by JJ Zep
“You kidding me? We get hit, I don’t want to be hobbling around trying to get my boots on. And I’m definitely not running out of here barefoot.”
“I was in a coffee shop when this all started,” Bob Sizemore said. Bob was the eighth member of the team, the one who’s name Chris had had a hard time remembering. He was a tall man, thin and serious. Richie called him Scarecrow Sizemore. Strangler called him Sphinx because he rarely talked or showed any emotion. He was talking now.
“I was in a coffee shop on Atlantic Avenue, not like this, one of those franchise ones –”
“Starbucks?” Paulie said. “Man, I hate all that fancy pansy overpriced crap they sell. Joe is Joe, why you gotta call it by them fancy names.”
Sphinx ignored him. “I used to run a small optometry practice just above the coffee shop.”
“You were a doctor?” Paulie said incredulously.
“An optometrist,” Sphinx corrected. “Most days I’d go to the coffee place at ten, after the early morning rush. On this particular day, my first appointment arrived late, complaining about traffic and some police blockade, so I got there about ten after. I was standing at the counter –”
“Whatcha order?” Paulie cut in again. Julie flashed him a look.
“I was standing at the counter ready to order when suddenly there was this scream. Not just a scream you know, but a scream…a genuine, terrified scream.”
Chris found himself nodding and saw that the others were doing the same. They knew the scream Sizemore was talking about.
“Everyone in the shop just froze. It was like God had pressed pause on his remote control. Then some burly guy said, ‘what the fuck was that,’ and you could hear in his voice that he was genuinely scared. I mean, a big, burly New Yorker scared half to death by a scream.”
No one spoke, all of them revisiting their own recollections of that terrible day.
“The runners came next,” Sphinx continued. “A panic-stricken stream of them, and the screams had now risen to a wail, almost like a police siren. There were actual sirens too, but the cops weren’t getting through. There was a pile-up in the street, cars slamming into each other, drivers just abandoning their vehicles and running.”
“I remember that too,” Julie said. “How it was.” She gave a shudder that had nothing to do with the temperature inside Pacino’s.
“Then this guy comes running, weaving through the traffic, heading straight towards us. The front of his shirt is covered in blood and he has his hand pressed to his neck, but it isn’t doing any good. The blood is pumping through his fingers, spurting through. He runs directly towards the coffee shop and crashes into the plate glass window. I remember the sound it made, like something dropped from a height, hitting the ground. I remember the bloody hand print he left on the glass as he slid down.”
“Jesus!”
“Suddenly, everyone was screaming, even the burly guy I mentioned earlier, crying and blubbing like a little kid. I didn’t scream. I just wanted to be out of there, so I walked to the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. People were rushing past, slamming into me but I only had a few feet to walk to my office. I let myself in and went upstairs, locked the door.”
“What then?” Richie wanted to know.
“I waited.”
“You waited?”
“I waited in my office until it was dark and then I went home.”
The ending of Sphinx’s story seemed like a bit of an anti-climax but if there was more to tell he didn’t want to share it.
“That’s some fucked up tale,” Paulie said, eventually breaking the silence. “Let me tell you what happened to me…”
And so each of them, in turn, recounted their experiences of the day the world had ended. All except Chris, there were some memories he preferred to leave buried.
twenty
“What the fuck was that?”
Chris woke with a start, sitting bolt upright on the bench where he’d curled up to sleep. Now the sound came again, a mournful lowing, like a huge animal in distress.
“Jesus! What is that?” Richie said. He was on sentry duty and the only one fully awake. The others were stirring though, Chris could make out their shapes in the dark - tense, fearful.
For a moment there was no sound but the banshee wail of the wind, still not relinquishing its frigid grip. Then the sound came again, faint at first, a knock, knock, knock that accelerated until it morphed into a screech and then ascended the registers until you could feel it in your back teeth.
Chris drew back the drapes and peered out onto the darkened street. The wind whipped up little eddies of snow that drifted across the road like ghosts. Nothing else was moving out there.
The knocking sound started up again.
“Come in,” Paulie said and then gave a nervous little giggle.
Knock, knock, knock, scccreeeeech! This time it reached its highest note yet and followed that with a loud snap that sounded like a rifle shot.
“What the fuck?”
Knock, knock, knock, knock, sccccreeeee, snap, snap snap, and then a loud clatter, as though a pile of scaffolding poles had just been dropped onto a concrete floor and Chris realized what the sound was. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge had just fallen into the bay.
