In the three seconds Deckard gaped, his escape was cut off. He’d had a chance to escape—alone. None of the others could have kept up, not even Thuy, and there was no way he could leave her behind.
“Back inside,” he hissed, pushing them through the sliding glass doors and then hauling back on a long curtain, cutting off the little light the night afforded. He pushed through them and sped for the front door, only to be brought up short when it thumped, heavily, rattling on its hinges.
“Look out,” he hissed in a whisper to Chuck who was standing in the middle of the living room, seemingly frozen in place. Dodging around the cowboy, Deckard hurried to a small office off the living room. One window faced the east side of the house, glancing out he saw there were zombies there as well, seven or eight, too many to try to rush by in secret.
Deckard came back into the living room and turned in a small circle, slowly realizing that they were trapped and that they were going to die very soon unless someone came up with a plan.
“Thuy? Tell me you have a plan. Please. Can you make some sort of bomb or something?”
She shook her head, her black hair somehow shimmering even though there wasn’t any light. “I can…I can check in the kitchen or the garage…wait! The garage!”
“We can use a car,” Stephanie cried, catching Thuy’s sudden excitement. A second before, salvation was an impossibility, now it likely sat in the garage just waiting for them. With the last of her energy, she practically ran to the garage door that sat just off a small hall leading from the kitchen. Ignoring the moans and the banging on the doors and windows, she threw open the door and froze half in and half out of the garage.
Right away, Deckard knew there wasn’t a car.
Hoping to find something of use, he pushed past her, squinting into the dark, looking at the shelves for something that could be used to create a fire or a bomb or, or…anything. Unfortunately, the people who had lived here had not been handy in the least. The shelves held some unused gardening equipment and the impeccably clean workbench sitting in the corner had only a few items on it: a hammer, two screw drivers, and a blue jug filled with windshield washing fluid.
“Where’s the car?” Stephanie asked in a hollow whisper. She felt as though she was living a nightmare. The night had that slow motion, doomed feeling of a horrible dream that she couldn’t wake up from.
“We’ll figure something out,” Deckard said, once again pushing past her. He hurried to the kitchen, knowing that if there was a way out of the trap he had accidentally led them into, Thuy would figure it out. He found her down on all fours with her head beneath the kitchen sink and a flashlight in her mouth. Already there was a pile of cleaning products next to her left leg.
He stooped to pick up one of the bottles just as there was a crash of glass from the far side of the house. Forgetting the bottle, he sped through the house and found Chuck bracing the door to the laundry room with his stick thin body.
“What’s the plan, Deck? Tell me she gots a plan.” Chuck was with Deckard when it came to an estimation of Thuy’s intelligence. Chuck had never met anyone smarter. It was a fact, at least in his head, that she had more brains than the entire population of Norman, Oklahoma combined.
“I’m sure she’s got something clicking,” Deckard answered, clasping Chuck on his frail shoulder. “We just have to hold things together until she sets it in action. You guard this door. Courtney!” he yelled. With the zombies attacking the house, and the noise building, there was no sense creeping about as they had been. “Courtney, station yourself in the living room. I’ll watch the kitchen door. Steph…” His words caught in his throat as Thuy stepped out of the kitchen, holding only a couple of spray cans in her hands.
By her expression, he knew something was wrong. “Hey Thuy…it’s going to be alright. Just tell us what the plan is.”
She shook her head and then shrugged. “I don’t have one,” she admitted.
“Yes, you do, you just need some time,” Deckard assured her.
“No, time won’t do it. We have nothing. There’s nothing in the house and there’s too many of them. Look,” she pointed at the front door which was shaking and vibrating under the blows of the zombies tearing at it. “Time is what we don’t have.”
“I have a plan,” Chuck said, with a strange smile on his face. “It’s sure all queer that you didn’t think of it, Dr. Lee.”
Thuy’s eyes shot wide and eagerly she asked: “What is it? What’s the plan?”
