It definitely topped the angry notes I used to get when I wrote about bands people didn’t like. I held the head out of Evie’s reach. “Why the hell do you keep saying smiley face?” I asked.
“Because he added smiley faces after each sentence.”
Tony snatched the note and stared at it for several seconds, then grunted. “Now that’s just a criminal overuse of emoticons. Tacky bastard.”
“Well, they did send us a freaking head in a cooler,” Dax pointed out. “I don’t think we’re dealing with classy people.”
They were arguing about etiquette and I was still holding a severed head. What the hell had my life become? “Are the people that left us this still out there?”
There was a long pause. “I didn’t really check,” Tony said.
“Maybe they left,” Dax said hopefully. He whistled to the dog, and she reluctantly sat down, still staring at the head.
Sure, and maybe the sun was going to come out and the zombies were going to put on a musical number about how sorry they were for causing so much trouble. Then again, the dead got up and walked, which was on the same level as pigs flying and hell freezing over. Maybe singing and dancing zombies weren’t out of the question just yet.
I shook the head a little bit, and it gnashed its teeth at me. “Will someone take this damn thing?”
Dax carefully took the head and dropped it back into the cooler, where it landed with a dull thump. “How did they even find us?”
“We left the pharmacy and came here and…didn’t cover our tracks, did we?” Tony kicked his pillow aside, and the dog ran for cover. “Shit! We left a nice big trail.”
“Cognitive impairment is a sign of vitamin D deficiency,” I said. Sometimes I hate knowing anything about medical conditions. “I bet rickets is next.”
Tony sent me a scathing look. “If you hadn’t gotten your ass pistol-whipped, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“I’m sorry, who was it that wanted his fucking beets?”
“Guys!” Dax kicked the cooler to get our attention. “We can bitch each other out later. Right now, we need a plan. Are they outside waiting?”
Since I was closest to the window, I peeked around the blinds. Three bikes were lined up in a row to the right, with two others on the left, effectively blocking any path we hoped to take out of there. I only saw one actual biker in my field of vision, parked across the street with a big, nasty-looking rifle. He blew me a kiss, waved, and pointed at the gun.
I edged away from the blinds. “They’re waiting. I see five bikes.”
After a moment of contemplation, Tony crossed himself.
Yep. We were screwed.
As I pondered all the ways Blair and his buddies might torture us, Dax turned in a slow circle, staring down the hallway. “This can’t be right. I see an exit sign over the closet at the end there.”
Tony looked out the window again. “Those bikers aren’t doing anything. Do they really think we’re just going to go outside and say come kill us?”
“They did use emoticons in their note,” I said.
“Come with me.” Dax started for the storage closet, and after a few seconds, Tony, me, and the dog followed him. The Boy Scout flipped the light switch out of habit, cursed when the overhead didn’t come on, and switched on a flashlight. “Vibeke, hold this. There must be another exit in here.”
I pointed the light around the room while Dax tried to peer through the numerous shelving units. “Why would they block off their exit?” I asked.
“People do stupid things.” Dax tossed aside several rolls of toilet paper and leaned through the shelves. “There. Found it.”
“You found a back door?”
“No, they just carved a hole in the wall because they felt like it. Tony, give me a hand with this.”
The nice thing about being a female is that men will still do most of the heavy lifting. I got to stand back and watch while they pried the shelving unit away from the wall and shoved it aside. Dax turned the latch, the door opened easily enough, and the three of us peeked outside.
“I don’t see anything,” Dax said, “but shouldn’t they be covering the back entrance, too?”
Tony chewed on the inside of his cheek. “You’d think…they might not know it’s there. This is a long block. Maybe there’s not enough of them to cover the back. Maybe there’s just the three we saw, plus one or two on rooftops looking in. Maybe it’s just his scouting team, not the whole gang.”
“There’s too many maybes in there for me,” I said.
“Maybe they split up, each with a different body part…”
That was a novel way to deal with trouble. One group had the head, another had a hand, and did someone have the torso? I decided right there that if I ever developed mortal enemies, I’d send them various body parts, too.
“They’re going to figure it out sooner or later though, right?” Dax glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting angry bikers to come charging through the front door at any moment. “If we’re gonna go, we should go.”
“We need to make sure they aren’t lying in wait.” Tony snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Vibby. You have been chosen.”
“No,” I said immediately. I wasn’t sure what I was refusing to do, but Tony choosing me for anything was probably a bad idea. “No, no, no.”
“They probably won’t shoot a woman.”
The probably he threw in there wrecked his whole assertion. “Says who?”
“Women and cigarettes.”
I blinked at him.
“You know, post-apocalyptic currency. They see a pretty girl walk out, they’ll hold their fire. Or at least not aim for anything, you know, vital.”
“Because that’s so much better?” I exclaimed. “Besides, I haven’t been in the sunshine for weeks and I still look like I washed my face with poison oak. There’s nothing pretty about that.”
“Don’t forget the bruise,” Dax said.
“Thank you, Dax. I’m also bruised. I probably look like a plague victim. They might shoot me to protect themselves.”
