by L. ROY AIKEN
“Gitmo!” he shouts. Brandon leans out the window. “Any man who gives me and my crew beer and tells us to go have fun with the fire truck, I’ll follow that motherfucker straight into hell!”
“Haw!” cries the boy in the cab with Brandon, holding up his beer. “Gitmo!”
“C’mon, Brandon, why burn this neighborhood! These are nice houses! Your people could be living here!”
“Fuck these snooty-ass houses and shit!” Brandon cackles. “Fuck you, too, you sell-out son-of-a-bitch!” He holds up a black Glock 9mm. “Whatchoo gonna do about it?” he sneers. “Wanna try and make me move this? C’mon! I wanna see you try!”
The crack of a rifle and a high-pitched scream cut through the rattle of the fire truck’s diesel engine. Another rifle shot, another scream follows. Then another.
“The fuck!” says Brandon. He and his companion look over. I can’t see past this fire truck but it’s a safe bet some of Brandon’s firebugs are getting stepped on by the residents. The flames are rising by the truck where the privacy hedge is; the two who set the fire have already moved on to another house. I hear another rifle crack. He’s opening the door and edging over to jump out. He looks at me, his gun upraised. I hold up my hands, make no threatening moves.
I only need the second he takes to slip to the ground from the truck, which he does with a surprising agility for his condition. Still, he’s slow bringing the gun around. When he does my panga is there to relieve him of it. At the wrist.
“My God!” squeals Marta from behind me.
By the prodigious spray it’s apparent the arteries aren’t convulsing shut. I grab Brandon by the back of his shirt and shove him hard into the blazing privacy hedge. There’s a hissing like a fuse as the spurting blood drowns the flames. Stunned, Brandon falls to his knees and shrieks as the heat from the smoldering debris seals his wound with a crackling of seared flesh and steaming blood. The stench is gagging. Goddamn it, I’m so looking forward to living somewhere in post-undead apocalypse America that doesn’t stink like a bag of sour assholes.
The other boy from the cab comes running around the front of the truck. He stops long enough to go reeling from pistol fire. He falls over, clutching his side.
“Shit!” I turn to Marta. “Can you hold off any deaders coming this way while I move this truck?”
“It’s all right, Mr. Grace,” says Mr. Paulson. “I’ve got the truck.” I turn in time to see the muzzle flash of his silver .38 service revolver as he bangs a round into the face of Brandon’s fallen cab mate.
Paulson waits a couple of seconds for the initial ringing from the gunshot to leave our ears before continuing. “In fact, if you and your friend can defend the area around the hydrant we can take care of the fires.”
“Yeah, sure. Great.”
Paulson climbs into the cab. I hear the tenor of the engine shift as he puts the truck in gear and clears the driveway. So much for my getting out of here right away.
I turn to Marta. She cuts quite the figure, a tiny little woman with a huge spear upright beside her, the pointed stone head of which is half the size of her own blonde noggin and a foot taller besides. “You ready?” I ask her. Marta nods.
The truck pulls away and a mangled, chewed-over woman in gore-blackened hospital scrubs toddles up towards Brandon. Brandon mewls piteously as he watches her approach, too weak from blood loss and burn trauma to flee. I walk towards the former hospital worker. Up come her arms. Off come her arms. Her head tumbles after.
Standing over her remains I see her fellows advancing one by one down the street, following the vibrations of the fire truck—which the old man has brought around in a three-point turn to the hydrant across the street. He’s killed the engine but it’s too late for these, they’re going to keep coming until they scent one of us.
Still, the quiet is welcome. It’s just the sound of ringing in my ears now. That, and the clank of the wrenches as the old man and his younger neighbors work to attach a hose to the hydrant.
Still, the approaching dead are massing. They’re already more than Marta and I can handle on our own. The people putting out the fires are going to need some time to do just that before they join in the battle.
I bring the hammer down on the snapping hospital aide’s head. I look back towards Brandon in the steaming, smoking grass and get an idea. I jog across the broad lane to the men at the hydrant. “Where’s the other firestarters?”
One of the men gestures up towards one of the yards across the street.
