As Big T stepped past the Mercedes and out into the dirt roadway, he heard someone talking quietly, as well as the muffled weeping of a child. Good Lord, he thought. Is that the Indian girl?
The big man nearly jumped out of his skin when someone laid a hand gently upon his shoulder. He turned to find Levi standing directly behind him.
“What’s going on?” he asked him in a whisper.
“I’m not sure. I heard a noise by the car. Checked it out and found the girl and her daddy gone.”
Together they grew silent and listened. Someone was talking on the far side of a big oak across the road. It was a man… but not Billy Tauchee.
“You just be quiet and I ain’t gonna hurt you,” the voice said, half out of breath. “Holler out and I’ll cut your throat. Feel that? Sharp ain’t it?”
The little girl whimpered, scared half to death.
“Now we’re gonna walk up the road a mile or so and I’m gonna flag down some guys and we’re gonna make us a trade. You for enough black tar to last me a week or so. They search high and low for sweet stuff like you. It’s gonna be like Christmas morning, me showing up with you out of the blue.”
Big T took a step forward, but Levi’s hand restrained him. The bearded man nodded toward the tree. They watched as a patch of shadow separated from the darkness of the trunk and silently slid around to the opposite side. There was a heap of dead leaves piled around the base of the tree, yet they heard nothing.
“Billy?” Big T asked quietly.
“I think so.”
The man’s voice came again, low and vile. “Oh, my, ain’t you a piece of candy! I’d do you myself, but they like ’em fresh. If I sell ’em spoiled goods, I won’t get enough skag to get me through the night.”
They could hear the six-year-old thrashing in his grasp, her voice rising. “Mommy! Daddy!”
Her cry was muffled as her abductor clamped the palm of his hand firmly against her lips. “You do that again and I’ll cut out your voice box and give it to you for a play-pretty. Understand me? Now come on.”
They heard the rustling of leaves as the man began dragging her farther into the woods, apparently intending to put as much distance between the sleeping travelers and himself as possible before trudging up the hollow toward the highway.
Big T’s heart pounded wildly in his chest. “I think we need to get her, Mr. Hobbs… right now.”
Levi agreed. “Okay. But we’d best be careful, or he’ll kill her, sure enough.”
The two men were halfway across the road when they heard the girl gasp in surprise.
It was followed by the voice of the stranger. “Here now! Get the hell away from—”
Then came a crack as high and brittle as the report of a gunshot.
Levi and Big T ran across the road and passed the tree. They feared the worse… that perhaps the man had pulled a pistol and fired at either the girl or her father.
Instead, they were surprised to find Billy standing there, tightly embracing his weeping daughter. A few feet away, lay a man—undoubtedly the girl’s abductor—as dead as one could possibly be. His lean, filthy body was draped over a fallen log, a kitchen knife still clutched in his right hand. His head was twisted at an awkward and unnatural angle. His face was aimed at the ground behind him, rather than directly ahead.
“What happened?” asked Big T.
“I… I went… to pee… behind the car,” sobbed Jessie. Her face was buried tightly against her father’s chest. “He came out of the night… and grabbed me.”
“Shhhh,” whispered Billy softly. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
Levi walked over and prodded the man’s head with the toe of his boot. It swung loosely with no resistance whatsoever. “His neck is broken.” He turned and looked at Billy. “Now how did that happen?”
Billy stared back at him, his eyes dark and impassive. “I startled him when I stepped from behind the tree. He tripped and fell… fell hard. Busted his neck on that log.” A hint of a grin creased his dark face, but only for an instant. “Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
“Yeah,” said Levi. “I suppose so.”
Big T and Levi watched as Billy led his daughter gently back to camp.
The black man crouched and lifted the dead man’s head a few inches with the muzzle of the Tommy gun. The addict’s bloodshot eyes were wide and glassy with shock.
“So… do you believe it, Mr. Hobbs? That he just fell down and broke his neck in half like that?”
