Two seconds. Just a quick peek, then back down the hall to Bryan’s room, find Jess, and off you go. You need to know what’s going on, see how it affects your plan. What plan?
No need for a low-key exit with everyone distracted. The three of them could easily pile into the Dodge dually pickup, smash through the back gate, and be gone. Randy would be fine. The Janitor? He’d be fine, too. The old man seemed confident enough in his own abilities. So let him argue with Luz about the etiquette of living, dying, and living again. They’re all so smart. Fuck ‘em. They deserve each other. David had loved ones to evacuate and psycho killers to tend to. Anyway, the Alamo sure as hell wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Gabriel had made it sound like such a sanctuary, such a utopia.
He could hear muffled voices through the glass, despite the double set of doors. Something had folks excited, alright. As a precaution, he worked his way along the wall, his P38 pistol drawn. He didn’t anticipate having to shoot anyone, but he had to be prepared to. At least make a show of it. Prove he meant business.
Just ask Roy and Scott how serious I am about my business.
Finally, he reached the entrance, but kept to the side of it, doing his best to stay out of sight. Low in the west, the still-potent sun permeated the glass, rendering the dark tint powerless as cover. Anyone outside could glance through the panes and glimpse him there.
The gym bag slung over his shoulder, he gripped his pistol tightly while he brought the edge of his other hand to his brow, blocking the penetrating rays. The light warmed him despite the encroaching evening.
When his eye finally focused on the source of the ruckus, his jaw unhinged, his conscious mind struggling to process what his ocular nerve reported.
Oh my god.
Lenny was out there. A man of herculean stature, he was hard to miss. Beside the jolly gentle giant, another man of significant build, Randy.
And Luz was out there, leading the lynch mob.
What have those two done?
Being eye-to-eye with the sun, David struggled to see past the fence, but he could make out enough to understand what was happening. His inkling about the shufflers was right on the money. A new pack had found their way to the Alamo, it appeared, and now pressed against the fences again. But there was something else. Something odd. Most of the undead mob groped and swayed, actively working to make a meal of the living platter just out of arms’ reach. Others, though, appeared as if they’d wondered up to the gate and simply collapsed. Some were missing arms, hands…
Squinting, David looked closer at the scene. Then began to piece together a quite plausible scenario. Luz was obviously very unhappy with Lenny and Randy. Several of the dead were now… dead-er. By the looks of things, if the doctor had her way, Gabriel would no longer have a private room.
And now David’s mind anxiously churned, a new uncertainty clawing at him from within. Does he sneak Bryan and Jess out, leaving Lenny and Randy to the Infirmaries? Does he save the two men, and hope it goes spectacularly well, so well that he can still save Bryan and Jessica? What about Gabe? He didn’t want to leave the old man. Something inside him just wouldn’t let him do that, despite that being his intent mere moments ago. And finally, what about Natalee and her killer? Sure, she was dead and spread across the countryside in bite-size pieces, but he planned to make Doc suffer. Horribly. That’s where he was headed when Dr. Gonzalez so rudely and prematurely cut his mission short.
His breaths became shallow again, little spots and speckles pricking his already compromised vision. This wasn’t the decision he had expected to make. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. None of this was, actually.
He watched the group outside. Luz pointed toward the building, a scowl on her face, her lips a furious blur. She sounded like she was cursing them in Spanish.
David tapped El Jefe’s barrel to his forehead repeatedly, driving the nails of thought, of ideas. Possible plans. He had changed so much in such a short period of time, his thought processes rewired and traversing new paths, ones he’d never in a million years dreamed he’d walk.
All in, or all out. Be devoted to your decision. No pussyfooting around, this time. Commit to it, stick to it. You didn’t do that before, and it almost cost you everything.
He sighed a heavy, burdened sigh. He knew what he had to do. What needed to be done. A way to kill three birds with one mighty stone. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be dangerous. And he dreaded putting the plan into action. Still emotionally and physically distraught, he wasn’t sure he had the energy, the will, or even the ability to pull it all off. He’d need help. Damnit, he couldn’t do it alone.
