One thing she predicted correctly, though: she couldn’t react fast enough when the bullets finally hit the fan.
“Enough of this,” the commander said—and that’s all the warning she had.
But Kelton must have seen something, being closer. Or maybe he’d already reached the same decision as the commander—except he arrived there one second earlier.
The commander’s head disappeared in a blue flash. Blood spurted from his neck stump, and he collapsed.
A boom echoed across the garage, and Paula realized Stark had fired as well. An empty shell fell out of the shotgun as he pumped to reload.
Stark rotated to aim at the remaining soldier. “Where do you stand, Horner?”
Horner glanced at the business end of the shotgun and swallowed. He holstered his sidearm. “Someone has to be alive to carry out this mission.”
They all lowered their guns, including Paula.
She looked away to stare at the pile of zombie bodies. Inspector Clay’s charred corpse lay a few feet away. Black stars appeared in her vision, so she crouched before she would faint.
Vomit rose into the back of her throat. She closed her eyes and focused on keeping it down.
Lucy touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I will be.” And for the first time since Inspector Clay started this whole nightmare by breaking into her kitchen, she actually believed it.
***
She knew for sure she would be all right when a white delivery van pulled into the garage, and she saw who sat in the passenger seat.
Or maybe I’m dead, and this is a dream. This can’t be real.
Her nausea dissipated as she ran for the vehicle. “Jeff! Oh my god, Jeff!”
Jeff leapt out before the van came to a complete stop. Paula plowed into him so hard that his breath rushed out in a little “oof!”
They laughed as they kissed.
She tasted blood on his lip and inhaled his sweaty odor, and that’s what convinced her this wasn’t a dream. He was here, and he was alive, and she was alive with him. She buried her face in his neck and squeezed him as hard as she could, feeling the familiar muscles of his back.
I don’t care if this is a dream or not. This would be the best dream to have right now.
They pulled away to assess each other’s faces. A scratch bled over Jeff’s right eyebrow. He looked haggard and pale with fatigue.
She must not have looked much better, because Jeff asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you?”
He began to say something, but then he stopped because he was crying. Paula didn’t think she could be surprised any more tonight, but there you had it: she’d never seen him weep, and the sight of it made her cry, too.
Another kiss, this one longer. When they stopped, she ran her hands across his stubbly cheeks and through his crewcut. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
“We wouldn’t have turned in here if we didn’t see the lights on. What happened here?”
Paula glanced at the pile of bodies. The two soldiers stood on the far side of it and consulted an iPhone. She gestured dismissively with one hand. “Just some fighting. That’s all.”
Jeff laughed, pushing the tears down his cheeks. She laughed with him.
After a moment, Paula heard nervous shuffling behind her. Kelton was staring at his feet, his face red. She knew him well enough to feel his twinge of jealousy, even after everything they’d been through tonight.
Jeff broke away to shake his hand. “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”
“Just doing my, uh, you know…”
“Your job?”
Kelton nodded but continued to look away.
“It was more than that. And I won’t forget it.”
Paula wondered if Kelton wished he had the perfect movie one-liner handy. She decided to give him one. “A hero’s job is never done.”
Kelton looked up at her, startled. And then he smiled, maybe the first one she’d seen on him the whole night. She wanted to say more, things like thank you and maybe we can be friends now and I’m glad you’re not dead. But she didn’t know how to say them with her husband standing there, and maybe it wasn’t necessary anyway.
The man who’d driven the white van smirked and crossed his arms. He was a big, dark-skinned guy in a black suit and bowtie. Paula registered his horn-rimmed glasses and moustache and thought he looked familiar.
She was about to ask who he was when she noticed her husband staring at her.
“You’re right,” Jeff said. “This isn’t done.”
“What?”
Jeff nodded at the pile of zombie bodies. “We have to see this through.”
At last, she understood his meaning. “Jeff, no.”
He strode to where the Mexican standoff took place. Matter of factly, he reached past the headless corpse of the military commander to retrieve the dropped handgun.
The big, dark man was right behind him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Jeff was so startled that the gun slipped out of his fingers. Paula held her breath as it clattered on the pavement. One of these days, I really need to teach him about guns.
Jeff left it on the ground and stood up. “We’re gonna help.”
“Nope.”
“What?”
Paula stepped in to hug her husband around the waist. She wanted to hold him back from whatever he intended, but she knew a hug wouldn’t be enough.
Jeff looked between the two of them in confusion.
The big guy pushed his glasses further up his nose and scowled. He looked like someone who scowled a lot. “Jeff, I’m not a smart man. I just got enough sense to get by. That’s about it. You’ve been working the entire night to get back to this girl. And now that you have, you want to take her into immediate danger and see if you guys are gonna make it out okay?”
“But we can help.”
“No. You can’t.”
“But—”
Paula shushed him. This guy—whoever he was—was throwing them a bone, and she wanted Jeff to take it. “Just listen to him.”
The man crossed his arms, and Paula finally recognized him as an actor on TV. But where had she seen him?
“You got the girl in the middle of a world-ending event,” the actor said. “You both should be dead. Very dead. But you’re not. It doesn’t get any clearer than that.”
