Knights of the Apocalypse (A Duck & Cover Adventure Post-Apocalyptic Series Book 2) (17 page)

SIXTEEN

Funerals were a
selfish affair. That hadn’t changed.

Friends and family
gathered to grieve and arrange the burial while the person who did all the
dying got little say in the matter. Sure, there was the last will and
testament, but after quarreling over the specifics of the inheritance, dealing
with escrow and holding an estate sale, who had time to follow such specific
instructions?

Flowers were brought
in. People cried. Coffee was had and life went on.

After the majority of
the world died, funerals became a rarity. The survivors looked at cities filled
with bodies, decided it would simply cost too much in flowers, and moved away
rather than deal with the smell.

Out in the wasteland,
a person stayed where they fell because chances are that whatever caused them
to drop dead in the first place was probably still around and most likely still
hungry. In dire situations like these, the funeral was boiled down to those
remaining in the party shouting, “I’ll remember you,” over their shoulders as
they ran away.

If they died
somewhere safer, the ceremony was extended to a more formal, “We will never
forget you,” before the party turned its back and walked away.

If they died in town,
they would be buried to keep from stinking up the place.

But, generally,
they
weren’t
a princess
. Royalty
still enjoyed the solemn affair, flowers and an obituary. Organs played, a
choir sung and people said nice things about them before they were buried and
immortalized as a statue, a portrait or a halfway decent caricature.

“I’ll remember you,
Anna,” Aaron wept. She had been wrapped in a sheet of plastic and covered with
desert sand to hide her from the Aztecs long enough for her body to be
recovered and taken back home.

Jerry and Shane stood
watch as the young man cried over her grave. “I’ll come back for you. I’ll come
back and we’ll take you home. I promise. You deserve better than this. You
deserved better than him.” He leaned over the grave and gently kissed the dirt.
Then he spit the dirt out of his mouth and wiped what couldn’t be spit out on
his sleeve.

Jerry put a hand on
the young man’s shoulder. “She’ll be safe here until her father can come get
her.”

“Probably,” Shane
added. “Can we go now?”

Jerry turned. “Shane
…
please
.”

Aaron ignored Shane’s
comment. “I hope you’re right. I can’t stand the idea of those monsters finding
her.”

“She’s safer than we
are,” Shane said.

“You
?!
” Aaron turned but did not rise.

“Yeah. Us.” Shane
pointed to Jerry. “Me and him. We failed to rescue your precious princess, so
there’s nothing waiting when we get back. No citizenship. No feast. Just the
mines.”

“They just murdered
the love of my life!”

A wail carried on the
air from somewhere beyond the bottling plant. It was a single voice but it
wouldn’t be long before more joined in.
 

Shane crossed his
arms. “There’re worse fates, kid.”

“How dare you. I lost
her!”

“I’ve got to go back
to the mines!” Shane screamed. “Do you have any idea how terrible it is down
there?”

“I don’t know, I
imagine it’s like the void left in my soul from the murder of the woman I
loved.
Dark, bleak and cold.
Is it like that?”

“You don’t know
anything! It’s not cold at all. It’s hot. You never stop sweating. The air is
so thick with dust that you take in a breath and spit mud. The pounding of the
rock echoes in your head long after it stops. There’s never a moment of
silence. No peace. The guy next to you smells. And the guy next to him smells
even worse. It’s like working in a giant armpit. And if you’re lucky enough to
die from the exhaustion, you get rolled out of the way to rot so the king can
have his precious gold. You don’t get a fancy funeral like this.”

Aaron sprang from the
ground and caught Shane under the chin with his fist.

The tall man stumbled
back on weak knees but saved himself from collapse and came back at the young
man swinging.

The exchange of blows
was frantic. Each landed a few punches before the pair collapsed to the ground.
Shane rolled to the top of the struggle and drew back his hand.

Jerry grabbed him
around the chest and pulled him off the kid before he could strike and tossed
him to the ground.

Shane came up with
fury in his eyes.

Jerry turned his
back. “He wanted her dead all along, Shane. We were never supposed to come
back.”

Shane threw up his
hands. “So what do we do now?”
 

Jerry helped Aaron to
his feet. “We go back. We go back and we stop the prince from overthrowing the
king, and I can’t believe I just said that.”

“Two of us? Against
an army of knights?”

“Maybe not.” Jerry
turned to Aaron. “What do you say? Are you up for some old-fashioned revenge?”

His fists still
clenched, Aaron looked from Shane to Jerry and relaxed. He nodded slowly.
 

“Three of us?” Shane
asked.

“For starters,” Jerry
said. “We go back to Farmington with Aaron. He explains what happened, and King
Rodney rallies his army to help and I can’t believe I just said that either.”

“You’re fucking
crazy.” Shane kicked a rock and moved to get his gear.

“The girls are in
trouble, Shane. We have to get back and save them.” Jerry turned and bent to
gather their belongings. He handed Aaron his sword and dropped the two hatchets
into his belt. “We don’t have any choice.”

“You may not have
choices, Jerry,” Shane said as he appeared behind Aaron. “But I do.”

Aaron screamed as the
tip of the rusty katana grew from his chest. His death was quick. The young
man’s face grimaced in pain and then relaxed. His body dropped to the ground as
Shane withdrew the blade.

Jerry dropped to the
ground and felt for a pulse knowing he wouldn’t find anything.

“You really do try
and save everyone, don’t you, Jerry?”

The wailing grew from
a single shriek into a horrible chorus. They were closer than before.

Jerry rose to his
feet and watched Shane wipe the blood from the blade. He was smiling.

