Dead World | Novel | Dead Zero

by Platt, Sean

  “I have a good job. A good wife. A good life.”

  “Those are things that happened to you.”

  “I had to get the job. I had to get the wife.”

  “Either that or they got you. I had to get Alzheimer’s.”

  “God damn you.”

  Rick surprised him again, this time with a nod. “That’s fair.”

  “Why are you like this?”

  Rick came closer. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Thomas. You’re my son. I have to love you, just like you have to love me. But even beyond that, I always did my best.”

  “You did shit.”

  “You’re right. I did. I picked a side, and that side made me an asshole. What’s always bothered me about you is that you couldn’t even do that. You’ve always gone down the middle. You took the job that came to you. You took the woman who had to chase you down and make something happen, and you got damn lucky it was Carly who found you. You bought your own house straight out of my house, and you did it with your mother’s insurance money. You’ve never had to make monthly rent, or a mortgage. You’ve never fought for a promotion or for your country.”

  “Not everyone has to—”

  “I know. Not everyone has to. But you have to do something, Thom. Anything. You can’t walk right down life’s middle and see what comes. You can’t join the Cub Scout troop just because your mom decides she wants to be a den mother. You can’t take all the default classes in high school and college. I only ever had one complaint with you, and at first it really was just one. When you were ten, I wanted you to put yourself out there once. Take one big risk. But look what happened? You ignored me and ignored me and ignored me, until you finally decided I was the boogeyman. After that it was a mix of spite and digging in your heels. You were so determined to not be like me that passive acceptance became your entire life. Now it’s who you are, and I see no sign that you’re going to change.”

  “Why the hell should I change for you?”

  Rick sighed, and for a minute Thom thought he might sit. “That’s what you keep refusing to understand. You shouldn’t do it for me. We had our chance. You should do it for your son.”

  “Brendan is just fine.” Thom wasn’t as angry as he wanted to be. Maybe he was tired too, but there was a much worse reason waiting in the shadows. It was possible, finally, that he was seeing all of his father’s points, not just the ones having to do with paranoia and the end of the world.

  Maybe he agreed with what Rick was saying.

  Maybe the past day of inaction and evasiveness had proven it to be true.

  “He’s just fine,” Rick agreed. “In fact, he’s better than fine. He’s bold; he’s got real opinions; he protects his family and seems bent on doing the right thing. But that’s despite you, not because of you. I already see him starting to retreat. From you, sure, but also from himself. Soon you’ll have trained that spirit right out of him. Soon he’ll only be good at playing it safe.”

  “Safe is the reason we’re still breathing, Dad,” Thom said.

  A long moment before his only reply. “Is it?”

  Time passed.

  It seemed to take too long.

  Even as Brendan and Carly fell asleep (she was looking better already, though her wound was still a sewer), Thom found himself willing but unable to do the same. His nerves stayed too high, and that made him ponder his father’s words. When he’d been forced into fights, he’d gotten through them and felt calmer. By contrast, turning a blind eye only made the tension endure, and grow over time.

  “How much longer?” Thom asked Sanjay.

  “It’s not the tests holding us up. It’s the Army,” he answered.

  “What about them?”

  “I think they’re worried about extracting us too early.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they aren’t finished setting up. You and us, we’ve got a deal. I said I’d get you out and I keep my promises. The five of you will have to quarantine for days or maybe even months to be sure you haven’t brought anything out with you, probably at our new Aberdeen Valley facility, but you will leave Bakersfield. Just be patient. If we leave too soon, people afterward will start to ask why others didn’t get to go. We need to get out at the very last minute, for reasons of public perception.”

  Afterward. Too soon. Very last minute. Thom didn’t like the implication.

  “What are they going to do with Bakersfield?”

  “What Bakersfield?” Sanjay answered.

  Another half hour.

  Another hour.

  Still Thom couldn’t sleep, now that his conscience was so heavy.

