Dead 09: Spring

by T. W. Brown

  What my eyes saw, and what fed my growing fury was that this area of the store now housed sick or injured children. A dozen smaller beds were in a neat row, and I could see terrified faces peering at me. Each of the children had been strapped down and their mouths taped shut like the young boy on the floor. Two figures were standing in their midst with long swords in their hands.

  One of them snapped out of the surprise generated by my sudden and violent arrival. The person fumbled impotently for a holstered pistol, but I was faster and already had a weapon in hand. I plunged my blade in and up just below the ribcage. Blood came in a dark gout from his mouth, and he made a weak, mewling squeak. I shoved him aside, spun to face the second person, and felt myself stumble and come to an awkward halt.

  It was a woman. She had a long, slender blade out before her and was moving with a catlike grace as she came for me. All my rage and anger seemed to have simply vanished. My mind was screaming that this woman was going to kill me. She was like some beautiful but highly lethal flower. Her eyes were locked on me and I saw my death in them. The fact that I’d just killed three of her companions meant nothing. They were men. Sure, Katrina would probably smack me up side my head and call me a pig, but I could not help it.

  A dark smudge suddenly appeared in the center of the woman’s forehead. She slumped to the ground in a lifeless heap. I took brief comfort in the idea that she probably never even knew what had happened. I glanced over my shoulder to see the guy who had come with me stepping out from his aisle. He still had his funky slingshot in his hand.

  “Damn,” I breathed. “That baby packs some heat.”

  “Good for relatively close range,” he said with a smile.

  “What the hell do you use as ammo?” I could not help my curiosity.

  “Ball bearings when I can find them.”

  I leaned down and offered the young boy on the floor my hand. He scrunched into a ball and shied away from me as he stared up with wide and obviously terrified eyes.

  “Jeez, Billy,” my cohort with the slingshot said as he elbowed past and knelt down beside the scared young man.

  I stepped back and scowled. I turned to look at the other kids still secured in their beds and saw similar expressions in all their faces. How could they not know that I was the good guy? I had just saved their asses.

  A scream from deeper in the huge store pulled me from my thoughts. I turned and waved my arm above my head for the group to join me. Turning to the guy with the slingshot who was carefully removing the tape from the young man’s mouth, I said, “You go ahead and cut everybody loose. Keep one person here with you to stand guard.”

  Just then, the rest of my team arrived. I motioned for Katrina and the guy standing beside her to follow me. I hated not knowing how many raiders might be in here. I hated running around without an actual plan.

  Just ahead I spied a long train of temporary walls. They were the kind I remember from school; they acted as a partition for a section of the room and were on wheels. They also had about a six inch opening at the bottom. I raised my hand to signal a halt and laid down on my belly to try and get some sort of look. I saw three sets of boots moving about what I had to assume was a single row of beds. I also saw a young man lying face down in a pool of blood just a few feet away. His eyes were open and staring, but the dullness gave away the fact that he was very dead.

  “Just keep your mouths shut and nobody has to get hurt,” a man was saying.

  “You killed Ricky!” an elderly woman snapped. “Why did you have to do that?”

  “Please just hush, ma’am,” another voice spoke with cold authority. “The young man…Ricky was it? He drew a gun. What would you have us do?”

  “I would have you throw yourselves into a mob of those disgusting groaners, only they would probably get food poisoning,” the elderly woman retorted. I think I just found Dr. Zahn’s long lost sister.

  “Tape ‘em up,” the second voice spoke.

  I heard the familiar ripping sound as strips of duct tape were being torn. There were sounds of a struggle and I saw two sets of boots converge on one bed.

  “You won’t get aw—” the elderly woman began to protest, but her words were cut off and muffled as, from the sounds of it, at least four strips of tape were applied.

  “Please do not make us hurt you,” a third, and much younger sounding voice pleaded.

  “Just do your job, Gable,” the second voice ordered.

  At least I had an idea who was in charge. From this position, I had even been able to determine which set of boots belonged to him. He was standing back while the other two were taping the mouths of every patient.

  Getting up to my knees, but keeping my head down so that I could see, I moved as silently as possible to mirror the person that I had determined to be the leader. I motioned Katrina to move the opposite direction. He was pacing back and forth and would actually come close to the opening between a pair of these rolling, false walls.

  I moved to the edge of the partition, stood up, and waited for Katrina to get into place. Raising one hand slightly, I held up three fingers and gave the countdown.

  Three…

  Two…

  One.

  As quickly as possible, I stepped out from around the partition just as the man turned to resume his pacing in the opposite direction. Once more I lunged in and drove my knife into a man’s back. This time I did not bother to cover his mouth.

  I yanked the blade free and took a step towards the closest target. He looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties. He also looked like he had not eaten a good meal in about six months. His cheeks were sunken and his face was little more than a thin layer of skin clinging to a skull.

  “Just drop your weapon,” I said. I hoped the sudden wash of fatigue that was rolling through me did not show.

