by Mark Clodi
“The doctor, he said I was safe, as long as I take care of his house. You need to leave.”
“Lady, I have no idea what you are talking about. Tell me who you are. Now.” Katie brought the shotgun up to her shoulder and aimed it at the woman.
The woman eyed the gun warily, then slumped and said, “Beatriz. Beatriz Bustillo.”
“Now that wasn’t so bad was it? Turn around, into the house.” Katie motioned for the woman to go back inside. Katie followed Beatriz in and locked the door behind her.
“So, Beatriz...tell me what you are doing here.” Katie ordered.
“I…I work for the doctor. I don’t do much anymore. He never comes home, he just stays at the clinic.”
“The doctor? What doctor?”
“Doctor Sentry. At the clinic. He is…he is a good man. I know it.”
When the name poured off of Beatriz’s lips Katie felt the ground fall out from beneath her. She knew that name, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, know how she knew it. She hated him. A man she never met before and she had to kill him.
“Makes you wonder why, doesn’t it?” came Randy’s voice as he sauntered into the kitchen area.
“You again.” Katie snorted.
“What?” asked Beatriz.
“Nothing.” Katie said.
“Nothing? I suppose you are right.” Randy commented, “I think we are at a crossroad here, which way will we go?”
“What do you mean?” asked Katie.
“What?” asked Beatriz, slowly backing towards the living room.
“Not you! I’m not talking to you! And stay where you fucking are if you want to live! As for you, do we really need to do this now? And what do you mean about the crossroad?”
Beatriz bolted for the living room, Katie fired and the shotgun pellets caught the woman in the side of her lower back.
“Oh, you’re in for it now!” said Randy.
Katie ignored him and ran after the woman, who had kept running despite the wound. ‘Did I miss? It was close and she twisted around that wall pretty fast.’
Turning the corner with the gun held at waist level, Katie was surprised to see the woman was already at the top of the stairs. The bottom of the woman’s shirt was soaked red and a dark stain had spread from there onto her gray track pants.
“Freeze!” Katie yelled. Beatriz, stumbled forward to the ground and continued crawling.
The angle was bad but Katie took a shot anyway as she rushed up the stairs two at a time.
Beatriz had crawled into a bedroom and was fumbling at a night stand when Katie came through the doorway.
“Damn it! Stop!” Katie yelled.
Beatriz pulled her hand back, in it was clutched a revolver with a long barrel, as she lifted it out and tried to aim it back over her shoulder at Katie the shotgun went off. The revolver spun end over end and struck the wall, leaving a dent before rebounding onto the bed. Beatriz’s hand had ceased to exist, leaving only bloody stump with the bones of her hand sticking up from the end of her wrist. The woman screamed and clutched the bloody mess to her body.
Katie stood over her with the shotgun, waiting for the screaming to subside. It didn’t. Finally Katie reached down and grabbed Beatriz by the ankle and pulled her to the open area at the foot of the bed. With a twist she flipped the woman onto her back.
“What the hell were you thinking? I had you at gun point!” Katie said.
“You’re not supposed to be here. I’m going to get the injection. I’m going to live forever! He promised!” Beatriz whimpered.
“You’re going to bleed out in about five minutes and I don’t think I can stop it.” Katie said.
“And why would you want to? Our business isn’t about putting people back together, it’s about taking them apart.” Randy said from the doorway. Katie cast a quick glance his way and turned back to the woman dying on the floor.
“What are you talking about?”
“He said it was safe here. No one would come. Maybe tomorrow he would take me to the clinic. He has a new medicine to test and he wants to try it on me. There is no danger.”
“Lady, I have no idea what you are yammering about.”
“I…” Beatriz began, then stopped. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she shuddered violently.
“She’s leaving.” Randy said.
“Maybe she’ll haunt me like you?”
He shook his head, “I hope not, I don’t think there is enough room in your head for more than the two of us.”
“Fuck.”
It didn’t take long for Beatriz to die. Katie looked around the house and found a generator wired into the building in the garage. It required her to push a button and when she did the power came on inside the house. Once she shut the door to the garage she could hardly hear the noise. Katie looked down at her clothing and was surprised to see it was covered in blood.
“Damn it. This is why I was a sniper; there was less laundry to do after killing someone.”
“Very politically correct Katie.” Randy said with disapproval, “How’d you get so much blood on you?”
“Splatter, I guess. I hope this dump has a washing machine.”
“That’s my girl, kill someone in their own house and do your laundry while their body cools.”
“It’s not like I have to worry about the cops busting me.”
“I suppose not. Why are you here, Katie?”
Katie’s brow furrowed in thought. “I’m going to kill this Sentry guy. He sounds like a dick. I suppose waiting for him in his own home is a pretty good ambush technique.”
Randy laughed, “Sure, but why here and why him? You don’t even know the guy.”
“Shower first, I’m getting this blood off of me.”
“The water will be cold, the generator just came on. The water heater needs a couple hours to do its job.”
