Kill Them All

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Monday, 5:14 p.m.

It was nearly dark. The sunset flowed rapidly across the desert floor like spilled paint, dragging long shadows in its wake. The night approached quickly, eagerly, like a predator cornering prey. The rider to the south turned and shut off his motorcycle. The van stopped as well. Scotty rolled to a halt, got off his hog, and left it standing. Dusk swallowed them and the air began to chill.

I am out of my fucking mind for doing this…

As the evening glowered, Matt Cahill walked, ax on his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the lone man on the motorcycle. Scotty smiled brightly, as if delighted to see him. They stopped, by instinct, perhaps five yards apart. Up close, Scotty’s eyes were bright and feverish. His nose was rotting away, writhing with worms. The flesh on his exposed arms was blackened and splitting and oozing yellow slime. He had two firearms on his belt, one unfamiliar and bulky, and that pair of NV goggles. He was also carrying one large grenade.

“Well, damned if you aren’t causing us a bit of trouble after all,” Scotty said. Something rattled, deep in his chest, as if parts of him were beginning to break loose.

“Guess I underestimated you.”

“The jury is still out.”

“It seems like we got ourselves a bit of a conundrum. Love that word. The way I see it is, we need to take you back with us. You don’t want to go. We got firepower and experience. You got innocent bystanders. You need this to take a few hours. We need it over and done. It’s fourth down and forty and you can’t punt. That about sum it up?”

Matt kept the ax pointed at the sand. He casually put his trembling right hand on his hip, moving it closer to the items in his belt. “You going to talk all night, or did you have a proposal of some kind?”

“Oh, I had me an idea,” Scotty said. He drooled pus from a drooping lower lip. “Figured I’d ask you to do the right thing.”

The shadows swept over them. They were only a few yards apart now.

“Shit,” Scotty said. “Wanted to get here sooner, but Mack was too fucking stoned. Now it looks like we timed this all wrong. I can’t hardly see you.”

“Can’t see your face anymore either,” Matt said agreeably. “I don’t mind, though. You really are turning butt ugly.”

Scotty laughed. “There’s something going on for sure. I can feel it. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I catch something strange out of the corner of my eye, like that old Candyman piece of shit movie we saw when we were kids. Like there’s someone else over my shoulder. Something freaky.”

“There is,” Matt said.

Black squatted on the desert floor with them. The town had no power. The volunteers had no night-vision equipment. The darkness had arrived. Matt realized that Scotty hadn’t timed it wrong at all. In fact, he’d timed it perfectly. But then, so had Matt.

“So are you going to do the right thing, Cahill? Let us take you back, so that we don’t have to kill all these innocent redneck men, women, and children?”

Matt squatted in the sand. He bought time, wanted his eyes to adjust a bit. “Well, I’ve thought about that all day. That’s the big question. Does the Dark Man want me enough to let them go?”

“Who?”

He doesn’t know who sent him. He thinks it’s just the scientists from the university. But someone along the way is pure evil. They are all infected. I’ll need to find out who sent them one of these days…

Scotty slowly rose, scratched the seat of his trousers. He moved a few steps closer.

“Look, Scotty,” Matt said, as if he hadn’t noticed, “we both know you’re planning to kill the townsfolk anyway. The way I figure it, the only reason you’re here now, instead of just attacking us later under cover of darkness, is someone got word to you. Help is closer than any of us expected a while ago. What happened? Did they put that wildfire out already?”

“You figured all that out on your own?” Scotty squatted, letting Matt know that he was still able to see reasonably well. “Okay, here’s the thing, straight up. There is a busload of weekend warriors on the way down from Salt Fucking Lake or somewhere. ETA about an hour and twenty minutes.”

“And that changes things.”

“Indeed it does.” Scott scooted closer, voice lowering as if imparting secrets.

“Oh, Scotty? I also know I’m in somebody’s sights and you can take me out anytime you want. I’m not stupid.”

“Didn’t think you were.” He casually edged even closer.

Matt said, “But the thing is, you don’t want me dead. You want me alive. And if you kill me out here, all that precious blood runs out into the sand and it’s useless. Your boss will have to make do with whatever you’ve already got out there in the van. And if that’s not enough, the university will be royally pissed off. You might not even get paid.”

“True enough.”

The pocked moon was rising. The starlight was dazzling. Matt had his own night vision now. He was no longer helpless. He tried to summon the courage to act. His limbs shook. In the darkness, under the full moon, Scotty’s wicked eyes seemed to glow.

“So we just give you a badass flesh wound,” Scotty said. He moved a bit closer. “Then we patch you up and take you with us. Game over.”

“Nice plan. But you know what John Lennon said, right?”

Scotty grinned like the corpse he was rapidly becoming. “You wondering the same thing I’m wondering, Cahill?” He moved a bit closer, now only ten feet away.

“Yeah. Each of us wonders why the other one agreed to meet out here after dark. Why we’re talking for so long. Thing is, for me it was stalling for time and one other thing. When it comes to you, I already know that answer.”

Finally close enough for accuracy, Scotty made his move. His right hand darted for the tranquilizer gun on his belt, but Matt was expecting the move. He reached for his flashlight and rolled away, hearing a chuffing sound as the first dart went harmlessly into a clump of dead sage. At the same time, Matt flicked the flashlight on, temporarily blinding the men who had been focusing intently through their night-vision goggles. He rolled again and felt a tranquilizer dart thwack into his boot heel. He shined the light directly into Scotty’s hideous face.

Scotty was a gory zombie now, flesh hanging from his body, organs and excrement sagging and bulging from his bloody fatigues, a literal sack of shit. His pupils contracted in blackened sockets. Matt clumsily located the.38 and fired twice, knowing the flash would further damage the vision of the other mercenaries if they still wore the NV gear. One bullet struck Scotty in the Kevlar and stunned him. Gunfire came from Dry Wells as a few of the townspeople fired in response to the shot. Scotty was hit again, this time in the shoulder. He spun around, the dart gun dropping from his fingers, and fell flat on his back in the sand, probably just stunned.

Matt crawled over to the downed mercenary on knees and elbows. He ripped the coveted NV goggles from Scotty’s webbing, grabbed the grenade from Scotty’s chest. He’d wanted the goggles for Timmy, the town’s lookout. Matt kept moving, rolling away as fast as he could.

Scotty whispered, “Motherfucker!”

Half as a mercy, Matt brought up the.38 to blow Scotty’s head off, but he felt the sand near his own head puff up. The report followed a half second later. Someone had him zeroed in. Panicked, Matt rolled behind Scotty’s body and fired twice towards the van parked in the darkness. He flashed the light again, got to his knees, flashed it the other way.

Scotty moved, then sat up. Matt rose to his feet, decided not to waste his last two rounds so far from town. He kicked Scotty in the head and flashed the light both ways again. Then Matt Cahill raced back towards town.

Townsfolk fired past him at muzzle flashes and where they thought the enemy was parked. At the same time, the mercenaries did their best to wound Matt and bring him down. Three times bullets tugged his clothing as he pounded through the sand, but somehow Matt made it to the parked cars. He threw himself in the air, slammed onto the roof of the old Toyota, rolled over it, and landed back inside his own lines with the night-vision goggles in his hand. He was wheezing and shaking like a willow in a windstorm. The townsfolk cheered.

Soon, though, they all sat uneasily, whispering back and forth. Now there was nothing else to do but wait.