by T. W. Brown
Kevin and Mike sulked like a couple of scolded children down the stairs and around the side of the house. The smells from the kitchen had them both subconsciously quickening their step. They reached the front porch and Mike stopped so suddenly that Kevin collided with his back.
“You hear that?” Mike turned. Kevin had already stepped back and was shielding his eyes with his hands.
Both scanned slowly for the source of the low rumble that waxed and waned with no specific rhythm. The various pillars of black smoke that were drifting away from them on the wind gave no clues.
“Shaw?” Mike whispered as Kevin came up to stand beside him on the porch.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, nervously caressing the handle of the pistol holstered at his side.
The front door flew open, causing both men to jump. Kevin had his pistol in his hand and the safety off in a flash.
“You guys need to—” Heather’s voice stuck in her throat as she found herself staring into the barrel of Kevin’s Colt .45 semi-automatic.
“Grab the rifles,” Mike hissed, herding her back into the house. She turned and bolted up the stairs.
Kevin brought up the rear. Looking downhill, the edge of town was maybe a quarter of a mile from their doorstep. He thought he caught sight of a vehicle prowling through a smoky intersection. It was too difficult to tell. Closing the door, he climbed the stairs two at a time. Mike and Heather were each at a window, peeking outside. Both had a scoped rifle in hand.
“I thought I saw a police car,” Heather whispered.
“Me, too,” Mike agreed.
Kevin joined Mike and peered out as well. From up here, it was easier to see the half-dozen fires individually. From downstairs the smoke plumes all seemed to blend in. Actually, it didn’t look quite as bad as he’d thought it might.
“Over there!” Heather exclaimed. “Next to the Frank’s Fast Fill-up.”
Kevin scanned and quickly located the large maroon and white sign. It was a police cruiser! Whoever was driving knew what they were doing. He—or she—would go a couple blocks, then turn and hook back. The car would end up behind the small mob it attracted. The zombies would turn and he’d spin around again and leave them behind.
“He’s looking for something,” Kevin said jogging to the bedroom grabbing his binoculars. As he stepped out and into the hallway, he bumped into Heather.
“Can I go back to the kitchen?” she asked.
“Yep.” He put a hand on her shoulder and was suddenly hearing the entire conversation he’d had with Mike zoom through his head. He’d dropped it…probably a little too quickly judging by the look that crossed Heather’s face. “Mike and I will take turns watchin’ whoever this may be while the other cleans up.”
“Oh yay!” Heather clapped her hands and threw her arms around his neck, then hurried down the stairs.
“She’s totally not interested,” Mike’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Shut up!” Kevin came back to the window. He brought the binoculars up and quickly found the cruiser.
“Well?” Mike elbowed him in the ribs.
“There are a couple of bantha down there, but I don’t see…wait a minute,” Kevin recited the line from memory.
“C’mon, man,” Mike was actually whining.
“He’s stopping at some sort of fenced in, junkyard lookin’ place,” Kevin reported. “I think he’s getting out. Yes, he’s—”
Kevin dropped the binoculars and staggered back. Mike immediately searched for the bullet hole. His friend had just reacted like he’d taken a round to the chest.
“Kev?” He grabbed the taller man’s shoulders and spun him around so they were facing each other.
“Impossible,” Kevin whispered. His eyes were vacant and glassy. If it weren’t for the fact that he was also panting just a bit, Mike would’ve passed him off as one of the walking dead.
“What?” Mike shook him. Kevin’s mouth worked, but nothing came out of it. Finally, he lifted the binoculars over and off Kevin’s neck by the leather strap.
He went to the window and searched for the cruiser. He found it, but whoever was driving had ducked through a hole in the fence. Mike had found him just as he vanished behind a stack of wooden pallets.
“C’mon, you,” Mike growled.
Just as the person stepped back into view, Mike heard the front door open and shut downstairs. The driver turned. He was too far away to have actually heard anything. In fact, he probably couldn’t even see the bottom floor of the house from there. It didn’t matter. Mike saw the face. Just like Kevin, he dropped the binoculars.
“Impossible,” Mike whispered in the same tone Kevin used just a moment ago.
Kevin jogged down the grassy slope to the road. Cutting across a few open lots, he made for where he’d seen the cruiser park. He wasn’t stupid, he’d grabbed one of those sturdy eighteen-inch cornstalk knives. He still had his Colt in case of emergency.
A ragged looking woman with a huge flap of her scalp hanging down on one side limped towards him. Its hands clutched at empty air as Kevin ignored it and darted past. By the time it had turned, its prey had rounded a corner and vanished from sight. It made its way slowly in the new direction it had turned, already forgetting why.
Kevin heard occasional shuffling from various directions but continued to jog. He stayed in the middle of the road whenever it was possible. By now he guessed that he had to go about fifteen more blocks down and three or four over.
He remained alert and did his best to be cautious, but he couldn’t control his pace which kept getting faster. His mind was racing even more out of control.
How could this be? He had seen the bite with his own eyes. Hell, it haunted his dreams along with a hundred other nightmares that had put down roots. Only, this one was the worst because it had been his fault. All his fault.
