I parked behind the building and we got out. There were two police cars parked there along with three other cars and a pickup.
"Check it out," Jen said, bending over and picking something up off the asphalt. She grinned and held up a pistol.
"Look," she said. "There's another one over there by the grass."
I went over and picked it up. It was scratched up and had some water in it from the melted snow.
"I wonder if this is a nine millimeter." Jen said. "Cops use nine millimeter, don't they?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know, either," she said. "This one looks like Zach's gun, and his was a nine millimeter. They kind of all look alike to me."
"They were doing a lot of shooting here when it all started," I said. "I guess they were overpowered."
"Or they turned into them," she said, sliding the clip out. "It's empty."
"Do you know how to shoot one of those?" I asked.
"Yep."
"I've never used a semi-automatic handgun," I said. "I could figure it out; I've seen it enough on TV."
"I guess I'll have to school ya," she said. "I gotta make sure the new beau knows the ins and outs of firearms. Ain't that right?"
"That was all Brian," I said.
"I know," she said, "I'm just joking....hey, there's another one."
This one was under a shrub next to the building. It was a snub nose revolver. I knew how to use a revolver. I picked it up and opened the cylinder, but there were no live rounds, just used casings. I pulled one out and read the rim. It was a .38. I put it in the pocket of my coat, and stuck the other one in the waistband of my pants.
The doors were unlocked, and we went inside. There was a round desk in the middle of the room that acted as an information center. There were some potted plants here and there and big, poster-sized photographs of how Clayfield looked in the 1890s, 1920s, and 1950s. I had similar, smaller prints at the museum. The police station section of the building was to the left, and the city offices were to the right. I saw a closed door with a placard that said OFFICE OF THE MAYOR.
The office was in the front of the building, with a view of the court square. There was a window that looked into the interior of the building, too, but the blinds were closed.
"First, let’s go in here so we can look out the window and see how big the crowd is over there," I said.
I tried to open the door but it was locked. I was about to forget it and go to the police station when I heard movement in the office.
"Someone is in there," I said.
I knocked. The blinds moved.
"Are you okay in there?" I said.
"The mayor is probably infected," Jen said. "Let's just go. It'll never figure out how to unlock it."
Then I heard the lock clicking. The door stayed shut. I looked at Jen. She shrugged and held up the rifle. I tried the knob again, and the door swung open. I stepped inside, and the last thing I saw was a black blur coming at my face.
The next thing I saw is Jen looking down at me. I had a horrible pain across my right eyebrow.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"What happened?"
"This jerk hit you in the head with the butt of his shotgun."
Another face came into view. The man had a white and gray beard, neatly trimmed. He grinned down at me.
"Mr. Somerville?" I said.
"You know him?" Jen said.
He held out his hand to her.
"Hi, I'm Nicholas Somerville."
She just stared at him.
"He's on the city council," I said, sitting up.
There was a dawning on her face.
"Oh yeah," she said. "Saint Nick. You dressed up like Santa for that thing."
"Every year for ten years," he said.
Somerville wasn't dressed like Santa this time. He was in full camouflage. He had a rifle with a scope slung over his right shoulder and a shotgun in his left hand. There were binoculars hanging around his neck.
"How's the noggin?" Somerville said.
"It hurts," I said. "You could have said something before you clubbed me."
"You're lucky I didn't shoot you," he said. "What are you two doing in here?"
"Looking for guns," Jen said bluntly.
"Won't get any here," he said. "They're still locked up. I tried getting to them myself."
"What are you doing here?" I said, rubbing my head.
"Well, right now, I'm the acting mayor," he said.
"Says who?"
"Says me," he laughed, "but I'm not sure having a mayor matters anymore."
He turned toward the window and put the binoculars to his eyes.
"There's someone in that building over there," he said. "They're on the second floor. I just get glimpses of them every now and then. I don't know what they're up to in there, but they sure do have a fan club."
"We were coming to get guns to help them," I said.
"I've been thinking about helping them, too," he said, "but I couldn't do it by myself. You know, if we get enough of us together, we might have a chance of putting Clayfield back together again. The three of us could start up city government and get things organized."
"The hell we could," Jen said. "I was just starting to get comfortable with anarchy."
CHAPTER 20
Somerville noticed the pistol in my waistband.
"How many rounds do you have for that?"
"None," I said. "I found it in the parking lot."
"All we have is a twenty-two," Jen said, "with a little over fifty bullets."
"Oh," Somerville said, frowning.
"It's not like we're going in there shooting everybody," I said. "We just need to lure them away like you did with the car alarm."
"Did that work?" Somerville asked.
"Oh yeah," Jen said, "but it also attracted a bunch more."
He put his binoculars to his eyes again, and looked out.
"There are probably three or four hundred of them over there."
Jen was looking around the office.
"Have you been in here all this time?" she asked.
"No," he said, sounding distracted. "I got here early this morning. I shot one of them in the street in front of my house the night before last. I noticed it was gone yesterday afternoon, so I thought the mayor had a crew working. I thought I'd come up here and help out any way I could."