“No. I—”
“You did the job. You’re a hero. Now take your wife, and find a safe place.”
The actor picked up the gun Jeff dropped and handed it to him. “You’re a good man, Jeff. Don’t get stupid on me.”
Jeff remained silent for a moment as he stared at the others—at the soldiers still tapping their iPhone, at Kelton watching from the other side of the zombie pile, at Paula.
Come on, she thought. Get me out of here. Please. I’ve changed my mind about dying tonight.
Finally, Jeff’s shoulders slumped. He nodded. “Thanks.”
He gave the other man a brief hug before turning to walk away. Paula threaded her arm through his and kept her hand firmly planted on his hip as they headed to the van.
I’m not letting you get away this time. Not for airplanes in Atlanta. Not for zombies. Not for anybody.
But she didn’t think she’d have to say those words. Jeff knew what was important now. She’d heard it in his voice on the radio, and she’d tasted it in his tears.
As for her, Paula knew she would be move out of the house at 105 Orchard Way, Nilbog, Virginia. She would leave it, her parents’ graves, and her copy of How to Save Your Marriage behind. She would follow Jeff wherever he wanted to go.
She made eye contact with Lucy Grimm as they walked past. “Take care of Kelton.”
The young, pretty scientist nodded. “I will.”
When they reached the van, Jeff turned to look back at his dark-skinned friend. “You know, I never learned your real name. Just been thinking of you as Criswell.”
The actor looked thou
ghtful as he stepped closer. His glasses had again fallen down his sweat-slick nose, so he pushed them back up. “My name is…” He hesitated. “Mal.”
Jeff looked puzzled at first, but then he must have made the connection at the same time Paula did. They looked at each other and grinned.
Jeff snapped his fingers. “Mal Levolent? From Sinful Cinema?”
The actor looked embarrassed. “Yes.”
“I used to love that show! But then they got that stupid bimbo who couldn’t act. Brown Sugar or something? I don’t remember.”
“Mistress Cinnamon.” Mr. Mal Levolent smiled and put his hands on his hips, a mannerism Paula now remembered clearly. “But if you want to call her a stupid bimbo, that’s fine with me.”
Jeff cocked a thumb and fired an imaginary pistol at him. If Paula had her way, that’s as close as Jeff would come to a real firearm for the rest of the night. “You should start that show back up. I would tune in.”
Mal kept smiling. “Maybe I will.”
Giggling like teenagers, Paula and Jeff climbed into the van and drove away.
They talked about the Sinful Cinema TV show the whole way out of the island’s east end, before they pulled into a secluded stretch of woods to wait out the crisis in the back of the locked van. It was a surreal relief to talk about something normal, almost as great a relief as it was to be together again.
The hard floor of the cargo area proved to be an uncomfortable place to make love, but Paula didn’t care. Jeff cried one more time before they finally slipped off to exhausted sleep, and Paula cried with him.
She held him tight and wished for the moment to go on forever.
Chapter 24
LUCY
As Lucy watched the delivery van drive out of the parking garage, Kelton stepped up beside her. “Why didn’t you go with them? It’s probably safer.”
She reached into the pocket of her lab coat to squeeze her Angry Birds tension ball. She nodded at the zombie bodies near the stairs. “That’s my grandpa over there.”
Kelton nodded as if that explained everything. “Do you think your grandpa—”
“Oh, no. Shit. Kelton!”
“What?”
She ran up to the two zombie bodies and rolled them over with her foot so she could see their faces. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Grandpa’s not here.”
Together, they fanned out from the stairwell and searched the others Kelton had shot.
“He’s not here.” She stared to cry.
“Hey, hey. Take it easy.” Kelton awkwardly put an arm around her shoulders and patted her back. “He probably just got away. That’s all.”
“It’s not fair.” She dug her fingers into her face and tried to get herself under control. If she gave in to her grief now, she wouldn’t survive the night. She knew that was so—intellectually—and keeping things intellectual was the way things would have to be for now. I’m not ready to feel it all yet, she’d told Grandpa that afternoon, right after the funeral. It was still the truth.
But wouldn’t it feel nice to turn into Kelton’s embrace? To feel that arm around her shoulders holding her close? She could bury her face in the soft lining of his jacket’s lapel and let it all out. Paula asked me to take care of you, she would tell him. Would you let me? And will you take care of me?
But Kelton stepped away. He addressed the big man who’d driven in with Paula’s husband. “How about you, Mr. Mal?”
“It’s Mr. Levolent, or just Mal. Or Criswell, if you like.” He gave a little chuckle, as if the joke should mean something to them.
“All right. I’m just Kelton. Why didn’t you take the chance to leave? I have a job to do. I’m a cop. But you could’ve gone with them.”
Mal Levolent—and no, Lucy didn’t believe that was his real name—stared thoughtfully at the two soldiers still consulting their iPhone. He considered the pile of zombie bodies and shrugged. “I haven’t felt this alive in a long time.” He smiled at Kelton. “And who knows. If I add ‘real-life zombie killer’ to my resume, I can restart Sinful Cinema with a better fan base.”
