Zombie Mountain(35)
The girl had taken most of his ammunition. But not all. His gaze fell onto his bag of tricks, and his face transformed into something evil. Hell, he felt evil. Enraged. Bloodthirsty.
The motherfuckers are gonna pay!
Cole turned his back on the view and dragged himself to a nearby desk. He opened the drawers. Nothing. He moved from that desk to another, finding a pair of scissors. You can do this, he told himself. He grabbed a stack of paper from one of the printers, rolled it up. He would need to clench down on something. The Press Room had a bar; he moved slowly to it and reached for a bottle of whiskey, opened it and drank deeply. Then he reached around to the wound at the back of his knee, found the open gouge. He dug the scissors around the broken pen and waited for the nausea to pass. Clenching the paper in his mouth as hard as he could, he caught the pen with the scissors’ tip and pulled.
* * *
When Cole came back to consciousness, he wasn’t sure how long he had been out. Yes, the pain was still there, but lessened a great deal with that pen fragment out. Still, he couldn’t bear weight on his leg. And blood continued to pour from the wound. He shoved a wad of tissues in the hole, crying out as he did so.
He fashioned a makeshift crutch out of a mop from the closet. He envisioned snapping Julie’s neck, and would’ve gladly done so if she’d been there with him. He never dreamed she had it in her to betray him, and come to their aid.
But for Cole there was always a Plan B. He drew his backpack close, and checked the contents inside. He eased himself carefully into the chair and waited patiently for the smoke to clear and dust to settle outside.
Chapter Twenty-four
Jack smiled broader than he thought he could, proud of the damage the group had done. They had killed literally hundreds of the undead. If only the music would stop, they might wander off. Who knew that hard rock and roll could raise the undead like this?
“Never thought I’d get sick of that song.” said Brice. “I’ll never think of Eric Gagné the same way again.”
Everyone stood together in the shadows of the dugout, watching the vile creatures roam above them, insane with anger and a hunger that would never be satiated. Jack wondered how far along his daughter was in the zombie transformation process. But she hadn’t turned completely, not yet. There was time, and he could almost feel her fighting the rabid rage within.
Try as he might, he couldn’t help thinking about the water cure, or more accurately, the drowning cure.
“I’d say let’s just get the hell out of here,” he told Joe and Mike, as they stepped together toward the dugout entrance. “But we still have something to take care of.”
His brother nodded. “Someone, you mean.” He stepped forward a little more and pointed up to the Press Room. “Bet your ass he’s up there, planning something more.”
“We don’t know if he’s still in there.”
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere.” Anna’s voice was dark. “I don’t think he can walk.”
“Jesus... what did you do?”
“I stabbed him in the back of the knee, with a pen.”
“I think I underestimated your grit, kid.”
Anna didn’t grin. Instead her red eyes flared. “Well, don’t. Not ever again.”
Jack shuddered at the sight of his daughter literally turning before him, then gritted his teeth. “Okay. Let’s get this done.”
“What’s the plan?” Joe asked.
“I’m going up to the Press Box. Alone.”
* * *
Anna wasn’t thinking straight. Her mind was clouded, muddled. Her mouth was on fire. She was so thirsty and so hungry. So damned hungry!
As she watched her father leave the dugout and begin crossing the field, it suddenly occurred to her—too late—that there was a side stairway, through the dugout, up to the Press Box. It was how she had reached the field and ambushed the infected.
“Daddy, wait!” she yelled.
But too late. The first explosion rocked the stadium.
* * *
The weapon was no bigger than a machine gun. In fact, it kind of looked like an AK-47. In reality, it was a grenade launcher, and Cole had removed it from his bag of tricks.
He had already shot out the Press Room windows and was now perched there, with the grenade launcher on his shoulder, when he sighted one of the Carter boys exiting the dugout. He didn’t care which one.
He took careful aim and pulled the trigger.
The explosion was deafening. Beautifully deafening. He watched the Carter boy fly off his feet, hurled back in a rain of grass and dirty and zombie parts.
Now there was the little girl running, the girl who would soon be a crazy.