“What?” The shocks kept on coming.
“I guess they don’t want to take chances that we’re zombies.”
Criswell frowned. “Or there could be another answer to your riddle. What if they knew you were alive and were trying to contain what they believe is a contamination area?”
Jeff didn’t think it made much difference. If people were contaminated, they would be zombies soon enough. But he suspected infection wasn’t the way this particular apocalypse worked.
“We don’t have time for conspiracy theories,” Edith said. “People are dying.”
She led them across the empty intersection to the white delivery truck. Jeff saw now that the men he had spotted near it were just teenagers, not much older than Jimmy Owens.
That is, not much older than Jimmy Owens had been.
Oh God, everyone’s dead.
He told himself not to think about it. There would be plenty of time for that later.
The one behind the wheel had succeeded in starting the engine, while the other one peeked under the hood.
Jeff looked down the road to their right. A halo of flood lights glowed over a rise in the road. The Dupree Bridge was a one-lane hunk of metal—hardly more than a cow crossing—which meant the light must have been coming from the military. Probably a road block.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Are you sure it’s okay to just cross the bridge?”
The teenager behind the wheel shut off the engine and got out. “Hey guys, this one works!”
The one looking under the van’s hood slammed it shut. Jeff saw now that studs hung from his nose like two brass antennae. “It’ll run over zombies real good.”
Edith shook her head. “Perfect, but we’re not taking any more survivors. It’s too dangerous.”
In other words, they weren’t going to go driving around in search of more live bodies. They must have been collecting folks all night.
Edith nodded toward the bridge. “It’s time to cross.”
It finally clicked in Jeff’s head what Criswell had noticed already. “Wait a second, are you leading these people?”
“They needed somebody.”
His admiration grew for her. Yes indeed, she’d come a long way from where she was that afternoon. But didn’t she just say the military were shooting people who tried to cross the bridge?
“I understand,” he said, “but maybe you should think about this.”
“I have.” Edith turned to the others gathering around them. “We cross now!”
***
Jeff thought he and the actor had either chanced across Edith Holman’s group at exactly the right time—when they were about to cross the Dupree Bridge—or at exactly the wrong time.
What he saw after a five-minute march due south didn’t comfort him.
At the far end of the short, one-lane bridge, the Army’s flood light, mounted on a pole, stared at them like a yellow eye of death. Silent, unmoving soldiers in combat fatigues and helmets crouched and lay prone to aim rifles at them. They had strung huge coils of barbed wire across the bridge. Others watched from behind wooden barricades decorated with a ROAD CLOSED sign. In front of the barbed wire lay shorter coils of some other type of barrier wire that looked even meaner, like it was made out of razor blades.
No way. This doesn’t feel right.
As the thirty or so survivors formed two single-file lines to cross, Jeff hung back.
Criswell stood beside him. For once, they were of the same mind. The actor reached out for Edith Holman’s arm as she passed them but missed. “This is a mistake.”
She didn’t even glance at them.
Jeff shrugged. “Maybe they know what they’re doing.”
He watched the survivors walk past, for the first time able to get a good look at them, thanks to the extra light. He saw older and younger people, men and women. A few children. Most looked in pretty good shape, with only minor cuts and scrapes. An elderly man supported his limping wife. A woman in a black, sparkly dress carried a tiny purse; she must have been out for a night on the town. A young girl held her mother’s hand. Although she was half the age of Emily Rooter, it brought back unpleasant memories of what occurred at the grocery.
Where Mac and Danny died.
No, you don’t know Danny’s dead. Now stop it. Hold it together.
As they passed a wooden traffic barrier on the near side of the bridge, the survivors all dropped their rifles and handguns. They put their hands on the tops of their heads as they continued onward.
No one made a sound.
Tension grew in Jeff’s stomach like a tumor. “God, I don’t like this.”
He assumed the only soldier wearing a beret instead of a helmet must be an officer. Jeff stared at him as the man peered back through binoculars.
The group was halfway across the bridge. Maybe everything would be all right, after all.
The officer dropped his binoculars and pointed at the survivors. “Fire!”
The Army opened fire.
Jeff and Criswell dove to the ground for the second time that night.
People tried to scatter, but it was too late. One by one, they all fell with brand-new holes in their chests and heads. Jeff groaned as they shot a young woman in her back as she tried to run away. She stumbled and fell across the traffic barrier, where she hung in an inverted V. There, she died as blood streamed out of her mouth to pool on the pavement below her.
Edith Holman was the last to go down. Jeff watched as she picked up the young girl, who now had a fresh bullet hole in her forehead. “No!” he screamed as a second round of gunfire took her down.
He grabbed Criswell’s wrist and pulled him the other way. “Come on!”
The big man climbed to his feet and ran with him.
More gunshots rang out, and this time, Jeff had no doubt they were intended for him and Criswell. But they were already too far away.
***
They ran all the way to the intersection where they first met Edith’s group.
Jeff pointed at the white delivery truck still parked crookedly in the road. “Let’s get in!”
