Left Behind: The Suburban Dead

by T. A. Sorsby

  It was louder than I would have liked. I put that to the back of my head, and went to the back corner again, waiting for the signal Anita and Damian were in, a minute later, I got it, Damian leaning around to give a thumbs-up. The sash window went up, and we were good to go.

  Neville helped Lucile get up to the window and climb through. He looked as if he was going to struggle to get up himself, then he stepped back from the window a moment, while the legs of a chair were offered through.

  He took it, simple office furniture, dark metal with blue padding, and set it up to give us a boost. After he’d swung a leg through and bobbed his head to get in, I did the same, finding myself standing on an old sofa, several blankets strewn across it as if someone had been sleeping there.

  ‘Five minutes,’ I whispered, ‘wait and listen.’

  *

  Thirty Seven

  I sat by the office door, half slumped, resting the side of my head against it to better hear the corridor beyond. I could dimly make out the wailing and moaning of the zombies outside, hear their fists beating against the rigid wire fence. Every now and then I thought I heard something from upstairs, a cry of pain, the shuffle of movement, a closing door, but I couldn’t really be sure.

  Neville sat on the chair behind the desk, all but wringing his hands as he looked about the room, glancing over signs of its recent occupancy - the slept-in blankets, a bottle of pop by the sofa, candles beside a pristine copy of a recent bestseller on the desk.

  It seemed like a good long while since we’d broken in; the soreness of catching my leg on the windowsill had faded, and was being replaced by pins and needles from my odd seating position. I looked over at Neville, and tapped my wrist. He checked his watch, and counted up fingers - one, two, three, then made an ‘ish’ gesture.

  Lucile was just leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, having picked a spot between two old vinyl records under glass, signatures of the bands and recording dates on white cards beneath. This studio had hosted some big names over the years. Guest appearances, live sessions. Not my sort of thing, less Some Bad Men, more dance-groups and wedding playlist wonders.

  I followed the train of thought from my favourite band and arrived in Katy Station on the outskirts of Depression Town. No leads. Nowhere else to look. If she was alive and well, she’d have found me by now - come to the flats, gone back to her old place.

  Only explanation that let her still be alive was her being out of the city, got away on one of those ambulances from the hospital, found out it was too dangerous to return. Started making a new life. I liked that thought. If she wasn’t here, at least she was safe, somewhere. I held onto that, wished for it. Apparently, it passed the time.

  ‘Time.’ Neville muttered, slowly rising from the chair. Lucile shrugged herself from the wall, and returned her gun to hand. She and Neville had left their bats by the bolt cutters outside - no good to them in the close confines of the building, and no sense bringing a club to a possible gunfight.

  I got up and opened the door a crack, stomach a-flutter from what we were about to get into. I took out the larger of my two guns. It felt more reassuring in my hand than the antique.

  ‘Anything?’ Lucile whispered behind me.

  I shook my head, and opened the door wider, moving out into the corridor. Four doors were down the left side, three had name plates for radio executives or DJs, I wasn’t really sure. The fourth, I remembered from my deliveries here, was a toilet. And, you’ll be delighted to hear, had soft loo roll. My brain went on a ten second tangent about that probably being the first thing to run out of at home once we went on the tinned fruit diet.

  Neville took the first door, standing off to one side, reaching for the handle. I knelt down on the other side, and as he let it swing open, pointed my gun in. Though the light was dim, there was enough to see nobody was home. I felt pretty stupid, kneeling there on the threadbare carpet, but we repeated the process for the next door.

  Just before we did the third, motion caught my eye at the end of the corridor, but I did as Anita asked, kept my cool, didn’t panic, and gave a long hard look down that way. It had been the woman herself giving a quick glace around the corner. A moment later, she and Damian appeared in full view.

  We checked the third room, while they made their way up the corridor, towards the reception area, glass doors looking out over the parking lot.

  I felt like my voice was trapped now, heartbeat rising in my throat, knowing we were now going to climb the stairs, and come face to face with the Deserters again.