  The man took a tentative step toward me, but it was the younger kid who spoke. “Just do what he says, Mitch.”

  “Shut up, Gable,” the man I now knew as Mitch growled.

  “Do what the kid says,” Katrina called from behind both men who were so fixed on me that they had not seen her step into the cordoned space.

  Mitch looked over his shoulder and something dark and nasty crossed his face. It was so brief that it might have been my imagination, but considering what I’d seen in the past year, I seriously doubted it. He looked back to me with no expression at all. Extending his arms out to his sides, he opened one hand and let the wicked machete that he was carrying fall to the ground with a noisy clatter.

  “Now open your jacket,” I said. Mitch scowled and I knew I hadn’t imagined that. Still, he did as he was asked and revealed a nifty looking shoulder holster with what I was guessing had to be a freaking .44 Magnum. I mean, this gun was straight out of a Dirty Harry movie.

  That thought made me wonder what Clint Eastwood looked like as a zombie. And then I started to chuckle.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Mitch snapped. Obviously he thought that I was laughing at him.

  “Nothing,” I replied through laughter that was actually getting worse the more that I tried to stop.

  “Billy?” Katrina called with genuine concern in her voice.

  I was verging near hysterics at this point. The laughter was so fierce that I felt like I was going to pass out if I could not get a breath soon. Keeping her eyes on me, Katrina made her way across the room. Through the tears in my eyes, I could see Mitch lower his arms.

  Crap, I thought. I tried even harder to stop laughing, but it was useless. By now, everything was a blur as I felt tears flowing down my cheeks. Somehow, I ended up on my knees.

  I heard the distinct sound of a gunshot, and people yelling. Unfortunately, I was growing dizzy as I simply could not catch my breath. The more I tried, the worse my laughter became. Then…the room faded.

  ***

  “Billy?” a voice called from somewhere that was both very close, yet miles away.

  I opened my eyes to discover Katrina and
the rest of my group gathered around me. Katrina was holding a rag that was crimson. Crap, I must have been shot or stabbed, I thought.

  “Hey, big man,” the guy who I had left back with the kids said with an uneasy laugh, “you gonna be okay?”

  I sat up, and Katrina moved away just a little to give me some room. My eyes scanned the group as my hands went over my body in search for whatever injury had caused so much bleeding.

  “You lookin’ for something?” a voice asked from almost right behind me, causing me to jump. “Whoa! Sorry!” A man stepped out and into my field of view with his hands up. “Just asking a question since you seem to be patting yourself down.”

  “Where am I hurt?” I asked. The looks I got in return were a mixture of everything from puzzlement to concern.

  Katrina leaned in close and began inspecting me. “Does it hurt anyplace specific?” Her hands had now joined mine and were patting me down and tugging on places to try and find the wound.

  “I gotta be hurt somewhere to be bleeding like that.” I gave a nod to the rag that Katrina was still holding.

  It was like I threw a switch. Everybody froze, and then they started laughing. I was the only person who did not find the humor in the moment. Well…with the exception of the kid I recognized as one of the three that we had encountered before I blacked out or whatever the hell happened.

  “Billy,” Katrina said with a sniff, “this is what I wiped from your face. You were a crimson mask of horror from whatever you did back there when you took out the guys who were holding those children hostage.”

  “You scared the piss out of a few of ‘em…literally,” the man who had been there with me said with a shake of the head. “You killed the second guy and got a good spray of blood across your face. Then, after I took down the girl, you spun on those kids, blade dripping with blood clutched in your hand. Those poor kids thought that the devil himself had come.”

  That at least explained the reaction that I had received. I looked around and only saw one of the two would-be hostage takers. He looked like somebody had just taken away his birthday.

  “And what the heck happened to him?” I asked.

  “When you went kooky, that idiot you were keeping at gunpoint made a move for his gun,” Katrina explained. “The kid over there shot him.”

  I glanced over at the young man standing with his wrists zip-tied and cocked my head with the unasked question of why. He met my gaze and blushed.

  “BP and his team have the perimeter secured around this place and Darla has snipers on the roof,” a lady that I didn’t recognize reported as she jogged up to us.

  That was when I took another look around and realized that I was now in a different part of the store. My guess was that this had been the manager’s office. Hmm, I wondered, how long had I been out?

  “Any word about how anybody else is doing?” Katrina asked.

  “None yet, but there has been almost no gunfire for the past twenty minutes or so,” the woman answered.

  I said a silent prayer that it was because our side had been victorious. Just as I got to my feet, a massive explosion shook the building hard enough to send me back down on my ass.

  As I struggled to my feet once more, I saw several figures backing into the store-turned-medical center. It was easy to recognize BP’s figure as he walked backwards, firing his weapon in short bursts. I took that as my answer.

  6

  Vignettes L

  Emily-zombie moved in the midst of the small pack. Their numbers had swollen over the past few weeks. Now there were eleven. There had been fifteen, but they had moved towards a source of noise one morning. Having no concept of balance, three of them had fallen from a slick rocky outcrop and ended up in the waters of a swift moving stream that was gorged from the snow melt.

