Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Taylor, Keith

  It occurs to me that it was my own voice that drew the thing away from Kate. It heard me, and now it’s come to hunt me down. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and the grip of the bat feels slippery in my sweaty hands.

  The thing finally appears, limping slowly through the door to the back room. I pull back against the wall into the shadow of a large grandfather clock, trying to blend into the shadows as best I can. Trying to make myself small.

  It’s an old man, maybe late sixties. Neat, short gray hair and a fussy little silver beard that looks like it received loving attention each morning. As he emerges from the behind the counter I see why he’s limping. He has an enormous shard of glass embedded in his bony thigh, jutting forward about six inches and buried so deep that it barely wobbles as he walks.

  He doesn’t seem to notice the pain even as he bumps against a low table and presses the shard deeper into his thigh. His cream trousers are soaked crimson down one leg. His knuckles are bruised and bloody.

  I hold my breath as he slowly approaches, wishing the grandfather clock was just a little bigger. In the silence all I can hear is the slow drag of feet and soft, rasping breath from the creature. He seems to be moving away towards the window, and I pray he’ll climb through.

  He reaches the glass and pauses, as if his slow, broken mind is processing the best way to negotiate the window frame. I can almost see his mind tick over like an idling engine, and once again I wonder what’s going on in there.

  He seems to reach a decision. Slowly – far too slowly for my bursting lungs – he lifts his bad leg clumsily over the lip of the window. He moves to set his foot down in the street, and—

  —And the minute hand of the grandfather clock beside me ticks over, breaking the cloying silence with a loud, dull tock.

  The creature whips his head towards me and locks eyes with mine. I freeze in place, shocked by the cold, mindless hatred in those eyes, and stifle a cry as he pulls back into the store and suddenly runs – sprints – towards me with terrifying speed.

  I know I don’t have the space to swing the bat. I don’t have the time to think straight, but I instinctively know I’ll still be on the back swing by the time he’s on me. There’s only one thing I can do. As he barrels towards me I thrust out the heel of my left hand, still clad in the heavy leather mitt, and drive it forward and up into the man’s chin, my arm locked at the elbow. I watch in slow motion as he opens his mouth to bite, and I cringe as my blow forces his mouth shut, catching his tongue between his teeth and cleanly severing the tip. I imagine I can feel the tiny chunk of wet flesh spit against the palm of my hand as the man falls backwards, stunned.

  Now I’m working on autopilot. No conscious thought passes through my mind as I lift the bat and step forward to take my first heavy overarm swing. I swing like I’m chopping wood, bringing the aluminum rod over my head and down hard onto the man’s forehead. He seems to react with anger rather than pain, snapping at me and trying to lift himself back to his feet, but I move too quickly for him. I swing again, sending him back to the ground with a fresh gash in his cheek, and again. Again. Repeating, over and over, his face caving in deeper with each blow until he isn’t recognizable as a man any more. Now he’s just a mass of swollen flesh, as misshapen as a Picasso portrait, one cheek sunken and caved, the other exposed, raised bone.

  I keep swinging long after he’s stopped struggling to stand. Long after he’s stopped moaning. I swing until I can’t tell the difference between head and floor. Until he’s just a body cut off at the wrinkled, sinewy neck, ending in a glistening pink and white jellied mass of flesh and bone.

  “Tom!” A voice cries out to my left.

  I swing the bat toward the sound instinctively, my arms barely connected to my mind, and the aluminum crashes against the dark wood of the grandfather clock.

  “Tom, stop!”

  The voice finally breaks though. The red mist starts to fade, and I feel myself regaining control. I blink a few times and try to make sense of what I’m seeing.

  It’s Kate, her face just inches from the end of the dented, bloody bat. She looks down at the mess twitching at my feet then back up at me, and slowly, carefully reaches out to pluck the bloodied bat from my hand.

  “I think you got him, babe.”