“I am not sitting around with all this blood on me for a couple of hours. A cold shower will get it off as good as a hot one.” Katie marched upstairs past the now closed door of the room Beatriz lay in and continued on to the master suit.
“Nice.” Katie said, pushing inside. The room had cream colored walls with dark, mahogany trim. The floor looked like it was made of compressed bamboo and there was a large throw rug on top of it, upon which sat a king sized bed. The bed looked like it hadn’t been slept on in weeks. There were two large windows, one overlooking the street below and the other looking out the back yard. Along the far wall were two doors and a doorway. The doorway led to a bathroom that was the size of a bedroom in a normal house. It was tiled with a shower, a Jacuzzi tub, and the usual sanitary facilities. Katie stripped off her clothing and dumped it in the tub before stepping into the shower.
Randy didn’t disappear; he followed her to the shower stall where he watched as Katie rinsed the blood off of her body.
“Care to join me?” Katie teased, giving a roll of her hips.
He shook his head, “I never liked cold showers.”
“You’re dead, you won’t feel it.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
“You swam with me.” Katie protested.
“Yeah, the ocean is large and filled with the souls of the dead. The shower is not.”
“I’m done anyway.” Katie said, rinsing the last of the shampoo out of her hair. She stepped to the side of the shower and grabbed a teak colored towel. Katie dried herself off, wrapped her hair into one towel and her body into another. She turned the water on in the tub and rinsed her clothing well, then wrung it out and rolled it up into a third towel she took from the linen closet.
“Do you just bet the laundry room is downstairs?”
“A good bet. There won’t be a basement this close to the ocean; the water table is too high.”
Katie found the wash room tucked away at the back corner of the house and tossed her wet clothing into the dryer.
“Forty minutes and I will be good to go.”
“You didn’t even wash it, you just rinsed it.”<
br />
“So sue me. I got the blood out and I am not sure when Sentry is coming home.”
“I’m glad you brought that up Katie. What are we doing here again?”
“I just…feel I need to be here.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well, what else am I going to do?”
“Find an island somewhere, boat out there and ride this thing out?” suggested Randy.
“How about I kill this bastard first and then do that?”
“You are good. You can’t tell me why you are here and refuse to think about it.”
“A woman’s prerogative.”
“Bullshit.”
“I better check my guns. Make sure everything is ready for the good doctor when he arrives home.”
“This is bullshit.”
“Go away Randy. I’ll talk to you after.”
Randy faded away like the fog he was, leaving Katie struggling not to think about what he had said.
Chapter 30 – Max
The zombie who was aiming her rifle at Stewart collapsed in a spray of bone fragments and dark, sticky blood. Her gun slipped from nerveless fingers as Stewart’s shoulders sagged in relief.
“About fucking time, Max!” Stewart said, only to turn and see Ruben standing with his gun still aimed in the zombie’s general direction. “Ruben?”
The old man nodded. “Your boyfriend and Bill are having a little pow-wow back at the car park.”
“So you can see zombies too?”
“No. I just followed the swear words. They usually lead to you. I’m glad I could help out.”
“Well, thank you.” Stewart said, a little gruffly.
Ruben eyed the thick vegetation around them uneasily, “We should get out of here, I don’t like being somewhere they can jump us so easily.”
“Uphill gets us back to the state patrol building.” said Stewart pointing up the slope.
“Yeah, I didn’t get lost walking thirty yards into the woods to save you, believe it or not.”
“I believe it. Sorry, I was just trying to be helpful.”
“Forget about it.”
The two climbed the hill and came upon Max and Bill arguing to their left as they emerged onto the thin strip of grass between the building and the edge of the woods.
“Now what?” asked Stewart.
“Max has something on his mind. It sounds like that sort of argument.”
Stepping over to the other two Stewart could tell Ruben was right. Both men stopped talking as they were approached.
“What? Is there trouble with the bro-mance?” Stewart asked.
Max smiled, but Bill scowled and said, “No, just a disagreement.” Doing a double take, Bill went on, “Ruben. I didn’t even see you leave.”
“Well, you two were arguing and I thought someone should cover Stewart’s back. What were you two bickering about?”
Max looked at Bill and back to Ruben. “Nothing much. We were talking about the mission and trying to figure out what to do.”
“Or if we should do it. I’m sorry Ruben, I was all set to keep going without Max, but now I wonder at the sense of it all, especially with Javier down. It’s just the four of us against a bunch of the toughest zombies. Not just tough zombies, but the ones who started this mess? Maybe we should pack it in.” said Bill.
“Hallelujah. Let’s load up and head home. Let the Drapers of this world deal with the heavy lifting.” Ruben said.
Max shook his head, “Go if you want to, but I am going on. We went through this already, before we even left Lake Michigan. Any of you could have backed out then, but you chose to come. What has changed? Javier is incapacitated? Did you really think we would all make it through? I didn’t. Which is why I was more than half hoping you four wouldn’t come along.”
“No, we are in it until you say ‘stop’, Max.” said Bill. His face was downcast with a slight frown, “I just don’t know when that will be. Maybe when Stewart dies? Or I do?”
