She let go of Bryce long enough to wave it around like a fencer might. This form of defense was utterly useless. With courage that even she didn’t know she possessed, she pushed her daughter towards Bryce and took an actual swing at one of the undead. The poker tore a furrow in its cheek. It didn’t even blink.
It reached out to grab her and once she was in its claws it would’ve sunk its teeth into her beautiful face, however, Bryce tripped it as it passed. It fell face-first and Bryce stepped down on its neck with all his weight.
“Give me that!” He held out the gun and reached for the poker. Not realizing it was empty, she made the trade eagerly.
Bryce drove the poker down with all his might, stabbing the creature in the top of its head. In a sickening display, its body went into spasms. Bryce watched for a second too long and when he looked up, he saw Victoria aiming the empty gun at an onrushing zombie.
In a move that might have been instinctual, if Bryce had possessed any fighting instincts, he leapt forward with his left knee cocked up to his chin. As if he had practiced the move a hundred times, his left foot shot out and crashed into the zombie’s chest. Something crunched like dry kindling inside it and it went flying back.
“Holy crap!” Bryce was wide-eyed in amazement. “Maddy, did you see that?”
She had and for some reason, she felt a stab of jealousy. It took her a moment to realize why. Bryce might’ve been in pain from whatever they had been given, but he wasn’t like her: A jiggling sweaty freak, who thought her heart was about to explode.
“I saw it,” she muttered. “You kicked one of them. Great. If you had…”
“I need bullets!” Victoria cried, holding up the gun. “This thing’s empty. You gave me a fucking empty gun!”
Griff came up behind her and snatched it out of her hands. “We don’t have time for this,” he snarled. He was just barely holding off the dead and he knew his ammo wouldn’t hold out much longer. He tucked the pistol away. “Listen lady, either stay and help your husband, or shut up and keep up. We aren’t slowing down for nothing.”
As he said this, his eyes inadvertently slipped to Victoria’s daughter. Victoria put a protective arm around the girl. “Where are you going? Are you just running away or…”
“The Federal Plaza,” Griff said. “It’s downtown.”
She knew where it was—how far it was. The distance scared her. On a normal sunny fall day, it would be over an hour-long walk. Out here, with monsters running around and the world gone crazy, she didn’t know if she could make it. But what was her other choice? Her husband was leaping from car to car, drawing some of the creatures away, but where was Jordan?
There he was! His eight-year-old legs were speeding him away from her on a parallel course that her husband was taking. “The Federal Plaza!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “We’re going to the Fed…”
Griff slammed his hand over her mouth, crushing her lips into her teeth. “They heard you. The entire fucking city heard you.” The dead certainly heard her. The five of them had been in a small, zombie-free zone. It was now closing in on them fast. “This way.”
The FBI agent took off at a run, heading west along 31st Street. Normally, it was a pretty street: tree-lined with brownstone condos rising five-stories on either side. There were three lanes between the sidewalks, and each had a line of cars that went as far as they could see. Although the sidewalks were virtually empty, Griff didn’t trust them. There was no telling what lurked in the dark shadows next to the stairs running up to the buildings.
It was better to keep to the middle of the quiet street.
The five ran and limped along the narrow lanes with Griff in front, his pistol at the ready, and Bryce taking up the rear, armed with only the three-foot poker. At first, Bryce was able to keep up, buoyed by the kick. Nothing in his life had ever felt so natural. As a kid he had been bookish and geeky, and had never considered playing a sport, but if he’d been forced to choose one, it would’ve been baseball. It was the only sport that required a calculating mind. There were just so many numbers involved. Angles had to be calculated, velocities determined, averages were constantly reworked.
That part of the game he understood. Hitting a rock-hard ball being thrown at his face at ninety miles an hour, was where he and the game diverged. Still, he had to wonder if baseball players who hit homeruns felt something similar to what he felt when he had kicked that zombie. The thrill of his action ran constantly through his mind: the leap, the perfect body position, the explosive thrust of his leg at the exact moment, the crunch of bone.
