At the far end of the warehouse were a pair of rolling metal doors. Both Maddy and Bryce went to each and sniffed as Sid watched, his thick lips twisted by confusion. They looked like dogs working over a hydrant. It was off-putting and he took another swig.
The sharp cinnamon smell was distracting to Bryce. It almost overpowered the smell of gasoline and sewage coming from the other side of the door. Maddy closed her eyes and let the different scents gently breeze through her. Yes, there was gasoline dripping from a nearby truck and a sewage line was backed up, but there was also a whiff of someone frying with sesame oil and someone else had their nasty bong sitting outside their window. She also smelled zombies, but they weren’t close.
She nodded to Bryce and he went to the chains that raised and lowered the doors. They would be loud going up, but there was no other way to leave the building that wasn’t being guarded by zombies. He took a chain in hand and gently pulled down. The chain rattled through the pulley and there was a dreadful squeak that had probably gone unnoticed for years. In the dead quiet, it was almost a scream.
Bryce could only stand it for two seconds. By then there was a foot-high gap. Good enough to slip under. They dropped down and scrambled beneath the door and found themselves in a two-lane street that, in the emergency, had been turned into four lanes; there was barely room to walk.
There wasn’t a zombie in sight. Neither Bryce or Maddy trusted their eyes, however. They sniffed out the zombies—none were very close. But there was something on the air that made them both edgy.
“What is that?” Bryce asked. There was a tiny mechanical sound coming from somewhere nearby, but with the brick walls rising so close on either side, they couldn’t pinpoint the direction. It made no difference. They were heading south, sound or no sound.
Bryce led the way, his spear held out in front as he slipped between the cars. They slinked low to keep themselves hidden as much as possible and then inched south. With every step the stench of zombies grew. Soon even Sid could smell them and hear their moaning. He tugged on Bryce’s hoody and jerked his head, hoping they’d take a side street. To him, west was just as good as any other direction, if it didn’t have zombies.
He was ignored and they kept going, slowly, car by car. It was excruciating for Sid. His legs ached and his head had begun to pound, which was no wonder since he’d been more or less drunk for the last day and a half.
Then they were through the trap.
With every step, the ugly fecal smell grew less and the moans became softer. Sid grew weak with relief. After a block and a half, he decided a little self-medication was in order and he unscrewed the top of the Fireball.
“Close fucking call,” he said as way of a toast, and tilted the bottle back. He then offered some to the others.
Bryce grunted a, “No,” and shook his head. Maddy shook her head, feeling her stomach roll slightly. The smell was pungent and it got worse as he looked up and let out a cinnamon burp that went on and on. Maddy had to turn away, waving a hand in front of her face.
Sid snorted laughter and even Bryce grinned, but the light moment lasted for all of a second, then they heard something snuffling behind them.
Goosebumps flared across Maddy’s arms as she caught an ugly but familiar scent. It was the one-armed Puerto-Rican. He was seventy feet back at an intersection, his nose in the air, tracking them by smell alone. It was fifty-fifty that he had them dead on; they’d know depending on if it turned or kept coming.
It kept coming, slowly, not yet certain. When it had them zeroed in, it would let out a scream and then it would be another race for their lives.
“We have to kill that thing,” Bryce whispered. Maddy nodded at this, while Sid only chewed on the ragged nail of one thumb. “You two keep going and leave the whiskey bottle open. If it’s following that scent, I might be able to kill it before it can alert the others.” He touched the edge of his broom-spear. It was jagged and pointy enough to kill a person; there was no telling how effective it would be against a zombie.
“Might?” Sid asked, turning up a lip at the spear. “I don’t like no might. You should use the axe thingy. That’ll do the trick for sure.”
Maddy’s hand gripped the handle tighter, though only for a brief moment. With a guilty grin, she held it out to him. “No thanks,” he said, pushing it away. As much as he wanted the climbing axe, it was her weapon. She had dreamed it. That made it personal in a way that he felt, but couldn’t fully understand.
