Out in the street, the rest of the survivors formed a loose circle around the station steps as the zombies closed in. Alex lashed out with the bat again and again while the rest of them stood frozen in horror, uselessly holding their makeshift weapons.
“Y'all maybe want to help?” he screamed.
With a yell, Tom finally swung the metal table leg. A zombie's head collapsed with a crunch and it dropped. He stared at it in disbelief for a moment, then moved on to the next one.
Rachael, Sinder, Emily, and Josh stood paralyzed.
Alex screamed, “Goddammit, y'all, you gotta fight! Hit 'em!”
A zombie grabbed Emily by the wrist. More latched on. They pulled the table leg out of her hands. She screamed as they dragged her away into the crowd of undead.
“No!” Josh shouted. His paralysis broke. He lunged forward and swung the hammer, burying the claw end into a zombie's forehead. He wrenched the hammer loose and struck again, driving the hammer through the temple of the next one. Josh brought the hammer down again and again until the last of them lost their grip on Emily.
He stepped in front of her, brandishing the bloody hammer. “Stay away from her, you bastards!”
Harbaugh reached the door of the sheriff's station. He tried the door handle, but it didn't turn. He tried the key, and the door still wouldn't budge. “Shit, shit, shit,” said Harbaugh, tugging harder at the door. Behind him, Buck fed shells into his shotgun, looking out over the horde of undead.
A terrified eye appeared in the wire-reinforced window in the doorway. Deputy Pete Wilder was smeared with blood, his face pale as death.
“Pete, open the door.”
Wild-eyed with horror, Pete said, “I can't. They're out there.”
Chapter Eight
Harbaugh rattled the door handle furiously. “I'm out here, Pete. We're all out here. Open the fucking door.” The zombies closed in slowly, forming a shrinking half circle around the group of survivors as they backed up against the stairs of the sheriff's station.
Alex swung his bat, and a zombie dropped. Then another, and another. One more zombie lurched toward Emily, and Josh stepped between them. He screamed as he drove his hammer into the zombie's forehead. Blood sprayed his face. Rachael cringed and took a half-hearted swing with the crowbar.
Another gunshot rang out. A zombie's head disappeared in a fine, red spray. Its headless corpse staggered forward a few steps and fell. Alex turned and saw Annie, on the second story balcony of her bar, firing with a lever-action rifle.
“Pete, just open the door,” Harbaugh repeated.
“But what if they get in?”
“Deputy Wilder, you open this door right now. That's an order.”
“But . . . but . . .”
Harbaugh slammed his hand against the window. “Deputy, open this goddamned door!”
After a pause, they finally heard the clunk of a lock turning. The door opened. Harbaugh turned and motioned for the rest to get inside. They all did, Alex and Buck coming in last. They shut the door and threw the latch. Seconds later, zombies slammed against the door.
“Jesus, that was a close one,” said Harbaugh. “I'm glad we—” He stopped when he saw the condition of the room. The floor was wet with blood. Blood sprayed the walls, stippled the desk and the piles of paperwork. The place reeked of gun smoke and the sickening, coppery tang of blood. Doc Harper lay on the floor, his coat more red than white, his head a mess. Brass shell casings littered the floor. Mabel Burns, the dispatcher, lay sprawled across her desk, also dead. Her phone headset sat askew across her face, and her flower-print dress was torn and bloody. For the first time, Harbaugh noticed that Deputy Wilder's uniform was stained deep red. The deputy's arm was covered in gauze, soaked through with blood. “Jesus, Pete. What happened?”
The deputy laughed nervously. “Doc Harper . . . He came in . . . and he just bit Mabel. Just bit her, you know? Right on the throat. Killed her. And then he came after me. I . . . I shot him. I shot him, and he just kept coming. Then I shot him in the face, and . . . and then he died.” The deputy leaned against the wall. “So then, I was . . . I don't know. But I was trying to figure out what to do next. And Mabel, then . . . she got up and she bit me. So, I shot her in the head, too. I . . . yeah. I shot Mabel.” The deputy sat down hard in one of the office chairs, shivering. “She got me pretty good. I don't think the bleeding's stopped.”
