Death and Biker Gangs (Grave New World)

by S. P. Blackmore

  Evie sat down, then smiled up at him. Leave it to a golden retriever to be utterly adorable even when there’s blood on her muzzle and revenants are bashing themselves against the door.

  Tony hopped over to a pile of stuff that I realized had to be our belongings. “Vibeke,” he said, “you’re going to have to elaborate on being up a tree once we get out of this pickle.”

  The kitchen door sagged inward. Son of a bitch. “So can we go?” I asked. “Are we done here?”

  Dax got the leash fastened to Evie’s collar and shouldered his backpack. “How? Tony can’t walk.”

  Tony scowled at him. “I can hop faster than most of those fucks can shamble.”

  “Gloria Fey’s out there with her news van. It runs.” I allowed myself to look the tiniest bit smug when the boys gawked at me. See, I did something right. “Now can we go?”

  “Gloria Fey?” Dax exclaimed. “The Gloria Fey?”

  “She’s a horrible driver,” Vijay said. “Hits everything in sight. But that’s probably why we’ve survived this long—zombies don’t stand a chance.”

  “The van runs?” Dax asked.

  “Yeah, Threepenny Sal’s a mechanic and he knocked together some sort of system…it keeps the engine clean or some shit. Well, cleaner.” Vijay shrugged. “I don’t know how it works, man, but it does, so I’m happy.”

  The way Tony’s face lit up, we might as well have told him that Santa Claus was real, and was personally going to save us with the aid of a very big machine gun.

  A chunk of the door broke off, and an arm and head poked through. The dog tore away from Dax to launch herself at the ghoul. Her jaws clamped down around the wrist, dragging away skin as she landed on the floor.

  “Evie! Down!” I snapped my fingers, and she reluctantly backed away, her hackles still up. “Guys, I’d say it’s time to bug out.”

  Tony picked up the Winchester Dax had been fiddling with a few hours ago.

  Vijay leaned further away from the door. “One of us has to track down Gloria. I don’t think she went too far, but give me a minute.” He considered the three of us, the wheels in his head clearly turning. He focused on Tony, his brow furrowing. “You can’t run, but I don’t want to leave you on your own. Think the three of you can hold these asshats off for a few minutes?”

  Tony looked at his Winchester. “How much you got left, Vibeke?”

  “Almost a full magazine, I think.” Although with my luck, I’d probably loaded it wrong somewhere along the way, and the entire thing would explode in my face…which was still better than being eaten by zombies.

  “Here.” Vijay dipped his shoulder, pulled his big rifle off, and handed it to Tony. “Think you can handle that? I’ve got half a mag left, full auto.”

  Tony grinned as he handled the weapon. “Shit, where’d you dig this thing up?”

  “People drop all kinds of crap when shit hits the fan.”

  The ghoul Evie had ravaged caught his arm on the ragged hole left behind in the door, and bits of flesh and congealed blood splattered to the floor. Vijay blanched. “Right. I’ll get Gloria.”

  “Whoa, wait.” Dax pointed his carbine at the cameraman, spurring another growl from Evie. I knelt down, slinging an arm around her chest.

  Dax kept his gun trained on Vijay. “How do we know he’s not just gonna bolt? We don’t know these people.”

  Great. Now he decided not to trust all humanity? “They’re okay, Dax,” I said. “They helped me out.”

  “Why the hell would I show up here and then ditch you?” Vijay asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Dax nodded slowly, lowering his gun.

  The ghoul in the kitchen door let out something that sounded very close to a frustrated roar.

  Evie broke away from me, charging the ghoul wedged in the door. Her jaws closed around his wrist again, and she jerked back, partially dragging him forward. I looked away. “Vijay, get going. Honk for us or something when you get here.”

  Vijay eyed the dog, taking small, measured steps out the door. “She’s not gonna…catch whatever they got, is she?”

  I shrugged. We all have it, anyway. “She hasn’t yet.”

  Vijay took one last look at the golden girl before taking off. His footsteps clattered down the porch stairs.