“Go,” he told them.
They squat-walked away, their shoes scraping loudly in his ears. He was suddenly hypersensitive; he could hear their breathing plain as day, and the smell of the whiskey was foul and heady. As their impressions on the world faded, he caught the first expressions of the zombie. Its snuffling was the most obvious. Its smell hit him next. Yes, it had the shit-stink of a zombie, but it also had a subtle ammonia scent, like its clothes or shoes had been regularly in contact with a cleaning agent.
Bryce, his heart rate picking up, ducked down at the front of a car and watched the zombie’s stumbling feet come closer. It would pass within two feet of him and if it had its nose in the air, he planned on driving the tip of the spear up into the soft flesh of its neck and into its brain. One quick, hard jab should do the…
The creature stopped suddenly and now its snuffling became a soft sniffing. It had discovered a new scent, one that was closer. Bryce could almost…no, he could definitely feel the Puerto Rican’s eyes shift toward the front of the car.
“Shit,” Bryce muttered and stood. Twenty feet away, the zombie grinned, showing bloody teeth. “Yeah, keep smiling and see what you…” In mid-sentence, Bryce leapt over the edge of the car and charged, catching the creature by surprise. Still, twenty feet was a lot of distance to cover when all it had to do was let out a howl.
It was unafraid of both Bryce and his spear. A scream ripped from its black hole of a mouth as it sprung forward. It was a cagey creature and seemed to know the spear’s strength and its own weakness. It came at Bryce hunched, protecting its throat and holding its one hand out to catch the spear’s point.
Bryce had to pull the tip of the spear back as the creature seemed to be inviting him to stab it in the hand, chest or shoulders, places that would do little harm to it. He had only one shot at ending the scream and killing it quickly, so he edged the tip of the spear to the side and, as the zombie followed it with his dark eyes and one hand, it left itself slightly open to a second attack. His sneakered foot flashed up in a hard front kick that Bryce hoped would crush the thing’s larynx. Precision and timing were absolute keys to landing such a strike on a moving target.
He missed by the smallest margin. Still, his foot crashed upward under the thing’s chin and hammered its head back. It was a heavy blow that staggered the zombie and cut the scream off.
Now, Bryce tried to tear out its throat with the spear but again his lack of training showed. He was just a touch slow and the tip tore into the grey flesh an inch off target. Worse, the beast grabbed the spear before Bryce could pull it back. Its grip was shocking in its strength and it was all Bryce could do to get the spear back.
By the time he did, he saw the demon leading a horde of zombies down the street. It was leaping from car to car, completely healed, and moving fast.
Bryce turned and sprinted away. In no time, he came to an intersection. Fifty yards ahead of him, Maddy and Sid were running down the line of cars. Amazingly, Maddy was in the lead by ten feet. Sid was reeling and stumbling. He was drunk and had no chance; he would die quickly if Bryce fought the demon and lost…no. That was wrong. The demon wouldn’t kill Sid out of hand. It would come up behind and blind him or give him a quick blow to the back of the head. Maiming him would be that much more fun. That way his screams would echo throughout the city.
Then the demon would go on to Maddy who’d be breathless and reeling and in no position to fight. The axe she had bet their future on would be useless.
They would die
if Bryce didn’t do something. He turned and looked back at the demon and then amazed himself by flipping it off before running west on a side street. His plan was simple: he would draw the demon away and, if it was possible, try to escape. Bryce was fifty yards down the street before he realized that the demon and its horde wasn’t following him. It was going after Maddy and Sid.
They didn’t stand a chance.
“No, no, no,” he whispered as he jogged back a few steps. He wanted to go back for them, but it was too late. There were dozens of mindless beasts between them.
Chapter 34
Bryce turned away, his mind spinning quickly. It spun and spun, uselessly. He was alone, cut off from anyone he could call a friend and he only had the vaguest of notions where the Federal Building was: south.
The truth was that for first time in his life he needed people. And they needed him.