Tony finally took a moment to inspect me critically. “You’re right. Take off that thermal. You have a tank top on underneath?”
I stared at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You look like you have syphilis.”
I pointed at my face. “This is not what syphilis looks like!”
“Whatever. You do look kinda diseased. Gotta offset that with boobs.” Much to my horror, he started undoing the top buttons of my shirt before I could smack his hands away. “I’ll get a gun. Just go check out the area and make sure it’s clear for us to bolt.”
I sighed, undid the buttons of my shirt, and pulled it off. I handed it to Dax and stood there shivering in my tank top. “I don’t even get my rifle?”
Tony pressed the silenced pistol into my hands. “Keep it quiet,” he said.
Chilly air wafted in from the cracked door, and I longed for my jacket. “So what am I doing?”
“Just make sure the coast is clear. Walk around, look both ways. If nothing happens, they probably aren’t watching it.” He practically shoved me out the door. “Don’t fuck up!”
I really hate that dude sometimes. I slipped out into the bitter cold, my breath visible each time I exhaled. I hadn’t seen the sun since the rocks fell out of the sky, and besides the inevitable problems following crops and plant life biting the big one, it was also fucking freezing. I didn’t notice so much when I was running around in my layers, but wandering out in just a tank top and jeans reminded me of how bad it really was.
The world was dying. It had to be. It couldn’t recover from this sort of pummeling, at least not in my lifetime.
Stop it, Vibby. I edged forward another few steps, then stopped to look around. Nothing moved; the wind blew over the top of the building next to me, then swept past with an eerie whoosh.
Maybe the cold helped preserve the dead. Now there’s an unhappy thought.
A ladder ran up the side of the building. I glanced around and didn’t see anyone in the immediate vicinity, so I tucked the pistol into my belt and scurried up to the roof for a better vantage point.
No one was on the roof across the street, at least not that I could see. A few streets down, the larger buildings of Elderwood’s once-booming downtown area loomed out of the ever-present ash and haze. Were there people in them? Or had they been completely abandoned?
The buildings still looked fairly solid. How long until the elements started eating away at them?
The world is dying, I thought again, then mentally kicked myself. Dammit, I had more important things to do than wax poetic over all this crap.
I climbed back down and kept walking, emerging into a vast, relatively empty rear parking lot.
The left was clear.
I caught sight of movement to my right and dove back into the alley, swinging the gun into my hands. I held my breath and willed my heart to slow down. I wasn’t quite sure how they tracked humans, but I thought they might sense vibrations. That would explain how they kept happening upon us.
When my heart rate eased, I peeked back around the side.
Ten or eleven revenants were in a clump near the corner, some of them sitting, others milling around. I checked around once more to make sure I was clear, then returned my attention to the ghouls. I’d never seen such a big batch of them doing anything but pursuing me.
Did they have a social structure? Had they gravitated toward each other, or had all of these people just died in the same general vicinity? They were all in varying states of decay, which suggested to me they’d joined the coterie at different times. Social creatures, Tony had said. Had he been right? People craved the company of other people. What if that need survived after death?
I wondered if the dead threw slumber parties.
They didn’t seem to sense me yet. I was downwind, trying not to choke on ten bodies’ worth of rotting flesh. The one nearest me, a child of about nine, had a red strap around his wrist. He walked in slow circles, pausing to jerk his wrist forward every now and then.
I squinted, and realized the strap terminated in a small, empty collar.
Ugh. I turned around and slunk back into our hideout. “No living. Medium herd of undead right around the other corner.”
“Define medium,” Dax said. “If the bikers know there’s zombies, that might be why they didn’t come back here.”
“Ten, maybe eleven.”
Tony frowned. “You didn’t take them out?”
“Oh, yeah, and alert the angry biker gang?”
“Can we go around them?” Dax asked.
“No. We can go left, but they’ll just see us and follow us.” I glanced over my shoulder, but nothing had shambled around the corner. “Close the door. Sound carries.”
They shut the door. Dax flicked on his flashlight, and Evie pawed at my leg. “So now what?”
“Well, we’ve got angry biker gang on one side, and undead fucks on the other.” Tony looked back and forth between the back door and the corridor. “How do we turn this dreadful scenario to our advantage?”
“Teleport?” That was pretty much the only way I saw us getting out of this.
“No,” Tony rubbed his hands together. “We turn ’em on each other.”
“Brilliant,” Dax said. “Make the zombies and the bikers fight? Let me get my phone, we’ll be YouTube superstars.”
“Don’t sass your elders, Boy Scout.”
I felt someone had to point out the fallacy in his plan. “And how the hell do you propose we turn them on each other?”
Tony grinned. “Leave that to me.”
I guess I should’ve seen that one coming.
TEN
I still don’t know why I let them talk me into climbing onto the roof to act as bait.
“You’re small and quick,” Tony had explained before punting me back outside, though at least this time I was fully clothed. “Just give us a few minutes to distract the bikers.”
