Plague (Gone 4)

Brianna did not want to look at Brittney, really really didn’t.

“Are you okay?” she asked over her shoulder. No answer from Brittney. Not surprising since her mouth was smeared all around the back of her head.

Brianna steeled herself and shot a glance at Brittney, but the whip hand was already reaching, yanking Jamal’s rifle away.

Brianna pulled her knife free and leaped at Drake.

She buried the knife in Drake’s chest. It was a huge blade, a bowie knife, as big as a chef’s knife and a lot thicker. The blade was in all the way, up to the hilt.

Drake grinned. “This should be fun.”

Brianna expected him to try to turn the gun toward her but instead he tossed it aside. Then, with his real hand, he drew the knife out of his chest, slowly, as if relishing every inch of steel.

Brianna stared, mesmerized. And almost missed the sudden flick of Drake’s tentacle arm as it swept behind her.

Almost missed.

Not quite.

Brianna dropped and the whip went over her head. Drake threw Brianna’s own knife at her, but it wasn’t even close. The knife stuck into the back of a pew.

Brianna pulled her sawed-off shotgun from her runner’s pack, leveled, aimed, and fired.

The blast caught Drake in the mouth. It turned his thin-lipped smirk into a gaping hole, like a sinkhole.

Drake reached with his tentacle to feel the hole. He stuck the end of his whip hand into his own destroyed mouth. The pink-red tip came out through the back of his head and waved at Brianna.

Drake made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh if he’d had tongue and teeth and lips.

Brianna dropped back a few feet.

Drake’s face seemed to melt and re-form. She could see individual teeth, white pearls in the starlight, moving like insects, crawling out of the shredded flesh to find places in newly reshaped gums.

Brianna felt for the wire she hung from her belt. It was an E string from a cello she’d found. She’d wrapped the ends around short pieces of wood to form a four-foot-long garrote.

“This is what you were going to do to me at the power plant, remember, Drake?” Brianna winced as Drake’s tongue grew inside the still-gaping hole of his mouth.

“Oh, sorry, you can’t really chitchat, can you?” Brianna taunted. “Well, the thing is, whether it’s me running into a wire at two hundred miles an hour, or the wire running into you at two hundred miles an hour, it works just the same.”

She grabbed the garrote and was behind Drake before he could blink. The wire went around Drake’s neck as she was still running. The wire bit and sliced, and she felt a powerful jerk in her hands that tore one handle from her grip as the wire sliced through neck bone.

Drake’s head fell. It hit the stone floor hard, and rolled onto its side, rocked a few times, and lay still.

Not enough, Brianna thought, turned, raced back, threw the loose end of the wire around Drake’s waist, caught the handle, and gripped with all her strength as she backpedaled at super speed.

The wire cut through Drake’s still-standing torso just below his ribs. It stopped at the spine.

Brianna yanked, but the wire would not cut the spine. She yanked and yanked and the meat of Drake’s body twisted sideways so she could see the insides, see the organs, the sliced raw flesh like steak, the pale intestine, and all of it clinical, like a drawing, like some hideous display.

And suddenly her frenzied yanking, legs pummeling the slippery marble for purchase, succeeded, and with a grinding, grisly sound the spine parted and Drake fell in two pieces to the floor.

Brianna was aware of screaming. Jamal, hand over his face but eyes staring in horror. Screaming and screaming like he would never stop.

Brianna wanted to scream, too. But not in horror. In sheer, vicious triumph. She wanted to dance and smear herself with the blood of her beaten enemy. She wanted to leap atop the body chunks and kick them in contempt.

Brianna threw back her head and howled at the broken rafters and the sky beyond. “Yaaaaah! Yaaaaah! The Breeze!”

Jamal stopped screaming. He was gibbering, making word-like sounds, like a crazy street person. He was crawling away across the floor.