Hounds
Chapter 25
"Sure. I'll take a bite," Duncan said, settling into his seat, relaxed.
"We'll do whatever you want. On one condition," Leo added, taking a slow sip of the wine.
Rather than bargain for their lives outright, they'd decided to play it smarter — if they handled this right, they might walk away with more leverage over Alejandro than either of them had any right to expect. Leo's old line of work had taught him one reliable thing about men like this: crooks, lowlifes, anyone who profited off other people's suffering without ever getting their own hands dirty always had a soft spot for a good deal.
That got Alejandro's attention immediately. He'd already taken a shine to Duncan — getting two birds with one stone practically made his whole week. He laughed, long and loud, taking another pull from his cigar.
"Tell you what. You boys pull this job off clean, you can have anything you want. Women, drugs, cars — you've seen what's out there. What else does a man really need out of life besides a little pure ecstasy?" He grinned around the cigar. "Soy el rey de esta ciudad."
The job: break into a police station that had turned into a full-blown undead infestation — more than either of them could handle alone — and come back with weapons. Their gear for the job amounted to a couple of baseball bats, one bulletproof vest, and a hand axe for Duncan.
They were dropped off out front with no briefing, no layout, no idea what waited past the doors.
"I've got high hopes for you two. Don't disappoint me," Alejandro called out as the car peeled off in a U-turn, laying on the horn the whole way — dragging a fresh trail of the dead toward the station right along with it.
The job itself was simple on paper: get in, grab as many weapons as they could carry. Simple, and nothing else about it.
"Well. Let's get to it," Duncan said, climbing the station steps, ready at the door.
"Sure. Piece of cake," Leo muttered, gripping his bat.
The second Duncan pulled the door open, the dead were already waiting. They went to work, dropping bodies over and over with no end in sight, the fight dragging on for minutes before the entrance was finally clear — both of them barely upright, soaked in blood by the time it was done.
"Shall we?" Leo said, wiping his face on his shoulder, stumbling a step.
"Ladies first," Duncan said, spitting on the floor. The stench of rot still hung thick enough to taste, but it was bearable, barely.
They picked their way down a narrow hallway, Leo leading by memory of every police station layout he'd ever worked.
"So where do you think they keep the good stuff? Some kind of vault?" Duncan asked, glancing into doorways while Leo covered him, room by room, until they found it — an underground armory stocked with a real arsenal. They started loading whatever they could carry, and it was there, without either of them saying it out loud, that the same thought hit them both.
If they handed everything over to Alejandro, there'd be nothing stopping him from sending his men back for the rest later — and that made every gun left behind in this station a threat to the hotel, and to everyone still waiting there.
"So what do we do about the ones we can't carry? Lie to his face about what we actually found?" Duncan asked, holding Leo's eyes. Guns this good would give them a real fighting chance against Alejandro if it ever came to that — and dealing with the dead with something better than a bat sounded like a mercy at this point.
They kept packing duffel bags full when a sound stopped them cold — dismissed at first, until a second, heavier thud followed, too solid to be nerves playing tricks. They moved toward it together, weapons raised, Leo counting down silently on his fingers — one, two — three. They swept the restroom stall by stall, four total, splitting to opposite sides on the last one, Leo right, Duncan left. Leo yanked the door open and got hit immediately by the reek of a corpse already half-consumed by a pack of rats.
"Oh, God, that's disgusting. Did he die on the toilet or something? That smell—" Duncan gagged, backing off.
"Come on. Let's give the guy some privacy. Least we can do," Leo said, already swinging the door shut — when something at the edge of his vision made him snap his gun toward the restroom entrance instead.
Something huge stood there. Over six feet, built like a minotaur, breathing slow and deep, studying the two of them like it was trying to work out exactly what they were.
"Hey. You lost or something, pal?" Leo tried, half a joke, hoping for literally any reaction besides silence. He got silence. He caught Duncan's eye and edged right, signaling him to mirror it left — right as the thing charged.
Neither of them got clear in time. It slammed them both into the wall, and they spent a few frantic seconds hammering at its head, fighting to break loose, until Leo finally put a round straight through its eye. It reared back roaring, giving them just enough of an opening to break free.
It was too strong for either of them alone, and the restroom was too tight to fight it in properly. They scrambled out into the hallway — only for the thing to come barreling after them like an enraged bull, catching Duncan across the chest and sending him flying five feet into the air, straight into the ceiling, shattering the lights above them.
That left Leo alone with it, the one working light in the hallway now flickering, making an already bad situation worse.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he muttered, aiming at the last spot he'd seen it — except it didn't charge blind the way he'd hoped. It used the dark instead, working the shadows, forcing Leo to fire blind past the light, taunting it, burning through his clip fast. Just as he went to reload, it slammed into him with the force of five men, pinning him to the wall, jaws snapping at his face.
Duncan's shot into its back was what saved him — enough to pull its attention off Leo long enough for him to scramble for a reload. Furious now, the thing turned and charged Duncan instead, who dodged at the last possible second and put a round straight into one of its legs. It worked. He kept firing, slowing it down piece by piece.
It couldn't bull-rush anymore after that, though it could still move. It turned back toward Duncan, who kept backing off slowly, luring it toward the entrance where the smaller undead had already been cleared, buying Leo the room he needed to actually think.
Once his ammo ran dry, Leo started throwing whatever was within reach, keeping at least three meters of distance between them until the thing finally cornered itself without meaning to.
It kept coming anyway — roaring, stomping, smashing through a pile of corpses hard enough that the noise dragged the horde outside straight toward the building.
Just as it closed the last few inches on Duncan, who'd grabbed a chair for whatever good that would do—
"Hey! Over here, you piece of—" Leo shouted, hurling a shotgun northeast of Duncan's position the second the thing's attention snapped toward him. He used the opening to slide underneath it, coming up on the same side as Duncan.
"Took you long enough," Duncan said, breathing hard, already aiming.
"I knew you had it handled," Leo shot back, just as the thing roared and launched itself into the air at both of them.
They unloaded everything they had into it mid-leap, shredding it apart before it even hit the ground. It landed and didn't move again.
"Is it dead?" Duncan asked, still aiming.
"Let's make sure," Leo said, putting one last round through its skull.
That's when the horde outside finally broke through the front entrance. Neither of them said a word — just locked eyes and went straight back to work.
---
By the time they walked out of the station, they had three duffel bags each, stuffed with everything worth taking. The walk to the club took about forty-five minutes, arriving just as the sun started going down.
"There you go. We got your stuff," Duncan said, dropping the bags in Alejandro's office. He had his men search both of them anyway, just in case they'd skimmed anything off the top for themselves. They found nothing.
"Well, well, gentlemen. A pleasure doing business."
"About our condition," Leo cut in, before Alejandro could move past it.
"Sure, sure. What'll it be — booze, women—"
"We want you to stay away from the hotel," Leo said, cutting him off a second time, and the two of them walked out without waiting for a response.
By the time they made it back, the rest of the crew took one look at the state of them and froze.
"What the hell happened to you guys?" Brad asked.