"No cleanup crews," Jen said. "They're just walking away."
Somerville laughed. "Not this one. I shot him with my thirty-aught-six. He was stone cold dead."
"I'm telling you, he walked away."
“She's right," I said. "Either they're not dying, or they're coming back to life."
"Nah," he chuckled. "There's a cleanup crew. They're probably just operating from another location. I'm thinking the fairgrounds or one of the high schools."
"Whatever," Jen said. "If we're going to help the people over there, then let's do it. There's a house out on Bragusberg Road that has someone in it, too."
"There are two police cars outside," I said. "Why don't we just turn on a siren?”
"Or better yet," Somerville said, "let's turn on the emergency siren--the one the city uses to warn people about tornados.”
"That one is really loud, though," I said. "I've been out at Blaine's house and heard it way out there."
"Who's Blaine?" Somerville asked.
"That'll be too loud," Jen said. "We don't want to draw them in from everywhere do we? Besides, wouldn't it run on electricity?"
"I don't know," Somerville said, "but I've always wanted to be the one to turn it on."
"Feel free," Jen said. "Just wait until we are out of town, okay? Right now, I think the siren on the police car will do."
"Okay," Somerville said, turning toward a map of the city which was hanging on the wall in the office. "Where do we want to sound the alarm? Which way do we want them to go?"
"There are three groups that we know about," I said. "The best thing would be to put
the siren where they would all come together without coming into contact with us."
I marked the house on Bragusberg, the building behind the courthouse, and the First Christian Church.
"It looks like Walnut Street might be a good spot," Somerville said. "It's a couple of blocks from all three groups, and away from each other. Too bad we couldn't contain them there."
"They should stay for a while," Jen said. "We'll have plenty of time to get into the buildings and get out."
Somerville retrieved the keys for the police cars from the other side of the building. Then he put his .30-06 into the cab of a black pickup in the parking lot.
"I'll drive one of the cruisers," he said, still holding his shotgun. "One of you follows me in the other one. One of you stays here with my truck. We'll set a siren off at the corner of Walnut and 9th, and then we'll pull down the block and see if it works--"
"It'll work," Jen said.
"If it doesn't, we'll have a second cruiser as a backup. If we need the truck to come pick us up, we'll honk our horn three times."
"Then what?" Jen said. "If it doesn't work, what good will a second cruiser do? And how is honking three times going to let anyone but the monsters know where you are?"
"We'll stay on Walnut. How about that? If you hear honking, drive down Walnut Street until you find us."
"Fine by me," I said. "Give me the keys."
"To the truck," Jen said. "I want to drive one of those cop cars."
"No," I said. "You're not going out there. It's too--"
"Don't you dare say it's too dangerous," she said. "I'm going."
Somerville tossed each of us a set of keys. I got the truck.
"I'll leave you the binoculars," he said, "so you can watch them and see when they've all gone. If you can get in there and get them out, then do. That rifle is loaded. It's bolt action."
I watched them pull away. They went back the way we'd come in. When they turned left onto North Street, I took the opportunity to run over to my wrecked car. I thought I might be able to drive it out of there, but I'd left it on and not only was it out of gas, but the battery was dead. I grabbed the bag of supplies I'd packed a few days before and ran back over to Somerville's truck.
I could not see the building from where he was parked, so I had to start the truck and pull it around to 6th Street. When I got to the intersection with Broadway, I killed the engine and waited with the window down. A few of them noticed me and started toward me, but halfway there, they seemed to lose their way and eventually returned to the mob.
I was intrigued by what could be in that building that had them so interested. The movement in the window was rare and brief. I couldn't hear any loud noises coming from it, but I was a block away, and there might have been sounds I couldn't hear at this range.
It might have been a situation where a few of the infected stopped there because of the movement in the window, then others stopped because of them, then others until they reached a sort of critical mass where they were there because of each other more than anything else.
I opened up my salami sandwich--my lunch from Thursday. It was a little stale, but good.
Then I heard the siren.
The crowd began to move toward 7th Street. First it was just the ones on the western side. Some of them seemed torn between staying and going. I looked through the binoculars.
There were a few that were jogging away toward the siren, but others were only shuffling along. I hadn't given it much thought, but I'd been avoiding paying attention to their faces as much as possible. Like Jen, I was trying not to think of them as people anymore, and looking at their faces didn't help with that. Also, on some level, I was afraid of seeing people I knew. I wondered how it would affect me when I had to point a gun at one of them.
There was a difference between the slow ones and the ones that were moving faster. Something in the eyes was different. I noticed they could all move fairly quickly when they wanted to, but for some, it took a little more encouragement.
There was a couple having sex in the street near the corner of the county jail. It didn't look consensual. Is it ever consensual with animals? It was probably best that Jen wasn't there so she wouldn't feel the need to do something about it and screw up our plans. The man, naked from the waist down, stood up and walked over to the others. The woman lay there for a few seconds then followed.