Levi studied the way the man was laying for a moment. The column of the log was positioned just beneath his shoulder blades… a good ten inches from his neck. “If Billy says it happened that way, then we’d best believe him. We weren’t there to see it ourselves, now were we?”
Big T stood up and let the man’s head hit the ground with a thud. “No, sir. We weren’t.” The big man hesitated, a troubled look on his face. “But should we just leave him there? Out in the open like that?”
“Think of what he had in mind for Jessie,” Levi said. “I say leave him for the critters to fight over… or the Biters to gnaw on.”
Big T nodded grimly. “Amen to that.”
Then, together, they walked back across the road, leaving the dead man where he lay.
Chapter 16
They reached the city of Hendersonville around ten-thirty in the morning. The place was seemingly deserted—the same as Cherokee—but there were more signs of carnage along the main stretch, from the highway to the middle of town. The blackened hulls of burnt-out cars, as well as vehicles that had suffered devastating crashes and been abandoned, littered the two-lane thoroughfare. Several restaurants and businesses had been set on fire as well. The empty buildings had collapsed on their fire-weakened supports weeks ago and lay in piles of charred wood and steel. A few bodies lay here and there, some burnt to the bone, some simply shot in the head and left there to be picked apart by birds and animals.
Clouds of buzzards were more prevalent in some areas of the city than others, so they deliberately avoided those zones. Kate took the lead in the Yukon as Agnes provided directions to her sister Angela’s house in a suburb near Highway 25. When they arrived at North Edenburg Street, they found it deserted, too. The houses looked average, like any other residence in a small, Southern community. A gray house with blue trim sat on the corner where Dundee Street converged with North Edenburg. There was a low, waist-high wall of recent construction around the property, made of mortared concrete blocks with sharp iron spikes set along the top, angled forward. It was a clever idea. Biters weren’t good climbers and even if they managed it, the spikes would have impaled them and kept them at bay. The only entrances through the wall were a heavy wooden gate directly in front of the house and a larger one around the side, where the driveway connected with Dundee. It was obvious that someone occupied the gray house—either an individual or a family—but they were wise enough not to show themselves when strangers came around.
On the opposite side of North Edenburg were a modest split-level house, a double-wide trailer, and a small white house with a picket fence and a wilted flower garden out front. It was this house that the Yukon pulled up to. The name on the mailbox read A. TRESSLER.
Levi climbed out of the pickup truck and appraised the sky. It was overcast that day with dark storm clouds rolling in from the southeast. A few buzzards swooped and soared overhead and he saw a dozen or so perched on the limbs of trees up and down the street.
He reached into the truck and took the pump shotgun with him. “Stay put and keep an eye out for Biters,” he told Nell, Jem, and Big T. Avery had joined his father on the sidewalk, holding the AR-15. “There are a few buzzards hanging around, so there must be at least one or two Biters in the neighborhood. We’ll try to keep as quiet as possible in there, so as not to rile any up within earshot.”
Nell held the .357 in her lap. “We’ll be okay.”
Levi joined Abe and Agnes in front of the house. “Are you folks ready to go in?”
Agnes looked at the house apprehensively. “I suppose so.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he told her. “The place looks deserted. She might not even be in there.”
The elderly woman looked irritated. “I’m a realist, Levi. I know this is a long shot. This is just something I needed to do, whether it was a wasted effort or not.”
“I understand,” he said. “No offense meant.”
She smiled. “None taken. I’m just a little nervous, I guess… of what I might find.”
Kate stood near the front grill of the Yukon. “Papa, do you want me to come with you?”
“Stick around out here, will you?” he suggested. “If you see Biters, give the horn a toot and we’ll come out.”
His daughter nodded. She laid the Uzi on the hood and took a Glock in each hand. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
Together, Levi, Avery, and the Mendlebaums walked past the white picket fence and up the sidewalk to the front porch of Angela Tressler’s house. Several of the front windows were broken, showing darkness just beyond the shattered panes, and obscene graffiti had been sprayed upon the outside walls. The door was partially open. Dead leaves had blown across the porch and into the foyer inside. A wheelchair ramp ran along the house’s front wall on the right side. It, too, was covered with fallen leaves.
