Chapter 19
My reflexes were not at maximum efficiency. Between the stun sticks and the weird blank outs, I was off my game. I felt fuzzy at the edges. At Princess's scream, I looked up, and stood there, blinking as doom sailed toward us in a blaze of red chrome.
Someone slammed into my back, shoving me down as the truck sailed over head, crashing into the side of the alien ship with the now familiar massive gong before rolling off harmlessly to the side.
"My bad!" I heard Fred's shout from across the torn up street. The wreckage of several vehicles littered the area, some little more than twisted shreds of metal which the aliens must have shot out of the air. No wonder Bullet Face was ready to beat a swift retreat, even if it left his allies at the Fort in the lurch. I had a feeling my alien frenemy was the cut throat survivor type.
The ship wobbled into the air before taking off with a muted whoosh. That thing had some stealth when it wanted to. Now that it was gone I could hear the yelling.
"-nearly hit us with the truck, you walking dildo!" A great deal of slapping punctuated Princess's words.
"What, you managed to tuck and roll, suck it up." I missed Fred. The slapping got louder.
"Are you okay?" Kit murmured above me. He was the one who shoved me out of the way. The sun back lit his hair, burnishing it with shots of gold, and added copper highlights to his eyes. Caged between his arms, I lost my train of thought before the urgency of the moment came rushing back to me.
"Fort Braydon!"
Kit jumped off me, as Fred skidded to a stop beside me, yanking me into a hug.
"You freaking idiot, learn to duck!"
I patted him on the back. "Next to look before you throw half ton pick ups."
Fred pulled back to give me that goofy nightmare grin of his. Kit sucked in a breath.
"Boy, I'm going to have a fun time explaining you lot to my superiors." He glanced around, his face crumpling at an overturned slightly crumpled SUV. "You had to go and throw my car?"
Fred stared between the man and his vehicle. "Uh, my bad bro, let me fix that for you?" He glanced at me. A breather? He mouthed.
"Go, I'll explain on the way." I waved him off, looking for the rest of our little group.
"Yo, Gingy! Could use some muscle here."
Ginger trotted on by, bouncing as she went. Kit watched her go, his jaw hanging slack.
"Okay, what the hell is she?"
"That's a question for the ages." I caught sight of J.D. discreetly ruffling Wolf Girl's hair as they walked toward the group. Princess helpfully perched on top of the truck Fred and Ginger worked to flip back on its wheels, heckling them along. Despite the destruction all around, everyone seemed in one piece, including Bert and Ernie who shared a quiet reunion apart from everyone else.
"Why don't you go introduce yourself, make sure they don't finish wrecking your car," I said. Kit followed my line of sight and left with a nod. I approached my Muppets.
What the hell do I say to them? They were my first companions on this crazy messed up ride, but they weren't simply lovable oozy corpses anymore. Bert had wrapped his good arm around Ernie's neck, resting his forehead against hers. I always wondered why they two traveled together as a couple of mindless bodies. Maybe they weren't so mindless. I wanted to, I don't know, set them free? Upgrade their member status? Figure out what the hell brought on the rapid fire change so I could help it along?
They looked up at my approach.
Screams rose in my head.
The Muppets caught me as I pitched forward, blood dripping from my nose. The fuzzy feeling decreased, but didn't fade completely. I could still hear faint cries, as if from a long distance. Oh no. I really was fading. Whatever was happening to me was escalating, despite my recent booster snack. I glanced back at the others. Kit peeked through his hands as Fred hot wired the righted SUV. The others were piled in the back of the vehicle, ready to ride into another violent mess. Throwing themselves in harm's way like it was nothing, for perfect strangers who might plug them full of bullets before Kit had a chance to plead their case. Princess was still a mess of fading bruises and healing fractures from her torture session. I couldn't dump this on her, on them. I just needed to see it through, to make sure we all made it through the next encounter. After that, maybe Princess knew how to fix me. If not, well, then I had to make sure someone looked after Bert and Ernie for me, find a way to fix them fully before I permanently blanked out.
I looked back at the Muppets, touched by the concern in their dark eyes. "Come on guys," I said, wiping the blood away, "Let's go save some humans."