  The zombie’s arm detached with a stomach-twisting crunch. Evie looked almost surprised, her ears lifting as she suddenly found herself gnawing on a severed limb. She spat it out and snarled at the undeterred zombie, which reached for her with its stump.

  “Evie!” Dax barked. “Evie, come here!”

  She obediently retreated, though her growls continued. Dax reached down to snag her leash, securing her as much as he could while holding the carbine with his other hand. “Try not to hit her if she gets loose, guys.”

  The door shook again, bulging inward. The dead thing in the door moaned, stretching feebly with its stump, its eyes almost glittering with desire. “Guys?” I asked. “Does this seem smart?”

  “No, this is probably the dumbest stunt we’ve tried yet,” Dax said. “But here we are. I guess we’re slow learners.”

  “Just aim for the head.” Tony hobbled over to us, and we arranged ourselves in something of a line facing the kitchen door and the horrors it barely contained. “Dax, Vibeke…” he paused, as if searching for words. “That was some impressive shit back there. I’d hug you both if you smelled better.”

  Dax snorted. “We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t gotten shot.”

  “Hey, you can go with Vijay if you want. He might need a hand.”

  “We’re here. Might as well put on a good show.” Dax glanced at me. “Vibeke? Ladies first. Want a head start?”

  Yes, I wanted a head start. Everything still functioning in me said run.

  But they walked miles to get me…and killed people to save me. I knew I wouldn’t leave. Knew I’d stand here with them until the bitter end, because we’d come too far to split up now. Besides, I was pretty sure Dax wouldn’t be able to haul Tony out on his own, not with all our equipment weighing them down.

  “I’m all in,” I said.

  The top hinge ripped off fully. More arms came through, and a gray, sagging face pressed up against the widening seam. The zombie in the center seemed pretty much wedged in place, either unable or unwilling to back out. It was in for an unpleasant surprise when the door caved in.

  We stood waiting. My heart jackhammered in my head, and my fingers itched to pull the trigger. It could all be over a few seconds from now.

  I took a deep breath. “Dax.”

  “Vibeke?”

  “I’m sorry I said zombies would improve Los Angeles.” I was actually sorry for a lot of things, but Dax was the only person I could actively apologize to at that moment. “Zombies don’t improve anything.”

  “True facts,” Tony said.

  Dax didn’t really look at me, but he tipped the carbine up, awkwardly saluting me with it. “We’re good.”

  The door gave way. The ghoul stuck in the center splattered into brownish-gray ooze across the kitchen floor. I cringed away, trying not to breathe in too deeply.

  The dead spilled in.

  I picked my shots this time. Twenty-eight rounds wouldn’t get me far, but I wasn’t about to waste them by losing control of the gun in full auto. The big rifle felt almost like an extension of my body, its barrel discharging as I brought the dead into my sights, spent shells clattering around me.

  I vaguely heard the other guns firing—shells kept flitting past my face—but I almost drifted to another level of awareness, some plane of existence where a nearly seventy-year-old assault rifle felt as familiar as driving a car. Hell, maybe it was some kind of shock. Only Evie’s occasional howls kept me somewhat rooted to reality.

  The doorframe provided a pretty decent bottleneck, and the bodies of the fallen began coalescing into a neat little barricade. I kept squeezing the trigger as a new head shambled into my sights. Ten. Eleven. They weren’t living peopl
e, bringing along emotions and nervous ethics to grapple with. They were dead, they were hungry, and I was in the fucking zone. Fourteen. Fifteen. Half the magazine gone, and still they came, picking their way over their fallen comrades.

  Tony’s gun stopped cold, and I realized my ears were ringing. From the corner of my eye, I saw him swing it over his shoulder and switch to the old Winchester.

  I picked out a new target and fired. Eleven rounds left, if I counted right.

  Ten.

  Nine.

  Eight.

  The doorframe was choked with them now, the wood bowing inward. Shit, what if the wall gave in entirely? I wasn’t about to stop and reload while they were piling all around us. This is bad. This is bad…

  The blast from the horn cut right into my train of thought. I backed toward the door. “That’s Gloria. Let’s go!”

