Walking Dead by Greg Rucka Read Free Book Online Page A

guy,” the one on the left was saying. “That's the guy who dropped Gorda.”
     
The leader righted his head, then nodded, barely. His whole expression was as dead as when he'd entered, his stare empty, with nothing for me to read in it.
     
Then he turned away, saying, “Kill him.”
     
At least I'm pretty sure that's what he said, but I could be wrong. Everything after the word “kill” was lost when I started laying down fire.
     
I put my first two at the shotgun, and the double-tap hit him before he could bring his gun to bear. By then I was already moving back and left, counting my steps as I shifted my aim right. Second pistol got a shot off as I lined him up, but he rushed and it went high, and I was still counting steps when I drilled him with another two, then swung the pistol back left.
     
The leader had moves, already behind the nearest hard cover he could find, the two oil drums closest to the south door. I didn't linger on him. I was firing 45-caliber jacketed hollow-point, and there was no way it would penetrate both walls of the barrel to hit him. I continued bringing my weapon aroundto find first pistol, the one who'd spoken, who'd identified me. He was going for a set of oil drums himself, the same cluster of them that held Zviadi, and he was firing blind as he went, and his shots were hitting the floor and the walls and not me.
     
I shifted aim past him, and hammered the fuse box with five of the six rounds I had left, dumping them off as fast as the trigger would let me. Somewhere around bullet three I broke through, and the lights went, and without windows, the building dropped into an absolute darkness. I finished my count, and the heel of my left foot hit the door behind me.
     
I went outside, yanking the door closed behind me to give them the noise, checking my corners. No one was waiting to spring on me. With one hand, I grabbed the pipe I'd placed and slid it through the handle, leaving six inches of overlap on the wall, effectively barring the door from the outside. Then I sprinted for the eastern side, coming around and making for the southern door as fast as I could. I'd brought two mags with me, and I switched them out as I ran, slowed at the corner, then rounded strong, my weapon in high-ready. I saw the car, the same damn Land Cruiser, parked fifteen meters off to the side.
     
The door burst open. I'd thought it would be the leader who came out first, because he'd been the one closest to it, but instead it was the first pistol who emerged, raising his gun, and I realized too late that I was too close. I got a forearm up and under his weapon as he came in, forcing his gun away from me, and he fired anyway, for all the good it did him. Even as he did that he was barreling into me, and we went down together, each of us trying to get our weapons to bear, twisting like kids in a playground fight.
     
The fall trapped my weapon beneath him, denied me any useful shot. He didn't have the same problem. He fired again despite my grip on his arm, this time dangerously close to myleft ear, and the report hurt like a motherfuck. I sacrificed the gun, went for the knife I'd taken off Zviadi, and doing it cost me my leverage, and we tumbled. He ended up on top of me, fighting viciously against my grip to bring the barrel of his gun in line with my head.
     
He was still fighting to do it when I punched him twice in the side with the knife. He made a soft and awful sound of surprise, then cut it short when I quickly drove the blade into him a third time. Then I pulled it free and stabbed again, fast, this time coming down into the side of his neck, where it met his shoulder. He turned to dead weight.
     
Then something heavy and hard skittered on the pavement my way, and a fucking hand grenade bounced out of the darkness of the doorway straight toward me.
     
The last time I'd dealt seriously with hand grenades had been in the Army, and that had been a lifetime ago, and all the training options that