Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 39

I glanced at Logan, saw him successfully took out three vectors and put two more on the floor, writhing and screeching from his shots. Some of the vectors jumped out of the way, hid behind the other apartment's open doors, out of Logan's line of sight.

I pushed back against Bobby, but my ankle pivoted wrongly, lost my balance, and he shoved me back against the wall. Coupled with the duffel bag and the gun sticking inside it, the items jammed right into my back, felt like my spine was on fire, fearing he broke it.

The elevator dinged.

"Nat! Don't you dare!" Logan screamed back without peering his eyes away from the charging vectors.

"Bitch! Wait for me!" Bobby yelled after.

"Fuck all of you! I'm out!" Nat yelled back.

The elevator doors parted.

Snarls joined the cacophony coming from the elevator. I saw people dressed in nightgowns, business suits, tracksuits, baggy hoodies, and one woman with nothing at all. The elevator walls were painted in black dried blood. Loose guts were strewn on the floor.

Seven pairs of hands and arms shot out of the opening doors, instantly reaching out for Nat. In a split second, a vector got her left arm. The swift motion hiked up the sleeves of her jacket, exposing her bare flesh.

The vector bit Nat's arm.

Nat screamed and jerked back, desperately tugging on her arm, her shrills piercing with frenzied alarm. She dropped the keychain, flung it back close to where Bobby and I still struggled with the shotgun.

With her other hand now free, she tried to scratch and punched her way out of their firm hold.

It didn't work.

One vector slipped out of the elevator, peering away from the mass of bodies falling on the poor woman, transfixed on Bobby and me. He rushed toward us, bringing the most piercing shrieks he could muster.

Bobby was still fixated on Nat and the vectors, and I took that into my favor. I shifted off to the side, only an inch or two off to his left, and stepped hard on his foot. Bobby wailed, and the shotgun suddenly went off, realized I had my finger on the trigger, accidentally pulling it. Bobby's right leg was gone, sheared off just below his knee.

I quickly examined my legs, still both intact, albeit covered in Bobby's blood and bits of his flesh.

Bobby clung to both my arms as he lost his balance, leaning more toward me, and I knew if I didn't move, he'd take me down on the floor, and the vector would be on top of us.

The vector hopped onto Bobby's back, nails, teeth, and all, quickly taking him down to the floor. Bobby tried to fight back, but the vector bit on his lower lip, as if it was giving him a massive and mouthful smooch, and then I heard the stifled tearing of muscle and the crack of broken bones.

Bobby screamed. I saw the blood flew up in thick, viscous spurts over the hunched man. The vector's hands grazed around his victim's eyes, and in one swift thrust, plunged his thumbs deep through both of Bobby's eye sockets.

Another howled scream.

I peered away, forced myself to move and find the damned keys. It took a couple of seconds to find it on the floor. I grabbed it and ran back toward the emergency door.

The vectors close to apartment 2022, spurred on by their reinforcing infected, stormed toward us.

"Run!" I said to Logan.

I spared a glance behind me to the elevator.

Nat was still alive, screaming as if her vocal cords were being ripped apart. Two vectors tore through her belly, and she watched in horror as they pulled out her insides like twine. Two more ripped off her right arm, the one where their jaws already latched onto her flesh. The last vector grabbed her by the head, hooking his hands in her open, screeching mouth, and pulled hard, breaking through cartilage and bone, exposing her tongue and her palate out in the open.