Despite the time and effort we'd spent trying to locate the last humans, now that we had one sitting among us, most of the group seemed at a loss with how to proceed with public relations. The fact we were heading to another fire fight didn't help ease the thick tension in the vehicle. Princess kept up a string of light banter that stopped Kit from bending the steering wheel out of whack as he drove. Wolf Girl and the Muppets had a snuggle pile in the hatch back, while J.D. and Fred sat on either side of me.
"He's healthier than I expected," said Fred, "I don't see any visible mutations or lumpy bits, so at least humans still look human."
"I can hear you," said Kit, glaring at Fred in the rearview mirror.
Undeterred, Fred plowed on. "How did people survive? Did they find a cure?"
Kit took an arm off the wheel, lifting his arm up. I spent so much time looking at his face I never really looked at the rest of him. In the daylight, the bite scars were faint pale crescents marring the tan skin of his forearm. There were at least three, and the tip of a fourth peeking from the hem of his sleeve. How many did he have?
"Immunity, the surviving human population can't be infected," he glanced at me in the mirror. "There is no cure. Whatever caused all this spread too fast for science to keep up, hell they still don't know what it is. A plague, virus, fungus, whatever it was, it was nothing they've ever seen and haven't seen since."
Princess fell silent, gazing out the window.
"There are still people looking for a cure, though, right?" J.D. wore a constant frown on his face since first laying eyes on Kit.
"What scientists we have left have been trying for the past twelve years."
A beat of silence passed.
"How long did you guys think you were, uh, dead?"
"We guessed it might be something close to that," I said.
"Did...did they follow through with the plan?" J.D. finally asked. I had a feeling this was the question he hoped to put to his fellow soldier since we tumbled from the ship.
Kit locked eyes with him in the mirror. "Yes. They finished construction of Temperance a year after the call to evacuate."
"Temperance?" I said, sharing a bewildered glance with Fred before memory clicked into place. J.D. told us of the plan when we first met. "You mean they pulled to the Great Lakes?"
"Not to them, beneath them," said Kit. "That's what the aliens wanted from me. They wanted the location of Temperance."
"Then what the hell did they want from you?" I tapped Princess's shoulder, forcing her back into the conversation. Her dark grey eyes were flat. They gave away nothing. I think she would have continued to keep her secrets if Ginger didn't break silence.
"They wanted me."
She'd been silent the whole ride, her hands fisted in her lap. She shook off Princess's hand on her shoulder. "You know we've been active for awhile?"
Of course I knew they'd been active the longest out of all of us. That was why I hoped Princess could fix me. Ginger opened her mouth but couldn't seem to find the right words.
"She's our own patient zero," said Princess, "the first one to taste the forbidden fruit."
"They want to study her?" Fred's gaze flickered between them.
"That's not the only reason," Ginger whispered, staring at her hands.
Kit sat up in his seat. "Guys!"
The SUV's brakes squealed, momentum throwing all of us forward. The corrugated metal walls of Fort Braydon shone in the fading afternoon light, lined with trench containing large coils of razor wire. This was apparently a precautionary deterrent for the 'local wildlife'. The remains of a couple unfortunate zombies were still tangled in the wire. The gruesome sight would have captured my attention longer if it weren't for the pandemonium at the Fort's outer gate.
"Oh no," said Kit.
The gate was a smoking ruin. A stream of zombies poured in, unable to resist the call of a fresh meal. Gun fire and shouts clogged the air as humans fought them off, hunkered down along the top of the wall. The contingent of aliens Bullet Face warned us of pushed the advantage, blasting at anyone who attempted to take a shot at the invading undead. A young man rose as they watched. The section of the wall he took refuge on rocked violently as a dozen zombies clawed for him. An air blast hit him in the legs, forcing his thigh to bend in a sharp unnatural angle. He fell forward, his screams unheard as the zombies tore him to pieces.
Kit was scrambling from the drivers seat. "We have to do something! We have to help them!" He snagged on his own seatbelt, giving Princess a chance to grab him.
"You run in there, you'll die."
"I can't sit here and watch!" Kit yelled in her face. Princess wiped a fleck of spit from her cheek, releasing him.
"We aren't saying you should," said Fred, climbing out of the SUV, "but we need to be smart about this. We bum rush them, those aliens will just mist us."
"Do you have any weapons left in this rig?" asked J.D., shrugging off the last gun he carried from his shoulder. "I'm fresh out of ammo."
