Free These Dead Lands: Immolation by Stephen Knight, Scott Wolf

keeping you alive right now is the fact that I haven’t applied another few ounces on the trigger, but I feel a sneeze coming on, so get ready for things to change.”
    The woman rode her bike over and stopped beside Hastings. She flipped up her visor. “Kill him. He’s a rapist and a murderer.”
    “That’s a lie, bitch,” Jerry said. He was still looking at Tharinger.
    “Six, movement across the parking lot,” Guerra said over the radio. “I count over seventeen reekers heading our way. You want me to engage, or should we fall back? Over.”
    “Roger that, Guerra. Break. Hartman, pull up here. We’re moving out in just a minute. Over.”
    “On our way, Six. Over.”
    “Jerry, your weapons,” Hastings said.
    Jerry finally managed to peel his gaze from Tharinger. “Okay. Okay.” He reached around behind his back and very slowly brought out a SIG516 short-barreled rifle. It was similar to Hastings’s M4, but much smaller, a personal defense weapon more easily concealed. Jerry pulled the weapon’s strap over his head.
    Then he snapped the weapon up and pointed it right at Tharinger.
    Hastings’s two shots were lost to the sudden staccato crackle of the .50 caliber. Jerry was blown virtually in half as the big rounds slammed through his chest, pulverizing flesh and bone and muscle in an instant, turning connective tissue and supportive biologic infrastructure into a jellified mass. The man collapsed to the road in a spreading pool of scarlet. His mouth moved as he tried to breath with lungs that weren’t there, and even if they had been, they were no longer attached to his diaphragm.
    “Fuck! Oh fuck! ” the driver cried.
    Hastings turned on him immediately. “How many of you are there? Tell me!”
    “Don’t say anything, Lenny,” the man with the bloody nose said.
    Hastings shot Bloody Nose through the head at close range. Lenny squeaked and gagged.
    Hastings took a step back in case the guy started puking. He didn’t want some redneck upchucking all over his boots. “How many?”
    “Six more!” Lenny said. “We got a roadblock up the road—”
    The woman rolled the bike closer, glaring down at the pudgy man. “Are they still alive, fucker?”
    “I don’t know! I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it!” The pudgy man looked up at Hastings with imploring eyes. “I wasn’t me! It was Jerry and the others. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it!”
    “You are so full of shit.” She turned to Hastings. “Are you the commander here?”
    “Yes.” Hastings kept his rifle’s sights on the man. As the driver began sobbing and incoherently pleading for his life, Hastings felt nothing but mounting loathing. He wondered about that. The world was ending, and he was only moments away from taking another man’s life, an American’s life, over charges that hadn’t even been proven yet.
    The woman ignored the blubbering man. “Are you going to help me?”
    From the truck, the CB radio blared again. “Jerry, this is Frank. What’s with all the gun fire? Are you guys all right? Kick it back, man!”
    “Who’s Frank?” Hastings asked the fat man.
    “Jerry’s brother.” Snot dribbled from his nose and ran through his mustache. “He’s like you, a Marine.”
    “An active duty Marine?” Ballantine asked.
    “I dunno.” The man shrugged. “Maybe. I dunno. He came back to town about a year ago. Could that mean he’s still in the Marines?”
    Tharinger called down to them, “Guys, those reekers are starting to get close.”
    Hastings heard a moan, then another. He took his eyes off the sobbing fat man and glanced over the hood of the Dodge Ram. Several ragged-looking corpses were tottering out of the tree line. No runners… yet.
    “Sergeant Reader, gather up the weapons and toss them into the Humvee. Ballantine, go get your truck and get ready to move out.” Hastings looked at the woman on the idling motorcycle. “Lady, what’s your name?”
    “Diana.”
    “Hi, Diana. Get off your