  ΅

  :::5:::

  I STARE AT my reflection in the curved, mirrored surface of the cappuccino machine, and I barely recognize the face looking back at me. It’s the same face I was wearing when I visited the coffee shop yesterday and the same face I woke with this morning, but now a thin crust of brown blood dries quickly on my cheeks. My hair is matted, clumped together and stuck to my forehead. I reach up and run my fingers through it then stare dumbly at my stained hand. The hand I just used to murder a fellow human being.

  I flinch when I feel Kate’s hand on my shoulder, then look down and see that my clothes didn’t escape the blood spray. I look like I’ve spent my morning painting a room red with a hose, and as my sleeve comes into focus I notice a small shard of gray white... something caught in a crease in the fabric.

  It's a fragment of skull.

  “Don’t touch me!” I yell, pulling away from Kate’s hand.

  She steps back in surprise. “What? Why?”

  I tug my jacket off and drop it to the ground. “Look at me, I’m covered in this shit. Here, give me your hands.” I pull her to the basin by the register and twist open the faucet with my elbow. “We have to keep ourselves clean. Who knows how this thing spreads? Maybe a single drop of blood in your eyes or mouth is enough to fuck you up. We can’t take any risks until we know what’s going on, OK?”

  I wait for Kate to clean herself off, then dunk my head under the tap with my eyes closed and my lips pressed shut. After a minute I risk cracking open one eye, and I see the water swirling down the drain is running clear.

  Next comes my jacket. I grab a towel from the stack by the basin, soak it wet then wipe down the waxed cotton until the worst of the blood seems to be gone. Death by contaminated jacket would be a really dumb way to check out.

  Kate watches me as I dry myself off. She reaches her hand to her mouth and moves to chew her thumbnail, a nervous habit, but catches herself in time and forces her hand to her side. “Shit, this is really happening, isn’t it?” she says, with fear in her voice. “All that stuff you used to say about Bangkok. This is it, right? Sons of the whatever, zombie plague, end of the world shit. It was all true?”

  I nod solemnly.

  “Well... damn.” She lowers herself to a stool by the counter. “I always just assumed you were a little weird when you talked about that stuff. You know, like someone who thinks they faked the moon landings. It never occurred to me that you might actually be right.”

  I manage a hollow laugh. “Well thanks, honey. It’s nice to know I can always count on you for support.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. It’s just... Jesus, I mean this is really it. No more coffee shop. No more McDonalds breakfast. No more... oh shit, no more Game of Thrones.”

  She sees my expression.

  “Come on, don’t look at me like that. I just mean... you know, it’s over. All that day to day shit we took for granted, it’s done.”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I reply, shrugging my jacket back over my shoulders. “I just wish I’d done more to prepare for it. I don’t have a plan. I have no clue where we go from here, Kate. Shit, I don’t even have a gun. How am I gonna protect us?”

  Kate smiles for the first time. “Oh, I don’t know. You were pretty good with that bat.”

  I look down at the bloodied aluminum bat resting on the counter. “I guess. It won’t last long, though. It’s already dented to shit. Couple more skulls and it’ll be worthless. That reminds me.” I grab the bat and start to run it under the tap, letting the blood circle around the drain.

  We both jump at the sound of the coffee shop’s security shutter lifting from the ground, and I cringe at the loud rattle as it rolls up. That n
oise will carry all the way down the street.

  “Quiet!” hisses Kate as a figure ducks under the half open shutter. It’s Arnold, the retired firefighter who holed up with Kate in the antique store. This is hardly the time to bring it up, but if I saw him in the street on a regular day I’d probably ask for his autograph. He’s the spitting image of Danny Glover. It’s just uncanny. I swear, if he tells me he’s too old for this shit I’ll start looking for the hidden cameras.

  “Sorry ‘bout that,” Arnold replies meekly, rolling it back down behind him much more carefully. When it reaches the ground he turns to us and grins. “Got my gun.”

  Kate smiles, relieved. “And the radio?”

  “Police scanner,” he corrects, shaking his head. “It’s wired up to the car. Couldn’t bring it along without lugging the battery with me, but I managed to pick up a little chatter before the signal dropped. It’s just like I said, alright. They took down the bridge. Smart motherfuckers.”

  I look from Kate to Arnold, confused. “What are you talking about?”

