But on the way past the cellar the thing bashed against the door. Then the glass knob jiggled ever so slightly. Finally, curiosity got the best of him. Leaving now would be akin to leaving a Husker’s football game at halftime. The need to know what had been periodically bumping the door and taking up space in his head over the last sixty-some-odd-hours was gnawing at him.
He stood there gripping the door handle for a few minutes with the rational side of his brain urging him to walk out the back door—to sprint to the pick-up he’d liberated from the Fonz and make his way through the dead and go to wherever the silver GPS numbers would deliver him.
But the irrational side of his brain spoke to him—a sick mantra, the words, do it, do it, do it resounding in his head. Manifest Destiny be damned. Getting ahead of the herd or horde would have to wait. And locating a GPS unit in order to play Bishop’s silly game would also go on the back burner.
Do it.
And he did. Like a lion tamer, he held the kitchen chair horizontally in front of him, left arm threaded through the back slats, four sturdy legs ready to counter the creature’s inevitable first lunge. He leaned forward and snicked the lock with his right.
Bang.
Do it.
That the door would open towards him was a given. Whoever designed the first cellar stairway long ago had come to the conclusion that opening a door into a darkened hole where the footing was uncertain and lighting a luxury was likely a losing proposition. So Elvis pulled the door towards him, releasing a sickly sweet stench of carrion and damp soil and old rotted timbers. Then from the darkness, hunched over and gray, the toddler’s granny fell up the top two stairs, landing face first on the kitchen floor, the impact sending its dentures skittering across the floor and loosing a torrent of squirming maggots from its toothless maw. Sidestepping the glistening white larva, Elvis trapped the writhing creature to the floor. Picturing a soccer ball at his feet, he torqued his hips and drew his right leg back to half-mast. “Sorry, Ma’am,” he said as he dipped his right shoulder, starting a chain reaction as the energy coursed through his back muscles, unloaded his cocked hips and focused every ounce of inertia down his leg, culminating in the introduction of shoe leather to bone.
Following through with a final twist of the hips, Elvis drove the reinforced steel-toe of his boot through the monster’s septum and into its brain. A sickening crunch reverberated through the galley kitchen and Elvis hopped in a circle around the chair, struggling to dislodge his boot from the stilled creature’s caved-in face.
He finally resorted to stepping on Grandma’s stick-thin neck, grinding the vertebra there to a pulp while working his right foot free.
Fighting the urge to puke, he stepped over the body and stared down into the void. Listened hard. Nothing.
He pulled a mini-Maglite from a cargo pocket and twisted the bezel until he had a nice wide cone of light to work with. Leading with the pistol clutched in his right fist, flashlight held in the left, he took the stairs two at a time. He stopped four strides later. Eight stairs down—mid-flight. Starting at his four o’clock he swept the white light over the packed dirt walls right to left. Freezing the beam at roughly ten o’clock, he gasped as what he was looking at was rejected momentarily by the rational side of his brain.
The little girl whose short life was on display in pictures on the mantle upstairs was dead. She’d been killed and partially eaten by Grandma. Her thick blond hair had stuck fast to the floor in the blood that had pooled and dried where she had been ravaged and then finally reanimated.
What a pitiful sight it was, watching it struggle and twitch, its tiny teeth clacking together.
Unable to check the rising surge Elvis hinged at the waist and vomited on the stairs below him.
Chapter 19
Schriever AFB
“Boardwalk with one house ... that will be two hundred big ones,” crowed Sasha, palm out. “Rents due, big bro. Pay up.”
“Dice are broken,” Wilson mumbled, ripping the paper band holding the two-inch-thick stack of twenties he’d surreptitiously pocketed after the imploding windshield encounter with the undead Wells Fargo driver days ago. Why the stone-faced soldier had given the bricks of cash back after quarantine was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Maybe the Army’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy could be applied in more than one way, he’d thought at the time. Especially after a society-crushing viral outbreak. No matter, he gave Sasha a well-earned dose of stink eye, licked his thumb, and then flicked away ten of the crisp, aromatic Andrew Jacksons.