But thirty feet short of it, four zombies emerged from the bushes and gave chase. The lead one was a young man in brown sweats and a stocking hat that didn’t conceal the gash across his forehead. He ran as fast as they did. Maybe he’d been killed by zombies in the act of working out.
The truck’s rear faced them, and its cargo bay door was open, pushed up on its tracks. Jeff and Criswell scrambled inside.
Criswell beat him to the driver’s seat and immediately turned the key. The engine roared to life.
Jeff pounded the inside wall. “Go! Go!”
The truck lurched forward, nearly throwing him out the back. As Jeff recovered his balance, Mr. Stocking Hat zombie leapt into the back with him.
He didn’t think. His arms, pumped with adrenaline, acted for him. He grabbed the zombie’s shoulders and slammed him into the wall of the truck. And then he pushed the creature with all his might out the back door to tumble into the gutter.
Jeff fell to his ass to stop his own momentum from carrying him out as well.
Criswell called from up front: “What the hell’s going on back there?”
Well, duh.
Jeff gasped for air as he watched Mr. Stocking Hat recede into the darkness behind them. As they drove farther from the bridge, the lights from the military roadblock faded away. They were alone for now.
Jeff pulled down the rear door on its tracks with a satisfying clunk. There wasn’t a way to lock it from inside, but maybe that didn’t matter. He climbed forward into the passenger seat.
The truck’s headlights cut two solitary cones, the only light on the street. Jeff could see they were about to enter the dilapidated eastern third of the island. Good enough.
Sweat dripped off Criswell’s face as he drove, but he didn’t seem to notice. “So where the fuckity fuck do I go now? I left my hick-town compass at home.”
Then Jeff heard the most startling sound he could have imagined under the circumstances, something he’d never heard before: Criswell’s laughter.
What the hell, he thought, and joined him.
Chapter 22
KELTON
They ran straight away from the soldiers until Kelton realized this was taking them farther from Nilbog Elementary. With a sickening feeling, he understood that the abandoned school might be where the soldiers were headed, as well. So did that mean he should trust them to take out the alien’s energy source and just concentrate on staying alive?
“Whoa, whoa. Slow down a minute.”
Three women and him. That’s all that was left of their original group of well-armed policemen. Kelton frowned as they stopped to catch their breath. He was finally getting his wish—to be the barbarian protector of his own little harem—but reality wasn’t proving as nice as fantasy.
Look at them. What were they thinking? Becky was probably the ablest body among them. She was a tall, physically fit African American woman carrying a shotgun. All Lucy Grimm had was a white lab coat, luminescent in the darkness. It might as well have been a billboard shouting LOOK AT ME! EASY TARGET HERE! And Paula—shit—she knew how to fire that handgun she carried, but she was barefoot and clinging to sanity by a thread.
And they’re all being led by me: a fatty who’s gonna faint because he missed his dinner.
Becky unbuttoned the collar of her uniform shirt to scratch her neck, revealing a bulletproof vest. “School’s the other way. But we’d be too exposed walking down Pine.”
Now was his chance. We don’t have enough people anymore, he would say. We should just focus on survival.
Becky gestured with her shotgun back the way they came. “I say we go back around the parking garage. The soldiers might be near there, but if we’re careful.…”
Kelton nodded. “Okay.”
He scowled in disgust at himself as Becky led them off in the new direction. The barbarian protector he wasn’t. Not a good one, anyway. Sometimes it was easier just to go along.
***
He pulled himself together by the time they were circling the garage’s base on its little access road. He would suggest they head south to the river. If they stuck to the trees and stayed quiet, they might make it to the Dupree Bridge and from there to safety. But it would be tough going in the darkness. Their only flashlight now lay beside Coburn’s corpse.
A concrete wall and overgrown hedges hemmed in the access road, pressing them closer to the garage. He couldn’t see a damn thing inside.
“Hey, guys, maybe we should just head to the river, and—”
“Shh!” Becky tapped a finger to her lips. She pointed into the dark garage and then to the egress where she was headed.
Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell them once we’re past this.
Every light in the parking structure blazed on with an electrical buzz.
It was an ambush. At least forty zombies stood in the center of the empty garage. They surrounded Kelton’s group in a loose C shape—hands already out, ready to grab anyone trying to slip past. Mouths open to bite.
Inspector Clay was there, his great plug of a bald head utterly white in death. His police badge reflected the lights as it hung from his suit jacket’s pocket. The sight startled Kelton as no one had told him the inspector died.
He also saw old man Jamie Rooter, face blackened by the fire in his house, the fire that Kelton had carried him out of just that afternoon.
And the rest of the Rooter family. The last time he saw Butch Rooter in his wife-beater undershirt, he lay with a torn-out throat in the foyer of his burning house. But now here he was, grinning like a redneck in moonshine heaven.
Butch’s brother, Henry, who’d escaped the house after setting fire to his father, stood with them. Someone had stabbed him in the face with a kitchen knife. The knife’s handle still hung from Henry’s right eye. Dried blood trailed down into his beard.