“Simple. We gots to sacrifice one of us.”
Chapter 23
1—10:17 p.m.
The Hartford Quarantine Zone
Eyes shot around the room. Each of them looking back and forth from one to the next, stunned and frightened by Chuck’s statement. He was right. The only way out was for one of them to cause a distraction so the others could escape. But who? Who would be left behind to get eaten?
Stephanie knew she was the obvious choice. She was the sickest and the weakest and the worst fighter and she wasn’t smart like Dr. Lee or resourceful like Courtney and she didn’t have Deckard’s endurance and strength or Chuck’s toughness.
She was useless—except in this. In this one thing she could be greater than all of them. She could be a hero, if only she could find the courage to open her mouth or raise her hand, or do anything besides shake like a leaf and hope that someone would come up with a better plan.
When no one did, she tried to force herself to say something. She even went so far as to open her mouth but words refused to come. She could feel them in her chest ready to come bursting out, only her throat locked up and she couldn’t get a squeak out.
It was up to Chuck to speak for her. He smiled suddenly at Stephanie and said: “I’ll stay. I’ll open the garage door a bit and make a ruckus. I’ll bang some pans and such, enough to get them on me good, while y’all go out through the study window. It’s got a screen on it that y’all can pop right off. Just whatever you do, don’t shoot y’all’s guns.”
Unexpectedly, Thuy balled a fist in front of Chuck’s face as if she was going to hit him. She only shook it in complete fury. “No! This is unacceptable. There’s got to be another way.”
Just then, one of the hinges on the front door gave way. There was a crack! and the sound of metal bouncing on hardwood floors. Calmly, Chuck squinted toward the door as if it was just one more sunset, adding to the net of wrinkles around his eyes.
“If there’s another way,” he drawled, “we’ve wasted all the time left to us in order to find it. Y’all better get going. Hurry now.” Gently, he pushed Thuy’s fist down and then pointed to the study door.
There was no time for words and so Deckard simply gave Chuck a nod and began pulling Thuy away.
“But…” was all she could think to say.
Courtney was just as speechless and walked past Chuck with a strange, blank look on her face as if she had been knocked on the head.
Next was Stephanie and she seemed as thunder-struck as Courtney. Chuck pressed the M4 he carried into her numb hands. “Be careful how many bullets you use, darlin’. There ain’t a lot left. Just a touch over half a mag.”
“All I’ll need is two,” she said as she slid the magazine out and thumbed a couple of brass bullets into her palm.
Chuck gave her a strange look and said: “Sorry, darlin’ but y’all’s shooting ain’t all that good. Yer gonna need all them bullets and then some.”
“Nope, just two. Hey, Deckard, catch.” She tossed the magazine. It arced gracefully, but he was so surprised that he fumbled the catch.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. The answer was so obvious that he didn’t know why he asked it. Stephanie had been a weakling since he had first laid eyes on her. Now she was strong.
“I’m helping you escape, now get going.” Her words were sharp as glass and her eyes were hard. When Thuy hesitated, Stephanie shoved her bodily into the study and shut the door in her face to keep her from asking another time-
wasting and pointless question.
Now, they were alone.
Chuck knew what she was doing and was incensed; however, before he could say a word, she strode past him. He caught up to her in the kitchen, staring around in the dark, trying to figure out which cupboard held the pans. “You need to get yer ass with the others! Go on. If you need a goodbye kiss, well ok, but then you need to git!”
She ignored his blazing anger and opened the first cupboard. Bingo, she thought and snatched two pans. When she straightened, Chuck grabbed her shoulders and brought his face within an inch of hers. “I am trying to save you.”
Her courage peaked as she said: “You can’t save me, just like I can’t save you.” She could see his pain, both physical and emotional. It was a mirror of hers. They were both going to die very soon, one way or another, and the one thing she had learned in all of this was that she didn’t want to die alone. If she was going to die, she wanted it to be in the arms of the man she loved.