  Arnold walks to the open chiller cabinet, grabs a Coke and cracks it open with a hiss. “Brooklyn Bridge, son. They took it down, right in the center. That’s why it’s so quiet hereabouts.” He shakes his head in wonder. “I swear I never thought they’d go through with it.”

  I feel like I’m missing something, like I’m only hearing one side of a conversation. I turn to Kate with a questioning look.

  “Tom wasn’t here earlier, Arnold, remember? Why don’t you catch him up?” Kate speaks to him like she’d speak to a senile grandpa, and I wonder if Arnold is quite all there. He looks at me blankly for a moment, as if he’s forgotten who I am, then the brightness returns to his eyes.

  “Oh, right, right. Sorry, senior moment.” He lowers himself to a stool and sets his Coke on the counter. “You remember Bangkok, right?”

  I nod. “Of course I remember. Millions of people died.”

  “Sure, sure. OK, well, after Bangkok the government started planning contingencies in case of an attack. You know, crazy blue sky shit they never thought they’d really need, like what to do if aliens invade and whatnot. That was how they came up with... Oh, what’s it called? That old fairy tale with the guy who lured all those rats and kids away with his... what, like a magic flute or some shit?” He creases his brow for a moment, deep in thought. “Pied piper!”

  I shoot a worried glance to Kate, but she shakes her head almost imperceptibly. Don’t worry, he’s cool.

  Arnold continues, growing more agitated and jittery with each word. “Operation Pied Piper, they called it. See, they figured these things, you know, they’re probably pretty dumb, right? Not too much going on in the old brain box, so they must be easy to trick. They figured they’d probably be attracted to sound, so they came up with this plan to clear the city after an attack.” He runs his hand across his stubble. “God damn genius, whoever came up with it.”

  “What? What was the plan?” I ask, impatiently.

  Arnold grins. “Blow the bridges. Wash the fuckers down the river like flushing a gutter. You get it?”

  I shake my head. Am I just being dumb, or is this old guy making no sense at all?

  Arnold swells his chest proudly. “I was a firefighter. Marine Company One. Twen’y eight years on the John D. McKean, and six more on Three Forty Three. We were part of all sorts of crazy plans, but Pied Piper jumped out at me more than most. See, in the event of an attack it was the job of Three Forty Three to drop anchor right between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges after they were blown. Firefighter II would go to Williamsburg, and Bravest would head up to Queensboro.” He notices my blank expression. “Those are the names of our fireboats, son.”

  “We had these, you know, these huge speakers, like you get at a music festival. Big, bulky things. Good and loud, so the sound carries. We were supposed to rig them up and play all sorts of shit to lure those things out to the edge of the bridge and get ‘em to jump in the river. Didn’t really matter what, so long as it was loud. Looks like they went with the fireworks track.”

  It takes me a minute to figure it out. “You mean that noise about an hour ago? That was the boat? I thought it was gunfire.”

  Arnold shakes his head. “Nope, that was a recording of July 4th. 2011, if I remember right. Personally I would have gone with Springsteen, but I guess it doesn’t matter, so long as it worked.” He sits back and takes a smug sip of his Coke, as if he came up with the plan himself. “So you see now, right? That was the plan. Blow the bridges, then draw those bastards into the water with the noise, right off the edge into the middle of the East river. Hey presto, you got an empty street outside instead of a million homicidal bastards trying to break in through that shutter.”

  I frown. “But what about everyone downstream? What happens to them when thousands of those things float ashore?”

  Arnold chuckles. “A net, son. A really big goddamn net. Last year, just before I called it a day, we helped set up one of those huge things they use on fishing trawlers. You know the ones, those big factory ships that drag them back for miles and just hoover up every fucking thing? We got one of those bad boys running right across the Narrows a couple of miles downriver. You just winch that up to the surface and you got yourself a nice little barrier.”

  I can’t help but be impressed. “That’s... OK, that’s really damned clever. So, do you know what comes next? Is there a second part of the plan, or did they stop at the big net?”

