Berserkers.
That’s what they were. Every one of them just psychotic and vicious.
They hopped from the truck while it was still moving and fanned out into the street. They looked much like the dead one we had found. They were all bald with warrior scalplocks, distorted faces hidden behind gas masks. They wore flapping overcoats and leather trenchcoats, jackets that were stitched patchworks of other coats, even what looked like ponchos made from tarps. They swarmed forward, brandishing homemade spears, spiked clubs, axes and pikes and, yes, hatchets.
We laid down a volley of fire and then got the hell out.
We ran for our dear lives like spooked rabbits. It was all confusing and there was no cohesion whatsoever. Should we make our stand in a building? On a rooftop? Behind a wrecked car? In the end we found ourselves back in the vicinity of Fisher’s little commune, which was now a commune of corpses. We spread out, armed, and got ready.
The truck came storming forward and I sighted on it, put a couple rounds right through the windshield. It blew into the cab in a spiderwebbed mass of candy glass. The passenger slumped over and the driver jammed on the gas.
I sighted again. I knew the only weapon that would work from this range was my. 30.06. This was my baby. Maybe I could have passed the rifle to Carl but Carl was behind a station wagon on the other side of the street. There just wasn’t the time.
“Nash,” somebody said.
I breathed in and out. Sighted. Squeezed the trigger with a half-assed prayer brushing past my lips. I caught the driver in the throat, I thought. He snapped back in his seat, hands flying from the wheel trying to stem the flow of blood from his neck. The truck went out of control, bouncing off a minivan, and spinning up onto the sidewalk and ramming the remains of a police patrol car. And there she died.
The driver struggled out and Texas ran up on him and blew him away with the. 50 cal Desert Eagle. But the others were coming.
As they got in closer, I saw it was true what they said about these animals. They did wear the scalps of their victims. They wore them in scarves and belts. And not just those things, but necklaces of blackened ears and teeth strung on wires, a wide and gruesome collection of mummified body parts.
Carl dropped two with his AK and it was just sheer pandemonium as we all cried out, firing, pouring everything we had at our attackers whose numbers were swelling as more of them came running down the street. Already, eight or ten of them were down and writhing and they’d been replaced by twice that many. Even Janie was shooting with the Browning. 45. Mickey had Carl’s. 22 Airweight.
One of them got with twenty feet of our position by crawling underneath some cars and I popped him right in the face. The slug went right in through one of the plexiglass eye ports and the Clansman was thrown up against a truck. But he did not go down. He took three or four shambling, zombie-like steps forward, bright red blood spouting from the entry wound and then went down, face-first.
Others closed in.
One jumped on top of a truck and threw his spear. It barely missed Janie. Carl blew him away. I ran out of rounds and had to switch to my Beretta 9mm. I shot one and then another and then something clubbed me in the back and I went down. I hit the ground and twisted away just as an axe bit into the pavement where I’d been. I jumped up and emptied the Beretta into my attacker and then another jumped me, tossed me against the car. He lashed out with a knife and I just avoided it, kicking him in the belly and hammering his scabby bald head with the butt of the Beretta until something gave in there with a wet snapping.
Carl emptied his AK and starting blasting away with his Mossberg. Texas Slim was hit with a spear in the side and went down. Gremlin was beaten down with a club. Mickey fired her Airweight, jumping around with great athletic grace and popping them one after the other and then she was out of ammo and two of them grabbed her. She fought and kicked and they slammed her face-down on the hood of a car. They were going to rape her then and there because that’s how the Clans operated…not with military precision or organization, but with sheer mania.
Carl blew one of them away with the Mossberg, scattering his guts for twenty feet and, dropping and turning, wasted another. Then three of them knocked him down and it was all over as they raised their hatchets.
But Janie grabbed an axe from one of the dying ones and buried it in the back of a Clansman. He spun around, axe sunk in his back and smashed her with his fist. She went down and he leaped on top of her, tearing away her shirt, her white breasts exposed. He grabbed them with his filthy, pocked hands.
“JANIE!” I cried out.
And then I was in the mix. I ran and punted the Clansman in the head like I was kicking the winning field goal and the Clansman rolled away, limp as a rag. Then I leaped, diving, and took out two more like bowling pins, jumping to my feet and kicking one of them until they were no longer moving. Then I took up Carl’s dropped Mossberg and cracked another in the face hard enough to rip the gasmask right off him. He stood there, his face like a fleshy, grinning skull covered in clots of oozing white jelly. Mickey hit him from behind with a club and his skull cracked with an audible snapping. I gave him the butt of the Mossberg full in the face and down he went. Four Clansman were left and they came on screaming and swinging chains and throwing hatchets.
And that’s when the birds came.
18
There was a sudden wild squawking and chirping and trilling and we all looked skyward. Even the Clansmen. Except there was no sky. Above the surrounding buildings it was black and the air was thrumming with the flapping of hundreds of thundering wings. Janie was on her feet, zipping her coat shut and covering herself when they came. I threw myself at her, knocking her down as two- or three-hundred birds came swooping down in a single shrilling mass. There was nothing to do but cover my face and roll into a ball, covering Janie’s body with my own.
The birds came down.
The world was a cacophonous storm of cawing and pounding wings. I felt them beating around me, feathers filling the air. Beaks pecked me, clawed feet tore my skin. There were so many I could not breathe. I was going to suffocate in feathers and bird shit. As I lay there with Janie, I thought I heard her scream and I was certain I did. I was gasping for breath. Crying out as beaks drilled into me again and again. With one hand I swatted at them and they pecked away at my palm, my fingers until they stung and bled. The air was thick with them, with that awful humming and fluttering and squawking.
And about the time my mind began to unreel from the crowding of birds, the feel of oily feathers and nipping beaks and the gagging stench of dander and rot…they lifted. They pulled away and were gone.
Then I looked finally. They weren’t gone at all.
They were attacking the Clansmen.
It was incredible but it was happening. Something about them had drawn the birds. I saw ravens and crows, buzzards and even a few huge vultures, as well as mutated forms with greasy green wings and scaly, knobbed heads, leering red eyes and hooked beaks that almost looked like sickles. They went right after the Clansmen and clawed them with their feet and pecked away at their gas masks, their mottled heads and yellowed hands. They hit them from every direction.
One of them tried to run with twenty or thirty birds on him, some circling and dipping in for attack, but most clinging tight and pecking away mercilessly. He looked like some kind of contorted, grotesque scarecrow that was finally getting his due from the birds he had frightened away for so long. He finally went down and the birds settled over him, pecking him until he was writhing red meat. I was astounded and I was pretty sure the others were, too.
Another Clansman who’d been making a pretty good show of himself by batting away birds with a swinging chain, their broken bodies littered at his feet, suddenly let out a piercing, guttural cry and…disappeared. He vanished as a flock of birds simply enveloped him. The crows and buzzards and the rest just kept cawing and squawking as their beaks rose and fell, coming away stained red, yanking out strings of tissue. It was an appalling sight. When he was down, crushing a few of his attackers beneath him, the birds kept at it, crowding in, fighting for space like piglets at their mother’s teats. The sound of the Clansman being stripped was simply awful…moist tearing sounds and crunching noises and pulpy hammering as beaks dug deeper for hot goodies.