Right. Because this would all go off without a hitch. But when the world goes to shit, you embrace the crazy plan.
I prowled along the roof in a crouch. I tried to stay well away from the edge, just in case one of those frequent tremors came around. The last thing I needed was to fall right into the rotten arms of the undead.
The two nearest the corner seemed to be in the best shape. I hunkered down at the edge of the roof, braced myself on my fingertips, and peered over the side. The one nearest me had been a soldier while he lived. I didn’t see any bite marks on him, though that didn’t always mean anything. People came into Elderwood with concealed bites all the time, mostly thanks to all those damned zombie movies that said the bites transmitted the disease.
We can treat the bites, Hammond kept broadcasting. We can treat the bites. No one seemed to believe him, and they’d come in and not tell people they’d been bitten, and then the infection would take root and spread and perpetuate the damned stereotype.
The soldier swayed back and forth. I couldn’t make out the name on his uniform, but he was wearing the same togs as Hammond’s men.
He was hanging out next to an EMT.
The EMT had gotten munched; his hands were partially devoured, and there were bite marks around the hole where his nose had been. I could pretty much picture how things had ended for the poor guy. He was trying to resuscitate someone…she came back and bit his nose off…then went after his hands while he was reeling.
I shuddered, doing my best to drive the gruesome scene from my brain. I scrutinized the EMT’s face, trying to make out the features beyond the dangling ear and missing nose, but it didn’t look like anyone I’d known. I was dreading the inevitable awkward moment where I had to plug a reanimated former coworker.
All right, so the ghouls were pretty much in position. I crept along the side of the building until I came close to the front, where I dropped to my belly and slithered along that way until I reached the opposite side. I paused when I heard voices.
“What the hell are they doing in there?”
That probably meant Tony and Dax were enacting their grand distraction. I peeked over the edge and spotted two bikers almost immediately below me.
They didn’t really look like a biker gang, aside from the leather chaps and the big Harley-Davidson parked a few feet away. They wore flak jackets that they’d probably swiped off dead soldiers, and neither of them looked older than twenty-one. Damn, I’m being pursued by college kids.
The taller one had a cigarette in his mouth. “One of them’s a girl. Blair says to leave her alone.”
“I don’t see a girl, but…are they square dancing?”
“They…shit, dude, I think they are?”
The bikers leaned forward, clearly absorbed in whatever Dax and Tony were doing.
I decided it was time to let slip the dogs of war and crept back to my little crew of dead fellows. I stood up when I got to the edge and waved at the revenants. Previously, even looking at one had seemed to draw giant bunches of them.
This group didn’t seem to notice me.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Didn’t it just figure? The one time I wanted their attention on me, and they were interested in the cracks in the ground. “Psst,” I whispered. When even that failed to stir them, I chucked a small pebble their way. “Hey, dead dudes!”
The soldier and the EMT were all but clawing at the wall within seconds, and I scrambled along the edge, staying in their line of vision. They rounded the corner, utterly fixated on me. I hadn’t felt this attractive since the last time I got pawed at a Radiohead concert.
Shit, I really just thought that. I needed to stop humanizing dead people.
I hunkered down and let the former EMT and the soldier slam their hands against the wall. Their grunted complaints carried up, and I fruitlessly pressed a finger to my lips. “Shut up, guys, don’t let them hear you yet.”
If anything, they got louder. Zombies don’t really follow directi
ons all that well.
The businesswoman came shambling up next, followed by the goth kid. The random passersby and the child without a dog brought up the rear.
I always loved parades. “All right, revenants,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t get too loud, “follow me. To arms!”
I led the charge of the undead to the corner. I dashed back and forth between the two groups, grimacing as the distance closed between them. I kept waiting for the biker kids to hear the undead prancing toward them, or see me staring down at them, or do something that indicated they knew what was on the way.
They kept right on talking.
“Move,” I whispered. “Please move?”
How could they not hear the revenants coming? Even I could hear them, and I was fifteen feet in the air.
I stared over the side, my heart pounding. What the hell are you idiots doing?
“You know,” one of them said to the other, “I really miss karaoke.”
“Hey!” I called down. Their heads snapped up, and the taller one’s mouth fell open. I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open, too; their faces were covered in bleeding sores, and their eyes were almost entirely red. Christ on a pogostick, what’s wrong with them?
The EMT and the soldier sent up their howl.
Shit! I pointed behind the building at the parade of ghouls. “Run! They’re coming, you idiots!”
Too late.
The dead mob spilled around the corner, and they all but tripped over the bikers in their haste to get to me. They happily transferred their attention to the screeching, leather-clad gents in front of them. I guess you can’t be picky about your entrees when you’re dead.
“Holy fuck!” A gun fired from nearby, and their companions rushed to aid them. I gawked down from the roof, unable to tear my gaze from the weeping wounds and bloodshot eyes. Something’s wrong with them...something’s wrong...
Flesh tore, and one of the boys shrieked.
I almost dropped my gun. “Run! Run, you fucking morons!”
The ghouls shredded them with hellish ease.
Death and Biker Gangs Page 10
