Page 84 of Hell Breaks Loose

“Anyone have anything to add about my getup?” I snap, crossing to the old pickup truck. All three shuffle awkwardly.

“Uh, actually, what’s that one movie with the singing and dancing and the two gangs?” Lonnie starts.

Grico thwacks him on the back of the head.

“Oh, yeah!” Vance laughs, covering his mouth as I pin him with a glare. “Cool! Go! Crazy, Go!”

Fucking. Stooges.

“Both of you go. Now. Before I reassign you to a task in close contact with sewage.”

Vance and Lonnie scurry to their vehicle, shoving one another for the driver’s seat.

“Grico, you’re with me. The jets and the sharks are heading into the hills. It’s time we see what my fiancée is up to and if she’s staying true to her word.”

Here and there on our systematic, somewhat erratic sweep of the neighborhoods, we spot stragglers.

People slipping in and out of houses.

Occasionally, I spot one of Rachelle’s lackeys, scrambling from one shadow to the next.

Over the next several hours, reports come in over the radio. Signs of movement from the Block. My guys are good. Within half a day of arriving, I have a picture of what the stakes look like.

A neat comparison from the calls Hellena’s made, that Sing has confirmed.

There are definitely… discrepancies.

But as the Herald pointed out, I play the long game. So I’ll give this a few days. Keep an eye out. Let her show me her loyalty. Or dig her own grave.

We’re about to head back to my hotel base of operations when I spot a shadow beside one of the houses, sitting still. Watching the door.

“Grico, tail that wretched creature. I want a closer look.”

As paranoid as the sickly looking man seems to be, he hardly notices us.

The only thing on his mind appears to be the other scavengers. Watching them, checking what they’re taking. He moves from one spot to the next, mumbling to himself.

Or to someone else.

A bedraggled looking woman peeks out of a once-nice suburban home, looking both ways before trotting out carrying a sack full of random groceries, water bottles. She makes it halfway across the lawn when the freak dashes out, tackling her to the ground.

Fists batter her face as she screams, lashing out with a pocket knife.

“That’s fucked up,” Grico murmurs, disgust clear on his face.

“Let’s see just how fucked up.”

The creature becomes more frantic with every slice and stab of the knife.

More enraged.

It doesn’t seem to feel any pain.

Until I hear it, what it keeps repeating over and over again as it begins to bash the woman’s head in with a garden cobblestone.

“Find water. Find water! Find water! I’m trying, I swear, I’m trying! FIND WATER!!” he screams, covered in viscera.

And suddenly, the limp body beneath him is irrelevant. Only the bottles of water she was hauling hold the man’s attention. He scoops them up.

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