Bad Medicine by Jonathan Green

Author:Jonathan Green
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*

CREED BUNDLED out of the through the saloon doors, bowling into the fleeing Haze. Using his tumbling momentum, Creed rolled onto his feet and bounded into a run, agile as a ratskin brave.

The bike stood propped up on its stand on the other side of the street. He leapt into the saddle and thumbed the ignition rune. The bike’s engine roared into life, growling like a branded synth-ox.

‘Get on!’ Creed yelled over the deep-throated petrochemical bellow of the beast. The doc didn’t need telling twice.

Zombies burst into the street, moaning horribly. There was a crash of splintering wood and One-Eight-Seven barged through the timber wall of the bar, half a revenant saloon-girl clinging to its pistoning legs, a slime-oozing spinal column still locked in its claw.

‘Now let’s get the hell out of here!’ Creed shouted over the bike’s diesel-guzzling roar.

The back wheel of the bike spinning wildly, the stink of scorched rubber overwhelming the stench of death in his nostrils, Creed slewed the vehicle round, throwing up a spray of gravel behind them. Then, with an over-revving scream the bike hurtled forwards, bombing along the main street, away from Slygo’s Saloon, towards the bridge out of Ferro’s Gulch. Creed was leant forwards over the handlebars, Doc Haze clinging on for dear life, One-Eight-Seven pounding after them on its augmented leg-chassis.

In no time they were crossing the bridge, already doing a breakneck speed, the plasteel sections clattering under the speeding bike’s wheels. As soon as they were on the other side, Creed pulled on the brakes. The vehicle skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust.

The bounty hunter pulled two grenades from the recesses of his coat, yanked their pins free with his thumbs and rolled them across the chasm-spanning construction. Two more followed.

‘Good thing I picked up a little extra at Hackbut’s,’ Creed said, thinking aloud. ‘Even if he does charge like an overloading fuel cell.’

‘What?’ the doc queried, intruding on Creed’s musings.

‘Highly,’ he replied.

The bridge joists juddered, this time under the heavy, piledriver footfalls of the chugging servitor. The grenades bounced as they rolled, one dropping between the girders. At the end of the main street the growing zombie pack continued after them. One-Eight-Seven reached the safety of the far side of the chasm.

The grenades detonated in a series of eardrum-battering bangs, accompanied by a blinding pyrotechnics display. The midsection of the bridge fell away immediately, dropping into the murky abyss below. With a groan of dying metal the rest of the structure buckled and twisted, cantilevering until, with a resounding clang that echoed from the dome roof high above the bulk of the bridge hit the wall of the chasm. The rogue grenade had exploded in a crevice, blowing the rusted stanchions free of the solid face of the ravine.

‘That’s them taken care of for now,’ Creed said, wiping his sweat-beaded brow with the back of a hand, ‘but this ain’t over yet.’

‘So what now?’ Haze asked, happy to let the bounty hunter continue to take the initiative, having not wanted to be involved from the start.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.