Monsters of the Deadlands: The Complete Series

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The monsters circled the building. Six, maybe seven of them; hard to get a proper count with all the shifting shadows.

Thankfully they hated sunlight, and the two portable UV lamps we’d brought with us were the only things stopping them from attacking.

Behind me, in the brightly lit room of the abandoned building, Jarrod screamed like a banshee.

Pip, our medic, let out a string of colorful curses. “Hush, okay, I know. Hush. Let me…Shit, Jarrod, shit.”

“Bee?” I turned my head to find my second. “How’s he looking?”

She sucked on her cheeks, shaking her head. “This ain’t no duct tape job, Rue.”

I turned away from the monsters and back to the scene inside. Jarrod sat propped against a wall, legs splayed in front of him like a broken marionette. He screamed in agony, batting at Pip’s hands as she tried to duct tape his ripped torso shut. But his intestines weren’t cooperating.

Pip’s hands trembled as she brushed back the dark tendrils of hair that had escaped from her ponytail before tearing off another strip of tape and trying to slap it onto the wound. Blood bubbled up to cover her hands and the tape slipped from her fingers.

Oh crap. “Pip?”

She glanced back at me with wide, frightened eyes. “It won’t stick. I can’t…Rue, I can’t.”

“Please…” Jarrod pleaded with me. “Rue, please make it stop.”

My heart sank and my stomach trembled because I knew what he was asking for.

“Rue, I’ll do it,” Bee offered.

I inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my mouth to steel myself. “No. It’s on me.” It was always on me. That was part of the job.

I pulled my pistol from its holster and approached Jarrod.

He’d been with me for two years, the engineer of my team. Quirky, funny, brave. He didn’t deserve to go out like this.

“I’m sorry, Jarrod.” Pip stepped away and turned her back.

Now that Pip wasn’t trying to shove his insides back into his body, there were no more screams, just sobbing and quick, shallow breaths that made his whole torso shake.

I kept my eyes on his face, not wanting to see the mess the monster had made of his abdomen. Maybe we should have left him to die back there. Might have been a mercy for us all.

“Do it, Rue.” Pain had etched lines into his face. “Make it quick. I can’t…please.”

I adjusted the silencer on the gun. The weapon, useless against the monsters that had taken over our world, was given to us for one reason alone. Mercy.

“Please…” Jarrod begged with his eyes.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and pressed the gun to his temple. For a moment another face peered back at me with pain-filled cocoa eyes. I blinked away the memory. “Sleep well, Jarrod.”

The shot was nothing but a puff of air and a jarring vibration up my arm. Jarrod’s eyes flew wide and then drifted closed.

Gone.

I stood, tucking the gun back in its holster, blinking against the heat of tears.

There was no time for grief. We were five miles from base and half a mile from our backup ride.

No fucking way was I getting eaten by these fuckers this close to the finish line, not with the bounty we’d managed to pick up.

The backpack filled with antibiotic pills, antihistamines, and various other meds parked in the middle of the room needed to find its way back to base. Lives depended on it.

I took a moment to compose myself and lock away the horror of what I’d just done. My chest ached with pressure, with the need to scream.

But falling apart was not an option. “How much power do we have left?”

“Maybe half an hour, if that,” Bee said.

It was two hours until dawn. We couldn’t risk waiting it out, but thirty minutes of power might get us to our ride now that we didn’t have an injured party to haul. The jeep was kitted out with more UV lights. If we made it, we’d be safe.

“What are you thinking, Rue?” Bee asked.

Bee, my second, my training partner, and my best friend, never doubted, never questioned, not while we were out in the field anyway.

Her petite stature and heart-shaped face usually threw people off guard, but I’d seen her bring down guys much larger than her on the sparring mats, and she never missed a shot.

She should have become a sweeper, but she’d chosen to be a scout like me.

To stay with me. I wouldn’t let her regret that decision.

