Something to Die For by Kaye Blue
Seventeen
Lucas
“What the fuck!”
Merlin was loud, but his voice could barely be heard over the screams.
I glanced over at him quickly and saw that he was on the brink of losing his shit.
“Hold it together. Those are your brothers out there, and they need you,” I said.
My words seem to get to him, and he cracked his neck, clearly trying to shake off the fear that had hit him like a truck.
I didn’t know how long it would last, but I would take advantage.
An uncontrolled Merlin would only be a detriment, and I didn’t need any more of those.
“Is that those…things?” he asked, sounding timid, afraid, no trace of the big shot he’d pretended to be.
I followed his line of sight and saw two soldiers dressed in fatigues. Or at least they had been soldiers. Now, they were mindless monsters chewing on the rib cage of one of Merlin’s guys.
“Yeah. Get them in the head, and they should go down,” I said.
He didn’t ask again and instead took aim, taking down one and then the other.
He approached slowly, the screams of his man sickening in their intensity.
“Sorry, brother,” Merlin said as he stood over the man.
He finished the man off with a head shot, and we both turned toward the door of the outbuilding.
“I’m not leaving my shit. Cover me?”
I nodded, not needing the encouragement.
I counted at least fifteen of those things, which meant we were way outnumbered.
But I could handle it.
A few carefully targeted sprays of automatic gunfire, and they all went down.
We headed back to the outbuilding, and Merlin quickly went to the cart, relief on his features when his precious electronics were back in his grip.
“Come in,” he said into his walkie-talkie.
“Merlin, there’s dozens of them out here. We gotta go,” said one of the other men, whose name I hadn’t bothered to learn.
“We’re on our way. Cover us when we come out.”
I pushed open the outbuilding door, not sure what I was going to see you, not expecting at least two dozen more soldiers, all of whom moving in that telltale way that told me they were no longer alive. They’d moved quicker than I expected, no doubt attracted by the sound of gunfire.
I wasn’t going to wait for more to show up.
“Go! Get to the truck!”
I took care of the ones that got closest, saw that even more had been roused by the noise and were moving faster.
Not fast, exactly, but they were moving toward us at a steady clip. I wouldn’t let any of them get closer.
Instead, I use the suppressive fire, kept all the others away.
“Load this shit up,” Merlin called.
Two of his men approached and quickly began throwing boxes on the back.
“The others?” Merlin called.
One man shook his head. “It’s just us.”
“Fine. We’ll leave the trucks. Hop in.”
Merlin got into the driver’s side, and I got into the back with the other two.
He drove off, and those things gave chase, but soon they were nothing but small figures in the distance.
“Fuck!” one of Merlin’s men said.
He sank back into the corner of the truck, his eyes wide, adrenaline making his pounding pulse visible in his neck.
“Haven’t seen them up close before?”
He shook his head. “No. Didn’t think they had gotten this far out of the city. But they’re everywhere,” he said.
That seemed to be a realization that he hadn’t made before.
It was the same for me.
Yes, I’d seen them up close and personal, but over the hours since then, I had been lulled into a sense of complacency.
No more.
I needed to get the doctor where she was going and then be on my own way.
I knew exactly where I was headed and wouldn’t let anything stop me from getting there.
Thankfully, the roads were still clear, though who knew how long that would last.
As we approached the compound, Merlin slowed the truck to a crawl.
The tension that had only just started to break was back in an instant.
I heard a grunt and what sounded like the muffled pop of a silenced shot.
Could smell the arid scent of fire.
I knocked on the truck window, and when it opened, I peered inside.
“Merlin, looks like you got company.”