  Tony made it about a foot before his bad leg gave out. I ducked underneath his right arm, and Dax got under his left, clutching the dog’s leash in his left hand. “Come on, Evie!”

  Evie growled, but went along with us.

  We limped down the back porch stairs as fast as we could, passing a recently exterminated zombie in a ballgown.

  A horrific crash sounded from the house as the kitchen wall gave way. I pictured the ghouls toppling to the floor, rotten entrails spilling from swollen guts.

  We reached the driveway, and all thoughts of being in the clear promptly evaporated. The news van was there, all right, and so were another dozen or so revenants, all of them quite interested in the three of us.

  Tony sighed. “This is getting old.”

  “You said it,” Dax muttered. “I’m out. I hope you’ve still got some rounds left in that Stormawhatever, Vibeke.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Gloria had done some donuts while we were inside, leaving the smashed and pulped remains of the dead as multicolored smears in the street. The remaining ghouls were still lurching toward us, though, and I was rapidly tiring of their company.

  Well, I still had ammunition, and we did have an escape vehicle waiting. “Get Tony to the van,” I said, staring at the undead. “I’ll handle this.”

  Talk like a badass, and people will believe you’re a badass. The boys sent me respectful looks and started moving toward the van.

  I picked off two ghouls hanging out near the front, clearing a path for Tony and Dax. Six shots left. Vijay leaped out of the passenger seat and pulled the sliding door on the side open.

  Dax boosted Tony up into the van.

  I took down two more ghouls. Now the rest seemed firmly fixated on me.

  They were people once. They were just like me, terrified by what had happened, doing what they felt was necessary to survive. They went to their appointed emergency center to wait out the horror and wound up encountering something beyond their worst nightmares.

  I didn’t have to be there to know what happened. It was written in the streets of Old Town Muldoon, scribed in the colorful bracelets dangling from gray, deteriorating limbs.

  Four. Three. The last one came closer, jaw opening and shutting rapidly.

  They were people once. They weren’t anymore.

  And that made all the difference.

  I shot the last one as it staggered toward me, then realized I’d run out of targets.

  “Vibeke!” Tony called. “Get in here!”

  I never thought I’d be the last man standing.

  I climbed up into the van and ended up in the second row, sandwiched between Dax, the dog, and Tony. “Gloria, these are my friends.”

  “Yeah, they introduced themselves while you were going all Rambo on the revenants out there.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “You’re pretty good with that thing.”

  “I had a pretty good teacher.” I didn’t look at Tony. His ego was entirely too big for the endtimes already. “Sorry for the detour.”

  “Hell, girl.” She gunned the engine, and the van crunched over more bodies. “I’d have gone in there myself if you’d told me they were this cute.”

  SEVENTEEN

  We pulled over on the outskirts of town, ostensibly so Gloria could check her maps, but really so Vijay could engage in the time-honored ritual of proper post-apocalypse introductions. “Did anyone get bitten?” he asked, scrutinizing all of us. “Tony, why were you limping?”

  “Got shot.” Tony gestured to the red blood still coating his face. “This is all Arthur’s, by the way.”

  “Arthur?” Gloria swung around to look at us. “You got Arthur?”

  “He’s not getting back up, either,” I said, unable to keep a little gloat out of my voice.

  “But why was he after you?”

  Tony shrugged. “We had to bust the little miss out of Blair’s love nest and made a bit of a mess.”

  “What the hell were you doing wandering around on foot, anyway?” Vijay asked. “Hammond must be desperate.”

  “He is,” Tony said. “Hastings stopped transmitting and he flipped. Then the camp got attacked and these three ended up coming with me.”

  “And you knew each other before?” Gloria asked.

  I leaned back against the relatively comfortable passenger bench, just enjoying being able to sit on something that wasn’t the ground or a branch or undead. “Tony and I worked in the same building, and I met Dax the night the meteors fell.”

  Vijay cleared his throat. “And Elderwood…is it still around? We haven’t heard anything, not that they ever sent exciting transmissions.”

