A pair of the psychos, each slick with dark blood and one missing most of his throat, punched their way through the driver’s side window and dragged him from the cab. He screamed as their hands pulled at him, their fingers like steel. He managed to grab hold of the tire iron in the second before he disappeared from the cab, and he started swinging as soon as he could cock back his arm. The men fought viciously, but their skulls didn’t hold up so well.
Morris stared at the men. He saw the ruined throat again, and he wondered what the hell was happening. Pounding footsteps and angered screams brought him out of his thoughts. He climbed back into the truck and kept going. The vehicle carried him within two blocks of his wife’s workplace, the Fifth Third building, but then he crunched into a Lexus SUV and the truck ground to a halt. He probably deserved it for driving the wrong way downtown.
He kept the iron tight in his fist as he wrestled the truck’s door open and dropped onto the pavement. He knew how useful the tool was as a weapon, and he didn’t plan to give it up anytime soon.
He got to his feet and staggered toward his wife’s office. The world swayed a little, but he fought through the vertigo and kept moving. All around him the sounds of terror and murder filled the air. Screams blended with car horns and sirens and breaking glass. He tried to ignore it all and focus on the Fifth Third building just over a block down the street. The giant structure loomed above Fountain Square, which was now full of panicked individuals and their attackers. He knew he’d die if he tried to brave it.
Instead, he darted into the building that stood on the corner of Vine and Sixth. One of the crazies charged him just inside the lobby. He swung the tire iron, and it crashed into the man’s temple, spinning him to the floor. Morris continued up a broken escalator and ran like the devil was poking him in the ass. He saw a sign for the Skywalk and raced past it. He realized he might end up lost in the series of pedestrian bridges, but he didn’t have far to travel. Two turns brought him out onto the plaza overlooking Fountain Square. He saw the doors that led into the Fifth Third building and sprinted for them.
He got close to the edge and stumbled to a halt. A scream bubbled out of his gut and travelled to the top of his throat, where it stuck, robbing him of breath.
The plaza below had turned into a meat grinder. Blood covered everything and everyone, and its stench punched into his nose like a fleshy fist. He could only watch as the people below tore into each other. He saw a little boy who couldn’t have been more than ten leap onto a man’s back and bite into the side of his neck. Blood sprayed, and the child rode the adult to the ground like a lion felling its prey. A fat woman whose left leg ended in a mess of gristle and tattered flesh dragged herself forward and grabbed at a man who looked to still be dying. She bit into his stomach and pulled out a knot of intestine. The man’s screams arced over Fountain Square and reverberated off the Carew Tower.
Morris felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as horror took hold of him. What was happening? What had started this? This went beyond a simple riot. Even mass hysteria didn’t explain it. Something had turned these people bad, made them wrong. How was he supposed to get Carol out of this? What chance did they have? If they didn’t work deep in the city-weren’t surrounded by concrete and steel-they might have a chance, but now it all felt so impossible.
A peal of rage behind him snatched away his questions. He turned to find an old man charging him, hands outstretched and raking at the air. He saw the madness in the man’s eyes in the split second before he ducked low and shoved his shoulder into the psycho’s gut. The impact rocked his body, but he didn’t fall. He pistoned his legs up and twisted. He felt the old man’s fingers claw at him, but then he shoved at the body and the madman sailed over the ledge and into the carnage below.
Morris backed away from the edge, breathing hard. He stared a second longer and then ran for the Fifth Third building and Carol.
He took the stairs, not trusting the elevators, and by the time he saw the sign that read 44 he nearly cried out in triumph. He might have if he didn’t feel so exhausted. Sweat slicked his body. The tire iron felt like a tree trunk in his grip. He thought if he took another step his legs might liquefy and drain back down the stairs.
For a split second he considered collapsing against the fire door. He probably needed a moment’s rest. It would do him good, prepare him for the coming attempt at escape. He shook his head. No. He needed to keep moving. When he found Carol, he could rest. Until then, he needed to keep going, keep searching.
