Tony nudged Dax. “I guess they do eat people.”
My stomach churned furiously, but I steeled myself. I couldn’t just retch every time I saw a dead person.
Tony sidled over to us. “So tell me, Malachi, why were Will and little Darren locked in the basement?”
“Because the devil is in them,” Malachi replied, gesturing to the ghouls and their buffet. “Preying on their fellow men…”
“Yes, but how’d the devil get into them?”
“The Lord has sent down fire from the sky to cleanse our sinful—”
“The father’s been shot,” I said, some of my old training finally kicking in. It had been awhile since I’d done more than slap a bandage on a paper cut, but dead William Williams had a definite oozing hole in his chest region. “Blood splatter…he was alive when it happened. And the kid’s neck is chewed up.”
The fact that we were discussing this while a father-son zombie team placidly ate two people in front of us scared the hell out of me. I shoved that fear aside, instead glancing right and left. A big, antiquated handgun hung from the wall not too far away from me. I reached slowly for it as Malachi approached the Early Bird Special.
“Know what I think?” Tony asked. “I think you shot poor Will and threw him and his kid in the basement.”
“He was sniping his brothers and sisters!”
“Probably because they wanted to eat him!” Tony had his pistol pointed at Malachi’s face in seconds. The repurposed Ventras looked back and forth between their new overlord and the dead family. The father unit gobbled up entrails, and his kid gnawed on fingers. I choked down the bile in my throat and closed my fingers around the handgun.
The dead guys kept eating, though I was pretty sure they were keeping some sort of eye on us. So they will leave us alone if they’re fed…interesting. I filed that tidbit of information away and pulled the gun off the wall. It rested heavily in my hand, but it would do.
“The Lord has spoken, and He has sent down fire and brimstone to cleanse this filthy world!” Malachi’s voice boomed out, startling even the zombies. “The man, William, thought it silly to throw in with me when I had nothing to offer.”
Tony nodded. “So kill him and take over his store. Makes sense.”
“The Lord—”
“The Lord had nothing to do with this!” I slammed the handgun against Malachi’s head as hard as I could. Years ago, when I still hefted stretchers and held down screaming men, I probably could have cracked his skull open. Today I settled for a satisfying clack. He pitched forward, clutching the back of his head.
One of his minions stepped toward me, but Tony caught the man’s outstretched arm and snapped it back, and the gun slipped limply from his fingers. Dax shoved the other one. The minion slipped on the bloodied floor and landed right in William Williams’ undead arms.
The zombie peered down at the minion. “Hurr,” it said, almost sounding curious.
The child—Darren, was it?—abandoned its meal and leaped onto the guy’s chest, fingers and teeth tearing at his face. His shrill screams only lasted a minute; something ripped, he gurgled, and Darren chewed on his esophagus.
No puking, Vibby.
Tony grabbed the remaining minion’s collar. “Want to be dessert, kid?”
The minion shook his head frantically.
“Then stay the fuck out of my way.” He sent him sprawling in the other direction and picked up the discarded pistol. “Dax, Vibeke, you have your lists. Get as much as you can. Will seems…occupied…but if he comes at you, you know what to do.”
Aim for the head.
The crony dashed out of the building. Malachi crooked a finger at Tony. “You brokered a deal, came under my roof and offered the girl—”
“It’s not your roof; you killed a friend of mine to get here.” Tony backhanded Malachi and watched him drop. “Besides, I changed my mind. I kind of like her.”
He winked at me, and for a few seconds I felt something warm up a little inside me. He was just Tony again—the dark-eyed rogue from the third floor who always stopped by my office to flirt.
One of the zombies crunched down on bone, and suddenly we were back in an ammunition store while its murdered proprietor and his son chowed down on their killers. There was some poetic justice in that, but I could have gone the rest of my life without watching it.
We carried out as many boxes of suitable ammunition as we could find, and Tony fished a shotgun out from behind the counter.
