Frenzied Flight of the Femmes Fatale by DS Barbee (different e readers txt) 📖

Frenzied Flight of the Femmes Fatale

Emily’s eyes snapped open. With exception to the princess’ steady soft slumbering susurrations, suffocating silence saturated the safe house. Emily should have heard the hissing, screams, and rumblings of the Ragers at this time of night. Nighttime silence lay outside the norm of this new apocalyptic world. Years of harsh experience taught Emily to interpret activity out of the norm as bad news. The many various thoughts of what could chase Ragers away all brought Emily to the same conclusion: retreat.

“Princess,” Emily whispered, nudging the golden-haired girl.

The princess shot up with a gasp. “Does peril come our way?” she breathed. Then, after a moment’s pause, “Why is the noise level so diminished?”

Emily turned to face her lone companion and pressed her index finger over the girl’s lips. The princess’ mouth snapped shut. Her angelic face radiated resolved fear. Emily had seen professional warriors harden or shatter under less than the endless nightmares they had lived over the past three months. Intense pressure forced people to sacrifice either their hearts or spines. Emily chose her heart. However, this dead island’s princess somehow survived without compromising either. The princess’ uncommon courage complemented with compassion commanded respect. Even from calloused killers like Emily.

“We're leaving now,” Emily whispered.

Quickly and quietly, they swapped their night clothes for combat gear. Emily pulled her crimson leather jacket over her Kevlar-weaved undershirt. She tugged her Kevlar pants around her thighs and holstered her machine pistol and hookshot around her legs. Kevlar would keep bites from drawing blood, but it still hurt. The thought of her princess enduring the pains of gnashing teeth washed a wave of dread over Emily. Emily forced the fear back. She would protect her princess. Emily had kept her princess alive this long and this night would be no different. Emily would not fail her princess. She wouldn’t. Emily fastened her scabbard of short-swords around her back. The princess grabbed her .38 caliber from under her pillow.

Emily’s machine pistol served as an excellent sidearm. Still, she preferred additional punch for close encounters with the infected. Emily reached to the nightstand for her multipurpose rifle. The top half of the rifle was an M-16 machine gun, with a shotgun on the underbelly. Her ability to switch instantly between shotgun and assault rifle firepower was invaluable, even if the shotgun felt a little awkward. The princess stood behind her with the ‘quick retreat’ duffle bag of MRE’s, medical supplies, and ammunition slung over her shoulder.

Emily pushed the princess’ hair behind her ear before drawing the girl to her and whispering, “Go to the garage. You drive; I shoot.”

The princess swatted her protector’s hand away, “Emily my patience thou doth strain! I have learned what thou didst train!”

“Don’t get your royal panties in a bunch, highness.”

The princess eyes narrowed with exasperation and her lip trembled. “Now is not the time to play,” she whined. “Focus thyself on survival I pray!”

“Stay close to me Princess. I'll keep you safe. I promise. You don't need to be afraid.” Emily whispered.

“You will ensure the safety of both our persons,” the princess corrected. “You must desist in your belief that my life is more important than your own.” The princess’ eyes misted and her voice cracked. “I would elect death over loneliness. I forbid you to endanger your life for my own.”

Emily didn’t have time to persuade the princess away from her foolish notions that they were somehow equal. The princess was a supernova of celestial light. Emily was a black hole. “I don’t have a death wish princess,” Emily grinned. That was the truth. It had been ever since the princess had illuminated her existence.

The princess’ sapphire eyes bored into Emily’s brown sewer water eyes. “We both know I am the weak link,” she began, “You can survive without me. I would perish without you. You must swear to prioritize your security above my own.”

“Fine. I promise,” Emily lied. “Can we go now? Or did you want me to carry you to the truck?”

The princess lunged forward and snuggled Emily tight against her. “I love you Emily,” she breathed. “Your soul is an undiscovered treasure which I yearn the world to see. You must preserve your beauty that it might be edify humanity.”

Emily pressed the princess to her bosom and willed her constricted throat not to let out the sobs within her. Why did the precious little wretch have to say stuff like that now? This wasn’t exactly a convenient time to cry.

The front wall shattered into drywall dust and debris. A seven-foot tall man in a black overcoat stepped through the wrecked wall. Emily’s stomach twisted with fear. Not a Hunter! The merciless titan briefly scanned the room until his milky eyes landed on his target. Then he charged the princess.

Emily shoved the princess behind her. “Last stand Princess,” she shouted. The princess bolted back to the bedroom and Emily jumped in the Hunter’s path, pumping three shotgun rounds into his chest, and neck. The buckshot blasts bowled the beastly behemoth into the wrecked wall.

The Hunter rose and rushed Emily, ignoring the gory mess of wounds drenching its black trench coat. Emily fired another shot into its gut before it launched its ham-sized hand at her and latched its tough gray fingers around her neck. The Hunter’s lips pulled back in a moldy-toothed grin. It lifted Emily off her feet and smashed her into the wall behind them. Emily’s gun fell from limp fingers. The air left her lungs and her vision darkened. The Hunter would strangle her before its wounds bled it out. Rotten smelling infected Soldiers poured in behind the Hunter.

