Wretched Earth. James Axler

asked.

      “Ryan,” Krysty said, “we’ve got to do something.”

      “No,” he amended, “no, we don’t. We’ve got our hands full now. Let Omar’s people deal with it. What we have to do is get back to sleep. Plunkett’s going to want us hustling tomorrow.”

      Jak was frowning. “Girl not look right.”

      “What?” Ryan said. He had headed back to bed. Now he turned to look once more.

      The sky was clear overhead, but the pitiless stars didn’t cast enough light to see by. Nor did the lantern light seeping through the gaudy house windows. Still, it struck Ryan that the little girl did move strangely, as if she were stiff, somehow. And was it a trick of the light, or did her face appear gray?

      “What’s going on out here?” Omar himself, shaved-headed, ferociously mustached, stood in the doorway to the barroom. He wore his inevitable apron and held his sawed-off scattergun in his big blunt hands. He wasn’t shy about raising his voice regardless of the hour.

      The wag drivers ignored him. One of them blew kisses at the teetering, silent child, then he leaned toward her, puckering his lips.

      “Gimme a kiss, little girl,” he said.

      As if shot from a catapult, she sprang at him. Her arms flew around his neck. She pressed her mouth to his in what looked like a kiss.

      “Jesus God! That’s plain wrong,” Mildred said. “Get him away from her!”

      The wag driver screamed. He reared up, batting frantically at the child, who continued to cling like a pigtailed monkey.

      She turned her head to look at Ryan and his companions. Her eyes were sunken pits. A dark stain was smeared all around her mouth, and dark liquid ran freely down her chin.

      The wag driver’s lips dangled from her teeth like a limp onion ring.

      Chapter Four

      Stiff-legged in horror, the wag drivers backed away from their stricken friend. They weren’t quick enough. The little girl jumped on the nearest man’s back and sank her teeth in the side of his neck.

      “Shit!” Reno shrieked. “She’s one of them!”

      “What the fuck?” Ryan said.

      Someone was hollering from the watchtower. “Stand back! Stand away from the gate there or I’ll shoot!”

      Wag drivers pried the little girl off their second stricken buddy and dashed her to the ground. Omar was striding toward them, shotgun in his fist. His body language suggested he wasn’t sure who to shoot first.

      “Start the wags,” Ryan told his companions. “It’s time to go.”

      “What about Plunkett?” J.B. asked.

      “I’ll get him,” Ryan said grimly.

      He’d scarcely started walking toward the gaudy when Krysty screamed, “Ryan!”

      Instinct made him look left, away from where the warning cry had come from. A man lurched toward him from the shadows between sheds.

      He moved hunched over, his face thrusting forward, his arms dangling. One cheek had been torn off, exposing teeth on his upper jaw. The wound didn’t bleed. His skin was gray in the faint light, his eyes white marbles.

      At Krysty’s cry Ryan had drawn his handblaster. Bracing it with both hands, he fired two quick shots through the center of the man’s chest.

      They were good hits. He saw them hit, punching through ragged plaid flannel over the sternum. One or both had to have penetrated the man’s heart. But rather than slowing, he put on a surprising burst of speed.

      “Don’t let it bite you!” Reno screamed.

      Ryan gave the onrushing thing a front thrust-kick to the sternum. The creature reeled back three steps, then with unwavering determination charged forward again.

      As much from habit as anything else, Ryan punched a third bullet through its forehead. The creature folded obediently as a dead man should, and lay still.

      “Head shots work!” Ryan shouted as he sprinted toward the main building.

      Around him people spilled from the sheds and the gaudy house itself. The yard was filling with bodies, confusion and noise. People screamed. Shots popped.

      At the front gate the Fat One didn’t seem to quite grasp what was going on. With Locke and Leon trailing behind, she walked toward the center of the yard, waving her flabby arms and shouting for everyone to cease firing.

      The little girl, the lower half her face painted with the blood of her victims, jumped up, apparently unhurt. She darted toward the large woman. The Fat One saw her and dropped to her knees. Holding her arms wide, she cried, “Come to me, child! Run!”

      The girl did. When she was ten feet from the kneeling woman her head exploded. The decapitated body flopped forward almost to the horrified woman’s feet.

      Stopping by the door to let a knot of panicky people out, Ryan looked back over his shoulder. Mildred was lowering her blocky ZKR 551 target revolver from a one-armed shooting stance. He caught a gleam of torchlight on tears streaming down her cheeks.

      The Fat One squalled in outrage and jumped to her feet. “That wasn’t a little girl anymore!” Reno yelled, jumping in front of Mildred as if to shield her from the wrath of Omar’s heftiest wife.

      From somewhere came the cry “They’re over the wall!”

      More of those creatures, men and women but not men or women, moved with unnatural hitching gaits through the crowd in the yard. Ryan thrust his way into the gaudy house, breasting a stream of half-naked sluts screaming as they raced out.

      The first thing that hit him when he entered was an eye-searing stink of smoke. It was more than the potbellied stove could possibly account for unless the chimney had gotten blocked. He took a wild flying guess that wasn’t the case.

      Behind the bar the Thin One flailed vigorously at three no-longer-human opponents with an aluminum baseball bat. It made musical thunking sounds as it bounced off bone lightly padded by muscle or skin, off joints and skulls. Family members, employees and patrons wrestled with enemies whose skin, bluish in the lantern light, was cratered with running open sores. Some were missing big chunks from their bodies, even arms.

      A wag driver grabbed the arm of an elderly man to try to pull the oldie off a comrade. The arm came off in his hands. He stared at it in comic amazement as the changed oldie sank his few remaining teeth into the second wag driver’s neck.

      Plunkett and crew were nowhere in sight. Fleeing sluts, guards and customers were blocking the stairs. Ryan began shoving them bodily out of the way. As strong as he was, their fear was stronger. He didn’t make much progress.

      Smoke began rolling along the hollows of the ceiling between the beams. The gaudy house was well and truly on fire.

      Loomis tumbled down the wooden stairs, wearing only his shiny, black leather pants. “They’re already changing!” he screamed, catching himself on all fours.

      Buck-naked and baby-pink, Boss Tim Plunkett lurched down the stairs behind his sec chief. His hairy, fish-pale belly hung low, obscuring his genitals. Blood gushed from his torn-out throat. His voice box and airway were apparently still intact, or mostly so. As he banged from rail to wall and back, clutching his blood-gouting wound with one hand, he kept croaking, “Help me!”

      He toppled, to land on his gut with a massive crash.

      * * *

      SHUDDERING ORANGE FIRE erupted from the combined watch- and water tower, followed a beat later by a roar of full-auto blasterfire. Pressing the hand that held the pistol grip of his M-4000 scattergun to pin his battered hat against his head, J.B. reached with his free hand to snag the back of the man’s flannel shirt Krysty Wroth wore.