“It doesn’t look very promising, dear,” Abe told her quietly.
Agnes simply nodded and held the .22 Ruger in both of her liver-spotted hands. Even from outside, they could smell the offensive stench of decay. “Let’s go inside.”
They found the first few rooms of the house to be empty. The parlor was untouched, still decorated with antiques, comfortable furniture, and copies of Newsweek and Women’s Day on the oval coffee table. A copy of People lay among them. The bold headline on the cover read THE WALKING DEAD… FOR REAL! Below it was an out-of-focus photograph of a dozen or so Biters walking down the center of a New York City street.
The odor of rotting flesh grew steadily stronger, nearly overpowering. “Angie’s bedroom is at the back of the house,” said Agnes. Her voice was small in the gloom.
Together, they started down a narrow hallway. The door to the rear bedroom was partially open.
Abe slid his hand through the crook of his wife’s arm. “Agnes…”
She looked at him and nodded. Her eyes were already moist with tears. “I know. I’m ready for it, dear.”
The four were halfway down the hallway, when Levi, who took the point, heard a shuffling noise come from the open doorway of a small bathroom. He turned abruptly and found himself face to face with a Biter. It was horribly decomposed and, at first, he couldn’t determine whether it was male or female. Then he saw the stained material of a set of designer scrubs—Mickey and Minnie Mouse dressed up like doctor and nurse on the short-sleeved top—as well as a pair of sagging, bloated breasts tenting the material from underneath, and he knew it had once been a rather large and matronly woman.
She came lurching out of the doorway and barreled into Levi with the force of a linebacker. With a yelp of surprise, he hit the opposite wall hard, and slid down the drywall, landing on his ass. The twelve-gauge slipped through his fingers and clattered loudly on the hardwood floor. He looked up and saw her looming above him. Most of her face had rotted off and the lower jaw was missing. The open sockets of her eyes and the dark, blood-ingested crater of her exposed nasal passages and mouth were swarming with black parasites. Her skeletal hands—interlaced with equally-infested muscle and sinew—clawed blindly at the wall, searching for the rich scent of living flesh that emanated from the man beneath her. Her legs—grotesquely swollen, the ankles split open with dark, glistening wounds—straddled him on both sides, preventing him from escaping. Levi attempted to draw his Blackhawk from its holster, but it was nearly impossible from a sitting position.
Avery was at the rear of the procession, so the Mendlebaums were between him and the zombie. “Get out of the way!” he yelled. He lifted the assault rifle to his shoulder, but knew that he couldn’t get off a shot without hitting Abe or Agnes.
“Calm down, boy,” the old woman told him. Agnes placed the muzzle of the Ruger an inch from the Biter’s temple and squeezed off four shots. Gummy, black wads of brain exploded from the opposite side of her weakened skull, splattering the walls and the door at the end of the hall. A glob the size of a dog turd hit Levi in the chest and dribbled down the front of his shirt. He could feel the clot of tissue pulsing and moving through the material, a mini-hive of parasites searching for a new host.
“Get this shit off of me!” Levi cried out, his voice more of a frightened shriek than its usual deep baritone.
Avery struggled past the Mendlebaums in the narrow corridor and kicked the body of the Biter to the side. The toe of his boot punched through the dead woman’s side, unleashing a dark gorge of nasty, black fluid. The Biter went down hard, jittered sluggishly for a moment, and then grew still. Almost immediately, Avery and Abe were on their knees, carefully unbuttoning Levi’s shirt, attempting to remove it without touching his skin with the creeping clod of infested brain matter. When it was undone, Levi quickly shucked his arms out of the sleeves and cast the shirt on top of the fallen Biter.
Avery looked as pale as a ghost. “Mrs. Agnes, that wasn’t your…?”
“No,” she told him flatly. “I’d say it was her caregiver, Mrs. Thompson.” She turned to the partially-open door at the end of the hallway and stared at it for a long moment.