Spinning on his heel, he took off straight down the middle of the hall, undaunted by his demons.
Demons be damned.
Chapter 19
David rapped the wood with a loose fist while firing quick glances behind him. “Gabe,” he hissed in a harsh whisper. A moment went by. Another knock, harder this time. “Gabriel.”
He glimpsed over his shoulder, thinking he heard someone approaching. False alarm.
A tighter knock, enough to echo. His whisper graduated to a low growl. “Janitor. It’s me, David. Open up.”
Tapping his foot nervously, he waited for the old man to open up the door. He reached into his pocket, thinking he might have inadvertently pocketed the master key. Without finding it, he gave another guilty glance around the bright hall, expecting someone to walk up on him at any second.
C’mon, Gabe. Open the goddamned door, already. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
He pressed his ear to the wood, listening for life. He was sure Gabe was still in there. Hadn’t seen him leave or walk by. The old man just had to be in there. Why the hell wasn’t he answering?
David wiped the palm of his free hand against his pants. He’d started to sweat, nerves alight and approaching a blaze. He wanted to be gone five minutes ago. Gabriel wasn’t making things any easier for him.
He couldn’t wait any longer. Though he needed Gabe’s help, he’d have to proceed without him.
Whispering to himself, he said, “Damnit, Gabriel.”
He made it about ten paces down the hall when he heard the distinctive click of toothy metal sawing into the deadbolt. A second later, the clack of the latch bolt retracting, freeing the door from its frame. The well-lubed hinges made no sound.
“Gabe.”
The Janitor stood silently in the doorway, eyeing David with his now famous, single squinted-eye gaze. “What is it, Dave?”
David hurriedly walked back to the room, peering down the hall. He cast one more sidelong glance toward the front before focusing on Gabriel. “Listen to me closely. We have to get out of here. Now.”
The Janitor was already shaking his head before the last words had crossed David’s lips. Dipping his chin, he held up a hand, waving off rescue. “Dave, you know where I stand on this—”
“Lenny and Randy. They’re in trouble.”
The Janitor paused, then said, “What do you mean, ‘trouble’?”
“I mean something big is going down out front. Lots of shufflers surrounding the fence, several of ‘em dead. And I don’t mean still-walking dead, I mean lying on the ground dead. Dead dead.”
Gabe’s brows climbed his forehead as his features tightened below them, a waterfall of concern cascading and filling his wrinkles of age with worry.
Reading the man’s face, David added, “I think Lenny and Randy killed several of them. And now Luz is out there with her lynch mob. Gabe, we’ve got to do something. Luz ain’t right. Something is bad wrong with her. I’m afraid she’s going to do something terrible.”
The Janitor looked around the room, then past David and into the hall. His mouth moved, like he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t push out the words. Finally, he said, “I just wanted to reason with her. With them. The Infirmaries. They’ve got it all wrong, but they just can’t see that.” He lifted his guilt-filled eyes from the floor, focused on David. “How do I know,
Dave?”
“How do you know what?”
“How do I know that if you and me slip out of here that you’re not gonna just fall into the same trap? Or an even worse one? You’re confused, Dave. I don’t think you’re as far gone as Luz and her crew, but you’re teetering on the barbed wire, Dave. And the wire is wobbly. Could go to hell in a hand basket in a hurry.”
David forced the corners of his mouth toward the ceiling, then laid his hand on the Janitor’s shoulder. “Don’t just take my word for it, Gabe. I’ll prove it to you. Let me show you.”
* * *
It took about fifteen seconds to reach Bryan and Jessica’s room and for David to explain the high-level version of his plan to Gabriel.
At Jessica’s door, David said in a low voice, “Jess? Jess, open up. Please.” He glanced at Gabe. Lowering his voice to a strong whisper, he said, “We had a fight earlier. Got a little ugly. She might be ignoring me…”
Understanding, the Janitor slid closer to the door and said, “Jessica? It’s Gabriel. Please open your door.” He waited a moment. “Jessica? It’s important. Open the door, please.”
