by Joe McKinney
Yeah, there was going to be hell to pay when he got back to Littleton.
His phone beeped again. Jeff looked down at it. He had completely forgotten his last text message to Colin. He hit the read button.
greatest surprise of your life. hope you’re horny.
“What the…”
Jeff closed his phone and looked around.
The fat lady next to him was slapping Alex in the back of the head again. “Stop scratching it,” she said, her voice a muffled hiss.
She looked at Jeff and smiled.
“Kids,” she said.
They were close enough to the end of their time together that he didn’t see any need to be a jerk to her, so he smiled back and said, “Yeah, whatcha gonna do?”
A few minutes later, they were walking through the jet-way to the terminal.
Colin was waiting for him, looking cool with his finger-combed brown hair and good tan. He looked smug and well-provided for, with his hands stuffed down into the pockets of his $3,000 Armani suit pants.
Jeff held out his hand to shake and Colin smiled and said, “Fuck that,” and hugged him.
“You look good, man,” Jeff said.
“I’d say the same about you, but you look like shit.”
“Yeah, fuck you, too.”
The fat woman and her even fatter kid walked by and the boy coughed, scratching at a part of his arm hidden by his shirtsleeve.
“Take care, Alex,” Jeff said.
The boy waved.
For a moment, it looked to Jeff like the boy’s fingertips were red.
“Friends of yours?”
“Yeah, you know. We’re tight.”
“Uh-huh.” Colin turned and they walked together to the baggage claim, talking about Colin’s new fiancé and his life out here in L.A. He had yet to tell Jeff the girl’s name, and Jeff hadn’t asked.
“So what’s this surprise you were telling me about?”
“Out in the car,” Colin said.
They stepped out to the loading zone, and Jeff saw a black limo waiting for them.
“We’re taking a limo to Las Vegas?” Jeff said.
“No, we’re taking a chartered party bus to Vegas. But before that, we’re gonna do a little partying and play catch-up.”
Colin reached into his pocket and held out a closed fist to Jeff.
“What’s that?”
“Just take it,” Colin said. “One for you, one for me.”
Jeff looked around. The place was crowded, but nobody was paying any attention to them. He reached out and Colin dropped something into his hand. Jeff glanced at it.
One pink pill, one blue.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Viagra and the best ecstasy you’re ever gonna take. Pop ’em real quick. You’re gonna need it.”
“For what?”
“Just take it, would you?”
Jeff popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.
“Cool,” Colin said. He opened the back door to the limo and with a sweep of his hand motioned Jeff inside. “Go on,” he said. “Check it out.”
Jeff put a hand on the roof and peered inside. The first things he saw were two pairs of long, beautifully bare legs. They led up to two tiny black skirts and bare midriffs and halter tops. Above that, smiling at him, were two of the most fantastically sexy women he had ever seen.
Jeff blinked. It took a moment for recognition to set in. There in the backseat before him were Bellamy Blaze and Katrina Cummz, the famous porn stars. He had spent quite a lot of alone time lately with their best scenes.
He glanced at Colin, who just shrugged, a smirk on his face.
When he looked back into the limo, Bellamy Blaze was holding out a martini with three olives skewered on a plastic sword.
“Want a drink?” she said.
Colin gave him a nudge.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”
CHAPTER 11
Billy Kline ran for the courtyard, holding the old man in his arms like a baby. The old broad beside him was doing a pretty good job of keeping up. She was gripping the garbage spike tightly in her fists, her eyes wide open and desperately scanning every nook and half-open door they passed for signs of movement.
There was another gunshot up ahead. The old dude in the cowboy hat was popping off a few well-aimed shots at a section of the courtyard off to their right, and as soon as Billy stepped into the sunlight, he saw why. Several of the prisoners from his work detail were there, shambling toward them.
Billy glanced over the buildings behind them and saw a hotel. That’s where they’re coming from, he figured. And that meant there were going to be a lot more of them soon. This part of Sarasota was almost completely made up of hotels and businesses that catered to the tourist crowd. Few of the people stuck here would know the area well enough to get away quickly, which would turn them into sitting ducks.
A shot broke his train of thought. He didn’t so much as hear the crack of the report as feel the whistle of air as the bullet passed just inches from his face.
“What the fuck?” he said, and looked at the old dude in the cowboy hat.
The man pointed to the open doorway behind him with a nod of his chin.
Billy looked behind him and saw an old woman whose lower lip and part of her cheek had been chewed off. It looked like the fingers on her right hand had been bitten off, too.
And now, there was a bullet hole in her forehead.
Billy quickly gauged the distance between himself and the old dude who had just fired. It looked to be about forty-five to fifty yards. Billy didn’t like guns, but he knew enough about them to respect what they could do. And he knew shooting wasn’t as easy as they made it out to be in the movies. Even with a rifle, landing a kill shot at that distance wouldn’t be a guarantee. To do it with a revolver was either very lucky or the product of someone who was an extremely gifted shooter.
“Ed, what’s happening?” the woman beside Billy yelled.