  Anita pointed down the corridor she’d just come from, and put her thumb up. I did the same for ours. Then she pointed upwards. I nodded, then pointed to her, then to Neville; the two people with the most tactical training. Damian might have had the bigger gun, but they knew more of what they were doing.

  Neville and Anita led the way up the stairs, stepping softly, slowly, quietly, and in line with each other. They stopped just before the little landing at the top, the doors propped inwards by rubber stoppers. Neville went on the right, Anita on the left, just enough room for them to comfortably be side by side, then after a look, she held up her fingers, and made a countdown of three.

  It happened fast.

  They took the extra step to the landing, knelt down and leaned out of the stairwell, guns first. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about the diplomatic approach, but none of us had thought that going in guns-out was a bad idea, given that these people had already shot at us.

  They say you get further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. We were about to find out.

  ‘Freeze! We aren’t-’ Anita barked. I didn’t see what happened, but something glass smashed against the floor, there was a muffled swear, then Anita got louder. ‘Hands up, don’t fucking go for -’

  Bang, her gun reported, the sound flat and dull. She hadn’t even had time to threaten. Someone cried out in pain as something else clattered to the ground, crockery and cutlery. He’d been bringing food and water to his injured squadmate. We’d caught them at lunchtime.

  Anita’s gun barked again, but it was quiet compared to the overwhelming volume of shattering glass that followed - a glass door, an office window perhaps. For a few seconds after the deafening clamour, I could hear more glass falling from the frame with soft tinkling whispers, until Anita spoke up again.

  ‘We’re not here to fight!’ she yelled. ‘If you can still hear me, I’ve got no interest in shooting you again.’

  ‘I’m hit!’ someone called out, ignoring her. ‘It’s those scavs from last night!’

  ‘We don’t want anyone to get hurt,’ I called, cupping my hands but not taking another step upwards, ‘we were here the other day talking to the DJ about getting evacuated. Came back to check in when we heard the radio silence.’

  There was a moment’s quiet, before the apparently wounded one called back.

  ‘The Deputies? Shit, throw up all your guns and we’ll talk.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ I calmly stated, forcing down the rolling uneasiness in my gut, ‘we’ve got all the cards here. You’ve two wounded, you’re low on ammo, and…’ I hesitated a moment, almost telling him about our shooter in the upstairs bedroom, but I thought it better to keep that secret. ‘And well, we’re not.’ I finished. It came as lame as it sounds.

  ‘I’m armed enough,’ the injured man shouted back, ‘I’ve got a grenade. Could roll that down the corridor and you wouldn’t be making any more threats.’

  White hot panic rolled up from my legs to my head, bringing me out in a cold sweat. Would we be able to run fast enough?

  ‘Bullshit.’ Anita spat, ‘You wouldn’t use a grenade in here, even if you had one. Shrapnel would go through this drywall like paper, you’d be lucky to survive.’

  ‘What have I got to lose?’

  ‘You’re still alive.’ I reminded him, ‘That’s something, and look, we don’t want a fight here. We can all walk away. We’ve got some m
edical training,’ Lucile the First Aider cleared her throat but I ignored her, ‘we can patch you, and your wounded buddy up. My offer from last night stands, we’ll even throw in some food, got a picnic with us in our vehicle and everything.’

  ‘Where did you park? It’s crawling with rotters outside.’ The man asked, strangling a cry of pain. I doubt getting shot is a pleasant experience no matter where you take it. ‘You assholes let them through the fence?’

  ‘No, we didn’t,’ Anita reassured him, not rising to the name-calling, ‘came in through it with a pair of cutters. Knew you were in here so we didn’t want to take any chances, but you’re between us and a line on evacuation - so if you don’t want to get shot again, I suggest you give yourself up, and crawl into the corridor where I can see you.’

  ‘It usually take this long to talk people off a ledge?’ I muttered to Anita, moving to stand closer.

  She shook her head. ‘He’s stalling.’

  ‘Fuck this…’ I growled through gritted teeth, ‘How’s your partner doing, the guy who took a bullet last night?’

  ‘We’re doing good, what’s it to you?’

  He’d already lined sarcasm up as a favoured response for all our previous enquiries, which made me think there was trouble in paradise, and he didn’t want to show weakness.