He understood, but the truth hurt so badly that he fought the inevitable and with a roar he turned his size 13 shit kickers and put a whomping big dent in the front of the refrigerator. “Son of a bitch! You go with them or else.” Laughably, he had his fist raised.
It made her love him even more. Ignoring the rock hard fist and the clamoring of zombies breaking through the windows and hammering down the doors, she pulled him in close.
“You can only put off death for so long,” she said, looking up into his eyes. As hard as his fist was, his eyes were wet and soft, and his lips trembled.
He was afraid, only she didn’t realize what he feared until he asked: “You’re gonna make me kill you, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “I’d kill you, but I know you won’t let me. You’re too much of a gentleman.” For some ungodly reason, these words struck her as outrageously funny and she brayed laughter and smiled up at the man who would kill her two minutes later. “Come on! Let’s do this right!”
Taking one of the pots, she hammered it with sudden anger and strength on the side of the stove. Bam! Bam! Bam! She turned to him, her soft face wet with tears, her smile manic and at the same time endlessly sad.
“You got to try it,” she said and held out her dented pot.
He took it and looking into her eyes, said: “Aw-right.” It was his way. The one word confessed his love and told her that this was the right thing to do. They would go out together as lovers should.
With the pot in one hand, he went to the garage and flicked on the light. They both blinked at the glare and they both tried to hide the fear in their faces. Stephanie was ghostly white and so thin that it hurt Chuck to see what the last three days had done to her.
With a show of bravado he didn’t feel, Chuck laughed aloud as he marched to the aluminum double door and beat it with his pot. The metal on metal was a storm of sound—it was also completely cathartic. The two of them pounded out their frustrations.
It was over all too soon. In half a minute, they both sagged back, their exhaustion overwhelming them. Chuck took Stephanie by the hand and led her back into the house, nearly running into a zombie who had slithered through the shattered glass of the sliding kitchen door and was now getting to its feet.
With nothing left to lose, Chuck waited until it had lurched within arm’s length before clanging the now dented pot off the thing’s head with all of his might. The zombie’s black eyes crossed momentarily. It was stunned long enough for Chuck to plant his boot dead center in its chest and send it falling back into the others that had invaded the house.
“Upstairs,” Chuck said, tossing away his pot and taking Stephanie’s hand. She flicked on the light switch as she passed it. The light gave life to the place. The faces in the pictures hanging from the walls were of happy smiling people. Stephanie liked that. She took one off the wall and studied it as they went.
It was easier to find happiness in those still photographs than in the horrors coming up the stairs behind them. The house had filled with the dead, but she didn’t want to think of them.
“In here,” Chuck said. They stepped into the master bedroom and again she turned on the light. They had been in the dark for three straight days, afraid to live like people should. She didn’t want to die like that.
Chuck shut and locked the door, and for good measure he grunted and groaned a dresser in front of it. The door was solid, but no more than a million other doors that had been torn apart by the beasts. They would get in, and it wouldn’t be long.
“Do you think they got away,” Stephanie said, going to the bed. For some reason, she laid the M16 down on the blanket, straightening it, carefully, so it lay exactly centered between the two pillows. Chuck gave it a glance and went to the window. The view was altogether frightening. The front lawn of the housed was ringed by zombies, fifty deep.
“Yeah, they got away. We woulda heard them if they hadn’t. There woulda been shootin’ and stuff.”
The bedroom door shivered from the first attack. She wanted to ask: Do you think they’re coming back to save us? but she was afraid of the answer. What if he said: no? “I wish we had music,” she remarked, pushing her mind away to something else besides an unlikely rescue.
Chuck grinned. “Mood music?”
She laughed, but without any force now. “Just something to drown them out. They’re so ugly.” They both stood on opposite sides of the bed and stared down at it…and the gun. “Do we wait?” she asked. What she meant was: Do we wait for Thuy and Deckard to get back with their guns and whatever rescue plan Thuy had managed to cook up?
