Death and Biker Gangs (Grave New World)

by S. P. Blackmore

  We ducked behind the truck, and I tried to push my thoughts into something resembling an organized cluster. “Tony said to move this thing around the block.”

  “Tony doesn’t know shit about tracking. I did some donuts.”

  For a few seconds, all I could picture was Dax eating an actual donut while running over some zombies. I almost smiled.

  The slow, shambling mass of the dead shifted direction each time someone fired a gun, their attention darting from one section of the street to the other.

  Dax slapped my shoulder and pointed at the front of our would-be safe house. “There.”

  Small, quick figures moved at the edge of the throng. The dead had kicked up a sizable amount of ash, and the cloud made it tough to determine facial features, but everyone seemed to be in dark outfits. “Dressed in black,” I observed. “How tacky.”

  Dax leaned around the front of the truck as far as he could, then made an exasperated sound. “He’s taking potshots out the window. Son of a bitch, we leave him alone for ten minutes and he winds up in a standoff.”

  “Typical.”

  Dax pulled me back behind the truck, his gaze darting back and forth. “Okay, new plan.”

  “We can go back the way we came?”

  He looked ready to throttle me. “And what good will that do?”

  “Think! Those—people—are keeping the groundhogs occupied. We’ll go back around to the house, grab Tony, and sneak out the back way. It’ll work!”

  He blinked rapidly. “I thought we were calling them dingleberries.”

  I shoved him against the truck. “We don’t have time to argue over sobriquets!”

  “Ssh!”

  “Yeah, lady, cork it before you bring them down on top of us.”

  I whirled around and caught something black flying toward my face. I dropped to my knees, sending up clumps of the ash and dead foliage that covered the driveway. The butt of the rifle swung past the space my head had occupied and slammed through the truck’s window, sending bits of glass cascading over me.

  I batted them aside and scrambled backward.

  My black-clad assailant growled a loud curse as he tried to yank the gun loose.

  Dax lunged for him, wrapping his hands around the man’s neck. I popped back up and swung my rifle into my hands, preparing to bash the dude’s head in with great Norwegian righteousness.

  “Vibby!” Tony’s voice echoed dimly over the sudden increased wail of the ghouls in the vicinity. “Duck!”

  I threw myself back to the ground. An instant later, a bullet skipped off the truck’s roof, narrowly missing our assailant. Dax slammed him back against the cab of the truck, then shoved him several feet away.

  Pop-pop-pop! Tony’s shots peppered the ground around the guy, but none of them hit.

  Dax lifted his handgun.

  The roar nearly blasted out my eardrums at such close range. I gaped at Dax, then at our would-be assailant, who toppled to the ground, bleeding out from wounds in his abdomen and chest.

  I forced my voice to work. “Dax...”

  Dax stared at his handgun, then down at the body. “Get up,” he said. “That was stupid of me.”

  “Dax—”

  He shook his head viciously, dug his fingers into my arm, and hauled me to my feet. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Never get into a scuffle when there might even be the slightest chance of undead spectators hanging around. Not only is it plain bad form, they tend to want to participate and celebrate the victor—usually by making a snack out of him.

  Predictably, we had a whole pack of ravenous fiends heading our way. Dammit, I knew this entire operation was bound to turn to shit.

  Another loud crack issued from up the street, and I didn’t need Dax to tell me it was a shotgun. “Dammit, Vibeke,” Tony yowled, “run!”

  Some of the ghouls turned around, puzzled by all the new noises. Tony fired the shotgun again, then hurled what looked like a chair out the window.

  Dax grabbed my wrist and started hauling me back the way we’d come. “Time to go!”

  We ended up in the street, scrambling through discarded boxes and overturned trashcans. I guess the apocalypse hit on garbage night in Muldoon.

  Apparently, flying furniture and shotgun blasts are not nearly as exciting to zombies as the possibility of brunch. Our mad scramble down the street had quickly regained their attention, and a steady stream of ghouls lurched in our direction, that damned howling call to arms going up. Where there’s one, there’s always more.