  ‘He’s in no condition, his partner’s down too. Only one shooter to worry about.’ I muttered to my point-men. Despite my gut being in knots, it was still try to help.

  ‘Rush?’ Neville asked.

  ‘On my queue.’ I nodded, looking to Anita. ‘Mace him.’

  She bore teeth in a smile, but there was a manic nervousness to it. We were about to go into danger, against a desperate man with an assault weapon and nothing to lose, you’ve got to be a little crazy to face that. Especially when you’re forgoing your gun for a can of compressed gas.

  I took the flare out of my jacket, and stepped into the corridor, keeping low, dimly noticing the dropped sandwich tray and half-shattered drinking glass. Neville covered his side, making sure Anita and I weren’t flanked. I didn’t have time to explain what I was going to do, but I hoped she catch on quick.

  ‘Flash out!’ I yelled, mimicking the voice of a thousand faceless gaming avatars, lobbing the un-lit roadflare through a broken glass door on the right side of the corridor. I had expected that to be it, but Anita made a ‘bang’ to go with my imaginary flash, putting another bullet through the office’s corridor window.

  The bluff, the shock of breaking glass, I hoped it was enough. Cobra in hand, Anita at my side, we rushed into the room, yelling incoherently. The soldier had rolled onto his side, protecting his eyes and ears, but leaving himself open to a swift boot in the coccyx - hopefully taking the fight out of him, while Anita kicked the assault rifle away from him.

  He looked up in horror, eyes wide, expression pained, realising he’d been played. Seeing the end, he reached for a sidearm on his leg. That’s when Anita sprayed him in the face with CS Gas – also known as pepper spray, or mace. Standard police issue. A streamer of the stuff landed home, and immediately his snarl of anger turned into wails of pain. I felt a brief flash of sympathy, I’d been caught by some splash from that stuff before, and it can burn the skin, let alone the eyes.

  Sympathy didn’t stop me from disarming him, straddling his kicking legs and taking his pistol. He tried resist, but the pain was too much. Swearing and hissing, he made all kinds of promises about what he’d do to us, but the sound of shots from the corridor snapped my attention back. Brief bursts of small, automatic fire were filling the air.

  ‘Watch him, I’ll go!’ I called out, struggling to my feet and pointing the Cobra towards Neville’s side of the building, keeping myself as close to the shattered glass doorframe as I dared.

  Yeah. I’d told the firearms-trained police officer to sit and wait, while I, the postman, went into a firefight against a Territorial with a machine gun, wielding a six-shooter. Adrenaline is a bastard, but I must have said it with some conviction because she stayed put.

  Neville was, presumably, back down the stairwell, taking cover. I caught a glimpse of a black-clad trooper diving back into the doorway at the end of the corridor, and saw a magazine fall to the ground. He was reloading. He’d shot at my friends and he had the balls to try it again. I stepped out into the corridor to one-up my previous Maddest Thing record, set not thirty seconds earlier.

  I raised my gun, and walked forwards, slowly, measured steps that didn’t shake my aim. Neville, Lucile and Damian saw me coming their way, and backed me up; Neville leaning around his corner, Damian coming out into the corridor and crouching on one knee, shotgun to his shoulder. Lucile watched the rear – there was no more room, we made a line across the corridor, surely the easiest targets in the world, and waited several long heartbeats, for the shooter to surface again. I’m proud to say we kept our cool. But even then, it still went tits up.

  The black-clad soldier spun around the corner, gun to his shoulder, and fired. The Cobra bucked and kicked in my hand, twice, maybe three times, sounding more like Laurel’s rifle than any of the other pistols in the group. Neville fired several measured shots, to my - panicked pow-pow-pow. Damian’s shotgun went wild, blowing out a ceiling tile and sending dust and a bundle of wires down to hang over the corridor.

  In the aftermath of the gunfire, I heard a woman scream somewhere in the building, but my attention was pretty well focused on the job at hand.

  The man staggered backwards, I couldn’t tell who’d got him, but he must have been hit. He leant against the windowsill at the end of the corridor, back to the glass, which was already punctured by one bullet hole, cracked into a web.

