This Shattered Land - 02 by James Cook

Author:James Cook [Cook, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Amazon
Published: 2012-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Bear Country

Tom and I made a game out of killing the infected we ran into on the lonely mountain road. He seemed to think that his axe was superior to my small-sword for dispatching ghouls. I had never told him that I was once a fairly skilled fencer, and bet four pairs of my wool socks against one of his hunting knives that I could kill five infected with my sword in the time it would take him to kill two with his axe. I stopped by the side of the road and used my machete to chop down a sturdy sapling. It ended in a Y-shaped curve at one end, and would work nicely for what I had planned. Trimmed down, it looked like a long walking stick with a slingshot on one end.

“What the heck are you gonna do with that? Kill rabbits?” Tom asked.

I grinned. “Just you wait and see.”

He rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath.

It took us about three miles or so to get the requisite number of walking dead on our trail before we turned to settle the bet. I drew my sword and made a show of whipping the ornate weapon through the air in a series of sweeping, whirling slashes accompanied by graceful form and footwork. Tom responded by doing a comical series of clumsy hacks and spins with his axe, and finished the sequence by glaring at me and sticking up his middle finger. I smirked. The dead drew near, and I held the tip of my blade in Tom’s direction.

“Alright, my friend. May the best man win.”

Tom tapped his axe against my sword. “Whatever. I got the two on the end over there.”

“Fair enough.” I said.

We let the infected get to within a few yards before moving toward them. Tom broke left and jogged around the far side. I walked straight at the nearest ghoul with my stick tucked under one arm like a javelin. Taking careful aim, I lodged it under the creature’s jaw and pushed upward, stopping it in its tracks. I was just out of its reach, which allowed me to line up my sword and thrust it through the creature’s eye socket. A quick turn of the wrist, and down it went.

In the back of my mind, a little voice was trying to explain to me that there should be nothing amusing about fighting the undead. It was nasty, dangerous business. I explained to that voice that I was a fundamentally damaged human being, and that it should shut up and stop trying to ruin my fun.

Tom, for his part, utilized some of his newly learned skills to deal with his two targets. He executed a textbook front kick and knocked one of the infected back onto its ass. A couple of bouncing steps got him back on balance before he gripped his axe with both hands and slammed it into the face of another undead. His aim was low, and the weapon crushed the creature’s face.

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