“You’re just unlucky, Wilson. Don’t pout, give it here,” she said gleefully, waggling her fingers in the universal gesture that meant fork it over. As he handed her the worthless bank notes, his gaze shifted to Taryn and he reflected on how lucky he’d been to have crossed paths with her. How an unfathomable, yet serendipitous chain of events—like some kind of fated butterfly effect—had thrown them together. How in an you-cannot-make-this-shit-up kind of story she had been trapped in an airport full of the dead, only to be rescued by a stealth helicopter full of Special Forces led by the husband of someone he had recently met. Like he was living out a plot device in a James Cameron movie, he fantasized that he’d somehow been chosen to survive the initial outbreaks and then meet Taryn and conceive and raise a child with her. Their child would then grow into a man and eventually save the world. With a dreamy smile on his face, he was rudely yanked from his flowery fantasy by Sasha’s whiny voice. “Snap out of it, Wilson,” she said, mouth hovering a hand’s width from his ear.
“What were you thinking about, Red?” Taryn said softly into the other ear from an equal distance.
“Zoning out I guess,” he said, bending the truth enormously. “I guess I got way too much sun the last couple of days. Probably overdosing on vitamin D or whatever it is in sunshine.” In truth, he surmised, the vivid daydream had nothing to do with how many times he’d watched the Terminator movies. He was no Kyle Reese and Taryn was not his Sarah. Fact of the matter was, he was still grappling with the romantic repercussions of the previous night. A night of bliss he’d never forget and hoped to replicate before leaving for Utah. Hell, he thought, if Captain America aka Captain Grayson wanted to go on a few more missions, he was OK with that. The window of opportunity was as wide as it would ever be, and he harbored a considerable amount of fear it was about to start the downward slide. Hell, as far as he knew the ink on the inevitable Dear John letter was probably still wet and the piece of rotten news was tucked away in the top drawer of the desk sitting against the wall under the warbling air-conditioning unit. On the bright side, he thought to himself—as Taryn’s iPhone which was sitting atop said desk caught his eye—there was no way he’d be experiencing another one of those dreaded I’m dumping you text messages which had been all the rage before the world went to shit. And the thing that had really pissed him off about the ones he’d received was that there had been no way for him—the dumpee—to cajole, plead, or argue his case with the thousands of cold and indifferent pixels on the tiny screen telling him in more ways than one: You are not worthy.
So he had told a little white lie. Big deal. He couldn’t have just blurted out—I was fantasizing about you and me living together forever, Taryn. Followed up by putting his irrational thoughts into words—And please don’t dump me, Taryn. You’re all I have to live for.
Melodramatic?
Yes.
But with the loss of his mom, and the swift and sudden disappearance of the human race to the unforgiving Omega virus, the fear that he would never find someone as beautiful and sweet-smelling as Taryn again was visceral—and of late—all-consuming.
So he closed his eyes, hoping to live in his fantasy world for as long as possible.
“You’re doing it again, Wilson,” Taryn said, delivering a peck on his sunburned cheek.
And never the one to let her brother enjoy himself, Sasha said, “Your roll, Miss Tattoo.”
Shooting Sasha a look that said, Don’t
push it, Taryn threw the dice. “Lucky seven,” she said as she did a little dance in her seat and moved the pewter gray roadster the appropriate number of spaces. “I passed Go ... and that means I collect two hundred dollars. Pay me, banker man.” She flashed a quick smile at Wilson, who was peeling off twenties and glaring at Sasha, and concluded that there would be no better time than the present to address the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. Scrunching her brow, she took a deep breath and asked, “What did you two think about taking target practice on the zombies?”
Without missing a beat Sasha piped up. “That creeped me out big time. Especially how comfortable Raven was with the whole thing ... popping them in the head like that with her own gun ... almost seemed like she was enjoying it or something.”
“Apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree,” said Taryn. “Because it was crystal clear to me that Brook was enjoying every second of it.” She shuddered visibly, went quiet for a good long beat, and then went on. “Something about the way she calmly put down one after another of those things didn’t seem normal. I had to stop counting after about ten.”
“She offed twenty-six of them,” Sasha said proudly. “I was counting. And she didn’t even blink when she was shooting at the little ones.”
Taryn nodded but said nothing.
“A bite from a kid Z will kill you just as good as any,” Wilson proffered. Then he threw the dice, strictly because they were there in front of him. He watched the bones bounce around and finally come to rest showing double sixes. Box cars. Good a sign as any.
Disregarding their ongoing game, he let his gaze fall on Taryn and decided to dig a little and see if an earlier observation he had made was correct. “Looked like you had no problem shooting the handful of deadheads that you did,” he said. “Granted ... Miss Grayson seemed to think we all needed our firearms and double hit merit badges.”
“Double tap,” Sasha said, correcting Wilson. “Two shots to the head. The double tap ensures that they go down and stay down, were her exact words.”
“She doesn’t scare me a bit,” said Taryn, inclining her head a degree to punctuate the statement.
“At all?”
“Not one iota, Sasha. So she’s comfortable with her role. Momma lion protecting her cub. I get it. But she’s still human like you and me. She puts her pants on one leg at a time.”
Breaking out in a big grin, Sasha said, “Which side you think she lets it hang?”
“Grow up, Sasha,” said Wilson. He screeched his chair back and looked Taryn square in the face. “I have to know something.”
“Go ahead. Shoot,” said Taryn.
Wincing at her choice of words, Wilson removed his hat. He listened to the A/C rumble for a tick as his inner voice waged a losing battle with itself, one second screaming, Ask the question, and the next begging him to tell her to forget about it because he’d lost his train of thought. After a few seconds the mental volley became too much and he popped the question he assumed he already knew the answer to. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Me?” Taryn said incredulously. To Wilson her response sounded rehearsed. Almost theatrical.
“Yeah, you,” he said back. “Did you get any satisfaction from ridding the earth of a few more of those infected things?” And to drive home the seriousness of his question, he donned his hat and smashed it down to its customary position, put his elbows on the table, cupped his chin, and stared at her awaiting a reply.
“Not so much,” she answered softly. “I killed Dickless ‘cause he had it coming. He was a pervert when he was my boss and he wouldn’t quit staring at me after he got bit and turned into one of those things.”
“They all do that after they turn.”
“I know, Sasha. But you weren’t there to see him leering. Your skin wasn’t crawling twenty-four-seven just knowing he was out there dry humping the door trying to get in.” Suddenly, as if she’d run out of gas or blown a fuse, she went silent, lowered her eyes and bowed her head.
“Must have been awful,” Sasha replied sincerely.
There was a long moment of silence.
Lamenting the fact that Taryn was revisiting her darkest moment because of him, Wilson fidgeted in his seat, praying for Sasha to rest her case and conclude her line of questioning.
“It was,” Taryn said, lifting her head enough to shoot a sidelong look at Sasha. “When I shot him in the face I was happier than I’d been in days. Happier than when I found those two granola bars behind a porno mag in his lower desk drawer. Shooting those burnt creatures by the fence today was not the same ... I got zero satisfaction from that. Just makes me have to think about how they died the first time around. Who they were. Who they left behind. Made me think about my mother. My father, and my brother. Reminds me of the hot rod we were gonna restore together ... as a family. Just makes me think, and right now the last thing I need to do ... is fuckin think.”
Wilson peeked from under his boonie hat. “Speaking from experience, shooting them is a lot easier than killing them with a bat,” he intoned, remembering how he’d been forced to brain his undead next door neighbors at the Viscount Arms in Denver. “And now that I’ve got a feel for that M4 of hers, there is no way on earth I’m ever going to use that Louisville Slugger again. That thing is retired ... unless I have to use it as a last resort.”
“So a convert, huh?” Sasha said. “Mom always was against guns.”