Shane shook the blood
from his fingers. “I know who you are. Brae told me.
Jerry
the Librarian.
And, more importantly, I know what you’re worth. So I
figure I’ll kill you and claim the bounty. You see? I always had another way
out. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted this to work out. I wanted to save the
princess, return a hero and then turn you in. But if this is the way it has to
be, that’s fine too.”

“You saved my life
four times,” Jerry said.

“And it was a total
pain in the ass every time. For such a legendary badass, you sure need a lot of
babysitting.”

“Why bother?”

 
“If you died on the train or around any
of the idiots we came here with, it would look pretty suspicious if I cut off
your head and put it in a bag. These Middle Ages people are weird, but even
that’s pushing it. But now that we’re alone, I’ll just take your head and be on
my way back east.”

“What about Brae?”

“What about her?”
Shane asked. “She’s a whore.”

“That’s not cool, man.”

“No. That’s not what
I mean. I mean—yes, she is a whore. But, I’m not calling her names. She’s
a whore. Whoring is what she does. It’s how she earns her keep in the kingdom.
They stuck me in the mines and they stuck her in bed.”

“We can still save her.”

“She’s been with
every guy in the kingdom. Do you have any idea how they look at you when your
wife is everyone else’s good time? Do you know what that does to a man? I
haven’t been able to touch her in years.”

“You can get past
this. I’m sure she did it for you.”

“What kind of sick
logic is that? I loved her once. But it’s hardly worth risking my life going
back, storming a castle—the valiant knight rescues the princess, Jerry.
Not the harlot.”

“You’re hardly the
hero here, Shane.”

“I can live with
that.” Shane attacked. The katana with a thousand nicks whistled as it whipped
through the air.

Jerry leapt back and
drew the hatchets from his belt as Shane pulled the sword back against his
side.

Shane stabbed the
rusty point at Jerry’s stomach. The hatchet deflected the strike. Shane stepped
backed quickly as the second hatchet tore the air in front of his face. He
pulled the blade over his head and brought it down on top of the shorter man.

Sparks erupted from
the collision of steel as Jerry crossed the hatchets to catch the sword’s
blade. He pulled the tools tight and twisted his weight over the blade. He
spun, turning his back to his opponent and following through to the side of
Shane’s head. Shane fell away as Jerry wrenched the blade from his hand.

Shane stumbled back
toward the parking lot on the edge of town and fell to his back. Jerry was
between him and the fallen blade. Shane smiled. “What now? You don’t strike me
as the kill-an-unarmed-man type.”

Jerry backed away,
stepping behind the katana. “Pick up the sword.”

Shane propped himself
up on his shoulders and shook his head. “Your moral code is going to get you
killed, Jerry.”

Jerry backed up
farther. “Pick it up now!”

“And what if I
don’t?”

Jerry ran forward and
leapt into the air. Shane fell back to the ground and crossed his arms in front
of his face, assuming that his forearms were hatchet proof.

Jerry sunk a hatchet
into the creature’s left shoulder.
 

The scream was
deafening. The Aztec’s right hand reached out with nails like talons and
grabbed Jerry’s right wrist.

He felt the nails
break the skin and he fought back a shriek of his own as he swung the other
hatchet into the beast’s ribs. Jerry pulled the weapons free and turned to face
several of the mutations as they began to wail, and Shane finally began to
catch on.

He heard Shane
scrambling to get the sword as another creature came at him. This one had been
a middle-aged woman before her humanity had been trumped by madness. Her hair was
long and stringy in patches. Bald spots covered the rest of her head. Her teeth
were spotty, as well. She led with those and tried for Jerry’s neck.

He tried not to see
who she was before. He tried to ignore the flash of humanity in her eyes as the
rusted edge of the hatchet separated her neck and shoulder, but it was there.
They appeared just human enough to make a man think they could be reasoned with
and cause a swell of guilt.

The woman fell to the
ground and bled to death in front of him.

There was no time for
regret as a group of three rushed at them next. Two came for him and the third
peeled off to try and eat Shane. One was an older teen while the other still
wore the remnants of a safety orange traffic vest. Jerry sent the teen
sprawling and focused on the road crewmember. He was built like a water barrel
and, despite the starvation that drove them all
mad,
he did not look as if he had missed too many meals.

Jerry swung and his
hand was caught. The man in the safety vest wailed as he pulled Jerry closer
and threw him to the ground. He rolled over as the teen pounced on him and
pinned him to the ground. Jerry held him back with a forearm. His other arm was
trapped at his side. All he could do was chop at the kid’s ankle. If it hurt,
the creature didn’t show it. They screamed incessantly, so his wailing was no
help.

The kid still had his
braces. They were caked with rotted flesh and dirt, and they stank more and
more the closer they got to his face.

Jerry turned his head
to gain another inch of distance and saw Shane pulling the sword from the third
member of the group. “Little help?”

Shane looked at him
and moved out of view.

The wailing stopped
with a wheeze. A sound of surprise escaped the teen’s swollen lips as he was
torn from Jerry.

Alliances changed
faster than anything in the wasteland and Jerry expected Shane to help him to
his feet. They would fight off the mutants together and then go back to trying
to kill each other—a standard deal in the wasteland.

But it wasn’t Shane.
Safety Vest held the teen by his neck and squeezed as the kid tried to wail.

Jerry scrambled back
from the skirmish.

The teen tore the
flesh from Safety Vest’s arms as his wails were choked to nothing. Blood flew
everywhere. The teen’s foot was still lying on the ground and the stump flailed
as he tried to get free from the bigger
beast.