He listened at the door, the cool metal chilling his ear. He heard something banging around in the hallway on the other side. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a battle. Instead, he thought it might be one of the crazies, maybe two. He hoped it wasn’t more than a couple, and he prayed Carol wasn’t one of them. He didn’t want to think about what he might do if that was the case.
Taking a deep breath, he rubbed his sweaty palm dry on his pants leg. He checked his grip on the tire iron and made sure it was good. He felt tired, but his thoughts of Carol chased away the fatigue, replaced it with a desperate strength.
Cautiously, he opened the door.
He knew the hallways of this floor. More than a few times, he’d stopped by to either pick up Carol or bring her a lunch. He knew his way around, but he didn’t recognize the catastrophe he’d walked into. Somebody had smeared blood all over the door and surrounding area. A hole had been punched in the wall opposite the stairwell. Papers and tatters of bloody clothing lay scattered up and down the hall. One of the fluorescent light fixtures had fallen loose and now dangled from the ceiling. Morris eyed the swaying fixture and wondered just how the hell it had ended up like that.
He closed the door as quietly as possible, making sure he didn’t touch the crimson streaks that marked its surface. He still heard what sounded like somebody trying to beat their way through a door. They grunted and snarled with each impact. The sound electrified his nerves. He prayed whoever it was didn’t hear the quiet click of the closing stairwell door.
He worked his way down the hall, rolling his feet heel to toe and hoping he remained silent. The hallway branched off to the left fifteen feet down. He needed to pass that corridor and continue on another thirty feet. Then he’d follow the hallway left. Carol’s office would be the fourth door on the right. He hoped she was locked up tight, safe from the psycho making all the racket.
He reached the first branching hallway. Holding his breath, he eased himself toward the corner and checked the passage.
It was a woman. Not Carol, but a face he’d seen once or twice in the past. He’d never learned her name.
It appeared she’d put her hair up before coming to work today, but so much activity had knocked most of it loose. Now it hovered around her head like a blond explosion. She wore a black blouse and gray skirt. Both had been torn and streaked with blood. Great red splotches marked her pantyhose. She’d lost one of her shoes, but she didn’t appear to notice. She kept leaping at the heavy wood and raking at it with her fingernails, trying to tear her way through rather knock it down. Her desire to attack whatever was hiding behind the door robbed her of any sort of logic. For a second, Morris could only watch her in amazement.
He wondered if he could cross the hallway without drawing her attention. If she saw him, he could handle her. He figured she had to be the only crazy on the floor. Everybody else had fled or gone into hiding. If more poured out of the woodwork though, he’d have a real problem on his hands.
He almost smiled at the thought, because he already had a real problem on his hands. Anything else would just be gravy on the shit sandwich.
He decided to dart across the hallway. Cocking his swinging arm just in case, he ducked out from behind the wall. The woman screeched when he was two steps from being out of sight again. He ran another five steps and then turned around and squared his stance.
She rounded the corner like an out of control bull, never slowing and careening against the wall inste
ad of making the turn. The impact didn’t even faze her. She charged, finding Morris with her insane eyes and coming straight for him.
He wanted to swing, but his eyes were drawn to her throat and chest, to the ragged bites he saw there and the blood that flowed from the wounds. He regained his senses in the split second before she pounced upon him.
She hit him with the force of a battering ram. He tried to send the woman over his shoulder as he fell back, but she latched on tight and followed him to the floor. He jammed a forearm into her throat, knowing she would try to bite. Her teeth clacked together again and again, providing sharp punctuation to her shrieking and hissing.
He jerked his face to the side. If it was a disease driving everybody crazy, he didn’t want her flinging spit or blood into his eyes. He felt grateful for the long sleeves of his flannel shirt and the protection they gave his arms. Even through the sleeves, however, he could feel the wet ruin of her throat. He shoved against it, swatting at her arms with his free hand and keeping her nails away from his face.