  “It got sacked by ghouls and one of those biker gangs. Not even sure if we’re on a mercy mission or if we’re refugees again.” Tony started reloading the Winchester. Where the hell had he found more ammunition?

  We sat in silence for a long moment.

  Vijay cleared his throat. “Is anyone bitten?”

  I tugged off my jacket and pushed up my shirtsleeve just to make sure, but everything seemed to be in order. “Ralphie from A Christmas Story tried to make me into lunch, but he couldn’t get through the jacket.”

  Dax snickered, but no one else seemed to get the reference.

  Vijay reached over me, pinching the leather between his fingers. “Oh, you got one of the Kevlar-lined ones. Good thinking.”

  Tony shoved my shoulder. “Did you know that when you picked them out?”

  Of course I hadn’t known that—I’d just reasoned that leather would be harder to bite through than our street clothes. But I’d be damned if I let them know it. “Of course,” I said smugly. “Why the hell do you think I insisted on them?”

  Tony smiled lazily at our new companions. “Isn’t she hot?”

  “Get a room,” Dax muttered.

  “Much as I hate to interrupt this budding tryst, where are we going?” Gloria asked. “We can’t really stay in Muldoon, now that you’ve summoned every fucking dead guy in the county.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I’m new to this zombie cataclysm thing.”

  “Man, you guys shoulda seen her up the tree.” Vijay twisted around to look at me. “Where did you think you were going to go after that, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  “What do we do about the dingleberries?” Dax asked.

  Our new companions stared at him for a few seconds. “Maybe some toilet paper would help?” Vijay suggested.

  “It’s one of our nicknames for the…the ghouls.”

  “I gathered, but…dingleberries?”

  Dax pointed at Tony. “His idea.”

  “I bet they burn,” Gloria said. “Set a few fires? Roast them up real good?”

  Oh, God. I wasn’t sure I could take another zombie firestorm. “Someone tried that in Astra,” I said. “All it did was drive them out.”

  “Yeah, and then they overran Elderwood,” Tony said.

  My head snapped up at that remark. “I thought it was the brigands and the pit zombies that overran Elderwood.”

  Tony shook his head, his jaw tightening. “The brigands
knocked down the back gate and got into one of the tanks, but we were seeing singed fuckers for days before. They walked from Astra and there were too many of them, and…” he slumped back, staring at his bad leg. “I’d like nothing more than to barbecue the bunch of them, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I pawed at Tony’s arm. “Why didn’t Hammond say something?”

  “Right, and cause a panic? Sharp thinking there, Vibby.”

  “So we just leave them?” Gloria asked.

  “That’s probably our best bet.”

  Gloria sighed. Some of the iron I’d heard in her radio broadcast had seeped away, but she still sounded resolute, as opposed to resigned. “So we’ll hit up Hastings. Gimpy back there probably needs a doctor to look at his leg, and I’m getting tired of sleeping in the van.”

  There was something else we hadn’t addressed, and I coughed politely to gain everyone’s attention. “I hate to pour on the bad news, but she said there’s another gangster out there named Malachi.”

  Tony didn’t bat an eye, but Dax’s head shot up. “Malachi? As in the Malachi we…uh…weren’t nice to?”

  Tony rolled his eyes. “Why would it be the same Malachi?”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t it be?” I asked. “How many people named Malachi do you know?

  He shrugged. “So you think he…what? Walked out of the ammunition store after we beat him up and came down here to lord over irradiated motorcyclists?”

  I shrugged right back at him. “What else is there to do after the end of the world?”

  “I thought you left him for Undead Will and his kid to munch on after Vibby clocked him with the gun,” Dax said.

  Tony looked out the window. “Not exactly.”

  Dax’s voice sharpened. “Then what did you do with him, Tony?”

  “I locked him in the basement.”

  Dax looked at me. “And you went along with it?”

  Malachi had spent our five minutes of acquaintanceship blathering on about the promised land and the Lord smiting evildoers. I’d had no real problem with Tony throwing him in the basement. “He creeped me out.”