch. The stairwell was like being inside a black box. They could see the lights from below and some illumination from the bend in the stairs above, but that was it.
“We should’ve taken the elevator,” Lou said.
“Sure,” Johnny said, “and get trapped between floors? That would be great. Might take maintenance awhile to reach us.”
He kept going.
He was figuring that if they were extremely lucky, they might make the roof. He knew where the doorway was. It would be locked, but that wouldn’t be a problem. When he was sixteen he’d worked here mopping floors and cleaning the shitters. He was pretty certain everything would still be pretty much the same.
That was, if they could make it there.
The building, he knew, was crawling with rabids and soldiers now. It was like some sort of war and they were trapped in-between. If the rabids didn’t get them, the soldiers would.
He could hear gunfire. It was closer all the time.
Just because Terra and his boys had gotten wiped out, that didn’t mean shit, he knew. The troops would keep coming and coming. They wouldn’t stop until they’d mopped up the entire town.
Nobody had commented on the necklace of trophies Terra was sporting.
That was probably a good thing, Johnny figured. He’d seen guys mutilate cadavers in the war. It was a very solemn thing to them, symbolic of their ferocity perhaps.
Truth was, it was also the act of a damaged mind.
And Terra? He was damaged, all right.
At the top of the steps, Johnny paused.
It was quiet, but he knew there were people up here. Maybe human, maybe not.
His fatigue shirt plastered to his back with sweat, he slipped out into the corridor. It was dimly lit like those below. In either direction were doorways. Some open. Some closed.
The others followed him up.
Their footfalls were very loud, echoing in the stillness.
“Well, what took you, partner?”
That voice…
They turned and Rawley was standing in the doorway of an office. He had an M-16 rifle pointed in their direction, a big shit-eating grin on his piggish features. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost his hat and had his shirt nearly torn off. His face was bruised, crusted with fingers of old blood.
Lou saw him, his jaw dropped. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Back at you, buddy.”
Terra had his weapon on him. “Who’s this greaseball?” he wanted to know.
“Just call him Greaseball, everyone does,” Lou informed him with a very straight face.
Rawley was pretty much as they remembered him—save that he looked like some pissed-off mongrel had chewed him up and shit him back out again. He still had the same crooked smile, the same unreadable eyes.
“Hate to break up the fun and games,” he said, “but you may have noticed that I have a rifle here in my hands and if you don’t drop your artillery, well, shit, in about five seconds you’ll be deader than Jesus.”
“If we stand around bullshitting much longer, we’ll all be dead,” Johnny said.
Terra laughed that high giggle again. “I ain’t about to drop my weapon. You’re either with us or I kill your redneck ass right here.”