  He looked down, a white man in his early twenties, with his eyes wide and mouth open. Weakly, he tried to raise his gun again, but then the window shattered into a jagged cloud, and red mist burst from the front of his head. He hit the floor face down. Which was a blessing.

  That might have been overkill on Laurel’s part, but you couldn’t say she didn’t have timing. We had one Deserter blinded, one with a gaping head wound and one still unaccounted for. I turned to Neville to say as much, but then I realised why Damian shot the ceiling.

  *

  Thirty Eight

  ‘Says that the other’s been bitten – oh my Gods…’ Anita gasped, coming into the corridor. I’d already seen it, but the bottom of my world was too busy dropping out to comment.

  Damian was sprawled out across the corridor, eyes closed, his shirt staining red around his gut and coat going a much darker brown near the shoulder. A pool of blood began to spread slowly across the lino beneath him. Chills rose up from my feet and froze me on the spot - I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  Lucile saw it too, but she slid down on her knees at his side.

  ‘Oh shit, oh my fuck…’ she gasped, making like she was about to press down on his shoulder or his chest, but her hands wavered, uncertain. ‘Damian, Damian can you hear me?’

  He slowly moved his head to look at her, opening his eyes groggily. ‘How bad?’ he asked, his voice shaking, ‘It hurt like hell, Lu.’

  Anita was next by his side, taking out the small FAK that I’d used to patch her up with days before. Would she be able to save him with that little thing? Rather than jumping to help, I just stood there. Useless.

  ‘That’s good Damian, if it hurts that’s good.’ Her voice took on a firm, calm tone, the way that EMTs talk to you when they’re loading you into the back of the ambulance.

  ‘Don’t…feel so good from here, seen?’ he said weakly, tilting his head up to look down the length of his body. When he saw the bloodstains spreading across his clothes, he lowered his head again, bearing his teeth in a defiant snarl. If pain was good, he was going to lean into it.

  ‘What can I do?’ Lucile panicked, breathing hard, panic taking over, forgetting whatever training she’d had in her service days.

  ‘Your shirt - blood’s pooling underneath, so he’s got exit wounds
. Need to slow the bleeding there while I stitch him up front.’ Anita frowned, concentrating as she ripped open Damian’s shirt with the aid of the tiny scissors.

  I watched the oozing blood until it touched Lucile’s knee, but she didn’t seem to notice as it soaked into her jeans. She stripped out of her jacket and hauled up the bottom of her t-shirt, a dark parody of undressing for your lover, leaving her kneeling in the blood in her staining jeans and black sports bra.

  Damian hissed through his teeth and looked up at the ceiling, his cool exterior crumbling slightly. ‘Ah, shit!’ he lilted, his voice going higher with fear, what’d happened perhaps sinking in - the reality that there were no emergency rooms to be rushed to, no doctors to come save him…and I still found myself rooted in place.

  Neville touched me on the shoulder, just that little touch being enough to bring me out of my daze. He lifted his gun, pointing towards the office where we’d left the temporarily blinded Deserter.

  ‘Go,’ he muttered, his voice sounding like it came from the bottom of a well. ‘I’ll keep an eye out here.’

  I didn’t say anything, I don’t think I had any words in me, I just walked around them, as soft-footed as I could. I’d tell you I trusted Anita and Lucile to see him through, but there was a lot of blood now. I wasn’t sure what to think.

  ‘Am I going to die?’ I heard Damian ask, sounding as distant and muffled as Neville had, coming over the sound of an increasing buzz in my ears.

  ‘Let me have a look at you and we’ll see…’ Anita comforted him.

  I entered the office, broken shards from the shattered window were everywhere. As it crunched underfoot, the soldier, curled up into a ball, gave an involuntary twitch.

  He must have caught himself at it, so he tried to regain his composure, unfurling himself and edging to sit up against the wall by the desk. He’d been spitting curses a moment ago, but the gunfire and the mace must have taken the fight out of him. I closed the door, the bottom pane was still intact. He began to draw in deep breaths through his nose, letting them out through his mouth.