He couldn’t deny the rush that went through him when he felt the creature’s bones breaking. It was somewhat barbaric and at the same time, wholly natural.
As great a feeling as it was, the high from it couldn’t last. He began to lag. Maddy was as well. She was gasping. Her lungs burned. All of her burned. But they couldn’t stop. A small group of the dead were shambling after them, while from either side, zombies would suddenly appear out of the shadows and charge.
Thankfully, the cars were bumper to bumper, making a wall of metal on both sides of them. This slowed the zombies down. They had to climb over the hoods. Climbing was not something they were particularly good at. It’s the only reason Bryce was still alive, and he knew it, just like he knew he wouldn’t be able to go on much longer.
Frantically, he looked left and right as he ran, hoping to find someplace they could hide in and rest for a bit. At the corner, he stopped and looked in four directions. A rib place on their right was shuttered. Across from it a bank looked blank and impenetrable. To their left was a parking garage that was frightfully dark and finally there was a Trader Joe’s that had a delivery truck half through its front window—it had been looted down to its last bag of chips.
They kept running.
“Is there a subway around here?” Griff asked. He had a slight sheen of sweat at his hairline but otherwise looked like he could go for miles.
Victoria, in her loosest jeans and white sneakers, was also barely winded. She pointed ahead of them. “The Six Train is just another few blocks away, on Park Ave. But I don’t think we should try it. Even if we get in a car, we’ll be trapped. And what happens if we get to the next stop and there’s some of them on the platform? The doors open, no matter what.”
“I like the idea of being out of sight,” Griff said. He looked up uneasily at the buildings. There was no telling who or what was staring down at them. The what was answered when they passed the next stoop. Glass broke three stories above them. It rained down on the sidewalk just before a zombie splatted down. They all jumped, then made the same horrified look as it started to crawl towards them, leaving a trail of oily-looking blood behind.
Victoria’s little girl started to choke, though on what no one knew. Still, she was being loud and the shadows began to swing towards them. With the creatures coming up from behind, they were once again on the verge of being trapped.
“I say we try for the train,” Griff said. Another five hundred yards was nothing to him. Without waiting for a reply, he started for an intersection, which resembled a cross between a parking lot and an obstacle course. The cars were so jammed together that it was easier to leap from car to car.
Unfortunately, this also made them obvious. The car hoods clunked with each step and where many streets were dark, the lights here gave off a pretty amber hue. To make matters worse, some fool had abandoned his Mercedes, but not before turning on the alarm. When Griff stepped across to it, it began shriek and whoop, and its lights flashed and blinked. Every zombie within sight turned and charged.
Chapter 11
It was nearing midnight and the trap had closed on them.
Thirty or forty zombies converged on the little group, coming from all directions. In the shadows, they looked like normal people; drunk maybe, but still normal. There were housewives and bankers, plumbers and toll-takers. Most were still dressed as if just coming back from a long day at work. Two of t
hem were in suits. One was torn up, its face completely gone, all except for its teeth, which were gaping wide. The other was still buttoned up. His shoes gleamed; the crease in his pants was as sharp as it had been that morning; his tie was even cinched around the grey flesh of neck. He had blood on his chin and all down the front of his shirt.
The creatures clambered over the cars, sometimes falling in between them and getting stuck, and sometimes going headfirst making a sound like a coconut splitting open. This only slowed them down for a few seconds.
Griff stood on the Mercedes and looked for openings. There weren’t any, which meant he would have to make one. “This way,” he commanded, heading west as they had been. Eventually they needed to go south, but just then there were more of the beasts in that direction.
He was like a mountain goat going from car to car, while Victoria and her daughter, whose name turned out to be Tessa, were like gazelles—not as nimble, but quick, lithe and beautiful as their golden hair streamed behind with each jump. Maddy and Bryce resembled senior escapees from a nursing home. Gingerly and with a great deal of groaning, they tried to keep up.