***
Seven miles away, standing at the window of his apartment and looking out on a snowbound Columbus Avenue, Joe Thursday heard the sound too. At this distance, and with the wind ripping away at the acoustics, it was a lot fainter, but Joe recognized it for what it was, another piece of infrastructure falling to pieces. At this rate, Joe thought sourly, we’ll be back to living in caves within a few generations.
His ankle was bothering him again tonight, keeping him from sleep. It didn’t hurt exactly, it just seemed so…tight, he guessed the right word was, as though the ankle were an inexact match for the joints and tendons attached to it.
That wasn’t all that was bothering him though, he was worried about the people on Staten Island, worried especially about Chris and Ruby and Ana. Joe had been opposed to the winter operation, had felt it added unnecessary environmental risk to the mix. At the planning meetings he’d attended, he’d likened it to Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s suicidal Russian campaign. His opinion had held little sway with the mayor though. Rosenthal had been determined to press ahead. He was a man in a hurry. The reclamation of Staten Island had been the central plank of his election campaign and he wanted it initiated without delay. Now, while the mayor was spooning in a warm bed with Mrs. Rosenthal, the men he’d dispatched to Staten Island were having their asses chewed off by Z’s and their dicks frozen to popsicles. Joe congratulated himself on not voting for the little twerp.
He took in a deep breath and exhaled it in a sigh, fogging up the windowpane. He wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight, might as well console himself with a Maker’s.
He was about to turn from the window when he thought he spotted movement on the street, a shadow, slightly less dense than the surrounding darkness, scuttling along the sidewalk. He was mistaken, of course, no one was crazy enough to be out in this mess, at least not if they had a choice in the matter. And yet, there it was again, a definite movement.
Joe pulled down the sleeve of his robe and used the heel of his hand to clear the condensation from the glass. He tracked his gaze to the spot where he’d seen the person last, and saw nothing. “Your eyes are shot, Thursday,” he muttered to himself. “All that time staring out of this goddamn window. You’re going snow blind.” But there the movement was again, and this time the person stepped off the sidewalk and crossed quickly towards the apartment building. He only caught a brief glimpse of her but he was pretty certain who it was – the delectable, Justine Goodwillie.
twenty one
“Why the change of heart?” Mayor Rosenthal said.
He looked back over the desk at Barlow as though he were a parent considering a request from a child, a request he was disinclined to indulge. Barlow hated him for that.
“In exchange for the deputy mayorship.”
“That’s what you offered before.”
“Before the election, I offered it. The election, which, I don’t need to remind you, I won. I have a clear majority now. Why do I need you?”
Barlow held on to his smile with great difficulty. He would have liked to have reached over the desk and punched Jim Rosenthal in the nose. Instead, he said, “You have a majority, you don’t have a clear majority.”
“How so?”
“My people will vote en bloc on any issue. Yours…” He wavered his hand through the air like a falling leaf. “…not so much. What you have is a marriage of convenience Jim, a coalition covering a broad spectrum of beliefs. The fact is, you have a large center-right contingent that will side with me on any number of issues, and you know it.”
Rosenthal did know it, too. Barlow could see it in his beady little eyes. Still he clung to his position like a bargain hunter clinging to cut-price pair of long johns at a spring sale. He was a tenacious little son of a bitch, Barlow had to give him that much.
Rosenthal steepled his hands together and brought his fingers up to his lips. Barlow could almost hear the gears grinding in the little weasel’s head as he played the angles.
“You’re not here to fuck me on this are you, Joe?” Rosenthal said eventually.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“You have a heart?” Rosenthal said and they both laughed, a comradely, backslapping laugh that carried about as much bullshit as a Texas cattle ranch.
Rosenthal half rose in his chair and stretched across his desk, extending a hand. Barlow half rose in his chair and took it. They shook hands that way, crouching and grinning like a couple of gargoyles.
“Welcome on board, Mr. Deputy Mayor,” Rosenthal said.
“Why thank you, Mr. Mayor,” Barlow said back at him.
twenty two
The storm finally blew itself out early on the following morning. When Chris and the other members of Fox team emerged from Pacino’s the world seemed to be covered by a dazzling white eiderdown, three feet deep. He led them north. Drawing on his memory of the operational briefing, he believed them to be on Metropolitan Avenue. A right turn at the T-junction would take them into Forest Avenue. From there it was about a half mile to the golf club.