“We need to make it to the nurse’s station,” the old dude in the cowboy hat called back.
The woman turned to Billy. “This way, come on.”
The old man in his arms was groaning, and Billy was suddenly aware of how roughly he was treating him.
“Sorry, guy,” he said. “Hang in there.”
The man only groaned.
Zombies were pouring into the courtyard all around them. They were in some kind of central hub for the old-folks’ home, Billy figured, and they were starting to attract a pretty big crowd.
For a moment, Billy fought the urge to drop the old man and run for it. There were still large gaps between the zombies, and he was fast enough that he could probably make it through without even coming close to an infected person. But just as quickly he shot that thought down. He wasn’t a coward, and that’s what he’d be if he dropped the old man and ran for it. No, that wasn’t him at all.
Billy’s group and the old cowboy’s group came together in the middle of the courtyard.
The cowboy looked at the man in Billy’s arms.
“Hey, Art, you okay?”
The old man tried to answer, but it just came out as a slurred mumble.
“I don’t think he got bit,” Billy said.
The old cowboy nodded. “You’re okay, carrying him?”
“I got him.”
The squat woman with the two kids came up and whispered to the cowboy, “Ed, what are we gonna do?”
“We’re gonna have to shoot our way through. Can everybody move okay?” he said, looking at the others. They all nodded back. “Okay. Let’s get going.”
A zombie, faster than the others, had made it dangerously close to them. Ed motioned for Billy to stand aside. He raised one of his revolvers and dropped the zombie with an effortless one-handed shot.
As Billy watched, the old man released the catch on the revolver and opened up the cylinder. He depressed the plunger and ejected all six spent shell cas
ings onto the grass. Then he took a speed loader from a leather pouch on his belt, fed it into the cylinder, twisted the knob to release the bullets into their chambers, and then with a flick of his wrist snapped the cylinder closed.
“Where’d you learn to handle a gun like that, old man,” Billy said.
“I spent thirty-five years of my life putting men like you into outfits like that.”
The little boy who had been standing behind the cowboy was staring at Billy, half frightened, half fascinated.
“What are looking at?” Billy said.
The boy’s eyes got even wider. His Adam’s apple pistoned up and down.
Just then, Ed Moore pushed his way around Billy and stepped slightly ahead of the group. “Come on, everybody. Nobody stops moving.”
Billy was impressed, despite himself. The old cowboy moved with a fluidity that surprised him. He kept up a steady stream of fire, not wasting any bullets, not letting the moans and the horror of all those ruined bodies rush his shots. He fired all the way through both revolvers, then emptied the cylinders and reloaded without losing a step.
In all the reading Billy had done on the subject, and in all the documentaries he’d watched, every single commentator said that the best type of handgun to have in a fight against a large group of the infected was a semi-automatic, preferably a 9mm, as it offered the best compromise between magazine capacity and stopping power and ease of reloading in a combat situation.
But all those commentators had clearly never seen what you could do with a pair of six-shooters if you knew how to use them properly.
Ed cleared the path for them all the way to nurse’s station, a large, pink stucco cottage with narrow windows all around it, and they slipped inside the doorway without ever having to break into a trot.
He made it look easy.
“Put him over there,” Ed told the kid in the orange prison scrubs, and pointed with the barrel of his pistol to a large overstuffed chair in the middle of the room.
He holstered his guns and looked around. The others were huddled in the middle of the room. The kids were holding on to Margaret’s legs like they weren’t ever going to let go. Julie Carnes was giving Art Waller the once-over. Barbie Denkins didn’t seem to have any idea where she was. She just looked scared and small.
Ed walked over to the door they’d just entered and slid a desk in front of it. The zombies were already pounding on the other side of the door, and the desk wouldn’t hold them for long.
He went to one of the windows and looked out over the courtyard. There were bodies crumpled up on the ground in a long, meandering line that roughly paralleled their path across the courtyard. But there were a hundred or more of the infected still on their feet, and the combined sound of all their moans was deafening.
And they were coming toward the nurses’ station.
“That was pretty fucking incredible shooting you did out there,” said the man in the orange scrubs.
Ed felt a wave of disgust swell up inside him. As a marshal, and an oil field worker before that, he’d been around men who cussed all his life. But he’d never tolerated it. To him, a man who cussed was a man who lacked self-control and respect for others.
A man who cussed around women and children was lower than low.
“Please watch your language around these people,” he said.
“Huh?” The smile slid off the prisoner’s face, replaced just as quickly by a sneer. “Fuck you, old man.”
Ed turned on him. The prisoner was shaking his hands like he was working out the kinks, getting ready to ball them into fists. Ed stood still and waited, watching the man’s eyes and his shoulders. If he was going to do something, it would start there, the eyes squinting and the shoulders dropping just a hair to prepare for a punch.
“Ed?” It was Julie Carnes. She came up next to him like she had no clue what was going on between the two men and said, “Ed, it’s Art. He’s not doing so good. We need to get him some help.”
