Lockey vs. the Apocalypse by Meadows, Carl (love novels in english .TXT) 📗

I’d just started a car and revved the engine a couple of times. Meanwhile, I was trying not to shudder as I stuck my foot on the guy’s face to lever the hammer out of his head like King Arthur withdrawing some gory Excalibur.

“Peachy,” I muttered, trying to avoid flicking brain juice on myself.

I’m not going to lay down all the lessons Nate gave me then, but he taught me the correct way to work as a pair when clearing rooms and buildings, making sure the barrel of your gun never points at your team-mate, breaking a building down into sectors, how to do that balanced combat walk Nate does so smoothly. I have to say, it was interesting stuff.

Now, he didn’t do a live test; that would just be dumb. Nate swept through that building single-handed first with his Glock, fast and efficient, while I kept watch outside. Only when he announced it was clear did he walk me through the building, telling me what to do at every stage, all the things I should and shouldn’t do, the latter of which were often emphasised with the motivational phrase of “stop fucking doing that Erin, or you’ll get us both killed.”

I learned a lot.

But with the building clear, we had the joy of then assessing our loot, and oh mama, it was a payday. The place was pretty much untouched, so we rolled the truck up right outside the door and started loading it up. Canned food, bottled water, all the coffee, sanitary products (there are two women after all), bottled water, toilet paper, soap, cleaning products, shampoo, toothpaste, alcohol (mainly wine and spirits, because everybody has to kick back now and again), trays of canned fizzy drinks (because yum), and Nate even loaded up on cigarettes as well. I gave him a weird look and he pointed out that if we did meet others, they might make good trade items.

Clever bastard. Thinking ahead. Some people will still want to poison their lungs even in an apocalypse.

The owner’s keys were in his pocket and out back we also found his big white transit van, which he obviously went to the wholesalers in. That was a win, as his keys included the one for that too. So, we decided to take both vehicles back to the lodge. The van started first time and had a good half tank of fuel left, so doing as much as we could in this single run was just sensible. We could head back with a pickup and a van full to bursting of stuff, so we decided to spend a few hours loading up.

After a while, when we’d been left to our own devices with no further incursion from living or dead, Nate checked I was okay on my own and I gave him the nod. He wanted to break into the back of the pharmacy next door—as that had a full metal shutter covering the shop front—and fill up on important stuff like dressings, antibiotics, painkillers, general cold and flu treatments; that kind of stuff. What a fucking surprise, the guy was also versed in combat medicine and had a decent understanding of emergency stuff needed, so I left him to it.

I was out back, off in my own little world while sliding another tray of canned food into the back of the transit, when a voice stopped me dead.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

I froze, the shotgun still slung around my shoulder and hammer in my belt. A ripple of laughter told me the speaker was not alone. Slowly, I turned around, finding seven leering faces gawking at me. All of them were armed, wielding a collection of tools and blades. A couple of them had what looked like fire-axes, but they had a weird crowbar tool on the other end. One crazy looking bastard had—I shit you not—a fucking machete in his hand. The other three had a selection of heavy hammers. What really drew my eye though was the guy in the middle, as he was holding a semi-automatic handgun that looked almost identical to Nate’s.

“Well, fuck a duck,” chuckled the gunman, who resembled a gorilla more than a man. “If it isn’t little Lady Locke.”

Hearing my name snapped my gaze from the gun in his hand. I examined his face, frowning.

“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” I muttered, as I recognised his leering grin.

I hadn’t seen the bastard for ten years and he was shockingly large then, as big as any grown man. Now he was in his late twenties, the mother fucker was huge of chest and shoulder. He wasn’t someone who’d worked out and got big; he was one of those guys that are just born with gargantuan natural brawn. Freakishly strong, a good five inches over six feet, hair on his arms that was closer to fur, and—as I looked squarely at him—he appeared almost as wide as he was tall. He was like the link between man and ape, stuck in the middle of his transformation, a thing hammered out on evolution’s forge before being cast aside for something more aesthetically pleasing and elegant.

Johnny fucking Bancroft.

This was bad. Very bad. Bancroft was a bonafide psycho, from a long line of bonafide psychos. He was the second of four brothers, his eldest brother being the most dangerous criminal in this little town. The patriarch of the family, Harry, was banged up in some prison somewhere, but the Bancrofts were a name everyone knew, and everyone avoided if they could. No good came from being on their radar.

While Johnny’s intelligence was reflected in his appearance—one evolutionary link beyond animal and just scraping the bottom of humanity’s barrel—his brother Jamie was the real deal. Drugs, guns, extortion rackets, grand theft auto, coppers on the payroll; full on criminal kingpin and really bad news. My past was coming back to haunt me a month into the end of the world. Another cosmic laugh-and-point moment from the universe’s black sense