  Arnold gives me a toothy grin. “I’ll tell you if you hand me one of those cigarettes.” He juts his chin towards the pack of Marlboros resting on the counter. I chuckle, slip one from the pack for myself then slide it over to him. “Help yourself.”

  He lights up, and closes his eyes as he takes a long, blissful pull. “God damn, I miss that.” He holds the cigarette up and looks lovingly at the smoldering tip. “Marcy – that’s my wife, Marcy – she made me quit when I retired. Told me she wanted to keep me around until I’d finished repainting the kitchen. I don’t suppose it makes much difference now, right? Chances are none of us will be around long enough for a little smoke to hurt us.”

  He takes another long drag, coughs and winces. “Looks like I’m out of practice.” He sets the cigarette down on the lip of the counter and takes a sip of his Coke. “Prospect Park. That’s what’s next.” He turns his eyes up to the ceiling, trying to summon his memory. “Prospect, Lincoln and James J Braddock. Oh, and the Bronx Zoo. That’s where they’ll set up rally points for the city. They’ve all got fresh water, and they’ll bring in generators, food, tents and what not. Gotta keep the city empty until the army can sweep it clean, so I guess we’ll all be sleeping on camp beds for a while.” He shrugs his sleeve up and takes a look at his watch. “That’s where Marcy will be waiting, God willing. We live a few blocks from Prospect, and she knows to head there when everything goes to shit.” He stubs out his cigarette on the table. “On that note, kids, I think it’s high time we mosey.”

  I turn to Kate. “You good to go?”

  She nods and grabs her jacket, but I sense some hesitation.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “It’s nothing,” Kate replies, lowering her voice. “Just... let’s talk just the two of us when we get out, OK? There’s something you should know.”

  I nod, and I’m about to reply when Arnold grabs his gun, tucks it into his jacket pocket and lifts himself from his stool with a sharp gasp. “You OK, Arnold?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he replies, waving away my concern. “Nothing to worry yourself about.”

  Kate shoots me a wide eyed look, as if to draw my attention to something. She nods towards Arnold, but I don’t get it.

  “OK, let’s move, kids. Time’s wasting.”

  That’s when I see it, as Arnold turns from us towards the shutter. He’s bleeding. The back of his right thigh is stained red where he put his weight on the stool. The blood has seeped through his gray trousers, and the sodden material clings to his
leg. He doesn’t have a limp, but from the look of the blood his injury is more than just a little cut.

  Kate takes my arm as Arnold raises the shutter, and she silently mouths the words to me.

  He got bit.

  ΅

  :::6:::

  WE DRIVE SLOWLY south on Flatbush, Arnold feathering the gas just enough to keep us rolling without building up the revs. Even driving carefully the engine sounds worryingly loud in the otherwise silent streets.

  “Where are all the people?” I ask, peering down the empty roads at each intersection. “How come we’re not seeing many bodies? I’ve only seen a couple in the last five blocks.”

  Kate shrugs. “Saturday morning. I guess most of them were still in bed when it started. I know the coffee shop was pretty dead. And it was raining pretty bad this morning. Maybe they waited for the crowd to pass then headed for the park?”

  “Maybe,” I agree. “Maybe a lot of them got out of town before it all went bad. What time did it come on the news?”

  Kate shrugs. “I don’t know. We don’t have a TV in the shop. First I heard of it was a couple of customers talking about a riot going on in Manhattan, then it all went to shit pretty quickly.”

  Arnold slows the car to maneuver around a mail van blocking our side of the road, and I turn to the townhouses at the sidewalk. “Wait a minute,” I mumble. “You seeing this, guys?”

  I point out the window to the houses. Almost every second door is wide open, and as we slowly coast by I can see the carnage within. Behind each door a long hallway stretches towards the back of the house, and in almost every one bodies lie, twisted and broken, like chocolates revealed from behind the windows of a macabre advent calendar.

  “Jesus, they were all caught at home,” mutters Kate, crossing herself as she spots the beaten body of a small boy in SpongeBob pajamas He’s lying halfway across the threshold, as if he was trying to escape when he died. He’d look like he was sleeping if it wasn’t for the fact that his left leg is broken and twisted forward at the knee, like an ostrich.