Emily grasped at her short-swords as the Hunter slammed her from wall to wall. After what seemed an eternity, Emily gripped the short-swords and jammed the twin blades into the Hunter’s neck, nearly severing its head. The Hunter dropped her and slumped to the ground. Emily pushed the bald giant’s body off her and tore the short-swords from its cankered flesh. She severed, slashed, and sliced the score of Soldiers surrounding her, sending scalps and stumpy limbs sailing to the stained floor.

Emily sheathed her swords and opened fire with her machine gun. Every bullet splashed their snow-camo uniforms with blobs of blood, bits of bone, and brains. Emily batted away the stinky greyish green arms of one of the Soldiers, and crushed its nose with the butt of her rifle. Another set of hands, ending in sharp dirty fingernails, yanked Emily's hair.

Emily twisted the thing's hand away and cracked its arm at the elbow before jamming a grenade into its withered mouth and shoving it into a crowd of Soldiers. She turned away and the grenade let loose an ear-splitting boom, bathing the entire room in a macabre meat shower. Emily dropped back.

Resuming machine gun fire, Emily put a priority on the Soldiers sporting guns. Fortunately, the Soldiers were slow and inaccurate with firearms. Although their killing efficiency deeply declined with weapon complexity, their close-quarters lethality increased substantially with melee weapons such as blades, clubs, and stun rods. Emily converted every bullet into scrambled zombie gray-matter, but there were too many. The Soldiers would overtake her soon. She had to think of—

The entire front room flared into a furious fiery inferno, flinging Emily back and turning the Soldiers to cooked flesh. Emily struggled up on wobbly legs. She looked for her gun. Emily fought to keep the pain at bay, but no amount of mental discipline could ignore the consequences of a broken body. She did a quick physical inventory. No busted bones, but hot diggity damn she hurt. She hoped to avoid future explosions, at least for tonight.

A straggling Soldier sprang at Emily. She steadied herself and prepared to put her knife between its eyes. A gunshot cracked beside her and Emily watched the Soldier zombie lose its mind out the side of its head. A moment later the princess, covered in blood Emily hoped wasn’t the girl’s, laid Emily’s arm around her neck and slipped her arm around Emily’s hips.

“Let us flee from this place!” the princess panted, pulling her protector beside her. “I apologize for my inexcusable delay in executing the Last Stand protocol,” the princess said, “I encountered a substantial number of the Soldiers en route to the trigger.” She bent down to retrieve Emily’s gun.

“You did really good Princess,” Emily said. “Are you hurt?”

“No. It was, as you Americans would say, a walk in the park.”

Once in the garage, the princess dumped the supplies in the back seat of the military Humvee. Then looking to Emily with teary-eyed concern asked, “Will you succumb to the physical hardships of today?”

“I'll be fine exalted one,” Emily panted with a smirk. “Drive!”

The princess took a moment to scowl at her last living friend before running to the driver’s seat. Emily got behind the mounted .50 caliber machine gun just as the reinforced garage door jolted to open. Emily sawed down the Soldiers waiting on the other side; leaving their piled flesh to steam in the frigid air.

A Soldier pushed past the .50 caliber and jumped on the hood. Emily chucked a knife into its squishy forehead, freeing the demon-spawn from its wretched existence. More Soldiers to swarm the truck. The garage door finally opened enough to let the Humvee to exit. The truck screamed forward plowing through the crowd of Soldiers. The Humvee’s knobby tires ground their foul flesh and sprayed it on the wall.

A Soldier, missing most of the skin on its cheek, swung a bloody combat knife at Emily’s face. The princess swerved left to dodge an abandoned car, throwing the Soldier-zombie off balance. Emily drew her machine pistol and fired. While wildly inaccurate with one hand, she still punched the three-round burst into its chest, knocking it off the hood and under the Humvee with a satisfying thud and squish. Emily holstered her handgun and readied the .50 caliber.

The whining buzz of approaching motorcycles fueled Emily’s blood with adrenaline. About a dozen Soldier-driven bikes surrounded the Humvee. One of the Soldiers threw a Molotov cocktail at the passenger door igniting the side of the Humvee in flame. The princess’ screams pierced through the mechanical roars of the speeding vehicles. Emily abstractly noted the bizarre similarities between the flame’s white-hot heat and the bitter cold bite of Corpacia’s winter. She continued to fire, mutilating six of cyclists with a storm of hot .50 caliber metal. One Soldier crashed into two others while concocting another Molotov cocktail, sending all of them to an ignominious death. Multi-tasking wasn’t really a Soldier strong suit.

Emily disposed of the rest without further ado and ducked back into the cab. She pulled the fire extinguisher out of its clamp. “You’re doing really good,” Emily said.

“My location objective is the alternate safe house. My course of action is in line with your training protocol’s,” the princess called out, “We will survive if I do as you trained me. Correct?”

Equal parts pity and pride for the princess pushed against Emily’s heart. “We’ll make it Princess,” Emily reassured, giving the girl’s shoulder a squeeze. Emily hated that she couldn’t protect the girl from the terrible dread she must be feeling, but Emily would protect her from these monsters. She popped her head back up into the icy wind biting her skin and extinguished the Molotov’s fire. The distant screams of the Ragers reminded Emily that they weren't out of the woods yet.

Ragers were easier to kill than Soldiers because Ragers were dumb as a bag of rocks. They didn’t use weapons, and while Ragers did sort of work together it was primitive. In fact, it was more accurate to say they ignored each other while looking for someone to eat. The real danger the Ragers posed was