Read Online Wretched Earth by James Axler - Free Book Online

lift.”
    Planting the blade of his panga under his right arm, Ryan
switched magazines in his SIG. He didn’t much worry about getting gore on his
coat. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last.
    “Doesn’t mean we got to listen,” he said. “Follow me. Wedge
formation.”
    Without looking to see if his companions would follow—because
he knew from long experience they would—he set off at a trot for the battered,
faded-green bus. It had a snowplow blade up front and chicken wire over the
windows, most of which lacked glass.
    Cultists surrounded the school bus, trying to hold off the
moaning horde by pushing at them with their bare hands. They were determined and
vigorous enough to manage it for now.
    The concentration of warm food drew the changed.
    Ryan passed Brother Ha’ahrd, who was surrounded by a phalanx of
followers, including a few former wag drivers that seemed to have undergone a
last-minute conversion in the face of overwhelming, mind-frying horror. He was
loudly preaching a doctrine of love and forbearance and waiting on the will of
the Great Old Ones. The rotties didn’t seem to be listening. They were more
interested in eating his head.
    Which meant most of the shambling freaks were focused on
something other than the approach of Ryan and friends from the rear. He heard a
couple shots pop off behind him, and the thwack of stout ash wood on a skull,
accompanied by a grunt of effort and triumph from Mildred. Apparently a few of
the freaks still tracked them.
    Ryan didn’t look back. Unless somebody screamed for his help,
his job was clearing the way.
    He waded into the mob of rotties surging toward the bus door,
where three cultists had linked arms to keep them out. Ryan hacked at the backs
of necks and skulls as if the changed were a stand of brush he was trying to cut
a trail through.
    A woman turned a blood mask to snarl at him and he shot her
between the eyes. He sensed a presence on his right and whipped the butt of his
SIG around to squash a changed man’s nose in a spray of dark fluid. The rottie
staggered back. An eye blink later Doc’s slim rapier impaled the creature
through both temples like an apple on a skewer.
    A burly rottie, obviously a changed wag driver, bare-chested
and with a short Mohawk, spun to bare his teeth and spread his arms to seize the
one-eyed man. Ryan hammered him between the eyes with the SIG’s butt, then shot
him in the forehead as he staggered back.
    The rotties pulled down the two women and one man barring the
door. As the cultists futilely screamed and thrashed, the rotties homed in on
them. Ryan kicked at the flailing tangle until the way was clear, then rushed
into the school bus with his friends at his heels.
    A stout woman in a robe sewn together from burlap bags barred
their way. “Stop! There’s no room in here for anyone but believers!”
    Ryan was about to rebut her with a copper-jacketed 9 mm bullet
where it would do the most good when Krysty grabbed his arm from behind.
    “Wait!” she yelled. “She’s right!”
    The cultist was. Ryan looked around the bus to see the seats
and aisles jammed with refugees. Not all of them looked as if they belonged to
Brother Ha’ahrd’s flock, or at least had started the day that way. Still, the
practical puzzle was insoluble: even shooting the reticent wasn’t likely to
drive these people out into the blood-smeared rottie mob.
    “Up!” he heard Jak call.
    “Say what?” Ryan turned to see Jak disappearing up the first
window behind the door.
    Ryan jumped back outside. After even momentary exposure to the
relative warmth inside the bus, generated by close-packed bodies and humid
panting breath, the chill hit him like a slap. As did the stench of burning
petrocarbons, human flesh and hair, and spilled intestines.
    “Follow Jak!” Ryan yelled. He stooped to grab one of Krysty’s
calves. J.B. grabbed the other, and the two men boosted the woman high enough to
scramble onto the roof after the