“God, Pete, we've gotta get that taken care of.” Harbaugh saw the first aid kit lying open on the desk. “Emily, grab that. There's a bed in the holding cell. Buck, help me get him in there.”
Buck took Deputy Wilder under the armpits and Harbaugh lifted his feet. As they carried him around the corner, Harbaugh yelled, “And for God's sake, make sure the door's locked!” They got Pete to the narrow cot in the holding cell. He moaned as they set him down, ghostly pale. “Get his legs elevated,” Emily said. She wrapped the first aid kit's tourniquet around his upper arm, then twisted the handle down tight.
Pete's breath wheezed, rapid and shallow. His eyelids fluttered. “He's lost too much blood,” said Tom. “He's in hemorrhagic shock. Do you have any IV bags? Saline? Plasma?”
“All we have is what's in the first aid kit,” said Harbaugh. “Come on Pete, hold on.”
The deputy's eyes snapped open and went clear for a moment. He focused on Harbaugh. “I never shot anybody before. I wish I didn't . . . wish I didn't have to shoot Mabel. She was always so . . .” Pete gasped. His back arched, then he relaxed and went still, his dead eyes staring at the ceiling.
“Ah, shit. Goddammit.” Harbaugh stood and turned away. “Jesus Christ.” He pressed his fingers over his eyes for a moment, then kicked a trash can across the room.
Glassy-eyed, Harbaugh stumbled back to the main room of the station. Emily followed quietly behind him. The rest of them watched Harbaugh silently. He shook his head and sat down in one of the office chairs. He buried his face in his hands.
“Sheriff,” said Josh, “he's going to turn.”
The sheriff mumbled, “Kid, goddammit, not now.”
“I'm serious. I . . . Look, I don't like it either.”
“Josh, I don't have time for your comic book bullshit.”
Josh slammed his palms down on the desk. Harbaugh jumped. “This is not a fucking comic book. It's happening.”
Harbaugh's expression softened. Suddenly, he just looked very tired. He nodded. “Yeah, kid. I know. Just . . . just give me a minute, okay? Jesus, I just wanted to be a lazy small town sheriff. I don't want to deal with this shit.”
They heard a wet crunch. Alex walked out of the holding cell, his bat dripping with fresh blood. His face was unreadable. “He ain't gonna turn.”
Harbaugh nodded silently and returned his head to his hands.
Alex turned to the crowd. “Okay, I guess we're all pretty shagged out. Let's just take a breather. Darlin', can I borrow that pry bar for a second?” Rachael handed him the tool. Alex walked up to the snack machine and popped the lock open with one quick yank. He took two Snickers bars and a bottle of water, then sat down opposite the sheriff and set one of the candy bars down. “Gotta keep your energy up.”
“That's why I left Vegas, you know.” Harbaugh picked up the Snickers and unwrapped it. The desert heat had already penetrated the sheriff's station, and the soft chocolate of the candy bar left brown smudges on his fingers. He stared at the candy. “It was just too much. Too much blood. Too much death. It wore me down. I just wanted to come back here, to my hometown, and be Andy Griffith. And now . . . now this. How's a man supposed to deal with this?”
Alex unwrapped his own candy bar. He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Hell if I know. Like everything else, I reckon. One day at a time.”
“Maybe Annie was right. Maybe we should just go back to the bar and get drunk. Who am I kidding? What am I supposed to do about a goddamned army of the dead?” Harbaugh sighed, then took a bite of his Snickers.
“Sheriff, I know you didn't think too much of me
when you first laid eyes on me.” Alex leaned back in the office chair and set his boots up on the desk, then tipped his hat back. “But the first time I saw you, I said to myself, 'There's a fella what rides tall in the saddle.' I think we got something in common, whether or not you believe it. Both of us, when we see somethin' wrong, we can't really help ourselves. We gotta go out and do somethin' about it. Gotta go fight that monster. Hell, I don't know. What I'm tryin' to say is, I know that sooner or later you're going to walk back out that door to do what you can for these folks. And I'm gonna be there with you.”
Harbaugh said, “I always was too damned righteous for my own good. If I could have just learned to look the other way and ignore things, I'd probably be the police commissioner of Las Vegas by now.” He sighed again, jammed the last of his candy bar into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “You're right, though. I had the wrong idea about you.”