“Thanks.”
“You evil son of a bitch, why don’t you just kill me?” Brandon says as I cross the street back to him. I grab him by the back of his hair and the top of his pants. I lift him from the smoldering, stinking grass and begin carrying him up the driveway.
I heave him over the tailgate into the back of the truck. He lands with a thump, wisps of smoke and blood-steam still rising from his clothes and skin. I walk around to the cab, start the truck.
Marta looks at me wide-eyed as I back out of the driveway. I roll the window down. “Be right back,” I say. “Can you take care of these other characters coming down the street?”
“Where are you going?” We both glance over at a second hospital worker. He looks as if he’s trying to decide between homing in on the sound of my truck or on Marta’s voice. He settles for a few steps in the general direction of both of us.
Marta runs over and taps him on the forehead with her spear. His head snaps back and she thrusts the spear through the soft underside of his jaw. He falls to the street.
“Swear to God, I’ll only be a minute,” I say.
Another walker approaches. A patient in a hospital gown. He’s got the bloody VanDyke about his face and his pale mottled ass to the wind.
Marta scowls at the thing. “Dammit, you better come back is all I can say!”
“Promise!” and I screech off down the lane. Brandon thuds into the tailgate with the acceleration.
I see a few more hospital characters as I ride down the block. The citizens advancing along the next block are more of a mix of random street people. The homeless veteran, his beard clotted with who knows who; one of the pale chubby women you see at the bus stop, a chunk torn from the tissue flapping about her arm.
They thicken the further down I drive. The furious-looking woman with the wild hair, her entire front a stiff bib of dried gore turns her head my way as I pass. The young man in the baggy shorts lifts a grasping hand. The trick will be to get as close as I can to the middle of them, bring them all together. After a while I feel I have no choice but to stop. If I keep going the mob behind me will be too thick and I’ll never get back.
Of course, I could just keep on going. Fuck Marta and all those people.
I wish I had just a little more time to think about it but…no. No.
I stop the Big Yellow Truck. I leap from the cab. The ones closest already sense me through the vibrations of the truck’s engine and are beginning to close in. I vault over the lip of the flatbed.
“Hey, man, whutchoo doin’!” Brandon squeals.
“You brought over guests, son. It’s your responsibility to feed them.”
“What?”
As before, I pick him up by the hair and the back of his pants. A group of teenage boys who look a lot like him, maybe a little younger, are homing in on the back of the truck. All wear fresh bibs. The eatin’s been good today.
“Krystal’s not gonna like this!” Brandon says. “She’s not gonna like you anymore if you do this!”
That gives me the adrenaline spike I need to duck with my knees and clean-jerk his body over my head. The mouths of the approaching dead fall open as if they know what I’m about to do. Bending my knees again I raise and hurl Brandon at them.
They fall back a few steps. Save for one dangling foot, though, Brandon doesn’t even touch the pavement. His screams barely cut through the “ooooooh!” and “mmmmm!” of the mob as they take his arms, his legs, and as many clawed scoops into h
is ghost-white belly until the packaging breaks and they can get to the good stuff.
I jump out of the flatbed and for a panicked second I can’t get the door open to the truck (apparently it locked after I closed it). I end up bumping a 30-something mom type in the face with the door, dropping her in time for me to climb in.
I start the engine and pull away fast, making a wide arc right to circle around the gathering crowd. I wish there was a sidewalk for me to drive down but the broadness of the avenue serves just as well. I cut around the edge of the mob, clustering like ants about the gobbet of living flesh dropped in their midst. The ones closest to the hydrant have already turned around to see what their fellows are making yummy noises about. Bless her heart and that ridiculous spear of hers, Marta has widened the margin enough for this to happen. The men at the hydrant are free and clear and already working the blazes in the lawns along Oak Blossom Lane.
Marta has this look on her face when I pull up, though. “You all right?” I say.
She looks down the street at the massed dead. “Did you really do what I think you just did?”
“Take out the son of a bitch who came here to kill us? Use him to draw off the undead killers he brought on us in the first place? Yeah, I did.”