Dax raised an eyebrow. “A little overpowered for the undead, isn’t it?”
Tony grabbed a couple of boxes of ammo. “This isn’t for the undead. This is to scare the shit out of the living. You two watch Pops and Junior. I want to check the garage.”
Dax and I stood together and watched the happy duo continue eating. I hadn’t taken the time to really watch one in action, and they both seemed single-mindedly focused on consuming Malachi’s cronies. Both of them had watched Malachi when he came out of the room, though they hadn’t stopped their eating. With the happy preacher down for the count, they paid us no mind.
My morbid side found it fascinating. “So do they not see us as a threat?” I asked, watching little Darren dig around in a ribcage. “Did they view him as an enemy?”
“Could be residual memory, I guess…they might know who killed them.” Dax edged away. “Not that I want to psychoanalyze a bunch of zombies…can we go?”
Something clanked loudly in the back. The zombies didn’t react, but I swung around. “What the hell is he doing back there?”
“Maybe he’ll do us a favor and get himself eaten.”
Tony eased into view, pushing a giant motorcycle by the handlebars. I couldn’t exactly identify it, but I was pretty sure it was a Harley cruiser of some sort. He squeezed it past Malachi and the dynamic duo. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said, following him out the door. “Tony. This is a little much.”
“Never hurts to have another escape route. Hold this. I saw a ramp back there. We can just sort of…nestle it…in the back.”
“It’ll crush the dog,” Dax objected.
“Then the dog can come inside with us. Stay here.”
We stood there staring at each other while he went back inside, apparently to drag out this ramp. “He’s crazy,” Dax said. “Do you know how to ride a bike?”
“No. I don't know how to load one, either.”
Tony came back outside, dragging what was apparently a ramp behind him. This seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go through for a broken-down bike; I would’ve bet a good amount of pre-apocalypse money that the damned thing didn’t even run. But he seemed determined, and there were more than a few interested-looking dead folks wandering in our direction.
After a hell of a lot of sweating, pinched fingers, and colorful cursing, we managed to get it aboard, though I half-expected the truck to collapse under its weight. It didn’t look a very safe setup, but Tony beckoned to us. “Get in. We’re splitting.”
“What about Malachi?” Dax asked.
Tony gave him a pained look. He probably would’ve been perfectly happy to forget Malachi was there at all, thus leaving the man to his fate.
Dax narrowed his eyes. “You can’t just leave him with those…things.”
“Will did look a little hungry,” Tony conceded. “I’ll go throw him in the basement. Dax, get the truck started. Vibby, cover me.”
“Stop calling me Vibby.” But I stood guard at the door as he tiptoed past Will and Darren and pitched Malachi into the cellar. He tossed a gun down after him and shut the door.
Then he looked at William and cocked the pistol.
The zombie looked up.
Tony pointed the gun at his head, but his hand shook. “He ain’t attacked yet. Think he knows me?”
“Maybe.” I checked to make sure Dax hadn’t driven off without us. “I don’t think he died long before we got here. Maybe they remember things when they first…wake up.”
The zombie
watched him.
“Oh, goddammit.” Tony lowered the gun. “Vibeke, you want to take care of this?”
No, I do not want to shoot the father and son in their heads, thanks, Tony. “Just slap a note on the door. Tell people…tell them there’s ghouls here.”
We left the note on the front door, which we ended up leaving unlocked. William Williams watched us go, but I assume he went back to eating once we’d piled into the truck and stretched the dog out across our laps. Dax stepped on the gas the instant the passenger door shut. “You left those damned zombies in there, didn’t you?”
“They weren’t bothering us.”
“They might later!”
“Then why didn’t you shoot them?”
Dax pushed down on the accelerator and didn’t answer.
“Well, this all worked out for the best.” Tony clapped his hand on my knee, nearly unseating the dog. “I told you I wouldn’t let him get too far.”
I rammed my elbow into his ribcage. “You are such a douchebag.”