“Maybe, but probably not. I think if I am the one to die that you should turn around and head home, unless someone else can figure out how to find the bad guy. All we have to do is get within a hundred yards of the bad guy and blow him up. We don’t have to talk to him. I plan on getting close to wherever he is, dropping the backpack nearby, setting the timer and running like my ass is on fire and my testicles are catching.”
“Nice speech, Max. I’ll give you that.” Stewart said, “But if you die, do you think we’d really be able to go back and face your kids? I mean, maybe Ruben and Javier could, but I’ve been with you since this started and Bill is your best friend, neither of us could live with ourselves if something like that happened. No offense old man.”
“None taken. I would go back, someone has to tell them what happened.”
“Okay, so we are going on. Let’s load the fuck up and get out of here.” Stewart walked through the open gate towards the cars, “Are we all fueled up? I hope so, because I want to make some miles today. If Aubrey keeps the roads cleared we could be down there tomorrow at this time and back to Iowa three days after that.”
“That’s a good goal.” said Max, trailing behind her.
Ruben and Bill shared a long look and Bill shook his head, “Don’t. Don’t say anything. Lately every time you talk things get confused. I’m not sure what you gained, but I know it’s messing with our heads and after talking to Max I know we aren’t limited to physical improvements.”
“I wouldn’t try anything with you Bill. Things aren’t going the way I like anymore.”
“You and me both. You ready to spill the beans on what your zombie inherited power is?”
“Like I said, it didn’t come with a manual. I’m still trying to figure it out.” With that Ruben turned and started walking after the other two.
“You didn’t come through the gate Ruben.”
Ruben stiffened for a moment, and then kept walking.
“Have it your way, Ruben. But you should talk to one of us sometime.” Bill said softly.
After traveling more than six hundred miles that day and through part of the night they stopped at a rest area around two in the morning. The latest signs they had passed indicated that they were twenty miles outside of Jacksonville. There were two things of interest that happened that day. First, they were down to two police cruisers. The one Stewart was driving started overheating after only three hundred miles. They had opted not to try and find a new vehicle, fueling up only two was far easier than siphoning gas for all three. They had picked up three gas cans, two and a half gallons plastic affairs which helped with siphoning fuel from the abandoned cars along the highway.
When they finally stopped to get some sleep they still had half a tank in each car and all three gas cans were full. Max had wanted to stop at the last abandoned car they had passed to get fuel out of it, but Bill insisted they wait until daylight. By then everyone was getting tired and tempers were short. As they pulled into the rest stop, the other thing of note happened. After Max and Stewart were sleeping with Ruben and Bill left on watch, Javier woke up.
Chapter 31 – Katie
‘The bastard isn’t coming home.’ Katie thought. She was sitting in a sniper position in the master bedroom. She had set up the nest behind the curtains with her rifle pointed through a hole in the screen and propped up using the window sill for a base. It was almost sundown. The bedroom was a mess. She had pulled in enough furniture to build a nest around the window, a nest that included a firm brace for the rifle and a comfy position to support her while she waited. She had used a knife from the kitchen to cut a slash through the curtain and after getting her rifle set up she had gone outside to see how well her camouflage worked. Katie knew if the zombie used his special vision she was toast, she lacked the camo suit she had worn in Chicago. However, she was betting that the man was used to his house being empty and would not think to check it out before he came in.
‘Besides, I’ve replaced one living body with another one. He should see wha
t he expects, his maid.’ Whether Beatriz was supposed to be in his bedroom or not was a different matter, but Katie felt pretty certain she was going to be okay. ‘If he will come home!’
“What some company?” Randy asked from behind her.
“As long as you aren’t going to lecture me.”
“Me? Now why would I do that?”
“You tell me, Randy.”
Randy smiled and shook his head, “Now if I tried to do that you would just tell me I was lecturing. Give me some ground to cover here without pissing you off.”
Katie laughed and nodded, “Well, you got me there. What is on your mind?”
“How long are you planning on being here?”
“Until this bastard comes home, then I pop him and move on.”
“Where to?”
“This is starting to sound like the third degree again.”
Randy shook his head, “No. I am just curious, I seem to be stuck here with you and I have to wonder what is next.”
“Why? You got plans or something I should take into consideration?”
Flushing, Randy said, “No, not really.”
“You’re me. You explained that before.”
“Yeah, but I think I might have been wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Katie asked.
“I think I might know things you don’t. Like, remember when we were doing laundry, we ended up alone and decided to get a little hot and heavy on the washer?”
It was Katie’s turn to blush, “How could I forget? It was…earthshattering.”
“But what happened after?”
Katie shook her head, “We got our laundry and went our separate ways?”
“No. There was something else, do you remember?”
“No. Look it was a long time ago, I don’t remember every trivial thing that happened eight months ago.”
“So nothing else happened?” Katie shook her head. Randy continued, “See? This is what I am talking about. You don’t remember the bottle of champagne? The cheese and crackers? I pulled them out of my rucksack and we had a little post-coitus picnic before we folded our laundry and then went our separate ways.”