A gaunt man with crazy brown hair that looked to have been styled with a combination of an egg-beater and electric shock lurched from behind a minivan. Its hands caught Kevin by his right elbow. Barely breaking stride, Kevin shoved the point of the cornstalk knife up under its chin, through the roof of its mouth, and into the brainpan. With a graceful spin away from the falling corpse, he continued on, once more gaining speed.
He rounded the corner. There, idling in front of Heath Salvage was a police cruiser. A man was ducking through a hole in the corrugated metal fence.
“Cary?”
The man’s head jerked up…along with a big shotgun.
Mike shouldered his shotgun and checked the pouch on his belt—ten shells—then tugged on his gloves. Kevin had run out like fool. He might be packing plenty of weaponry, but he hadn’t put on his leather jacket or mesh-lined gloves.
Hurrying down the stairs, he almost took off out the front door. Damn, he thought. He hurried back to the kitchen where he could hear Heather humming. He didn’t recognize the song.
“Back in a few minutes,” Mike called, making the girl jump.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Heather spun quickly, closing the door to the woodstove. A wave of sweetness and cinnamon rolled over Mike causing him to salivate.
“After Kevin,” Mike answered.
“Where did Kevin go?”
“After that squad car.”
“Is it the bad guys?” Heather’s voice instantly shifted to a frightened, subdued tone.
“No.” Mike held up his hands in his best attempt at a placating gesture. “Actually, if we’re right about what we saw, this could be—”
Mike stopped. What? A miracle? Hope? An impossibility?
“Could be what?” Heather asked for what was obviously not the first time.
“This could be indescribably amazing,” Mike said. With that, he turned and ran for the door. “Stay alert! We’ll hurry back!” he called over his shoulder.
“You better,” Heather grumbled. She’d worked so hard on this meal. More important, tonight was the night. The night
she would let Kevin know how she felt about him. Tonight she was going to give herself to somebody because she really, really wanted to.
Heather was in love.
“Cary!” Kevin glanced at the shotgun. The muzzle sure looked bigger when you were staring into one.
“Kev?” Cary rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand as he lowered the shotgun. His expression shifted suddenly and he re-gripped the shotgun and slowly raised it. He didn’t bring it to the shoulder, but at this range there was little chance he’d miss if he simply pulled the trigger.
“Whoa!” Kevin raised his hands. “I didn’t…I wasn’t…” He had no idea what to say. If Cary was still holding a grudge about what happened, he was well within his rights. Kevin would not draw his Colt. Realizing he still held an eighteen-inch blade in his hand, he dropped it and raised both hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Cary looked confused. “Did you help do this?” He gestured to all of the destruction readily apparent just about anyplace you looked.
“Huh?” Now it was Kevin’s turn to look confused. “You mean the attack on the survivors here in Heath? Hell no!”
“So you just happen to be running around the streets of town, no sign of Mike or Darrin, and very little in the way of weapons or protection?” Cary’s face went cold and blank. “Where are Mike and Darrin?”
“Mike’s close by and fine,” Kevin answered. “But Darrin’s dead. The same people who did this killed him. They also kidnapped a mother and her three daughters. We’re gonna get them back.”
“Ummm…” Cary lowered the shotgun. “Okay, you can tell me in a minute, got company coming.”
A pack of zombies came around the corner a block away. They’d been following Kevin. Deciding it would be okay, Kevin picked up the cornstalk knife.
“Hop in!” Cary said and nodded to the cruiser. “We’ll lose these fucks and then you can fill me in.”
“Fill you in?” Kevin raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Oh,” Cary laughed, “you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing with a pulse.”
“Something like that.”
“I guess we both gots some ‘splainin’ to do,” Cary did his atrocious Ricky Ricardo impersonation.
The two climbed in the front of the Ohio State Patrol car. Cary took off in a squeal of tires. The vehicle fishtailed a bit, easily leaving the zombies in their dust.
Mike rounded the corner. He’d just pulled his hand-axe from the crown of one fairly “new” zombie. Most likely one of the survivors that Shaw and his men had hit yesterday. About fifteen feet away, the trailing end of a pack of several zombies were lurching and stumbling—fortunately away from him. Unfortunately, the police cruiser was tearing away from him as well, sliding around a corner and vanishing from sight.
“Damn!” Mike hissed before he could stop himself.
At first it was just one. A guy, no older than himself really, who’d had several small bites taken out of him. Yuck, Mike shuddered, children. All the man had on were a pair of stiff, stained boxer-briefs. His body was covered with at least a couple dozen bites that had to have come from children. That must’ve been doubly horrifying.
Then, a small woman stepped from behind the first one. At no taller than three feet—and Mike felt he was being generous—was a little woman. Not the little woman, but an honest-to-goodness Little Woman. As he backpedaled, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. She’d been Asian, and was still wearing the tattered remains of a set of vinyl thigh-high boots. They’d probably had spiked heels, but those were long gone.
“What fresh hell did you two come from?” Mike no longer cared if they heard him since more than half turned his way and were coming. He’d have to lead this group on a wild goose chase. Better to get them all at once.