With no plan whatsoever, Bryce found himself sprinting. He ran back the way he came, dodging the zombies. When he got to the street they’d been on, he tore south, sprinting on a parallel course with the zombies. It didn’t matter that some of them saw him in the dark; he was already past them when they did, his new longer legs stretching out going faster and faster. They were a blur.
A hundred yards went by in ten and a half seconds. He came racing up and found the head of the mob attacking a dry cleaner. The shadows and the night made it seem as though there were countless numbers of them, howling and swinging fists, trying their best to break down a metal gate that had been pulled down over the front.
Maddy and Sid were nowhere in sight and since they weren’t screaming under a pile of the undead, he could only guess that they had gotten away!
It was Bryce’s turn to disappear, a trick that was growing more difficult by the second as the dead realized that he was not one of them. He spun his spear as the first of the dead came rushing up. The whirling hunk of wood distracted it long enough for Bryce to pick his target: the thing’s right eye.
The spinning stopped with a slap as the wood came to rest in his palm, and in one quick lunge, he drove the point four inches deep. Blood poured down the shaft as the monster’s body jerked. Bryce had learned his lesson and snapped the spear back out again in a blink before grey fingers could grab it. This time there was no need. The zombie was already dead and Bryce was gone within the same second, racing down the remainder of the block to the next cross street.
He went west, loping easily, feeling strangely young for the first time in many years. He was young. Twenty-eight was plenty young, and yet he had always felt he had gotten old before his time. It was too many days spent in a classroom and not enough time spent out doors. It was too many hours in front of a computer. Too much of his life had been wasted, trapped in his own mind.
Now he was suddenly filled with energy and life. He was also hungry. But a sandwich would have to wait. The living dead were after him. Glancing back he saw that the moaning crowd numbered no more than fifteen, which suddenly seemed like a small number.
“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered to himself. Fifteen was way too many for him to handle. He also knew that fifteen could turn into fifty in a blink. “And Maddy still needs me.” Sid, too. The thought of Sid with his bottle was aggravating, and he decided on the spot that he would smash it when he tracked them down. “Which I better get doing.”
He was far enough away from the pursuing zombies that they were mere shadows, so he ducked down behind the cars, crossed to the other side of the street and crept back the way he had come.
At the corner, he saw that there were zombies everywhere up and down the street.
In the light of a neon sign, he could see that the gate protecting the dry cleaners had been torn down, but with no humans in sight, the mob was slowly dispersing, following whims or stray scents. Bryce was just thinking that the only way to get through the loose crowd was to sprint through it. However, just as he was about to take off, something came whirring down at him from above.
It sounded like a flying fan, and in a sense, it was. He found himself staring at a four-propeller drone. With its camera lens shining like a black eye, it had an alien feel to it.
“Wilkes?” he asked it in an excited whisper, his heart bounding. Just then, it didn’t matter that Wilkes had been hired to drag him back to Magnus’ plaza, kicking and screaming if necessary. If Wilkes was alive then maybe Griff was as well, which made the chance of being sheltered by the FBI that much greater.
The drone bobbed up and down. Was that a yes? “Can you hear me” It bobbed again. “Listen, I’m good. You need to find Maddy.” It bobbed again. He pointed towards the street they had been on before the Puerto Rican had found them. “She was right down there. She and another man went through a…”
It buzzed a little further away, rising and dipping, wanting him to follow it west. “No. I’m okay. You need to find Maddy.” In answer, it jerked a few feet further away. “We don’t have time for this. Go.” He pointed with his spear, but the thing’s movements only became more frenzied. “No. You need to find Mad…” He stopped in midsentence as the volume of zombie moans began to grow.
He turned and saw that the mob had spotted either him or the drone and was heading in his direction, fast. The same was true of the zombies he had fooled into running up the block. They were coming back on the double. So much for saving Maddy. With the creatures coming from both directions, he was going to have trouble just saving himself.