SEVEN
I found Tony sitting near the bike the next morning. I think he slept next to it.
It wound up stashed in the ground floor lobby, since we couldn’t really roll it up the stairs. Tony identified it as a Harley-Davidson Road King, although it didn’t look like it had been king of anything for a few years. Someone had stripped off most of the paint, and the bike smelled like…well, like sulfur and dead people. “Will’s been working on this for awhile. He was getting close to finishing her up.”
Something about the bike didn’t look right. “There’s no pipes.”
“I can fix that.”
“And the engine’s…something’s wrong with the engine…” Not that I considered myself a motorcycle aficionado of any sort, but I’d seen enough Harleys in my life to know what a V-Twin was supposed to look like. Tony crouched down next to it and pulled at a contraption built up around the two cylinders. “This wasn’t on last time I saw it. I think this is some kind of filter…yeah, he’s got some mesh in here, and looks like he bolted up a funnel…” He sat back on his heels, eyeing the bike with what looked like new respect.
I blinked. “And?”
“It’s a rough system. He was probably experimenting.”
“But what does it do?”
“If it works right, it lets the thing run in all this ash.” He touched the worn saddlebags. “I don’t know how I’m gonna dig all that shit out of the Ford. It’s had its last run.”
Tony had said that every day for the last two years. Why should the endtimes be any different?
“Guys!” Dax called from upstairs. “The news is on again!”
We raced up the stairs.
Gloria Fey stood outside what looked like Behrens Hospital, accompanied by a doctor clad in a bloodied set of surgical scrubs. “This is Gloria Fey in the Midlands Cluster, broadcasting to…I don’t know who’s picking up the signal anymore. We’re on, right?”
“We’re on,” the cameraman said.
“Okay. I’m here with—I’m sorry, what was your name?”
The doctor glanced into the camera. “I’m Lisbeth Lattman.”
Gloria wiped her arm across her eyes. I had never seen her looking so tired—maybe it was just the lack of makeup, or maybe she really had been awake for all those hours. “Okay. The CDC keeps sending out missives telling us that the attacks near the impact sites are radiation-driven madness. But I’m here at Behrens with Dr. Lattman, who has seen some of these victims up close—”
“This is not radiation poisoning,” the doctor broke in. “I don’t care what the government handouts are saying. This is not some illness. They might die from whatever pathogen they take in at the impact site, but that same pathogen brings them back.”
“What do you mean, brings them back?” Gloria asked.
The doctor stared at her for a few seconds. “It reanimates them after they die.”
“So the dead are coming back to life?”
“Is this staged, or is she really this stupid?” Dax asked.
Tony slapped him upside the head. “She probably hasn’t slept in a week. Cut her a little slack.”
“…not sure I’d call it life, but they are up and moving again. Ninety-five percent of them are extremely violent and will attack other humans. If you’re bitten, the wound will fester. Most bitten patients die within a day and reanimate within hours. If anyone you know has been bitten, stay the hell away from them. They will turn on you.”
“What should we do with them?”
“Shoot them,” the doctor said coolly. “Shoot them, put them down. It’s the brain or the upper spinal cord that harbors the pathogen…we aren’t sure which…bullet to the head is most effective.”
The set blipped, and Gloria’s expression tightened. “I’m being told our signal’s hitting interference. This is Gloria Fey, and the dead are coming back to life. If you know someone who’s bitten, or been near an impact site, stay away, the dead are coming back to life—”
The view snapped to static.
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Tony said.
“I guess if she hasn’t been out in the thick of it, she might not know.” Gloria Fey did best when she stuck to her fluffy entertainment pieces; hard reporting had never been her strong suit. The fact that she’d actually gone out into the field to get some answers meant she had some sort of hidden reserves I’d never seen…or there was no one else left to break the news to us.
Dax stood in front of the fridge for a long while. “Bet the feds shut down her signal.”