They waited another moment, traded glances, then David palmed the knob, and twisted. The door was unlocked.
The two men entered the room with haste, but found it empty. No Bryan. No Jessica.
David said, “Don’t look like she left.” He pointed to a duffle bag he recognized as Mitch’s. “There’s her stuff. Brought that from the trailer.”
“She could be out front, mixed up in the mess.”
“I don’t remember seeing her out there, but it was hard to see with the sun in my eyes.”
Gabriel brushed at his mustache with his fingers, then said, “The boy?”
“Bryan.”
“Right. Bryan out there?”
David shook his head. “Didn’t see him. But as I said…”
“Right. The sun.”
They stood there for what seemed like several minutes, though only seconds sped by.
The Janitor said, “I say do it now.”
“Without knowing where they are?”
Gabe nodded. “We wait too long, chance’ll slip by. May not get another.”
“But what if Luz decides to hurt—”
“Luz ain’t gonna hurt Jess or the boy. Especially the boy.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Just trust me on that one.”
After a few more darting glances around the room, David said, “Well, okay then. Let’s unleash some hell.”
“After you,” Gabe said, his hand upturned toward the doorway.
They made their way swiftly down the hall toward the east wing. Twice they thought they heard someone coming, and twice they were wrong.
A nervous energy propelled David, like he was about to play in a big game. He was walking through the grand tunnel, toward the field. The undead crowd cheering him on. He was the big-shot quarterback, calling the plays, the outcome of the contest riding squarely on his shoulders. Except in this game, winning or losing meant living or dying. And he hoped death would only find the already dead.
They pushed through the double doors to the warehouse, not allowing the doors to slam back into their jambs. They were about to make more racket than the place had heard in a long while, but there was no point in announcing it.
On the back loading dock, they stopped, surveyed the scene. Along the fence, several shufflers roamed aimlessly. They seemed to know they needed to get through the fence to feed, but had no cognitive reasoning skills to accomplish that feat. David continued looking the area over. When his eye found the tennis courts, he uttered one word.
“Shit.”
The Janitor latched his hand to his chin. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
Empty. Almost no shufflers remained inside the tennis courts. There were a few stragglers, but not enough to even be noteworthy. Most had made their way out, and now either roamed the field near the fence, or had attached themselves to the iron bars surrounding the Alamo.
“Think Luz set them loose?” David asked.
Gabriel thought for a moment. “Don’t think so. Those things were… safe, for lack of a better word, locked up.”
“Who, then?”
Shaking his head, the Janitor said, “Don’t know. Lenny was playing it low key, so I doubt it was him. Your guy?”
“Doubt it. Randy helped wrangle ‘em. I seriously doubt he’d go through all that trouble risking life and limb just to let them all go again.”
“Jessica? She is missing.”
David turned his eye to the old man, the words penetrating, cutting. Actually, Jessica freeing the captive horde made sense. She was upset, livid, probably thinking irrationally. He’d known her to be spontaneous, to act impulsively. Just like himself. Perhaps after their very vocal and heated disagreement earlier that afternoon, she’d taken it upon herself to do what she viewed was the right thing. He hadn’t attended any of the council meetings, but he believed that Jess and Luz bumped heads pretty regularly.
The last part of Gabe’s statement seriously bothered him, though.
Missing. She is missing.
Jessica was missing. Nowhere to be found. Maybe she’d been caught turning out the shufflers, and Luz had ordered her locked up, too. Just like the good doctor had locked up him and Gabe. But they simply didn’t have the time, the resources, to go from door to door. Besides, eventually, they’d find someone—or something—they didn’t want to find. He thought of Roy and his undead son.
“Now or never,” Gabe said.
David nodded. “Just like we talked about the other day, with an added twist. And no duct tape jumpsuit, this time.”