Her angry cries sounded like a harsh wind, and he realized he could feel the air wheezing through the wounds in her throat. Jesus, how was she still making any sound at all?
He grunted and twisted his body to one side, bringing the tire iron around as he whipped beneath the crazy woman. The weapon only struck a glancing blow to her temple, but it succeeded in getting her off of him. She slammed against the wall as he scurried to the opposite side of the hallway, pressing his back to the wall.
He saw her thrash against the carpet, struggling to make sense of the world so she could attack again. He planted his foot in her chest before she got the chance. With his right leg, he shoved her against the wall and held her there. She squirmed beneath his work boot, but his leg was a tree trunk, and her broken fingernails couldn’t tear through the thick denim of his jeans.
He swung the tire iron, but it bounced off the floor almost a foot from the woman’s head. He cursed his lack of reach. The psycho struggled to break free, and he knew he needed to act.
His first kick rocked her head back, bouncing it off the wall. He shifted his weight further down the wall, inching closer to her, and kicked out again. His left foot caught the woman’s open mouth. Her jaw cracked with a sound like a pistol firing. He reared back and kicked again. Her nose crumbled against the bottom of his boot.
A piercing noise filled the hallway as he kicked. It sounded like a siren cycling through the sky in the moments before a storm hits. It washed over the crunching and cracking sounds of the psychopath’s head between boot and wall. The terrible noise stabbed at his ear drums and echoed through his skull, and it wasn’t until long after the woman’s skull collapsed that he realized he was screaming through his hands.
He coughed and choked and somehow managed to find his breath again. It came in thick rasps, his chest pumping up and down. The air tasted stale and foul, thick with the stink of the bloodied, broken woman under his feet.
Slowly, he pulled his feet away from her still body. He caught a glimpse of what remained of her head, and that was enough. Swallowing the bile that rose to the top of his throat, he turned away from her. He’d never thought of himself as a violent man. An hour ago, he hadn’t thought he was capable of the things he’d done. Now, he knew better. Love and desperation had driven him to a whole new place. Worse, he suspected he’d be staying there for a long time.
————————————
“We ready?” Eric asked.
“As we’ll ever be,” Blake answered.
Morris nodded. “Yeah.” He shook the hammer in his fist one more time, and then Eric threw open the garage door.
The gray light of the overcast day still managed to sting his eyes as he crawled out from underneath the shadow of his memories. He felt an ache in his jaw and realized he’d been grinding his teeth.
As he charged out of the garage and into the driveway he tried to ignore his memories. All that meant a damn right now was the area around him and his chances of surviving to travel through it. He scanned the street, didn’t see a single zombie.
Stevenson and Blake charged past, the shrouded body of Jeremy Motts between them. Morris turned away and looked for trouble. As he crossed the street and entered the other driveway, he still hadn’t spotted any threats. A tiny part of him wanted to feel optimistic, but the rest of him said that part was just an idiot. There were still thousands of ways to die in this town, and the zombies were only some of them.
He took a position by the truck’s hood. Up close, the giant pickup looked to be in perfect shape. That didn’t mean the engine wasn’t fucked, of course, but it was a good sign. He tore his eyes away and made himself watch the street and surrounding homes. Everything remained still, quiet. It made him want to scream. He almost did when the truck moved behind him, but then he realized it was only Blake and Stevenson depositing Jeremy in the bed.
Eric reached the truck last. He checked the door handles. The two on the driver’s side snapped uselessly, locked. Eric ran around the hood as Blake dropped to the pavement and began his search.
Morris tried to shut out the noise around him and focus. He didn’t need to worry about the sounds the others made nearby, but what sounds lay beyond them. Closing his eyes, he searched for breaking glass, angry footfalls, or the hissing and rasping animal sounds the hungry dead made. He heard none of it, and that frightened him. It reminded him too much of Front Street and of the lifeless quiet in the stairway of the Fifth Third building. He sensed it was the quiet before a terrible storm, and that terrified him.