“Says my sister who won’t brandish anything except for her knockoff Fendi and Louis Vuitton handbags,” countered Wilson. “You didn’t even shoot Raven’s rifle ... did you?” he added accusingly. “No reason to fear it. Thing’s about one notch above a BB gun.”
More than a little embarrassed to debate her fear of firearms let alone her total inability to touch one, Sasha wisely made no reply.
Sensing the chink in her armor, Wilson turned the tables and pushed her buttons for once. “I suggest you put a couple of non-quarried rocks in those pleather bags of yours and swing away. Then you could say you’re a certified, green, organic, natural-born, free-range zombie killer,” he quipped.
“Better than being a gun nut,” was the best Sasha could come up with.
“One day this gun nut might save your bacon with a ... oh my gosh ... a gun.” Touché’ thought Wilson. Living away from home for a decent stretch before the outbreak had softened his delivery somewhat. But the longer he found himself cooped up with his little sister, the sharper his witty verbal comebacks had become.
Chapter 20
There was a knock at the door. Staccato, machine-gun-like pops of knuckle on wood containing a certain sense of urgency.
Everyone stopped talking at once, but it was Taryn who rose and took a few tentative steps toward the door.
After a few beats it came again. Only louder, like someone who was being shadowed down the street by a stranger and had just so happened to have randomly chosen Taryn’s billet for refuge and wanted in ... now.
“Who is it?” Taryn called out, even as she peeled the blackout curtain from the narrow window beside the door. The air conditioner rattled on and a voice, barely audible above it, called back, “It’s Brook and Raven’s with me. Can we come in?”
Taryn let go of the curtain and looked over her shoulder at Wilson and Sasha and whispered, “It’s them. And there is a guy sitting in a golf cart. He’s wearing some kind of uniform.” She took care to smooth the curtain into place, making sure no outside light shone in, then hinged up and worked the lock.
Brook and Raven stepped inside with a few bars of sunlight and the faint smell of death close on their heels.
“Game’s over,” Wilson said to Sasha. The wheeled office chair he had been sitting on emitted a pneumatic hiss when he rose. He stacked the three unwrapped packets of twenty dollar bills totaling six thousand in all, rustled up the loose bills and was about to stuff the whole lot into one of his cargo pockets when he caught himself. Old habits die hard, he thought with a smile upon recognizing the absurdity of giving a shit ab
out leaving the cash lying around. He tossed the worthless money on the table, watching it fan out and then slide onto the floor.
“What did you go and do Wilson ... rob a bank or something?” Brook said as Taryn shut the door and snapped the deadbolt into place behind her.
Ignoring the quip, Wilson regarded her with a serious look and said, “I thought you’d be down at the flight line by now welcoming your husband back.”
Making no reply, Brook fixed her gaze on him, hitched a brow, and tilted her head towards Raven, conveying the universal message that what needed to be said wasn’t appropriate to voice out loud with young ears around.
Seeing the looks exchanged between Brook and Wilson, and correctly guessing their meaning, Taryn grabbed Raven’s duffel bag and guided her to where they’d be out of earshot from the others and vice-versa. “I’ve got just the thing for you,” Taryn said to Raven. As she led them around the makeshift gaming table, they passed by the trio of desks pushed tight against the right side wall. She snatched up her fully charged iPhone and the white tangle of wires that passed for earphones. Then she directed Raven to one of the furthermost bunks, sat down and patted the mattress next to her. “I’ve got everything Lady Gaga ever recorded on this thing,” she added, hefting the smartphone in her hand like it was the last one on earth. “Want to give it a listen?”
“Heck yeah,” blurted Raven, eagerly accepting the device that was nearly identical to the one she had hoped to receive for her twelfth birthday but had not. Like an old pro, she plugged the buds into her ears and began thumbing her way through the digitally-rendered album covers.
After Raven and Taryn had moved out of sight, Brook commandeered the chair that Wilson had relinquished. She made herself comfortable, looked up at him, and said slowly and succinctly, “I need you and Taryn to watch Raven for me. It might even end up turning into an all-nighter.”
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