"A couple under the seats, but most were tossed out when someone threw it."
"I said I was sorry," Fred snarled.
J.D. dug under the seat, pulling out a pistol. It looked like a toy in his hands. "If all you have is a couple of pea shooters, we are in trouble."
"Maybe not," said Princess, flipping a bowie knife the length of her forearm from beneath the front passenger seat. Her eyes were fixed on the cluster of aliens. "I have an idea."
"They will blow you to tiny meaty bits," I said, seeing what she intended. There was no way she could get close enough to pull it off.
"Not if they had a good distraction." Princess looked at Fred and Ginger.
J.D. laid a hand on Kit's shoulder. "How attached are you to this rig?"
"Toss it," said Kit, without hesitating a beat.
The aliens had dug themselves in, protected by the same razor wire the Fort used on one side and a slap dash wall of rusted cars and other scrap at their backs. With access to their normal food of choice, the zombies ignored them, leaving the aliens to sit back, relax, and wait for the Fort to fall.
They didn't see the SUV until it was a looming shadow over their heads.
The group scattered in all directions, no choice but to dodge out into the open as the vehicle bounced into their fox hole. They were still disoriented when Princess charged the closest one, the one who'd rolled back and away until he was almost brushing the razor wire barrier. She blew past, swinging her blade in a perfectly executed arc. The alien froze, lifting a hand toward the open wound on his skull. She hadn't made a terribly large hole, but it didn't have to be. The whole purpose of the cut was to chum the waters.
His violet blood dribbled from the hole, brain matter still pulsing. He didn't have time to realize he'd been split open like ripe fruit. It was my turn. I charged the injured alien, shoving him airborne, straight into the thick of the ravening zombie horde. There was the briefest pause, the scenting of blood on the air, as the zombies turned toward their center.
Like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Princess stood next to me, the two of us cringing a bit as a few bits went flying but overall I was pretty satisfied with the result.
One of the aliens recovered, finally noticing our presence.
"Abominations!" It snarled, taking aim at us. A shot rang out. The alien's head rocked back, a bullet hole in the center of his head. J.D. had great aim. Considering how they seemed to brush off bullet wounds, he might have recovered from it, despite it's placement, but you can't recover from a dog pile of hungry zombies. The mob was splitting off, going after targets on the easier, tastier targets on the ground.
"What have you done?" Another alien emerged from the opposite side of the mangled SUV, looking on horrified as their invasion 'diversion' turned on them. He advanced on us, gun up and ready.
Boom, headshot. J.D. might complain about their size, but those pea shooters left a decent sized hole. Princess's knife zinged through the air, burying itself in the chest of a fourth. The zombies were swarming out of the Fort now, driven toward the smell, the feast. The remaining aliens witnessed the fate of their comrades and fled, retreating down the road as J.D. and Kit took pot shots at their back sides. We'd done it. We saved the Fort with a knife, two tiny pistols, and a flying SUV.
"What now," I said, swaying slightly on my feet. Now that the fight was over, the phantom screams began to kick up. I blinked, fighting to stay upright.
Princess slung an arm around my shoulders. "Now we watch the show," she said as the first zombies began to twitch and writhe, their flesh reforming as we watched.
"Egads, that's vile," said Fred, propping up my other shoulder.
"I'm sure you looked fabulous during the process," said Princess with a grin. The others joined us, including Kit, watching with fascinated horror as the zombies changed. The surviving humans on the wall were equally captivated. Good thing, since flying bullets would make negotiations a bit tricky. Even the scarred seasoned soldiers looked on as the rotting zombies began to look somewhat human again.
It was a beautiful thing.
The Newbies took in their surroundings, wearing familiar expressions of shock and confusion. They'd need a bit of orientating but between Kit, Fred, and the others, I think they were in good hands.
Blood trickled from my nose, and down the back of my throat. From the ringing in my ears, I could tell this was a bad one, probably the last one. Damn, I didn't get to say good bye. Didn't even ask Princess for help. I turned toward her, unable to look at Fred, and found her watching me.
"Let go," she said. Like I had much choice.
My eyes rolled up, cutting out my vision. The last thing I heard before my ears filled with those damn screams was Fred shouting my name.
***We are almost done folks! Chapter twenty will be up this evening.***