I saw old Mrs. Gordon in the crowd. She'd donated items to the museum, and was a big part in our last fundraiser. Toward the end of the group I saw three men in ripped and burned military fatigues. One of them was wearing a helmet like the ones pilots wear.
Then I saw two people that got me closer to being a believer in the whole undead hypothesis. On the ground, dragging himself along, was a man with only one leg. His right leg was gone just above the knee. It was a bloody stump leaving a trail behind him. He didn't act like he was in pain; he was just trying to keep up with the others. The second man was the rapist. The right side of his face was gone from Jen's shotgun blast. He was up and walking. He was having trouble, though, and kept veering away from the others and bumping into things.
I felt a chill that wasn't from the air. A wave of nausea hit me, and I opened my door and puked up my sandwich.
When most of them had disappeared from my line of sight, I cranked the truck and crept forward to get a better view. I watched all but the one-legged man go around the corner at 7th Street. The rapist Jen shot was the last of those still on two legs to go, his meandering causing him to fall behind.
I pulled the truck up in front. It was a three-story building that was part of the old downtown businesses. It was even in one of those photographs from the 1920s that were hanging in city hall. It might have been older than that. It had been difficult to keep businesses downtown since all the big chains constructed their super stores on the south side of town. Everybody wanted to be part of the little strip malls that sprang up around the giants.
The right side of the old building was home to an antique store, but the left side of the building had been vacant for several months. We'd seen the movement on the second floor of the vacant side. The building itself was situated between two other buildings similar to it in age and architecture. One side was occupied by a photography studio and the other by a pawnshop.
The one-legged man was past the pawnshop when he heard and saw me. He looked back at me, then to the corner where he'd last seen the others. He decided I was more attainable, and turned around, dragging himself with his hands.
It would be a while before the mob got to their destination, so I didn't expect Jen and Mr. Somerville back for several minutes. Rather than wait for them, I decided to go on inside and see who was in there. I pulled up my mask, and got out of the truck.
CHAPTER 21
This could never have happened in real life--me going into an old building off the court square wearing a mask and carrying a .30-06 while a one-legged monster crawled after me. Never in a million years. If I'd been told the week before that this was what I'd be doing—
Then I remembered what I'd been doing the Sunday before and laughed a little to myself. Exactly one week before, about the same time, I'd been sitting on my couch in my sweatpants with a game controller in my hand playing a first person shooter. The game was set in World War II in France in a town about the size of Clayfield. My weapon had been a 7.62 mm Mosin-Nagant, and my targets were Nazis, but still, the similarities....
The one-legged man had made it to the front of the antique store, just a few feet away. I didn't want to attract more of them by firing the gun, so I just let him be.
Unlike my video game, I didn't get extra lives; if they got me, I'd just start fighting for the other side.
The man hissed at me.
I stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of the building and tried the door. It was locked. I stepped back a little and looked up.
"Hello, up there!" I said.
The man hissed again.
"Come down! We're h
ere to help!"
The man tried pulling himself up on the sidewalk but slipped and hit his chin. He growled.
I stepped back to the door and knocked. Nothing. I went to the truck and got out my bottle of water. It still had a little in it. I threw it at the window on the second floor. It hit then bounced down to the street. I heard a noise from inside. It sounded like a bell or a gong.
"Hello?" I said.
The curtains moved, and then the bell sounded again.
I was going to try again, but the one-legged man was already chewing on the bottle.
Then I decided to walk around the photography studio on the corner and go to the rear of the buildings to see if there was a back door.
The back door was locked, but there was a fire escape. I couldn't reach it from the ground, so I ran back to get the truck. On my way back, I met the one-legged man coming around the corner--the little engine that could. When I ran past him, he changed direction again to follow. I pulled the truck around underneath the back windows.
I slung the rifle over my shoulder and the binoculars around my neck, climbed on top of the cab of the truck, then pulled myself up onto the rusted fire escape stairs. The metal was so cold. When I climbed up on the fire escape, I could see a mass of people south of my location coming from the direction of Bragusberg Road, headed to the siren. Good.
I was right there--the second floor. I got down on one knee. The window was curtained, so I tapped on it.
"Hey!" I said. "I'm here to help you!"
The gong sounded inside. I knocked on the window again. I heard what sounded like a strangled scream. I knocked louder.
"Are you okay?"
Nothing.
I tried to open the window, but it wouldn't budge.
"I'm going to break the window! Step back!”
I stood and hit the window with the butt of the rifle. It shattered the first time. I cleaned away the remaining shards with the gun, and then I pushed the curtains aside. I squatted down and looked inside.
The room was filled with old furniture. There was a door to my left that was open to a staircase, and another door beyond that that accessed the other side of the building. It looked like maybe the antique store was using the second floor of this side of the building for storage. There was a lot of old bed frames stacked up in the middle of the room and leaning against a couple of wardrobes that were standing back to back. The stack of furniture sort of cut the room in half crosswise. To the far left was an old claw footed bathtub set at an angle. It was dirty and missing all of its hardware. A couple of chests of drawers were between me and the bed frames. It created a little maze in the room with a narrow walkway winding through the furniture to the window on the other side.
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