  The undead converged, their hands reaching for me, pulling at my clothing, my gun, my hair. I swung the rifle back and forth, connecting each time, but the bastards kept coming.

  I lost sight of Dax almost immediately, though I could hear him hurling some rather creative-sounding obscenities at the ghouls and the situation. I jabbed the butt of the rifle into one wizened face, my finger itching to jam down on the trigger—but I didn’t dare. Not while some of the gunfire down the street still attracted their attention.

  The undead howled, and my brain tried to fizzle out on me.

  No! I kept swinging the gun, kept shouting, kept forcing myself to move, to think. The ghouls had almost done this once before, back in Astra—their singing had stopped me in my tracks, paralyzing me. I could overcome this. If I didn’t, it’d be the end. “Get off me, you fuckers. Dax!”

  “Run!” he yelled back to me, his voice muffled. “Go one way! I’ll go the other!”

  “What?”

  “There’s too fucking many! We have to split them up!” I couldn’t hear what he bellowed next. The singing swelled, and I swear my eardrums vibrated. “Run!”

  My brain might have been on the verge of shorting out, but my body knew what to do. I shot the nearest ghoul, and the sound of the round discharging blew through the undead choir. The revenant toppled to the ground and I jumped over it, forcing my way through the rotten ranks as they tried to close around me.

  I squeezed through a gap in the mob and found the comparatively open street behind them. I turned around to look for Dax and saw him sprinting down the side street, his arms and legs a blur. “Dax!” I called.

  “Meet me at the house!” he yelled back. “Don’t bring them!”

  He fired a couple of shots into the horde, and a number of them rewarded him by slogging in his direction.

  The rest were still fixated on me, though, and I heard shuffling behind me, as well.

  More of them were coming. So many more of them…

  Well, they were slow and rotten, and I was still pretty quick. I could handle this crap, no problem.

  Keep telling yourself that, Vibby.

  “All right, you undead assholes!” I called, backing up several steps. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the coast was relatively clear. I still had ghouls coming at me from that direction, but they weren’t as thick as the main clump. I took a deep breath, readying myself for a sprint. I didn’t know where the hell I was going to go, but I couldn’t stay here.

  I lifted my gun up and waved it in the air, flashing them all a big smile. “Who wants some fast food?”

  FIFTEEN

  You haven’t really lived until you’ve run down the middle of the street with a zombie horde chasing you.

  I kept a decent distance between myself and the bulk of the dead, stopping every so often to let them catch up. This bunch was more varied than the ones I’d seen in Astra and Elderwood. Some were old, others young, in varying states of dress or undress.

  A few were completely naked, which made me wonder just what they’d been doing when they died. Showers, maybe? Or some post-apocalyptic nookie?

  All of them wore colored tags around their wrists.

  Camp markers. Hammond had tried something similar with us, dividing people into camp sectors by age and marital status, but he hadn’t made us wear actual tags.

  The horde behind me yowled, and I fought the urge to cover my ears. If any revenant in the area hadn’t
been aware of my presence, they certainly were now. It was all-you-could-eat at the Undead Buffet, and I was the main course.

  I knocked aside the handful of revenants I couldn’t evade. The faster-moving ones came up to me with hands outstretched, their feet often trailing strings of dead skin and tendons across the ground.

  “Trust me,” I said to a woman who had been my age when she died, “I don’t have much meat left on me. It’d be like eating a string bean. I don’t know about you, but I hate string beans.”

  Fantastic. Now I was talking to them.

  She had a pink band around her wrist, and nearly tripped over her own two feet to get to me. I popped her in the head and started running again.

  I stumbled, nearly landing on my knees. My lungs burned from the bad air, and only adrenaline kept me from doubling over in a coughing fit. I picked a bad day to take up running again.

  I ducked down a corner, choking down the dry heaves that lingered just below my esophagus. The thermal shirt and leather jacket felt like they weighed ten pounds, and the damned boots I’d insisted on wearing to ward off ankle biters dragged at my feet.