I looked out the window again. Were more of them out there now? “I say we make a break for it.”

“What?” Pip stared at me in horror. “You want to go out there with those creatures waiting for us? After what they did to Jarrod?”

That was exactly what I wanted to do. “If we stay here, we’ll die. If we make a break for it, there’s a chance of survival. A chance to get these meds back to base, to those who need them. We move out. Now.”

It was an order and not up for discussion.

Pip closed her eyes and shook her head. Her breathing quickened and her hands curled into fists. “We shouldn’t have come. We shouldn’t have…”

Poor kid, it was only her third scouting mission. She hadn’t had time to become desensitized to the threat and was spiraling into a full-blown panic attack.

Bee crossed the room and slapped her hard across the face. “Snap the fuck out of it.”

Pip clutched her cheek and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I sighed. Time for a pep talk. I scrolled through the prepared scripts in my arsenal of morale-boosting shit. Stuff we’d been taught in case of a mental breakdown.

Ah, this one would have to do. “Pip. I need you. You’re the only one who can keep us alive if we get injured out there. Do you understand? You’re essential to this team.”

Her gaze flicked to Jarrod’s dead body.

It wasn’t hard to read the guilt etched across her features. “Not your fault. He was dead before we hauled him in here. You couldn’t have saved him, but you might be able to save us. I need to know you’re with us.”

Her jaw tensed, chin coming up in determination. “I got this.”

“Good, now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I grabbed one of the UV lamps that bathed the room in light and Bee grabbed the other. They were lightweight and had straps that allowed us to haul them onto our backs like packs.

“Stay between us.” Bee handed Pip the meds. “You’re our cargo and we’ll damn sure protect your ass. Got it?”

Pip shrugged on the pack holding the meds.

I led the way to the door. There was no way to avoid being seen or chased, but the lights would keep them at a distance and stop them from attacking.

At least that’s what I hoped.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Bee and Pip said in unison.

I yanked open the door and hauled ass into the night.

First thing we were taught in training was if they can’t catch you, they can’t kill you.

Stamina was key for scouts and sweepers, although in the case of sweepers it was for fighting the monsters, not running from them.

Sweepers had the heavy arsenal and kept Sector A around our base settlement safe.

Scouts got the mercy pistols, UV lamps, and orders to move fast and stealthy.

We’d been lucky we’d only attracted the attention of ripper monsters. The type 3’s had appendages they could whip out to snag their prey. Some even spat acid. Then there were type 4’s, humanoid and highly intelligent; at least that’s what I’d heard. I’d never seen one myself.

I sprinted up the rubble-littered road, dodging debris and weaving between abandoned cars.

Hard to imagine that people had lived out here once. Without walls, without the sonic vibrations that kept the monsters at bay.

“Rue, we have incoming!” Bee cried.

A fresh wave of rippers rushed onto the road from the building to our left, attempting to cut us off.

“Keep moving. We have the lights.”

We picked up speed, legs and arms pumping. We’d lost our ride to a flat tire. A fucking flat tire, because someone at base had forgotten to place a spare in the trunk after debrief checks.

But backup rides were hidden at various coordinates in a twenty-mile radius to base.

“These fuckers are hungry,” Bee panted.

Yeah, they should have dropped back, given up after the first mile. Rippers were usually territorial and stuck to a certain hunting ground. Not tonight, it seemed.

They stayed with us as we ran, keeping their distance to avoid the light radiating from us but never letting up.

“We’re almost there,” Bee said. “Take the next right.”

“Yeah, I know it.”

We swerved onto the next residential street with the rippers on our ass. Their eerie shrieks reverberated in my head, making it hard to focus, to remember which fucking garage held our prize.

“Number 432,” Bee yelled. “I see the mark.”

I saw it too, a crimson X on a white garage door.

We cut up the path and Pip grabbed the doors and hauled them up to reveal a dark, empty space.

My heart sank.

The backup ride was gone.