The drone buzzed to a fire escape that had been drilled into the front of the building he had stopped across from. The fire escape was black and ugly, and why it was in front, he didn’t know; it was just one of those things that were routine in New York City.
The drone flew up to the metal retractable ladder clearly trying to tell him he should jump for the lower rung. That had been obvious from the start. A brand new jaguar, bottle green and sleek, was parked halfway onto the sidewalk, and with his new found athleticism it was nothing for Bryce to leap from the hood of the car to the ladder. Unfortunately the ladder hadn’t been hooked properly and it came rattling down with Bryce hanging on like a frightened cat.
With a crash, both the ladder and Bryce landed square on the hood of the car, denting it.
Bryce was stunned by the impact and rolled right off just as one of the zombies came charging up. It went directly for him which meant crawling across the car. It slid off the hood just as Bryce had, plowing face first into the curb. It sat up, leaving most of its front teeth behind.
By then Bryce was on his feet and jabbing with his spear. The tip tore through an eye of another beast. It was slow to realize it was dead and stood for a few seconds, giving Bryce time to sling it from the shaft and towards the closer of the onrushing zombies. That was all the time he had for fighting. Dozens of zombies were closing from all sides—all except skyward. Up the ladder he went, nearly losing his spear at the first platform as the zombies raged around the base; in that short span, the car had been buried beneath a swarm of grey bodies. Some of the creatures mindlessly attacked the ladder, while others attempted to follow him up. Those that fell became the base of an ugly, squirming pile that mounted steadily higher. It was half as tall as the ladder by the time Bryce reached the second floor of the building.
From there the stairs zigzagged their way upwards and when the zombies reached these, they would come on even faster. Bryce wasn’t worried for himself. He knew he was already out of danger from them, but what of the people in the buildings? Had he just doomed another hundred people to a horrible death?
He squatted outside a shaded window and could smell a woman on the other side of the thin glass. She gave off alluring scents that told him she was young, dressed in leather, had recently painted her nails and liked vanilla scented candles. She was afraid, but not panicked.
The zombies would smell her as well and, when they couldn’t get to Bryce, they would go for her, and a single pane of glass was not going to stop them.
“Hey!” He tapped the gla
ss. She went still. “I know you’re in there. You’re in danger. There’s a mob of them right below me and if I don’t get out of sight soon they’ll keep coming.”
“Then leave.”
“It’s too late for that. They’re going to get up here.” She still didn’t move and so he tried a modified version of the truth. “I’m with the government. The FBI.”
The curtain was suddenly swished aside and there was a girl. For a moment, she was only a shadow. She was black and dressed in black, standing in a darkened apartment. Then Bryce’s night eyes kicked in and her outline formed itself into a person: leggy, narrow-waisted, black hair coiled in a single braid. She had a broad face with frightened doe-eyes and full lips that were pressed into lines. She had youthful good looks that were a year or two from maturing from pretty and into beautiful.
She unlocked the window and stood back. Her name was Nichola Lines and she regretted opening the window almost immediately. In his grey joggers, his red and gold tennis shoes and his ill-fitting hoodie, Bryce looked nothing like an FBI agent. The broom-spear didn’t help either. At least she had a baseball bat, which seemed a much more appropriate weapon.
Nichola hefted the bat as he clambered through the window. “No need for that,” he said as he eased over the back of her couch.
Bryce found himself standing in the middle of her apartment and feeling strangely huge. Excluding Nichola, everything around him seemed so small. The walls were close. The ceiling low. The kitchen looked like it had been built with midgets in mind, while the bed was a massive thing that took up a third of the room. But what was it doing in the living room? Slowly, it dawned on him that the twenty by twenty foot room was the entire apartment. All of the girl’s possessions fit in this one tiny space and for some reason this struck him as weird.
“I’m Bryce,” he told her, his eyes still flicking around. A stack of textbooks with a plant sitting on top of it told him she had recently been a student. Her coffee maker was new and large, while the TV was small and old; combine those with the double lamps around her bed told him she was a reader and a dreamer.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 25