  Even if his family got out, he doubted he’d ever shake the survivor’s guilt — passive and at the mercy of an external force again, just like his father said.

  Past midnight, Sanjay entered. Thom was already awake, and he shook the others. Rick, beside Rosie, roused on his own.

  “They’re predicting another half hour,” he said.

  “Did they call you?” A leading question; Thom wanted to know if Sanjay had noticed his missing phone.

  He shook his head. “They called my boss.”

  “I thought you were the boss.”

  “It’s sort of a matter of perception.”

  “What about the tests?” Rick asked.

  “We have all we need, I think. I’m sure we’ll call on you again while you’re quarantined, but my guess is you’ll be so thoroughly bored, you’ll leap at the chance for something to do. I don’t have any results to share. To be honest, what we’re seeing is … unhelpful.”

  “How?”

  “You are unique to you, Mr. Shelton. We seem to have called you here only to find out that what keeps the virus from attacking you cannot be replicated. But look on the bright side: if you hadn’t come, you wouldn’t be about to leave.”

  Fifteen more minutes.

  The building was lit, but without any sun the gloom draped their lives like a blanket. Thom was beyond exhausted. Carly, Brendan, and Rick all looked about the same. Only Rosie appeared chipper when she woke.

  Maybe he could close his eyes … rest for a few minutes.

  Thom was just starting to nod off when—

  Nineteen

  Don't Look

  The front door exploded open.

  It sounded like a bomb had gone off, but it was actually a car driving through the door and most of the wall, causing the front roofline to collapse.

  Bricks and dust rained from the broken ceiling. The whole room shook.

  Thom pulled Brendan back and Carly, still clammy but now faster on her feet, leapt with them.

  Rick stood almost calmly, but then even more chaos began.

  Two people spilled out of the car, a man and a woman. The impact had broken their windshield and bent their doors, so they climbed across the hood. The hole was wide. Behind it, Thom could see a similar hole in the gate. One of the big Army trucks had moved, probably to make way for the coming evac, and apparently these joyriders had been waiting for a way inside.

  But in saving themselves, they’d doomed those already in the building. The moonlight showed them plenty; Thom could see how fast the dead outside had multiplied … and how steadily, now that the perimeter was breached, they were ambling toward the bright light — and fresh meat — inside.

  Two of the soldiers had been knocked either dead or unconscious by overhead debris, but the other dozen-plus sprang into action, dashing past the newcomers and their car to face the oncoming horde.

  Thom could already hear similar gunfire (some of it louder and deeper, as if from a turret gun) from the building’s sides, suggesting that all those vehicles forming the barricade weren’t just for show. There were soldiers in them — more than thirty, probably, holding the building, along with all their vehicles and weapons.

  He had a moment to consider it in one run-on thought (this place must be serious even the military knows it’s serious) but after a second of that he was being pulled back by h
is father, who’d picked up one of the fallen soldier’s guns.

  He looked at Thom, who reservedly picked up the second dropped weapon.

  Rick fired.

  Soldiers outside did the same.

  But Thom didn’t fire; he either wasn’t loaded or couldn’t find a safety.

  He wrestled the big gun for five seconds or so before the soldiers outside began to back into the car hole, removing any chance of a clean shot. At first Thom felt protected. Between him and the zombies was a line of trained and armed killers. But the line did not hold. There were too many creatures outside, and machine guns, as it turned out, ran dry much faster than movies had Thom imagining.

  They fired in short bursts, but the total firing time seemed only seconds long — no more than ten. They must have had new magazines, and when they ran dry, Thom saw the soldiers reach to their belts.

  But the hesitation was too long, and the walkers behind weren’t frightened back when those in front of them were shot. Many, Thom noticed, weren’t even hit right. Many of the soldiers weren’t aiming for heads, or otherwise missing them entirely.

  In fear, they seemed to be reverting to their training: hit that big target on the chest. Some of the walkers who made it inside had been shot so many times, Thom could practically see the outside-mounted lights through their bodies. And yet still they marched on.