“What are going to tell Krystal?”
“If I ever see her again—which I won’t—I’ll tell her I did her a favor. You got a problem with that you can stay here. I’ve got one more thing to do before I go, and I doubt you’ll like that either.”
My foot is halfway off the brake when she says, “Wait! Let me in.”
I jerk back to a halt. She runs around the front of the truck and climbs into the cab. “All right, then,” I say. “Let’s save this little piece of paradise and we’re out of here.”
“Why?”
“Marta, if you want to continue riding with me you’ll shut up. Now.”
I pull into the driveway of the house where Brandon’s crew is kept. One is laid out on the grass, dead or the next best thing. Two more sit next to him, holding their torn shirts to the wounds in their arm and chest respectively, their faces contorted in agony. The remaining three sit on the driveway, their legs out, their hands bound behind their backs. A man with a shotgun stands over them.
I stop just in front of them. “You have any plans for these?”
“What are you looking to do?” says the man with the shotgun.
“You’ve got a herd moving into the neighborhood. If we can hang them off the fire truck as bait we can lead them back out of here.”
The boys’ eyes widen. I nod towards them. “We don’t have to feed these to them outright, just tie them to the side rails—”
The man with the shotgun delivers a swift kick to the boy nearest him. “The hell with that! I’m all for shooting these white trash filth anyway!”
“We’ve got to move fast, though.”
“You’re not feeding me to those motherfuckers!” says the boy next to the one who got kicked.
The man with the shotgun aims at his legs. “You can get in yourself or get carried in. Me, I’d just as soon shoot every last one you for what you’ve done! This way you just might get out of it, depending how fast Mr. Paulson drives!”
The three young men on the driveway get to their feet. They march obediently to the tailgate. When the man is done helping them up into the truck he goes to the boys on the grass. They struggle to their feet and with much more time and effort than we can afford he too takes his place in the flatbed.
“What are gonna do with that one?” I say, glancing over at the boy laid out on the grass.
The man gives a look to his young charges. He steps over the grass at the boy’s feet. He drops to one knee, tucks the stock into his shoulder. He squeezes off his round. The spray at this range pulps the boy’s skull. Red, living blood pumps from his neck, pooling blackly in the dark green Kentucky bluegrass.
“Who’s next?” he says to the boys in the flatbed as he walks back to the truck. He steps up from the tailgate. I back out down the driveway. We need to move faster. There wasn’t that much of Brandon to go around. Not for that many “guests.”
As I back out into the street I can see the assembled mob four blocks down the lane. They’re breaking up, stumbling about. Their heads are back as if sniffing the air.
I pull up to the hydrant and kill the engine. We should be as quiet as possible to buy ourselves maximum time but the man with the shotgun is jumping out of the flatbed and yelling at his fellows working the wrench on the hydrant. “Don’t cut that water off yet, we’re gonna need it for cleanup!”
“What the hell is going on here, Frank?” his companion says, eyeing me and my truck.
“Mr. Grace and I are trying to save the Oak Blossom Lane Homeowners Association. Now who had the duct tape?”
“Duct tape? For what?”
“To fix our zombie problem, you idiot!”
Mr. Paulson walks up. “What’s going on?”
I get out of the truck. “This is my idea. I figure the fire truck brought them in, it can lead ‘em back out. We tie these boys to the handrails on the back of the truck and between the noise and the promise of fresh meat they’ll follow.”
“Why can’t we just let them walk on through to the other end like they did last night?” says a younger man by the hydrant.
Mr. Paulson turns abruptly to him. “You do not want these things getting used to walking through here! And if their scat gets on the ground anywhere out here, that’s it! Dr. Hearn figured out that’s how they mark their territory! You’ll never get rid of the smell—and you’ll never get rid of them!”
Mr. Paulson turns to the men at the hydrant. “Get those boys taped up to the back of the fire truck! We gotta go.”
Frank already has two duct-taped to a rail, including the injured boy. It’s slow going because there’s only one roll of tape to go around.