“You know, I’m kind of an expert on movies. You need a co-host?”
The smile dropped. “Don’t push it.”
Before Kelton could answer, Mal Levolent walked up to the two soldiers. “So, you’re not going to kill us?”
The red-haired one put away his handheld and exchanged a look with the Asian. Lucy replayed the standoff in her head and remembered their names: Horner and Stark.
Stark shook his head. “Not in my mission, not anymore. But until we get the threat neutralized, I’d recommend not sticking your head out of town.”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about that. We’ve seen firsthand what our government’s policy toward that type of threat is.”
Stark’s eyes narrowed. It was the look of a man being challenged.
Lucy cleared her throat. “The next shock wave will hit within the hour.”
Stark nodded. “Right.” He placed the stock of his huge shotgun on his hip and pointed it at the ceiling. “Okay, listen up. Since we’re down a man or two, I need your help killing all the bad guys. If you got the guts, pick up a weapon and follow.”
The two soldiers walked off without another word.
Lucy looked at Mal and shrugged. “That’s that, I guess.”
“You want to come kill some aliens?”
“Yup.” She clenched her jaw and turned to follow the others.
The actor sighed. “Now, where’s my common sense?”
***
A minute after they left the garage, it occurred to Lucy that picking up a gun might have been a good idea. How the hell did she propose to kill zombies—with her resounding intellect?
I’m not thinking straight. Seeing Grandpa as a zombie had rattled her. And then not to have the closure of knowing he was finally dead, the normal way.…
She sighed and trudged behind Horner to the abandoned school at the end of the street.
The building was still attractive, even in its ruinous age. Brown and white trim decorated sand-colored, concrete walls. As the group crept closer to its entrance with guns drawn—all except Lucy, of course—she stared at the white brackets supporting the ledges that ringed its two stories. Teeth-like battlements rested atop those ledges. A stone engraving near the roof read PUBLIC SCHOOL.
Under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed trespassing to explore its old classrooms. But tonight, she could only grit her teeth and put one foot in front of the other to climb the steps.
As Horner paused to check the map on his iPhone, Mal peered over his shoulder. He gestured at the school. “What’s in there?”
“We don’t know exactly. The captain is the only man to have been inside one of these things. And he took off his clothes and ran after a hostile.”
“I have seen this recently. That is a trademark of the insane.”
Stark kept his shotgun trained on the entrance as he silently climbed the steps. He moved like a panther. Lucy didn’t even think his head bobbed up and down as he jogged. Stark flattened himself against the wall beside the door and motioned for them to hurry up.
She felt like a clumsy giraffe as she followed Horner, Kelton, and Mal to the other side of the door. She wondered if she should take off her lab coat to not stand out so much against the darkness.
The wooden door hung open, half off its hinges. A faded NO TRESPASSING sign poked through its broken windows.
Stark and Horner pulled small flashlights from their pockets. They attached them under the barrels of their weapons and switched them on.
Seeing this, Kelton exhaled hard through his nose. “Nifty.”
Stark and Horner led the way into a dark lobby littered with weeds and dead leaves. They checked the shadows to their left and right as they moved. Lucy felt even more like she shouldn’t be here, that she was only inviting her own death.
Horner carried a small submachine gun, but he kept it stra
pped across his back. That way, he could hold his handgun in one hand and his iPhone in the other. He checked the phone’s map before pointing up.
Stark nodded, and they all began climbing the stairs to their right.
Horner paused on a landing halfway up to touch a blood splatter on the wall. Still wet. “Cap came through here, all right.”
As he spoke, a white light flooded in through the windows above them.
Stark backed up against the wall. He swept his weapon in all directions. “Fuck.”
When nothing else happened, Kelton craned back to look up through the windows. “It’s just the school’s exterior lights.”
Stark came off the wall but didn’t stop scanning the stairwell. He spoke in a strained whisper. “Kind of suspicious, don’t you think?”
Lucy agreed with him, but she wasn’t going to make more noise by saying so. At least now they’d able to see without the soldiers’ flashlights.
They continued climbing the stairs.
At the top, they entered a wide hallway leading off to classrooms. It smelled faintly of rotten eggs. But what caught her attention were the tentacles of black slime attached to the walls. They extended in all directions, like a spider web. Some connected to stalagmite formations of black rock on the floor. The slime twisted through the extended ceiling’s grid like kudzu and displaced the tiles from their frames, many of which lay below in pieces. She couldn’t tell from where the slime originated or what its purpose was, only that it looked like it didn’t belong here. She stepped closer to one of the tentacles on the wall beside her—and squeaked as it pulsed like a vein in someone’s neck.
Stark put his finger to his lips. He pointed at a body sitting in a doorway far down the hall.
She couldn’t help squeaking again as it raised its hand to wave.
***
They didn’t run for the man in the doorway but proceeded slowly and carefully. There were pulsing stalagmites to circle, for one. As they moved farther away from the windows, Lucy saw that the stalagmites glowed at their tops like miniature volcanoes. Stark and Horner shone their flashlights into classrooms as they passed.
Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization Page 23