Alex shrugged. “Well, I am a stone killer. You wasn't wrong about that. But there's some things in this world what need killin'.”
Harbaugh wiped chocolate on his uniform pants, then reached into his shirt pocket with two fingers. He pulled out a single .45 caliber bullet. He placed it, standing up, on the desktop. “This is yours,” he said. “It was loaded in the chamber when I took your gun. I don't like to think about where we'll be if one bullet is going to make any kind of difference, but I guess you should have it. Use it well.”
Alex nodded thoughtfully. He slipped the bullet into the pocket of his jeans. “Look, I wanted to ask you something. I guess neither of us knows much about zombies, but from what I've heard, they're all supposed to be mindless walking corpses. Now, when we was out there, did those dead fellas seem mindless to you?”
After a moment's pause, Harbaugh shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, they did not. That felt an awful goddamned lot like an ambush.”
Alex nodded slowly. “Yeah, that's what I was thinkin', too.”
“But what the hell does it mean?”
“Means this shit might be more complicated than we thought. Anyway, when you're ready, why don't you go and show us where those guns are at.”
***
Josh sat on the floor in the hallway, his back leaned up against the wall. Emily found him there, staring blankly at the opposite wall. She had the first aid kit in her hands. “Hi, Josh,” she said.
He looked up and blinked. “Hey, Emily.”
She knelt down in front of him. “I'm just trying to make sure everybody is okay. Are you hurt?”
Josh thought about it for a moment. “No, I think I'm fine. Thank you.”
Emily cocked her head. “Look at you. You've got blood all over your face. Let me help.” She removed the foil wrap from a wet-wipe and dabbed gently at his forehead. He blushed and flinched away, avoiding her eyes. “Hey, it's okay.” She carefully wiped the blood smears from his cheek. “You know,” she began, “I just wanted to say thank you. Out there, I saw the way you jumped right in front of me to protect me. It was heroic.”
“I just . . .” Josh started. “It was nothing. Hey, I'm sorry about Chet.”
She cast her eyes downward. “Thank you.” She wiped more blood from near his mouth.
“I know he meant a lot to you. Me and him never got along, you know that. But he didn't deserve that. Nobody did.”
“I . . . thank you.” She paused for a moment. “I don't know how to feel about it. Maybe I'm still in shock. It's just . . . it's like I'm supposed to be destroyed by it and . . . I don't know. I just . . .”
“You feel bad because you don't feel worse?” said Josh.
After a pause, Emily nodded. “Yeah.”
Josh smiled bitterly. “I think I can understand that.”
She caught his eye. “He was always so cruel to you. Chet was, I mean. He was cruel to everyone. But he had it in for you, and I know it was because of me. Because we were friends. I don't know why I didn't try harder to stop it. I just . . . I don't know. High school, you know? I had a role to play. I suppose we all did.”
Josh smiled. “My role sucked.”
Emily smiled back. “Maybe my role wasn't that great, either.” She wiped the last of the blood off Josh's face. “There,” she said, “all better.”
Josh looked down again, then looked back and met her eyes. “You're going to make a great doctor.”
She gently placed one hand on his and opened her mouth to say something.
“Oh, Emily?” Sinder popped his head into the hallway. “Could you come over here and help me with this?”
“Sure, Mr. Sinder. I'll be right there.” Emily packed up her first aid kit.
“I hate that guy,” whispered Josh.
She squeezed his hand before standing up. “He isn't that bad.”
“Easy for you to say. You got the only A in his class.”
***
Buck took one of the dead radios down from the shelf and pulled the plastic cover off the battery compartment. A rectangular nine-volt battery dangled from its connector until he pulled it loose.
“What are you doing?” Tom asked.
“Just a little experiment,” answered Buck. He touched the battery to his tongue. And again. “Nothing,” he said. “No juice. Isn't that weird?”
“But what the hell does it mean?” said Tom.
“I don't have a clue. Did the . . . the whatever this is, the Event . . . did it break the battery? Is there something that's affecting the way electricity works? Was there some kind of fundamental change in the rules of the universe? I can't explain it. It's weird as hell.”