  They moved along the water’s edge, occasionally stopping and becoming confused and distracted whenever they reached a set of rapids. The sound thrummed in their heads and urged them to move towards it, but that little spark that urged caution would prevent them from investigating further; especially since no source of warmth could be found in the area of the sound.

  On they moved, each night pausing and waiting until the darkness receded. Sometimes they were drawn by sound, other times by a source of heat that would appear, but then vanish.

  When others of their kind, the larger ones that paid them no notice, would pass by, Emily-zombie and her growing pack would sometimes follow. The bigger ones were good at finding those sources of warmth. Even better, they could often bring one down, allowing Emily-zombie and the other zombie children to move in and plunge into the waning warmth before it went cold.

  On one such occasion, they were travelling in the midst of over a hundred others. In that time, they added another six to their number. During that period, they could travel at night without that impulse to stop and wait for the bright, warm orb in the sky to rise and pass overhead.

  Noise had turned them as a group, and eventually they came upon a cluster of warm figures. Emily and her group melted into the back of the pack as they converged. There was a great increase in noise that begged for Emily-zombie and the others to move forward, but that impulse kept firing and causing them to wait.

  Soon, the sounds became less and Emily-zombie tried to move forward only to find her path blocked by the closely condensed group of larger zombies. Her hand discovered something long and she gripped it without really understanding why. Yet again, there was another flash.

  Raising her hand, she brought it down on the hood of a long-abandoned car to her right. The sound sent pulses through her and caused all of the zombie children gathered around to shift and orient on this new stimulus. She repeated the effort again and again as the larger ones all began to redirect their own attentions on this new sound.

  Dropping the object, Emily-zombie moved against the flow of the sea of legs until she came to something on the ground. The warmth was almost gone, but there was a little and she dropped to it and fed.

  Looking up, she saw three more sources, none quite as strong as the one that she was feeding from, but enough to draw the zombie-children that had followed. When the last of that warmth faded, Emily-zombie stood. She resumed her trek.

  Once again, she and the others like her were alone. That night, as they stopped in the darkness, a group of nine more zombie children emerged from the shadows of the long structures that surrounded Emily-zombie and her group. Some crawled out from under the trailers, others coming from open doors.

  Within three more cycles of darkness, their numbers had grown to over thirty. They arrived on the heels of several sources of warmth. At last, one of those sources faltered, unable to keep up with the rest. Emily-zombie fell on the hobbled deer fawn with no regard for anything except tearing it open. Her mouth closed on the noisy creature and ripped.

  A few of the others were able to join in, but more stood in a circle, trying to get closer, but unable to break through the densely packed throng. And again it was done.

  One morning, as the darkness peeled away, Emily-zombie found herself on the fringe of a growing number of houses. There was something here. The intermittent pulse in her mind thrummed and her desire to continue walking evaporated.

  A source of warmth appeared before her. All she had to do was reach down and grab it for it to be hers. The warmth moved against her and the sudden pulse came, causing her to pause in mid-stoop.

  Soft fur moved along the cold, dead skin of Emily-zombie’s legs. She could feel a soft thrumming vibration that reverberated through her. She had no concept of purring cats, but the pulse in her brain jelly stayed her hand and kept her from tearing into the creature.

  With absolutely no grace, Emily-zombie collapsed to the ground. She remained motionless as the warm creature shoved itself at her again and again. Eventually, it pushed its way under one limp hand. That hand twitched once…twice…and then began to move back and forth with slow, gentle deliberateness. If a living being would have been prese
nt, they would have sworn that they were seeing a little zombie girl petting a large, visibly pregnant tabby cat.

  Others from her group gathered around. Many stood, some wandered off, forgetting within seconds about those they’d travelled with, but other flopped to the ground. None moved as that single source of warmth wove its way among them.

  The cat stretched out and basked in warmth of its own liking as the sun rose higher in the sky. It did not know fear, and would even drift off to sleep amidst the cold, dead creatures scattered around where it lay. When it woke, it stretched and moved close to one of the zombie children. With needle-like teeth, it would tug free a loose piece of flesh here or there and sate its appetite. It had discovered long ago that this one particular smell meant an abundance of food.

  Emily-zombie no longer felt driven to search. The presence of this soft mound of purring fur had filled some emptiness that not even feasting on the sources of living warmth could satisfy. If she had been capable of cognizant thought, she might have just been of the age to understand the power that came from feeling accepted.

  Every so often, one of the larger ones would appear. If it spied the warmth that was the cat, then it would turn and come for the creature. Emily-zombie and the others would hiss, mewl, and even growl. Sometimes they would form a cluster and use their bodies as a screening shield. Zombies being what they were, the larger ones would very often forget what they had been in pursuit of and adjust their course to a path of least resistance. But more often than not, the cat would have to scamper to safety, only returning when the larger ones would plod away, no memory of what had drawn them in this direction.