Mr. Paulson looks down the street to our approaching guests. A few loud grunts and moans can be heard as they catch traces of our scent. “Now what I’d like to know is how we’ve going to get this truck through the thick part of that mob. This isn’t an all-terrain vehicle; we can’t afford to ruin the tires and undercarriage on a bunch of rotten flesh and bone.”
“How far can these men pull this fire hose? How far does the spray go?”
Mr. Paulson’s face lights up. “Mr. Grace, I must say I have underestimated you. You are indeed Evans’ superior. I will be sorry to see you go.” He turns to the men at the hydrant and shouts orders. He indicates Frank with a nod of his head as he binds the last teenage vandal to the fire truck.
The men get to work pulling the hose while Frank stands by on pressure. “How’d you know I was going?” I ask as Mr. Paulson turns back to me.
“We all know your story, Mr. Grace. We’d all do the same thing.”
“Thanks for understanding.”
“Let’s get you on your way,” he says, and turns to go to the fire truck.
“Uh, wait!” I say. Mr. Paulson stops. I can tell by the look on his face he’d really rather I was on my way.
“You don’t have to actually feed those boys to the walkers,” I say. “It’s best you use them to draw them along as far as you can until you circle back.”
Mr. Paulson’s eyes narrow. I shrug. “After all, they did bring the fire truck.”
“Which we may yet need,” Paulson says, nodding slowly. “If Brick did his job Kerch is out of the picture. With him gone I wouldn’t be surprised if all the other crews weren’t getting a little overly jubilant.”
I hardly know what to say in the face of this confession. Fortunately the roar of water rushing from the hose changes the subject. A loud hrrrrrrrn! erupts from the herd as the force of the water clears a path down the middle of the lane. Any deader who doesn’t get out of the way is pushed bodily across the pavement, the smear of his road rash washing up behind him.
“Let’s go!”
Mr. Paulson turns away to climb into the fir
e truck. I spare a glance for the boys trussed to its rear before I get into the Big Yellow Truck. Only one meets my eyes, and with blazing hatred and defiance. The rest lean against the tall chrome rails, looking at nothing in particular, their faces empty and waiting. I try and remind myself of the ugly smirks and laughter from those same faces as they sought to turn Natalia’s sole shady oasis into an inferno. Besides, Paulson doesn’t have to kill them. Just ride them through the mob and put the fear of righteous upper-middle-class retribution into them.
I settle in and turn the key. The fire truck’s big diesel matches the roaring water decibel for decibel and I have to look at my gauges and test the pedal to make sure the engine in the Big Yellow Truck turned over. I put the truck in gear and drive towards the cleared area, a wall of wet, angry dead on either side.
The hose is directed to my left, pushing back the dead on that side. I power down the window and hang my panga out to take swings at random citizens who somehow miss the wrath of the Oak Blossom Lane Volunteer Fire Department. The hose lifts over us and the water rains down on us in fat, splatting drops before being directed into the flailing, furious dead on our right.
“A shotgun like that Frank guy had would be really nice right now,” says Marta.
“Yeah, it would. Where do you want me to drop you off?”
“I got a shotgun at my place.”
“So that’s where I’ll drop you off.”
“No! I want to—I want to get out of town. Like you. Drop me off next town over. In Salina.”
“Sure, no problem. If we ever get out of here!”
I see shreds of Brandon’s clothes cupping eddying pools of water in the street. A leg bone rolls and bounces along the weakening flow, the flesh red and furry on the knobs. Mr. Paulson sounds the air horn and run the sirens. Marta and I both jump when we hear the horn. It’s more than enough to wake the dead. Based on what I’m seeing in the mirror former citizens pushed over by the hose are getting up to stagger after the big knocking diesel, the skull-rattling honks of the air horn.
I drive as fast as I dare, weaving among the once-people swaying down the lane towards us. I use the forward momentum of the Big Yellow Truck to add force to my panga swings. My arm is killing me. The mob is thickening and I see why: we’re passing the turn to Kerch’s place. All I see is dirty hair on pale rotten scalps, a roiling sea of bobbing heads. Someone flooded Kerch’s estate with the former citizens of Natalia. All the racket Brandon made is bringing them our way.