  If I could just stash myself behind a building long enough to drop some of the gear, I’d be a lot faster.

  I turned sharply down the first corner I saw—

  —and ran right into a gaggle of very surprised zombies.

  Ohfuckingshit!

  I fired the rifle blindly into their midst, startled into stupidity. Rigid hands latched onto the gun and my arms, and my head swam as the stench of them nearly overpowered what remained of my olfactory sense. The scent of rancid meat mixed in with drying tissues and oozing wounds swept over me, and I choked down that damned predictable wave of vomit that always surfaced when meeting the undead.

  Think, Vibby, think! What would Ezekiel do?

  Ezekiel would probably call down his godly superpowers and smite the zombies, aye, verily. I did not have access to godly superpowers.

  Okay, what would Tony do?

  Tony would probably smite them in his own way. I needed more accessible post-apocalyptic role models.

  I clamped down on the rising panic and slammed the gun’s muzzle from side to side, effectively clubbing the nearest ghouls. I didn’t care if I hit their heads; I just wanted a little space.

  I stumbled backward and brought the gun into proper firing position, bracing my feet shoulder-width apart. I peered down the barrel, locking rotting, savage faces into my sights.

  Three of the nearest went down instantly. I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and charged the nearest zombie—a one-time pixie of a teenager, probably some overly chipper cheerleader who would have driven me crazy in high school.

  I crashed into her, sending her sprawling into her compatriots. I skidded to a stop, turned around, and bolted out of the alley, my thudding boots kicking up fresh clods of ash with every step. The adrenaline that had fueled my limbs finally reached my brain, and I swung right, neatly avoiding plowing into the mob that had followed me.

  The street opened up into a traffic circle, complete with the dead remains of a park in the center, and still-flickering streetlights on one corner. I gawked for a moment. Apparently, the Varney Dam was still functioning in some capacity, if it was able to power the lights.

  The ground shifted. I looked left and right, then chose the path of least resistance and plunged straight ahead, racing past the Muldoon Plaza Park sign and an undead child in pink rabbit pajamas.

  I’d splashed a couple of steps into water before I jerked to a stop. The manmade pond in the center of the park had swelled into a flotsam-filled, brackish-gray lake, and I had a feeling I wasn’t the only thing standing in it. Neon blue light flashed beneath the surface in the deeper area, where the very tip of the pond’s fountain was still visible.

  I couldn’t figure it out. Had the middle of the park dropped several feet?

  Evil stardust, I decided. Must be evil stardust.

  Little arms abruptly fastened around my waist. I let out a squeak, wrenched free, and stumbled further into the new lake. The kid in the rabbit pajamas snarled at me, skittering forward with alarming speed.

  Crap! Fast zombie. I’d been afraid of running into one of these guys. Hammond had talked about them now and then, but never brought in an actual specimen (and really, who could blame him?). I backed into the lake, and the child followed me easily, moving almost exactly like a living kid.

  Must’ve reanimated before rigor mortis set in. That was as far as I got with my scientific theorizing, because the kid abruptly launched himself at me, hurtling through the air with teeth bared and claw-like little fingers outstretched.

  I didn’t move aside fast enough, and he successfully tipped me over into the water. My left hand kept the rifle above the surface, but the kid latched on to my right, trying to bite through my jacket. His jaws pressed down on my arm, but he couldn’t seem to gnaw through the leather.

  I tried to pull my arm away. He stubbornly hung on, his rabbit ears drooping over his face.

  Great. All the ways I could possibly die, and I’d wind up getting eaten alive by Ralphie from A Christmas Story.

  This is why I never had kids. They devour your life and finances while they’re alive, then they try to devour you for real when they die and come back.

  I got up, dragging the kid with me. Half of his costumed right arm had been eaten away, which pretty much explained what had happened to him. Aside from his sunken eyes, his face seemed largely intact, if a little veiny. He’d probably been a cute little dude when he was still alive. Now he was just a pint-sized monster.