An ambush. Yes, sir. And it was one planned with a kind of personal, sadistic glee. The zombies—or the aliens controlling them—had known where he was headed and had tailor made his own welcoming committee. The only thing that would have made the party more perfect was if the former Rooter sister-in-law, Myra Applewhite, had escaped from jail to come here, too.
The zombies shuffled forward. In no hurry at all.
Becky fired her shotgun into the crowd. From this close, Kelton felt the boom throughout his whole body. The kitchen knife jutting from Henry Rooter’s eye disappeared in a spray of blood, taking the right half of his skull with it. Henry turned his head slightly, as if she’d merely slapped him across the cheek.
“In the chest.” Lucy’s voice came out as a strained grunt. “Their hearts.”
Becky fired again, this time hitting him center mass. The blast opened up his chest in a great, black cavity. Henry fell backward, nearly knocking over the zombie right behind him.
Myra Applewhite.
“No.” Kelton took a step back. “No fucking way.”
She made eye contact with him and raised her hands. Here I am. Smudges of ink still darkened her fingertips from when Larry booked her at the jail. The zombies must have busted her out when they recruited her. Below her half-toothless grin, she sported an extra red smiley face across her throat, ragged and stringy. The zombie who’d opened her up must have used its fingernails. That seemed to be a favorite M.O. for them.
“Run!” Paula said.
But nobody moved. The zombies had them surrounded. They continued their relentless, step-by-step advance. In another few seconds, they’d be close enough to play Paddy Cake.
From the other side of the garage, a rough male voice shouted, “Engage!”
A barrage of gunfire followed the command. The zombies at the rear of the group fell to the floor.
The assault continued, the staccato rhythm of machine guns mixing with the hollow booms of shotguns. More zombies fell or jerked as bullets slammed into them. The creatures turned away from Kelton’s group to face the new threat.
He had a glimpse of men in green camos, crouched behind concrete support pillars as they fired their weapons. It was the soldiers who’d murdered Coburn. Oh, no.
He pushed Lucy and Paula in the other direction. “Go on!”
They ran into the base of an open stairwell and took cover behind a wall. Becky stayed between them and the attackers, firing her shotgun—a good thing, because she provided cover for Kelton. Her head snapped sideways as a bullet found her, and she fell over dead.
Kelton crouched beside Paula Trent and Lucy Grimm and knew his turn was next.
***
“Would you die for me?”
The question caught him off guard as he leaned against the dishwasher in Paula’s kitchen. Kelton had been stuffing a chocolate-covered, cream-filled doughnut into his face. She always bought doughnuts for his breakfast when he spent the night, while she preferred granola sprinkled into yogurt. He looked up at her in bewilderment, conscious of a smear of icing on his cheek. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.
“I mean, would you take a bullet for me, if you had to?”
Kelton glanced down, past his police badge and over his love handles, to the revolver on his hip. He imagined it firing into the back of his own head. No, he thought, but because he had a mouthful of doughnut, he didn’t have to say it out loud.
He swallowed. “I suppose so.”
Paula frowned and looked away. She pulled her gray bathrobe tighter around herself, the same bathrobe she would one day wear as she fled the living dead. He knew she sensed his lie, and her disappointment made him gaze at his shoes.
They had stayed up the previous night watching The Last of the Mohicans, so he could guess where the question came from: those corny scenes where Daniel Day Lewis stands in front of his love interest, a waterfall’s spray streaming down his musc
ular chest. Him screaming, “I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you!”
He’d seen her wipe away a tear as they watched it. And maybe it had turned her on, because they kissed for a full minute after the movie was over, before Paula announced she was too tired for anything more.
She turned her coffee mug on the kitchen table, rotating its handle in a circle. “You always pick violent movies. Predator. Total Recall. First Blood: Part II. I think I’ve figured out why.”
“What, because they’re awesome?”
“No. Because you wish you were.”
He felt his neck heat up beneath his collar. She didn’t often insult him. In fact, never. “What’s this about?”
“Exactly. What is this all about?” She sipped her coffee. “You pick these movies because you’re so unhappy with your life that it’s your only escape. You wish you were smart enough to land a better job, away from Nilbog, but you’re not. So you settle for staying here and acting like you’re a tough guy—except you know you’re not that, either. You watch tough guy movies, instead.”
He dropped the doughnut beside her mug. Yellow cream spurted out onto the table. “I didn’t know they taught psychology at pharmacy school.”
“I don’t need a psychology degree to see where my life is headed with you, Paul. It clicked last night as we were watching that movie: how little we really have together. No passion. No sense of self-sacrifice. No love.”
He clenched his fists at his sides. He hated the way tears rose into his eyes, and worst of all, he hated how he knew this day had been coming. “When I asked if I could move in with you, you said no, you weren’t ready yet. So I haven’t pushed. And now I’m getting blamed for it?”
“It isn’t that, Paul, and you know it.”
“What, you think I don’t love you? You’re the only thing that keeps me going through the day—through my shitty job, when I’m busting drunks off the road. Of course I love you.”
“Until this moment, that’s the only time you’ve ever said those three words to me.”
Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization Page 21
