Read Online Wretched Earth by James Axler - Free Book Online Page A

albino youth.
    Stabbing, slashing, shooting only when utterly necessary, Ryan
and Doc helped the cultists stave off the rotties while Mildred and J.B. quickly
passed the packs up to Krysty and Jak atop the bus. Then Ryan and J.B. gave
Mildred a boost, and Doc. Finally, Ryan stood facing out, while J.B. scaled him
like a monkey and clambered up.
    The changed surged forward. Unfeeling hands reached out for
Ryan, blood-spilling mouths gaping wide to consume his flesh.
    * * *
    M ILDRED HAD BARELY got
her bearings atop the ice-cold metal roof of the bus when another stout woman
wearing the Cthulhu cult’s flowing robes and head scarf came bustling up
alongside the baggage that had been strapped onto a rickety roof rack.
    “You can’t come up here!” she snapped. “This is for believers
only—”
    “Gaia forgive me,” Krysty said. She kicked the stout woman off
the roof.
    Mildred felt her brows climb up her forehead. Krysty looked
back at her and shrugged.
    “Move your broad butt, woman!” yelled a familiar voice from
behind. Mildred turned a furious glare on J.B., whose head popped up over the
roof edge like a curious prairie dog’s.
    “John,” she said, “you and me are going to talk. ”
    But she shifted aside to make way for him as a great cry went
up from the cultists below.
    “Brother Ha’ahrd!” a voice screamed.
    Ryan looked past the rotties closing in on him to see the
long-haired prophet knocked off his feet by a surge of creatures who had
overwhelmed his guards. Cultists stampeded off the bus, bowling over the rotties
in their path in their zeal to rescue their guru.
    Ryan had caught a break.
    Not a man to waste an opportunity, Ryan holstered his panga and
handblaster, spun around and jumped as high as he could. Krysty and J.B. caught
hold of his outstretched arms and hauled him up on top of the bus as if he were
a child.
    “After all this trouble we could ride inside now,” Mildred said
peevishly. She knelt on the heaped baggage, making fast their own packs. Doc
squatted to one side, reloading his revolver as calmly as if he were out for a
morning stroll outside his home in nineteenth-century Vermont.
    Ryan shook his head emphatically. “Just as glad to ride up
here,” he said. “Rotties get inside—”
    Screams pealed out the door. “Shit!” J.B. said, leaning out to
peer over. “They are!”
    “Grab legs!” Jak called. Without waiting to see if anybody
responded, he got down on his knees at the front end of the bus roof. While the
few cultists and other refugees who had also sought safety up there looked on
dumbly, Krysty and Mildred jumped to grab the youth’s ankles as he let himself
topple forward.
    An instant later Ryan heard the roar of Jak’s .357 Magnum Colt
Python.
    * * *
    F EELING K RYSTY ’ S AND Mildred’s grips strong on his ankles, Jak let himself almost smack
face-first into the cold windshield of the bus, using his right palm at the last
moment to keep from breaking his nose.
    Beyond the glass, which remained unfogged due to the icy air
streaming in the open door, he saw the look of terror on the driver’s face,
rendered more comic by being upside down: the saucer eyes, the mouth a screaming
O below a bearded chin.
    The driver had good reason to scream. He was trying to hang on
to the wheel, probably to keep from getting pulled out of his seat, and batting
with his right arm at a rottie who was trying to bite his head. Other rotties
had got themselves jammed in the door in their lust for human flesh and hot
blood.
    Jak pressed the vented muzzle of his blaster against the glass
near the first rottie’s head and pulled the trigger. The Magnum blaster kicked
itself away from the windshield as the glass collapsed inward. He let his arm
straighten to ride out the recoil; he hadn’t been able to brace properly, and
expected the reaction.
    Inside, the bus driver stared in even greater horror at his
attacker. The back of the changed woman’s head had been blown off. The guy