The Briarwood company Cadillac was stuck. “On three,” Stark ordered. “One, two, three! ” He threw all his weight against the bumper. The tires spun uselessly in the snow. “No! Damn idiot! You’ve got to rock it! Rock it!”
Ryan Horst stuck his head out the window. “I’m trying, okay? Quit yelling at me.”
Stark stood up with a grunt. His back was killing him, having wrenched something during his jump from the hospital window. They’d managed to lose the zombie-werewolves right before Horst had spun them off the side of the road into a ditch. The other Briarwood Hunter, Lins, was trying to help push the front end of the truck out. It was hopeless. It would probably take a tractor to drag them out.
The two of them stopped to take a breath. Stark looked back the way they’d come. The monsters were bound to catch up any second, but he couldn’t even see far enough through the snowfall to tell how much time they had left. “All this shit on here and you don’t have a winch? You’ve got rims that spin, and no winch? Are you kidding me?”
Lins shrugged. “Weren’t expecting none of this, man. This was supposed to be a cakewalk.”
“No heavy weapons. No clue. It’s amateur hour.” Stark glanced around. His parka was back at the hospital, and the wind was cutting right through the seams of his armor. He needed to warm up, but if they hunkered down the monsters would tear them apart. There had to be something they could use, somewhere they could go. “I can’t believe I trusted you idiots.”
“Hey. Look at that.” Lins pointed at something in the distance.
Squinting, Stark could barely make out the lights. “I think that’s the high school. I drove by there earlier.”
“You got a better place to be?”
Stark’s face burned from the cold. His ears were probably going to turn black and fall off. Odds were there was nobody worth a damn at the high school, either, but if they had lights, then they had a generator, so at least he could die warm. “Better than being out here.” He slammed his fist on the hood to get Horst’s attention, then regretted it immediately as the impact stung his frozen hand. “Come on, stupid. Let’s go.”
Horst gave him a sullen glare as he got out, but he was smart enough not to say anything. Stark wasn’t in the mood.
The three of them gathered around the back of the Cadillac so Stark could take stock of the situation. Horst and Lins both had rifles, but there were only a couple of mags left between them. Stark had his issue Glock and a combat knife; that was it. He had pouches full of SCAR mags filled with composite silver 7.62, but his rifle had been left leaning against the wall during his hasty escape from Deputy Buckley. To make matters even more embarrassing, there was a Suburban full of top-of-the-line MCB equipment sitting in the hospital parking lot surrounded by zombie-werewolves.
“Before we make a run for those lights, you guys have any more cold-weather gear you can spare?” Stark asked through chattering teeth.
“If we did, I’d be wearing it,” Lins answered sharply as he sat on the Caddy’s bumper. Balancing his M-4 carbine between his legs, Lins pulled his sweater up over his mouth and nose, then shoved his hands into his armpits. “What’re we supposed to do about Jo?”
A slimy hand landed against the interior of the back window. A horrible visage rose behind the hand. The face was slack and pale, dripping sweat past bloodshot eyes. Drool spilled out as the mouth opened wide. The monster’s face hit the glass with a wet thud.
“Threat!” Stark shouted as he went for his sidearm.
“No, wai-”
BANG.
A hole appeared in the glass. The horrible face disappeared.
Lins fell off the bumper. “Son of a bitch! You shot Jo!”
Stark slowly lowered his Glock as the hand slid down the glass until it also disappeared from view. “Jo?” He looked to Horst, but the lead Briarwood man was just standing there, mouth hanging open, apparently in shock. “Who’s Jo?”
“ That was Jo Schneider,” Lins said as he got to his feet. “She’s with us. She’s Horst’s girlfriend! Shit, man, you just capped our secretary!”
It took his numbed hand a few tries to get the Glock back into the holster. “The one with the sexy voice?” Stark mumbled. “Well…Huh. I pictured her as better looking.”
“She was, before a giant scarecrow robot puked her up,” Lins said.
Horst stepped forward without a word and opened the back of the Cadillac. Stark looked past Horst’s shoulder. The woman had been wrapped in a blanket and appeared to have been in really rough shape even before the gunshot wound. He’d seen healthier looking zombies. “In my defense, she looked like a monster.” Jo Ann was still alive, but probably not for long. Stark’s bullet had punched through her shoulder, and from the amount of blood, he assumed that he’d severed the axillary artery “Well…Shit. Sorry, I guess.”
Jo Ann squinted at Horst. She was having a hard time focusing. “I…I was just gonna…tell you I was feeling…better.”
Lins urgently tapped Stark on the shoulder. “We got company.”
He turned around. There were dark shapes moving against the white backdrop down the block. The undead were back. They weren’t running this way yet, but they would be soon. “Time to go, Horst…Horst?” He turned back to find Horst still staring at the woman. Stark leaned in and whispered, “We don’t have time to be sentimental, kid. If you want to put her out of her misery, do it quick and don’t make too much noise.”
Shaking his head, Horst stepped back. “Naw. I’m cool.”
“Ryan?” Jo Ann croaked.
“Nothing personal, baby, but my pop used to say that if you’re being chased by a bear, you don’t need to outrun the bear, just your slowest friend.” Horst’s expression was as cold as their surroundings.
Jo Ann reached out for Horst as he turned away. She managed to snag his coat sleeve and held on for dear life. “Don’t leave me.”
Horst jerked his arm out of her grasp without giving her so much as a glance. “If we’re lucky, they’ll slow down for a snack. Come on. Let’s go.”
Stark whistled. That was harsh, even by MCB standards.
Earl swung the locking bar shut on the stainless coffin before stumbling away, wincing at the pain. He could feel the burning of the fresh cut across the top of his chest. Heather had sliced him good. A little higher and he would have lost his throat, so he’d gotten lucky, but he still needed to tend to the injury quickly before it became an issue. He always kept an extensive first-aid kit on hand, though it was normally for his Hunters. It had been a real long time since he’d needed one for himself.
Earl addressed the only other person remaining in the street in front of the Alpha’s house. “Everyone else had the sense to run. You’re a stubborn one.”
“I ain’t seen nothing like that before.” Aino had made the decision to help, and had even had the guts to help lift the unconscious Heather into the box. “Her grandpa saved my life, pulled me out of a collapsed mine. I thought you aimed to kill her; figured I owed Aksel to see that to the end. Surprised me when you picked her up instead… You’re bleeding. Let me see that cut.”
Earl opened his coat. Heather had managed to tag him just above where it had been fastened, and one claw had made it through the Kevlar beneath. “Just a scratch,” he lied.
It wasn’t fair to blame Heather. It wasn’t like she’d done it on purpose. Earl reasoned they were probably even, because he’d smashed the Thompson’s steel butt-plate over her head until the stock had cracked. Just shooting her would’ve been the safe move, but she was a good girl. Even though the odds of her beating the curse were near zero, she deserved a chance. Santiago would have done the same for him. Though Heather was going to be mighty surly when she woke up inside that dark little prison box.
Once safely back in the truck, Earl turned on the interior dome light, found his first-aid kit, and unbuckled his armor. Heather had scored a solid laceration just over his collarbone. A flap of skin was dangling, loose, leaking blood in a wide circle. “Damn. That’s ugly.”
“Just a scratch, huh?” Aino grunted.
“It’s wide, but shallow. It’s the depth that gets you.” Earl shoved the skin back into place, wiped it with