  I’ve learned how to handle monsters.

  I jerked my arm away hard enough to knock Ralphie off-balance. He flailed around, his bunny ears flopping, and I thrust the butt of the gun into his chest.

  He landed on his back in the water. By the time I swung the gun around to dispose of him properly, he’d disappeared.

  “Sorry, Ralphie,” I muttered, retreating to shallower waters. No way was I sticking around to see if he came back up.

  By now, other curious revenants were coming to have a look at what little Ralphie had done. I splashed back to relatively dry land, trying to put some more distance between myself and the rest. The horde that had followed me spilled into the park.

  The undead really are portraits in determination, if nothing else. I’d salute them if they weren’t constantly trying to eat me.

  Maybe if I ran fast enough, I could draw them into an endless loop around the circle, then quickly sneak away while they chased each other for all eternity. I fired a couple shots into the crowd and started running again, breathing a sigh of relief when I got back to relative terra firma. How many shots do I have left? I had plenty of rounds in my pockets, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the time or stable hands to reload the magazine.

  I came up to one of the feeder streets and slowed down just enough to keep from running into anything waiting for me.

  I nearly strolled into a coterie of dead people who were apparently admiring the faded mural of a sunset on the nearest building. I wanted to crack some joke about the sunset of civilization, but my brain was more concerned with the alarming way they turned to look at me, and the sound as they pulled fouled air down through ruined throats and launched into that horrible undead lament.

  They came right for me.

  I really couldn’t win. “Oh, come on.”

  I thumbed the selector switch to automatic out of spite, then let the rifle rip.

  The old gun jerked to the right, spraying bullets as it went. I miraculously mowed through a few skulls, then tore through some poor sap’s arm and ended up chipping the mural. I pulled the gun back to the left just as the chamber clicked to empty.

  Holy shit, I’d forgotten how hard the thing was to control on automatic.

  My left hand burned where it had been resting just above the magazine. Shit. Tony had tried to warn me about the metal there getting too hot.

  The ghouls surged
toward me.

  Well, that was stupid of me. I’m going to get munched and I will deserve it.

  I took off for the circle, fumbling with the catch that would release the spent magazine. It dropped into my hand. I shoved it down under my thermal shirt and tank top, then shifted all eleven pounds of the rifle to my right hand, trying to unzip my pocket with my left.

  Another revenant came at me from the side. I freed my left hand from the pocket to grab the rifle’s barrel, then swung the gun around as hard as I could.

  The ghoul’s neck crunched when the stock slammed into it. The head snapped to the side, then dangled in that position, eyes still fixed on me.

  The son of a bitch kept coming.

  And here I was with an empty rifle and no time to reload it. “Come on, man, cut me a break here.”

  The dead man in the suit didn’t care that I’d broken his neck. He just wanted his mid-afternoon snack.

  I swung again, striking his head hard enough to send him sprawling backward onto the curb.

  The little melee had cost me dearly. Two swarms of dead people had combined into one massive mob, and they were almost on top of me.

  Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. I looked around wildly, hoping for a tank, a phone booth, even a skateboard.

  The dead tree loomed over the edge of the park. When did I last climb a tree?

  My feet overruled my brain’s protests, and I rushed for the tree, swinging the rifle over my shoulder as I went. Bark flaked off in my hands, but I was able to grasp one of the overhanging branches. I dangled there for perilous seconds—now what do I do?—before instinct kicked in and I hauled myself up. My feet found purchase next, taking some of the pressure off my overworked hands and biceps. The lower limbs creaked and groaned when I latched on to them, but they held, and I slowly pulled myself hand over hand up into the dead branches.

  I found a decent roosting spot about twelve feet up. I swung my right leg around a solid-looking branch, made sure I was somewhat secure, and dared to look down.

  They gathered around with the sort of fervor usually reserved for Justin Bieber and the Twilight series. Some of them even reached for the branches.