Read Online Infernal Sky by Dafydd Ab Hugh - Free Book Online

both started thinking about Jill that way—as our responsibility. We hadn’t gone through all this crap just to let her die now.
    â€œCome on!” I shouted and headed toward the sound.
    When we returned to the corridor, another zombie was waiting for us, a male. This was one of the talkative ones. He didn’t babble about the Gateways and the invasion. Instead, he kept repeating, “Write it over and resubmit.” I didn’t give him a chance to repeat his mantra. Arlene had our only gun, but I was angry at not having been in time to save the woman in the next room. Sometimes I like to get personal.
    I felt the skin crawl between my shoulders as I hit the blue-gray face with my right fist. Marines were not meant to touch this reeking leather that once was human skin, but I was too angry to care. The soundof the nose cracking did my soul a world of good. Unlike Arlene’s prey, this one was slow. I could have moved a lot slower, but adrenaline surged through me as I did something I’d never done to any of these bozos: I gave it the old one-two with straight fists. No karate, no fancy side kicks, no special training. I just pummeled that damned face in a sincere effort to send it straight back to hell, where it belonged.
    â€œFly!” Arlene was right behind me.
    â€œBe with you in a second,” I said.
    â€œWhat about Jill?”
    Shit. How could I have been sidetracked so easily? There are certain drawbacks to being a natural warrior. “Take it,” I yelled, resuming the twenty-yard dash—thirty? forty?—to save Jill. I measured distance in kill -ometers. I didn’t bother looking back as I heard the solid, satisfying sound of Arlene putting a round in the zombie’s head.
    Arlene stays in good shape. I never slowed down, but suddenly she was running right beside me. We found a dead guard slumped against the wall. Recent kill. Blood still trickling down his arm onto his Ml. Dumb-ass zombies didn’t relieve him of his satisfaction. I grabbed the weapon without slowing down, and then Arlene and I slammed through a pair of unlocked doors, ready for anything.
    Anything consisted of a zombie ripping open a sawbones with the man’s own surgical instruments. I fired off six rounds of .30-06 little round scalpels that opened up the zombie a lot more completely than he’d managed to do to the doctor.
    â€œI can save him,” said Arlene, noticing the convenient medikit at the same time I did. In Kefiristan,she’d had plenty of experience treating abdominal wounds. Before I could say diddly, she was on her knees, scooping up the medical guy’s intestines and shoveling them back into the patient. Fortunately, the guy had passed out; and just as fortunately Arlene was really good at handling slippery things.
    Jill was my responsibility—if it wasn’t already too late to save her. As if on cue, she screamed again. I gave a silent prayer of thanks to Sister Beatrice, the toughest nun I’d had back in school. She always said the only prayers that are answered are the ones you say when you truly want to help someone else.
    I humped. I hurried. I tried my damnedest to fly. . . .
    Jill was still alive when I got to her. I almost tripped over the head of Dr. Ackerman, staring up at me with a really surprised expression. I did slip in the blood, and dropped the Ml as I careened right into the back of the biggest freakin’ zombie I’d ever seen. The creep had cornered Jill and was trying to get at her with a blasted meat cleaver. She was holding him off with a metal chair, like a lion tamer. She’d taken shelter in a tight corner, which gave her an advantage: he couldn’t swing the cleaver in a full arc, and she was able to avoid him by sidestepping the blade.
    I slammed hard into the back of her lion, and he fell forward. Jill jumped out of the way and shouted, “Fly!” That was all, just my name, but she crammed so