“Do you want me to check it for you?” Abe asked her, wiping his hands on his pants.
She shook her head. “She’s my sister. I’ll do it myself.”
The men stood and watched as she stepped over the decaying carcass of Mrs. Thompson and walked to the bedroom door. She hesitated, took a deep breath, and opened it.
“Dear?” Abe asked with concern.
Agnes turned. Her face was a mixture of confusion and relief. “It’s empty. She isn’t here.”
They joined her at the doorway and looked in. The bed was a mess. The bedclothes were twisted and half-lying in the floor. Objects from a cherrywood nightstand—a lamp, an alarm clock, several prescription bottles, and a pair of reading glasses—lay scattered across the floor. On the far side of the room, lying against a wall below a window was a flannel nightgown, turned inside out. Between it and the bed was a pair of women’s panties, also wadded up and discarded. All four walls were covered with spray-painted graffiti of the vilest kind.
Agnes moaned softly, her eyes troubled. “Oh, dear Lord, what’s happened to her?”
“She could’ve left, couldn’t she?” asked Avery. “Just got up and walked out?”
“No. She was an invalid… confined to a wheelchair for years.” She entered the room and looked around, even checked the closet. “I don’t see her chair anywhere, though.”
Abe walked over and put his arm around his wife’s stooped shoulders. “Well, at least there’s still hope. Someone could have helped her… maybe took her out of here.”
Agnes smiled half-heartedly, but her eyes were grim. “Or she could be crawling down some street, in the same shape that Mrs. Thompson was.”
Levi was about to reply, when the sound of a horn blaring—not tooting—came to their ears.
Immediately afterward, there was the crack and boom of gunfire.
Nell sat in the cab of the Dodge Ram with the window rolled down, staring at the front of the little white house.
They had only been inside for a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. She was concerned about Agnes and what she might discover inside. It would be devastating to have traveled so far simply to find her sister dead… or worse.
Jem’s hand slid across the back of the seat and patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t fret none. They’ll be out in a second.”
She nodded silently, but never took her eyes off the front door. The Colt Python felt heavy in her lap.
Suddenly, a clatter echoed from inside the house.
Someone cried out… a man’s voice. “Lordy Mercy!” she rasped. “That sounded like Levi!” Nell grappled with the door handle and stepped out. Frightened, she crossed the sidewalk and stood at the picket fence.
Jem was out of the truck and behind her in a flash. “What is it, Mama?”
“I thought I heard your daddy’s voice,” she said. Her heart pounded in her chest. “Didn’t you hear it?”
The boy looked frustrated. He brought his fingertips to the burnt side of his head, but refrained from touching it. “To tell the truth, I can’t hear much of anything out of this side anymore.”
“I thought I heard something,” admitted Big T as he joined them. “Not sure exactly what it was, though.”
Then, abruptly, Avery’s voice sounded like a bullhorn. “Get out of the way!” It was followed by four gunshots in rapid succession.
“I sure heard that!” said Jem. He jumped the fence with no trouble at all. “You stay here.”
“The hell I will!” snapped his mother. She stepped through the open gate and, together, the three started up the sidewalk toward the front porch.
They were halfway to the house, when five buzzards perched on the eaves of the roof spread their wings and took flight. The sound of fluttering from several different points drew their attention. They looked around to see more buzzards leaving their vantage points and taking to the sky.
“I think trouble’s coming,” said Jem.
He was right. Biters began to show up out of nowhere. From behind trees, hedges, and outbuildings they appeared. At first, they seemed confused. They stumbled around, looking for the source of the gunshots. Then Levi’s voice shouted from inside the house— “Get this shit off of me!”—and they suddenly knew which way to go. Dozens of zombies in various degrees of decay began to make their way to the little white house of Angela Tressler.
Someone began laying heavy on a horn and Nell realized it was Kate reaching through the open window of the Yukon. Her daughter then turned and began firing the two Glocks at approaching Biters with the accuracy and stone nerves of a modern-day Annie Oakley.
The Buzzard Zone Page 11