  Less than a minute after the car breached the wall, the walkers were inside and most of the soldiers were on the ground with walkers atop them, ripping away every bit of flesh they could reach.

  Thom could hear the soldiers screaming.

  Until they suddenly stopped after fifteen seconds, or fewer.

  “Get in back!” Thom shouted, waving at Brendan, Carly, and Rosie.

  Rick, still beside him, looked over surprised.

  What, he didn’t even think his son could yell?

  Brendan came forward, double-clutching while trying to reach for a weapon.

  Rick didn’t see; he was doing something to Thom’s gun, presumably to make it fire.

  Thom saw just fine. The first soldier reached back, taking him by the wrist with a reanimated hand.

  Rick got the alert, but in helping Thom, he’d manage to tangle his gun’s strap. He yelled, but then the thing’s head exploded before he could so much as stand upright.

  At first Thom didn’t know what had happened, but then he felt heat on his left hand where it held the barrel, and saw that the muzzle was smoking.

  He’d done it, and not by accident.

  He’d had to raise the muzzle, aim, and fire.

  The creature didn’t even flinch a second time. Its brain was gone.

  Rick looked at him as the memory eked back, Thom now recalling the instinct that made him take aim. There wasn’t time for it — the first line of walkers was still trying to get around the car and over the bodies, but an enormous group was right behind them. It seemed like the city was already lost, half the citizens right outside as if called to a beacon.

  Thom looked back. Carly was finally at a loss and Rosie seemed utterly confused.

  “Brendan!” He hissed at his son.

  “I want to help, Dad!”

  “Get in back with your mother!”

  Rick said, “He wants to help, Thom.”

  But Thom wasn’t backing down this time. Righteousness was on his side; he knew it as surely as he knew how he’d made his first kill. He knew why he was right (and Rick was wrong) only after looking back again at Carly and Rosie. His wife was up to this but also injured, and that made them both fresh meat.

  “He needs to do what’s best, Dad,” Thom told Rick.

  “So why don’t you cut the apron strings and—”

  “And what’s best is to protect them, not us.”

  Rick looked back and must have understood because his next noise was a bark of agreement at the boy. Carly’s shock was here at last. If someone didn’t force them into the rear, they weren’t going to go.

  And then it would all be over.

  “GO!” Thom shouted.

  Brendan was so startled by such an order coming from his father that he snapped-to without blinking.

  Thom, armed now with his safety off, fired on repeat, scoring more hits than he’d have thought possible. But the line was several levels deep; they came like eager crowds at a lightning sale. He kept his burst short, just like the soldiers’ and Rick’s, but still he ran out quickly.

  Rick thrust another magazine into his hands. They both reloaded. Thom was surprised to find the process fast, easy, and intuitive.

  “Now you, Thom,” Rick said.

  “I’m fine where I am.” And he was fine where he was, right beside the remaining soldiers.

  Rick shoved him. “I’m not being noble. Nothing out here survives. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Thom looked around. The soldiers were retreating — not away from the battle at large, but strategically, toward the door through which Brendan had just gone.

  “You first,” Thom said.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m a better shot.”

  So he went, keeping his gun out, paranoid the entire time that his nerves would make him hit the trigger and kill the wrong target. Once Rick eclipsed him, he let the weapon hang on its strap.

  Rick, last through, closed the door.

  They were in that sparsely lit back hallway now, packed to the gills. Thom saw Sanjay and the female tech who’d helped with Rick’s tests, but there was no sign of the other man, meaning Sanjay was in charge for real now if he hadn’t been before.

  Three of the soldiers had made it, and the clamor behind the door and through the outside walls suggested there’d be no more. Anyone still in the lobby or outside the building could count their remaining life in minutes.

  Carly was on a bench along the hallway’s wall, sitting with one arm around a terrified-looking Rosie, and the other wrapped around her son.