“Fuck.” Blake’s voice. “Looks like we’re going inside.”
Stevenson jumped out of the truck’s bed. “Joy. Let’s get moving.”
“Right.”
He heard the two men walk toward the house, and then he shut them out again, concentrating on his surroundings. He hoped it stayed quiet, but he refused to fool himself.
ELEVEN
“After you, princess.”
Blake shot Chris a hateful look and fought the urge to knock his block off with the crowbar he’d found. The cocky prick stood to the side of the front door, bent at the waist and gesturing with a flourish. Blake walked past and made sure to give the man’s head a good nudge with his forearm.
He couldn’t tell how long it had been since the home’s occupants abandoned the place, but he guessed it had been a good while. A layer of last fall’s leaves lay rotting on the living room floor. An old couch that had once been pale blue sat ripped open, its guts spread about in white and gray tufts. Maybe animals had gotten to it, or maybe something else. Maybe it had been the thing responsible for a hole in the paneling to the left of the couch. Five feet of exposed beams stood out from behind cracked and splintered compressed wood. Blake shook his head. Time and nature had really done a number on this place. How long before everything looked like this?
“Shit,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Chris said, stepping through the door. “Looks like their decorator was one of the first to go.”
“Looks like.” He almost smiled at the remark, but he kept the expression below the surface. “We should start looking.”
“Hey, I was just waiting on you.”
Chris slapped him on the back. He shrugged the hand away and moved to the coffee table. He brushed aside a crumbling drift of leaves and flipped through what must have been a year’s worth of rumpled home and garden magazines. He found remotes for the television, DVD player, VCR, and stereo, but no ring, not even a single key.
“Nope.”
Chris moved past him. “I’ll start in the kitchen. You take upstairs.”
“Right.”
“Try not to get lost, Ellis.”
“Fuck you.”
Chris’s laughter travelled through the empty house like a ghost.
Blake found the staircase just off the living room and pounded up it. He wanted to find the keys and get the hell out of here. He hated feeling stranded, feeling vulnerabl
e. Once they started moving again, he’d breathe a little easier. Not much, just a little.
The second floor branched out in both directions. He decided to try the right first. Fewer doors on that side told him he’d probably find the master bedroom in that direction. The carpet puffed dust with every step he took, and he was sneezing by the time he reached the doorway at the end of the hall.
It was a master, all right. A king size bed that had been stripped of all bedclothes dominated the room. A few shredded pillows dotted the floor. The window had been shattered inward by something, and rain had soaked the carpet, filling the room with the cloying stench of mildew.
A nightstand stood on either side of the bed. He approached the closest one, trying to ignore the way the carpet squished under his feet. How much rain had the floor absorbed? Was it even stable? He decided not to think about it. He’d just find the keys and get the fuck out.
The first nightstand sported a paperback that had bloated with moisture. A reading lamp lay broken on the floor. He wasted no time inspecting either. Instead, he pulled open drawers and rooted through cubby holes. They contained plenty of junk-reading glasses, a personal organizer, matches, a flashlight-but no keys. He pocketed the matches and checked the other nightstand. The results proved similar.
“Dammit.” He left the bedroom and walked to the other end of the hall. He figured there wasn’t much chance of finding the keys in the other rooms, but he needed to make sure.
Two closed doors stood opposite each other at the hall’s far end. He looked back and forth between them for a second and then decided to try the one on the left. Steeling himself, he gripped the knob and turned.
A home office waited on the other side. The window remained intact, so the room only smelled like dust. He sneezed and then stepped to a nearby computer desk, started searching.
“C’mon.”
Nothing. Same thing with the bookshelves and the jacket draped over the back of a chair. Maybe Chris had already found the keys. He grabbed the walkie-talkie off his belt and thumbed the mic.
Scavengers Page 9