Some of the creatures were fast, but even the fastest couldn’t judge angles, and instead of rushing to cut them off, they went directly for them, and lost whatever advantage they had in the process. Most were slow, however. They were missing chunks of muscles, fingers, feet and even entire limbs.
But they were tireless. Even as Griff blasted a hole through the onrushing creatures, the ones coming up behind grew closer and closer. Bryce even had to stop and stab one through the eye with his poker. It went deep enough to tear through the underside of its brain. Sadly, the hooked part of the poker got caught on the thing’s eye socket and when the zombie fell, it yanked the poker from his hands.
Now he was completely defenseless.
“Wait up!” he hissed. Everyone seemed so far ahead, except for Maddy. She had just jumped to the next car, Griff’s dark coat flapping around her like a crow’s wing. The car’s hood dented under her weight. Like an infant first learning to walk, she toddled to the back of the car, paused to take a shaky breath and jumped to the next, barely clearing the gap.
“Can’t…go…on,” she gasped, pulling her mask down.
Bryce put one of her arms over his shoulder, and together they went up and over the truck. After two more cars and a van, they made it out of the intersection and found Griff, Victoria and Tessa waiting, crouched low.
“You got to keep up,” Victoria snapped, a little too loudly. “We may not be able to wait next time.”
“Hold on. They were drugged by the same people we think started all this,” Griff muttered, hoping that by speaking softly, Victoria would get the message and speak quietly as well. “They’re important.”
This was nice to hear, only just then, neither of them felt important at all. They felt like useless baggage.
“Still, we can’t stop. You hear them, right?” Griff cocked his head to listen. Behind them was the sounds of the zombies getting closer. “Besides, it’s not that much further to the train station.” He stood, ready to go.
Maddy waved her hand. She was too winded to speak and needed more than fifteen seconds to recuperate. Pushing herself up, she squeezed between a pair of cars that had a foot of space between them. Beyond the cars was the dirty, gum-dotted sidewalk and an old Italian deli. Although it was dark and clearly closed, the deli was one of the few places they had passed that didn’t have its metal gate pulled down.
“Get back here,” Griff hissed. The first of the dead had fallen from the top of the van. Griff ran over and slammed his foot down on the back of its neck as hard as he could. The creature had been a programmer in life and its pencil neck snapped under the blow. As if it had just licked an electrical socket, its body spazzed wildly then went limp.
Even with a broken neck, it still tried to turn and bite Griff’s shoe. “We have to go!”
Ignoring him, Maddy cast about for something to smash the front window with. Nearby, lying in the gutter, was an oblong rock that the owner used to prop the door open on nice days. Although her legs were jello, she bent, picked up the rock, and heaved it at the front window. As it sailed at the glass, she feared the rock would bounce right off, and she didn’t think she had the strength left to pick it up again. She didn’t know what she would do then.
You’ll die. The words whispered through her mind just as the rock struck. The glass shattered and cascaded down and seemed to explode, covering everything in nasty crystalline shards.
Too late, she remembered she was barefoot. “Fuck! We’re going to cut our feet to ribbons.”
Bryce didn’t dare move from where he was. He was surrounded by the glass. Bending, he peered into the deli. “There’s some to-go boxes. We’ll make a path. Hey, Lady.”
“It’s Victoria.”
“Sure, Victoria. Could you run in there and…”
She was already striding past him. “I’m not deaf and neither are those things. Why are we trapping ourselves here?” The idea of being trapped was large in her mind. To her the entire city was a trap. It was this way of thinking that had led her into talking her husband out of staying locked in their apartment. It didn’t matter that their front door was stout oak and had a reinforced frame and multiple locks. In her mind, no door would hold if things got worse, and they had definitely gotten worse.
Grumbling curses, she stepped through the destroyed window, leaned over the counter and grabbed the closer stack of boxes. She made a trail of them back to where Bryce stood. Her daughter began to hurry forward. “Tessa, no. Let them go first.”