“No time for that. Just watch yourself. Don’t get bit, okay?”
“Sure,” David said. He tugged his pistol from his hip, held it out to the Janitor. “Here. You may need this.”
Gabriel showed his palm to the younger man. Smiling, he reached down to his ankle, lifting the jumpsuit leg. When he straightened again, he held a small snub-nose revolver in his hand.
“I didn’t know you were armed. Hell, you were carrying the whole time Luz was locking you up?”
He winked at David. “Choose your battles.”
David nodded. “Alright then. Let’s do this.”
* * *
The two men descended the stairs, stepped onto the shady concrete lot behind Alamo Assisted Living. They stood in the building’s massive shadow, which extended well past the fence and into the field. Shufflers by the gate took immediate notice of their presence. Rotten tongues licked at the breeze, teased with the taste of life.
It was a strange time to ponder, what with getting ready to flatten the lot of them, but David wondered how much of their drive was by smell, sight, and sound. Hell, maybe the shufflers could truly taste the living on the wind, the sense heightened by the demise of the others. With their puss-filled eyes and slowly decaying eardrums—rotting sinuses—he suspected the undead were pushed and punished by pure, unabated evil. What else could explain it? Well, he was about to unleash a bit of his own evil. Fight a little fire with fire… sort of.
Reaching into his pocket, David wrestled out the keys to the Dodge, jingled them in front of Gabriel. The Janitor held out his palm, and David let them drop into his hand. It was symbolic, fitting, seeing a keyring in the Janitor’s grasp again. What’s a custodian without keys?
“Need me to give you a boost?” asked David.
The Janitor shook his head, a smile peeking from beneath his push broom mustache. “Used to ride horses. I can haul my lanky ass up into the cab.”
Of course you did and of course you can.
Gabriel reciprocated. “You need me to hoist you into the bed?”
David actually returned the smile. “Think I’m good.”
Dipping his chin at David’s still-wrapped hand, he said, “You sure? I know you had a couple few days to heal up some, but you still look pretty banged up.”
“I’m better.
I can manage.”
I have to.
The old man pulled the driver side door open, tossed in the keys and his pistol, then reached into his back pocket, producing a plastic green tin. He pinched a brown wad, then tucked it between this cheek and gums. He held the snuff to David, who politely declined. Sliding the container back into his pocket, he said, “Gotta do this right, ya know?”
“Of course.” David eyed the rolling gate, noting the absence of a padlock. “Think it’s locked?” He tossed his gym bag into the truck’s towering cab.
“Don’t matter. Too many of them damn things congregating already. Don’t wanna risk getting bit trying to get the truck out.”
David licked his lips, hooked his hands on his hips. “You understand, Gabe, once we do this…”
“It’s a done deal. I get it, Dave.”
“No going back. Once those bars come down… the integrity of this place…” He crisscrossed his hands back and forth, over and under each other several times. “It’s over. Folks here will most likely have to find another place. You’re okay with that?”
“Dave, I have no emotional attachment to this building. Or the people in it, save for Leonard and Taneesha.” He launched a glistening brown wad over his lips, and it spattered the cement. “My loyalties died with my friends—my people—at Anderson Retirement across town. Lenny’s pop died there. So did his mom. And everyone else I cared about. I tried to make a go of it here, to make this a place of safety. And Luz and Roy shit all over it, not to put too fine a point on it. Turning people against me.” He shook his head, silver tresses swinging around his face. He seemed to have aged ten years in two days.
David simply nodded, listening.
“Don’t you worry about your cousin or that young boy,” Gabriel added. “They’ll be fine. Luz’ll be pissed. Ain’t no getting ‘round that. But she ain’t a killer. She’s just a confused young woman, trying to do what she thinks is right, even if it ain’t. Can’t fault her for making a stand.” He stared at David hard. “That’s why I’m out here with you right now, Dave. You’re making a stand. And I think it’s the right one.”
Dead South Rising (Book 2): Death Row Page 16
