Rotters: Bravo Company by Carl R Cart Read Free Book Online

position Gunner stood up and waved his arms. He yelled curses in Spanish and English at the thing on the path. I guess the thing heard him, because it jerked its grotesque head up, and staggered towards him. Gunner didn’t wait as long as I would have liked. He turned and ran back towards the village.
    The thing stumped along the path as quickly as it could, dragging one crippled foot behind it. It moved past us without slowing down. Seeing it up close did not help to steel my resolve to capture it. Hundreds of hungry flies swarmed around it in a droning cloud. I could actually hear them through my hood. Seeing the thing turned my stomach; I had to keep telling myself it was once a man. It moaned pitifully through its mangled mouth.
    It hobbled past me, and I forced myself to crawl forward onto the trail. I gave it a few seconds to move away. It didn’t look back. I hoped Hard-on was up for this shit.
    I silently rose and sprinted down the trail. I threw myself forward in a flying tackle, hitting the thing high in the shoulders, and pinning its arms to the sides. We went down hard in the mud, sliding forward on the trail. I wrapped up the creature with my legs and held on for dear life. A horrible rotten stench came through my gas mask, strongly enough to make my eyes water. I gasped for air and retched. The thing trashed violently underneath me, twisting its gory head from side to side, attempting to bite me. Its moans turned to growls. We wrestled in the mud. I was not a happy camper.
    “Hard-on, you worthless fucker, get up here now!” I screamed in my highest falsetto, each word rising higher to a terrified shriek. It was all I could do to hang on.
    Hard-on bent down until he could see my face. He was a good ten feet away.
    “What do I do now?” he asked.
    “Get over here, you fuck!” I screamed. “Get something in this fucker’s mouth before he bites me!”
    My grasp wasn’t holding. The damn thing was slippery and determined to get me. I was holding onto a man made out of slimy, rotted meat.
    “What do I do?” Hard-on demanded.
    “Use your rifle’s sling!” I shouted back. “Hurry!” 
    Hard-on unclipped his M-4’s sling and crept timidly forward.
    “Do it!” I howled.
    Hard-on carefully draped the sling over the man’s jerking, snapping head, and pulled it into its mouth. The thing immediately clamped onto the sling’s padding. Hard-on drew the webbing tight through the adjustment clip. He leapt back.
    I was still struggling to hold on.
    “What now?” Hard-on asked.
    Gunner had finally crept back to us; he stood looking fearfully down at the trashing monstrosity.
    “Get Gunner’s strap!” I suggested.
    It wasn’t bad enough that I had to wrestle with a struggling, virus laden dead guy; I also had to shout directions to these two brain-dead dickheads.
    Hard-on grabbed Gunner’s sling. He wrapped it repeatedly around the thing’s feet and tied it off. I shifted my hold and sat upright. Now I was just holding the thing’s arms down.
    “You’ll have to help me with this part,” I grunted. “Gunner get the sling off my rifle.”
    Gunner moved back up the trail and retrieved my M-4. He unclipped the sling and threw it to Hard-on.
    “I’m going to pull his hands together, wrap em up real tight,” I panted.
    I slowly forced the man’s hands together behind his back and lifted them as high as I could. Hard-on finally grew a set of balls. He wrapped the thing’s wrists together and pulled the strap so tight that it sank into the meat. He tied the strap off and stepped back to admire his work.
    With a groan I released the struggling, moaning, hogtied creature and rolled to the side. I painfully got upright and stood bent over, gasping for breath in the trail.
    “Do you guys think you could have helped me any slower?” I growled.
    “It was your bright idea to catch this fucker,” Hard-on replied. “Why didn’t we bring some duct-tape or something?”
    “I didn’t actually think we