“They don’t want to cause a panic.” One journalism professor had remarked that the government’s powers over the communication channels extended too far for comfort, but I’d never thought that power included an actual OFF switch. “Can you imagine what people would do if they just heard it on the news? That the dead were getting up?”
“Some of them might have a fighting chance if they heard it.” Tony cocked his head to the side. “What’s that noise?”
“Helicopter,” Dax said.
We all looked at each other.
Back before the world went to hell, the Fairway magazines used to have barbecues on the rooftop. The barbecue was still up there, though it was buried under about a foot of ash. Tony had to shove it out of the way to open the door.
The helicopter spun lazily about a quarter-mile off. Tony waved a hand in front of his face, dispelling some of the haze. “Sea Stallion…an older one.”
“Military?” I asked.
“Coloring’s wrong. Could be a search and rescue group, or…” The helicopter spiraled again, and its engine sputtered. “…oh, that’s no good…”
The rotors briefly resurged—a pilot restarting something?—then stopped entirely. The Sea Stallion’s nose dipped, and the entire thing just fell the fuck out of the sky.
A plume of smoke and fire went up where it had landed.
Dax cringed away. “Is that what happens when the engines get gunked up?”
“Yup.”
There was no talk of hiking out there to see if anyone had survived. Even if someone managed to escape the cockpit before it blew, the fire would just attract the dead.
Tony glanced down at the street. “Speaking of gunk, we’ve got some fallout from yesterday.”
Pegging the undead is much easier in the movies. They usually have some kind of theme song that plays right before they show up, so the characters have some idea that they need to get their guns out. We didn’t have that kind of benefit; if we were lucky, we might smell them coming. Otherwise, they just showed up without warning, much like an obnoxious coworker at a housewarming party.
Tony brought up the rifles and told us it was time to learn. Dax had something called a Jungle Carbine, and I wound up with the lever-action Winchester again. “I’m sorry, are we in the Wild West?”
“The magazine was called Restoration, not New Machine Gun Extravaganza. Now, there’s two stances we could use, but forward�
�ll help you.” He showed me how to line up a dead woman’s head with the front and rear sights, waiting until she grew slightly blurry.
He had his face pressed right up against mine, stubble scraping my cheek. “There,” he murmured, “you got her…try tracking her a little bit…see, at least they move nice and slow…”
The dead woman staggered along, her face tilted up slightly as if she knew we were standing up there.
“Squeeze,” he breathed into my ear. I squeezed.
The woman’s head snapped back, and a small, black hole appeared in her forehead. She went down quietly.
“Good. Push the lever forward.”
I pushed it, then jumped when the spent shell popped out near my face.
“You’ve got five more rounds. These guys are slow and we’re up high, so you’ve got the luxury of aiming.”
He went back to Dax, leaving me and my ancient Winchester to pop a few more dead dudes. They’re easy to kill when they come one by one, but I was pretty sure a whole mob of them might cause some trouble.
One, two, three dead men down. I missed a couple times, mostly when I didn’t line up properly, or hesitated in pulling the trigger. Never hesitate.
When I ran out of ammo, I pulled out the pistol.
The ground shook, and my first shot went wild. Two of the zombies craned their necks up toward the roof, and turned their bodies in our direction. “How do they even see us?” Dax asked. “The one on the left has no eyes.”
“Zombie voodoo,” Tony said. “Now please, show them it’s rude to stare.”
We put a stop to the staring.
The earth quivered again, though not as badly as it usually did. Tony showed me how to reload the Winchester—pretty easy, just pop in the shells—and seemed ready to declare me a semi-capable shooter when the tank lurched out of the haze.
It listed badly to one side, flattening out the remaining ghouls. A handful of soldiers walked along with it. They glanced up at us, and one of them gestured. The tank ground to a halt.
“It’s Hammond’s team!” I headed down the three flights of stairs to the front lobby, the dog and the boys hot on my heels. The soldiers’ guns came out when they saw me, and I jerked to a halt. “Um…hi.”
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