Ed forced himself to look away from the younger man, and as he did so, he felt a momentary wash of guilt go through him. They were in serious trouble, and here he was posturing with some thug. He didn’t have time for this.
“Okay,” he said. “Margaret, dial 9-1-1. Tell ’em we’re gonna need a bunch of cops out here. Julie, you make Art as comfortable as you can. You two”—he pointed to the kids—“the two of you help Mrs. Denkins onto the couch there and try to make her feel comfortable. Talk to her.”
“What do you want me to say?” Randy Hargensen said.
“Just talk to her,” Ed said. “You’re my deputy now. It’s your job to think of something.”
Ed turned back to the window.
“How many more bullets you got?” the prisoner said.
Outside, the infected were closing in on the nurses’ station and several had already started slapping their hands against the glass, smearing it with blood and dirt. The window was shaking. There were no drapes to close.
“Not nearly enough,” Ed said.
He glanced at the prisoner, then back at the courtyard.
“Your name’s Ed?” the prisoner said.
“Ed Moore.”
“Billy Kline.”
Ed nodded. “Good to meet you.”
“Yeah, right,” Billy said, and laughed.
Just then Margaret came up behind them. “Ed,” she said. “The line’s busy. I tried a bunch of times but I can’t get through. I tried my son’s cell phone number, too, and I got a message that the network is busy.”
“Okay,” Ed said. “Keep trying, Margaret.”
He looked behind him. The others were talking quietly among themselves. Everybody seemed to be doing okay except for Art and Barbie. The two of them looked so frail.
“We’re gonna have to do something pretty darn quick,” Ed said.
“What’d you have in mind?” Billy said.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“Where’d they all come from?” Ed said. “I went out for a walk this morning and the streets were empty. All of the sudden, there’s hundreds of those things.”
He had intended the question rhetorically, but to his surprise, Billy answered him.
“Most of these are probably from the hotel next door. My guess is a boatload of the infected got out of the quarantine zone and made landfall here sometime last night.”
“What makes you say that? Did you see a boat?”
“No,” Billy said. “It’s just a guess.”
“Based on what?”
“Well, they’re not gonna come by land. I mean, I’ve seen the quarantine wall on TV. Nothing’s getting through that. Coming by sea is the most logical way to do it. There’s a lot of ocean, and the Coast Guard’s only got so many patrols. Besides, before it all started, I saw a few of the infected that didn’t look all that fresh. It was their clothes. They looked like the people I’ve seen on the news from inside the quarantine zone.”
And then he told Ed about the man and the young boy he’d seen tied together at the wrist.
“Yeah, but zombies aren’t gonna know how to pilot a boat. That has to be at least a six-hundred-mile trip from here to the closest part of the quarantine zone.”
“Well, we don’t really know what a Stage Three zombie is capable of. But you’re probably right. My guess is it was a boatload of refugees. There were probably one or two who were infected, and they spread it here when they landed late last night or early this morning.”
“How do you know when they landed?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, old man, I don’t know. I’m just guessing. Late last night makes the most sense, though. Yesterday was the Fourth of July. I saw all the trash left out at Centennial Park from the celebrations. There must have been a bunch of people there last night. If the infected had come ashore any earlier, they would have run into all those crowds and we would have heard about it before now.”
Ed nodded. The kid reasoned pretty
well.
He pointed at the crowds in the courtyard and said, “Why do you suppose they’re all able to move around like that? If the zombies are eating them, don’t you think there’d be more of them that are, you know, not able to move? Shouldn’t they be dead?”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think the Stage One zombies attack to feed. Not like you mean, anyway. Maybe the Stage Two and Stage Three ones do. The Stage One zombies might even do it, too, if enough of them are attacking an uninfected person at the same time. But I think the Stage One zombies attack just to increase their numbers.”
Ed stared at him. He’d never considered that.
“You mean they’re like big viruses? They attack just enough to reproduce.”
“Exactly.”
Ed thought about that, and it explained a lot. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Some of it on TV,” Billy said. “Some of it’s just stuff I’ve been thinking about. It explains why the outbreaks spread so fast, you know?”
“Yeah. Huh. That’s pretty smart thinking.”
“Yeah, well, I may be wearing this thing, but I ain’t stupid.”
They stood there for maybe half a minute, Ed trying to think of what they were going to do and not coming up with anything, when two things happened more or less at the same time that decided the matter for him.
Margaret O’Brien had managed to get a 911 dispatcher on the phone and she was shouting to send help. Ed started that way. He was going to tell her to calm down, just tell them the address, that they needed help right away. But he didn’t make it more than halfway across the room before there was a loud crash and the sound of splintering wood from the doorway. The desk got pushed back a good eighteen inches as the door crashed open. Arms and hands and mutilated faces jutted through the opening.
A moment later, a window broke somewhere in the back of the station.
“Heads up, everybody,” Ed said. “We’re about to have company.”
He crossed to the door, drawing his revolver as he advanced, and fired four shots into the opening. Then he backed up and motioned for the others to get Barbie and Art onto their feet.