Bryce and Maddy looked at each other, neither wanting to be the first inside. Grumbling, Griff stomped by, his leather shoes crunching glass. Now it was a race not to be last. The zombies were climbing the cars, drawing nearer. Victoria grabbed her daughter’s hand and jogged for the door. Maddy was closer and followed her inside.
“Shit,” Bryce said, limping in last.
It was an old deli, with grime along the edges of the worn linoleum. The glass counter, smudged with layers of fingerprints, ran lengthwise down the narrow room. Judging by the rows of meats and the artfully arranged cheeses still on display, the owner had closed his business in a tearing hurry.
The fantastic smell of the place struck Bryce like a hammer and his stomach immediately rumbled. Pastrami, roast beef, maple turkey, rotisserie chicken. He caught the scent of each. They were irresistible and, as everyone else was hurrying through to the back, he leapt over the counter and yanked off his gloves.
A spiral, honey-glazed ham was right in front of his face, and no force on earth could’ve stopped him from ripping off a great hunk of it and stuffing it in his mouth. A soft groan escaped him. He tore off another hunk.
Despite the dark, his eyes picked out the plastic bags under the register. He snatched one and began grabbing fistfuls of meat, then cheese, then the scent of bread caught his attention and he threw four or five baguettes in as well.
“Gotta have mayo,” he said around a mouthful of salami. He was chewing and swallowing as fast as he could. By the time he had tossed mustard in on top of the mayonnaise there were zombies on the sidewalk outside the deli. He ducked down and duck-waddled down to the end of the case where he could sneak around the counter.
There was a door to the back rooms being held open a crack by Maddy. She glared daggers at him but didn’t dare say anything. As quietly as possible, Bryce slipped through the door and followed Maddy into a narrow hall that was made even more narrow by the stacks of boxes stored along one wall. Maddy had to walk sideways, and even then had to suck in her stomach. They passed a vile-smelling bathroom, a storeroom and an employee lounge that doubled as a second storeroom. It was only a “lounge” because of the taped-over leather couch of ancient origin that sat across from an old twenty-inch Sony TV.
Then they were at the backdoor. Griff was about to lead them out when he saw the bag in Bryce’s hand. He looked inside. “Did
you…did you steal that?”
With the world falling down around them and the owners having fled to who knew where, it was hard to call what he had done stealing. “I wouldn’t call it stealing, I’d call it survival.”
“Now’s not the time,” Maddy whispered. The sound of glass crunching in the front of the store was making her crazy with fear. “Just go for God’s sake.”
“What if there’s an alarm on the door?” Victoria asked.
“Then we’re screwed,” Griff answered. He pulled out Bryce’s gun. Victoria tried to snag it, but he held it out of reach. “Stop. Bryce, where’s your other magazine? You had two.”
Sheepishly, Bryce handed it over and watched Griff deftly switch out the magazines. He made it look easy. “How’d you get that thingy forward?”
“Right here. This little button next to the slide.” Griff gave him back the pistol. He looked over Bryce’s head at the door at the end of the hall, afraid that it would burst open any second. “If there’s any of them in the alley, we’re going to have fight our way out. Stay in single file and stay close.”
He took a deep breath and opened the door a crack. He expected to find himself looking out onto a slimy, trash-filled alley that ran the length of the block, instead he was shocked to see a tree not ten feet away. It was spindly and barely fifteen-feet in height, but it was still a tree. And the alley wasn’t any sort of alley he’d ever been in.
For one, it wasn’t straight. It jogged left and right depending on how far back the buildings extended. And there were more trees than just the one. He counted eleven. He found this mystifying, especially as they grew up out of little circles cut out of the cement flooring.
Down the alley was a little patio of sorts. Strings of bare bulbs hung over a dusty card table and a couple of folding chairs. Next to one of the chairs was a rusty coffee can filled with cigarette butts.
There were no zombies or people anywhere in sight. It was refreshing.
Maddy hurried to the table and groaned down into one of the chairs which groaned back at her in its own way.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 9