He considered, glancing towards the door that trembled under meaty blows. “I don’t think so. If we wait we might be rushed and things might go wrong.”
A shiver wracked her as her subconscious painted ghastly pictures on the surface of her mind. She forced her mind away from the images and her thoughts got hung up on a simple declarative statement: This is really happening.
“I wish we had a pistol,” she said in a whisper. “I want to be with you. I want to hold you even…even in death. Is that gross?”
“Naw, it ain’t. And we can still do this proper.” He went to the closet and came back with a handful of coat hangers which he twisted and bent to form a stiff braid. “There…” He had just proudly displayed his handiwork when the door cracked. As they watched a panel split and ugly faces leered in at them.
“We better hurry,” Stephanie said, but didn’t make a move for the bed. She was suddenly afraid to lie down. Her courage had evaporated.
Chuck went to her, kissed her once and laid her down as if this was their wedding day. “It’ll be nothing, darlin’. Close your eyes and listen to my voice.” He tried to lay down next to her but she struggled suddenly, digging in her pocket.
“Bullets,” she said. “We can’t do this without bullets. Ha-ha.” Her laugh was forced and her smile strained—the crack in the door was wider now. Soon it would come apart and the dresser would be heaved over. There couldn’t be a rescue, now. It was too late—too late for everything except death, one way or the other. “Let’s do this. Okay? I love you Chuck…do you love me?”
She was on her back and the tears in her blue eyes pooled and spilled down her temples. “Of course I do.”
“Then it’ll be okay.” With him so close, her courage flared enough for her to pick up the rifle and lay it on her chest between her breasts, the muzzle up under her chin touching her porcelain skin.
He found he didn’t need the coat hangers, his arm was plenty long for the job. “I’ll be right behind you, darlin’. You just make sure to wait for me on the other side. I’m gonna need a good word to get through the Pearly Gates.”
She tried to nod, but the bore of the gun stopped her. She was afraid to move and afraid that the gun would kick and only shoot her face off and she was afraid that the powder in the bullets had gotten wet and it wouldn’t fire—above all she was afraid to die. She found herself trembling from head to toe.
“We never had
a chance, did we?” she asked.
“I had the chance to fall in love with you,” Chuck whispered. “I woulda done all of this over again just for that chance.” He leaned over the barrel of the gun and kissed her lips. The touch of them were eternally imprinted on his mind.
“Me too.” The door broke nearly in half. She tried to turn her head, but he held her chin in place. “I’ll wait for you,” she said and closed her eyes. It was a promise she would keep even if it meant forever haunting an undead world.
He brushed her lips once more, felt his stomach lurch as if he were going to throw up and then pulled the trigger.
It was a surprise that she didn’t die right away. There was a hole in her, up under her chin, but her eyes were open and fixed and her mouth was slack. No air went in or out, yet her heart still beat. He refused to kill himself with her heart still beating. With gentle hands, he shut her eyes and kissed her again and listened with his ear to her chest.
At first her heart was like a hammer against a post, but gradually it became a hammer against velvet, and in seconds the sound of her heart grew less and less until it stopped completely.
The zombies were in the room by then and he only had time for one more kiss and one more pull of the trigger.
2—The White House
One man had sat in the situation room all night in complete silence. He had taken a corner seat and hadn’t budged and yet his presence had grown steadily as the hours passed until he felt that if he sneezed everyone would cry out in fear.
His name was Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Manzetti and usually he was part of a rotating five man team who carried the “Nuclear Football,” but as they were in the Situation Room, the football was unnecessary. The president had everything needed to launch a nuclear attack at his fingertips.
Everything except the ridiculously named “Biscuit.” Before any order pertaining to the use of nukes could be processed by the military, the president had to be positively identified using a special code issued on a plastic card. To Oliver and really, to everyone else, such a precaution was smart.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 36