  “That’s everyone,” said Rick, taking charge.

  “Hardly everyone!” Sanjay cried out.

  “Everyone who matters,” Rick replied. “Anyone hurt? I mean, more than usual?”

  Too late, Thom realized that the soldier beside him was breathing far too heavy, and had been since they’d all fallen into place. He turned to look and saw the final seconds of humanity drain from the man’s yellowing eyes.

  Arms came up, one with a huge bite from the meat of his forearm. It looked like a Fourth of July watermelon — one chomped by an enthusiastic cartoon character. But the hands were strong; Thom felt fingers curve to compress his esophagus, tension in those macerated limbs pulling Thom into the soldier’s maw.

  A blow came from nowhere.

  It wasn’t Rick; he was at the group’s front, seeing this but too distant to react with a clear line of sight. It wasn’t Carly; she still looked dazed. With shock Thom found himself gazing into his son’s furious face. He held a hammer, from a toolbox found in the hall. The claw end of the same hammer was embedded in the former soldier’s skull — right at the back where the fissures met.

  Brendan let go of the handle and the hammer fell with the body. It was like the axe from earlier. Only this one in miniature, swung by a smaller set of arms but no less effective.

  “Are … Are you okay, Dad?” Brendan asked.

  Thom swept his son into a bone-crushing hug.

  “I’m sorry. I had to do something. I couldn’t just—”

  Thom held him by both shoulders and said, “I don’t ever want you to be sorry again.”

  A window broke in one of the rooms at the hallway’s end. Then another and another. On the opposite side, the locked door bulged, retracted, bulged again. They were either slamming against it to open the thing or simply applying the combined pressure of a hundred stacked bodies. Either way, Thom could hear the members strain: hinges soon to give, a lock soon to snap.

  The others — the ones who’d broken windows — appeared at the hall’s end. It was maybe thirty feet, no more. Unlike on the oppos
ite side, there was no door to stop them. There was also nowhere to go. They couldn’t go back the way they’d come, and one peek into the other rooms showed their windows covered with shadows marching by outside.

  Maybe the things were too dumb to know they could come in that way (the windows they’d broken were in a brightly lit room), but there’d be no getting past them if Thom and company cared to chance that way out. He could see the building as if from the air, inside his mind. They’d surrounded the building and were now pressing in. No escape whatsoever.

  Brendan hugged his father. Carly and Rosie, strangers before today, huddled close. Thom saw Rick close his eyes; he suspected Rick’s gun was empty and knew his goose was cooked. The others had wide eyes, waiting. One soldier still had ammo, so he fired and felled two of those coming. But then he ran dry too, and kept pulling the trigger until his pistol was empty. Thom did the same with his reloaded weapon … and then it was really over, with death now on everyone’s doorstep.

  “Don’t look,” Thom said, holding his son’s shoulders. “Never look up.”

  A second crash shook the building. Dust rained from the ceiling, and elsewhere they could hear the sounds of falling metal, plaster, and glass. A cloud had bloomed ahead, thick enough that they could no longer see the zombies. When it cleared, Thom saw the nose end of an armored Jeep where the walkers had been, smashed through the end-of-hallway window and the small plaster wall beneath it.

  “DOWN! GET DOWN!”

  Thom did as he was told, and not a moment too soon.

  The second the remaining living in the hallway hit the deck, the turret gun began to fire like the drag of a chain across a steel edge — far too fast to hear individual reports. But soon the walkers had been reduced to many piles of undead flesh.

  The gunner waved them forward, shouting. “Let’s go, let’s go! This is evac! We leave in ten!”

  He meant seconds. Thom was barely aboard when the Jeep started backing out, the gun silent but the gunner swinging the thing around on its mount.

  There were another two Jeeps beyond the wall, each with a center-mounted minigun cutting semicircles from the mass of oncoming walkers. There were so many of them. Thousands, Thom thought.