Tom sighed. “It's just been a weird kind of day.”
Buck noticed Emily and Sinder observing. He said, “What about you, Dan? You're the chemist. What's your take on this?”
Sinder answered, “My take is that I wouldn't presume to understand God's will.”
Buck rolled his eyes. “Oh, great. That's helpful.”
***
They all followed Harbaugh into the armory. The sheriff's keys jingled as he opened the metal doors on the gun locker.
Alex whistled. “You got quite an arsenal for a hick sheriff.”
“The department wasn't always one fat sheriff and two deputies. Besides, Homeland Defense just throws this stuff at us. Why not take it?” The cabinet contained a dozen matte-black AR-15 rifles, an equal number of shotguns, a handful of pistols, and ammunition for all. “Okay,” the sheriff said, “raise your hands if you've never shot a gun before.”
Emily, Josh, and Sinder raised their hands. Harbaugh nodded. “You folks are going to get a crash course.” He went quickly over the functioning of the weapons. “Basically, treat every gun like it's loaded, and don't point it at anything you don't want to put a hole in. And for God's sake, be aware of what's behind your target. We're having a bad enough day without accidentally shooting each other.”
The sheriff handed Josh an AR-15. “Awesome,” said the kid.
Emily took a pistol with an expression somewhere between fear and awe. Sinder accepted a pistol without comment and tucked it into his waistband.
Harbaugh went around the room and divvied up the rifles, shotguns, and pistols to the rest. Rachael took a pistol, and Tom took both a rifle and a pistol. Buck held up his shotgun and said, “I think I'll stick with what I know.”
Harbaugh set a Glock pistol and a rifle in front of Alex. “We don't have any rounds for your fancy vampire killing pistol there. But we've got enough bullets for the department's Glocks.”
Alex took the pistol and made a face. “Desperate times . . .” he said.
Harbaugh rolled his eyes. “Oh, you're one of those. A gun snob.”
The vampire hunter shrugged. “I just don't like pistols made outta plastic. I mean, this here,”—he pulled out his Colt 1911—“this just . . . feels real. It feels right.”
“If ignoring a hundred years' worth of advancement in firearms technology feels right to you, I guess. I bet you're one of those folks that drives a sixty-year-old car and tells people how
much better it is than modern Japanese cars, even though they're more reliable and cost less. Then you drive around listening to hokey old music and getting eight miles to the gallon.”
Alex laughed. “Since you're a psychic and all, why don't you tell me where these zombies are comin' from?” He turned his pistol so the mirror-polished slide caught the light. “I get what you're sayin'. I've been accused of livin' in the past. And I ain't sayin' that Gaston Glock didn't make a fine pistol.” He aimed his own pistol up at the corner of the room. “But sometimes, it's about style, you know?”
The sheriff laughed. “My style is being able to shoot ten more bullets without reloading.”
***
Rachael cautiously cracked open the back door. The impound yard behind the sheriff's station was enclosed by a hurricane fence, firmly anchored in concrete and topped with razor wire. In the lengthening shadows of the afternoon, zombies crushed against the fence and pressed their fingers between the chain links, moaning softly and chewing on the fence. Rachael looked around for a moment, then propped the door open with a trash can and sat on the top step while she lit a cigarette.
Alex found her there. He had an AR-15 tucked under his arm, and a plastic bag full of ammunition boxes and magazines. “Hey,” he said. “How you holding up?”
She turned and looked up at him. “As well as can be expected, I guess. I didn't really know Lila that well, but Jesus. Nothing like a zombie apocalypse to put our little problems in perspective.”
“Ain't that the truth,” said Alex. He sat down on the concrete step next to Rachael and set a box of bullets down beside him. He began feeding bullets into the rifle's magazine. Outside, the crowd of zombies moaned and pushed against the fence.
Rachael took another drag. “You think that fence is going to hold?”
Alex shrugged. “For now, anyway.”
Rachael nodded. “So,” she said, “I've been noticing something kind of strange.”
“Like how they kinda sprang a trap on us?”
“Well, yeah. That, too.” She nodded toward the fence. “But look at the zombies out there.”
Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night Page 10