“C’mon you pus-filled sons-of-bitches,” Mike taunted.
Looking around, he saw a few more of the things emerging from the shadows. Some crept or pulled themselves from under cars, trucks, or piles of garbage and debris. Most of those were even worse off than the horde coming his way now, having abandoned their pursuit of the fleeing car for the more readily available meat standing in the middle of the street. The latest arrivals were missing one leg, two, or the lower half of the torso. But come they did, some mewling, some moaning and hissing, and others…
A chorus of baby-cries rose on the late afternoon breeze.
Considering his options, Mike drew a pair of steel-tipped, pommel-handled stakes he’d fashioned the first day they’d arrived at the farmhouse. He’d wanted a less precarious situation in which to put these things through a test…like on three or four. Oh well, he thought, beggars can’t be choosers. Looking for his best route, Mike drove a stake into the face of the nearest threat, a little surprised at how well the weapon actually worked.
Twisting, ducking, and dodging, Mike moved quickly, selectively attacking and clearing a path. He actually began to laugh as he took down one hungry corpse after another. Nobody was barking orders, or nagging that he wasn’t “doing it right.” He was exhilarated by the sudden sense of freedom.
A teenaged boy-zombie stumbled into Mike’s path, arms outstretched, mouth open wide displaying dark rotting teeth and a black, swollen tongue. “Eat this!” he yelled as he drove one of his stakes into that open maw. Another, missing the left leg to mid-thigh where a jagged piece of bone jutted from the meaty stump, wrapped its gnarled hand around one of Mike’s ankles, Mike plunged the other stake into the top of its head. Withdrawing both, he slipped free from the last fringes of the growing crowd and ran.
Throwing his head back in a long laugh that echoed through the empty streets, Mike howled.
Heather pulled the bubbling cauldron out from the woodstove and set it on a rack she’d scrubbed and set on the counter. Next, she checked the large casserole dish. She wished she had some meat. She knew guys well enough to know that, for the most part, guys liked to sink their teeth into—
“Blech!” Heather shivered at the thought. Suddenly, the idea of not having meat didn’t seem so terrible.
Looking under the lid, she admired her work. It was ready. All she needed now were two hungry men to help her eat. She placed the big dish on a pad in the center of the table and took off the apron.
She hurried up the stairs. Hopefully she could get an idea where they were, or if they would be walking through the door soon. Also, she could better see if anything unpleasant was approaching. She was proud of herself in that department. She didn’t shriek or cower when she saw those hideous things anymore. Nope. Now she put a bullet in their head, or, if they were being careful not to draw attention, brought one of the big blades or pointy sticks into play.
There! She heard the low growl of a car engine. She searched frantically. She wasn’t too worried about a couple of zombies showing up at the moment while she was alone. No. She was far more afraid of the living. It hadn’t been a zombie that kept her tied up in the basement of her high school. It wasn’t a zombie that had done those terrible things to her. Or worse, made her watch as he did it to others. Others he had intentionally let get bitten.
Heather physically shook her head to clear her mind of the images threatening to intrude. Today was a day to put all that in a strong box and lock it away. This was the day that she would give herself rather than be taken.
She scanned the edge of the town below; the remains of Heath. Just as dead as most—if not all—of its inhabitants. Anything coming from there would have to cross a lot of open ground if they were headed for this house. And they’d have to come uphill. They would have to cross a two-lane road. So even if they crawled though the grass, brush, and overgrown weeds, they would not be able to hide when they crossed that road.
Heather’s eyes narrowed. Something was lurking in the shadows of one of the buildings. It had been Packy’s Feed and Seed before things went bad. Packy had been short for Packard, the family who’d owned that store since her grandma’d b
een a little girl, and probably even before that.
There, something moved again. She checked the safety on the .30-06 that Kevin had showed her how to operate. She hadn’t actually fired it yet, but she knew how. He’d explained how it would kick. He’d also said “use it only if you are in worse-than-normal danger,” whatever that meant. It had a nice scope on it and had belonged to the people who lived in this house.
Bringing the rifle to her shoulder, Heather slowly scanned the area she thought she’d seen movement. What she saw brought her heart to her throat.
“No,” she managed a strangled cry.
“Just coast into that open lot.” Kevin pointed. “See that house up on the ridge over there?”
Cary scanned, “That two-story one that looks like the modern update to the place from Night of the Living Dead?”
“Exactly,” Kevin agreed.
Cary wrenched hard on the steering wheel. That was the big drawback to power-steering. Shut off the car and you needed to be Hercules. The only sound was the crunch of tires on gravel as they came to a gliding halt in the open lot Kevin had pointed out.
“We can always run back to this place and get the car if we need to,” Kevin said.
“I still don’t think I’ve got my head wrapped around Darrin,” Cary said as he put the car in park and looked over.
“Me either,” Kevin nodded solemnly, “but I’m not gonna let those assholes get away with it. Wait till you see what I’ve put together.”
“Actually, I’m a little more excited to see the look on Mike’s face.”