The snow had stopped falling, but the air was frigid, and the going tough. Every step sunk them into snow up to the shins. He called a halt at the T and looked up and down Forest Avenue. The powder here was virgin, undisturbed by tire tracks or human footsteps. That could mean one of two things – either, all of the patrols had made it back yesterday and were waiting at the base, or, more worryingly, none of them had made it back and were scattered all over this part of Staten Island.
By the time the base was in sight the question had been answered. A single Humvee, Colonel Bamber’s command vehicle, stood in the lot, snow piled up to its undercarriage.
“This don’t look good,” Paulie said.
Chris quieted him, called them into patrol formation and brought them to a halt at the edge of the parking lot. He called Ruby and Julie to him with a hand signal.
“Julie,” he said. “I’m going in there to check it out. I want you to stay back here with the team. Wait on my signal before coming in, don’t move until you get my signal, understand?” Julie nodded earnestly.
Chris turned towards Ruby. “Want to join me in a little reckie?” he said.
“Sure,” Ruby said, displaying neither enthusiasm nor apprehension. Never the most expressive of persons, his daughter.
They set off towards the clubhouse, walking abreast of each other, Chris with his AK slung in front of him, Ruby with her sword sheathed. It occurred to Chris that there was no once else in the world (except perhaps for Joe Thursday) he’d rather have by his side in a situation like this. They climbed the steps to the veranda, stopped either side of the double doors, Ruby listening, Chris watching the expression on his daughter’s face. If there was anything waiting for them in there, she’d hear it long before he did.
Ruby gave him a nod and withdrew her sword from its scabbard in a whisper of steel. They stepped through the doors together.
***
“Julie, what’s happening?”
Julie looked back over her shoulder and saw Chico scuttling towards her. “Chico, get back to where Chris posted you.”
“What’s happening?” Chico said again. He was beside her now, his breathing rapid, distress painted across his face. “Why did they go in alone?”
“Chico, I’m not going to tell you again. Get back to your post.”
“But Ruby…” Chico said. “Why send Ruby in? I would have gone.”
Julie studied the look on the kid’s face and understood what this was about. She allowed herself a chuckle, softened her tone. “You don’t have to worry about Ruby, kiddo. Believe me, I’ve seen her in action close up. She’s the best of us.”
“But I do, Jules,” Chico said, looking desperately towards the darkened doorway that Ruby had disappeared through. “I do worry.”
“You like her, huh?”
“I love her, Julie.”
A single shot rang out from the direction of the clubhouse. Julie and Chico looked at each other, sharing a frozen, terrified moment, and then Chico was up and running, sprinting directly towards the building.
twenty three
It was quiet in the clubhouse, too quiet, the kind of quiet that jangles as loudly as an alarm. Chris walked with the AK pushed to his shoulder, combat stepping. Across from him in the broad corridor, Ruby trod with similar caution, the Katana held in a classic grip, both hands on the handle, the blade assuming a vertical orientation from the right shoulder. They reached a T in the corridor. The banqueting hall lay right, the situation room left. He sent Ruby left with a nod, went right himself.
A few feet along the corridor his feet crunched on broken glass. He could smell them, their old book stench thickening in his nostrils. He stopped and listened for the telltale buzz that would give them away, heard nothing but the hewing of the wind, the clatter of a shutter against the side of the building.
Another step would take him to the broadening of the passage that marked the foyer of the banqueting room. A strong breeze rippled at his hair. He looked left and saw two things, the shattered glass of a set of French doors, and the first of the Z’s, lying broken on the floor. He stepped into the foyer and saw more of them, crumpled, desiccated packages littering the floor, too dried out even to bleed. Bullet holes riddled the walls, wild sprays fired by desperate, frightened people. Here lay the first of the soldiers, a signalman still wearing his headset, a bullet wound neatly perforating his forehead.
Chris took a pace into the banquet hall and viewed the carnage there. The scene told its own story - a small group of soldiers, signals and support staff mostly, overwhelmed by a much larger number of zombies.
Suddenly he wanted out of this room very badly. He turned and stepped between the bodies and it was then that he heard the cough.
A ripple of goose flesh crept instantly up his arms. The sound stirred a memory. Back in Kentucky, in what seemed another lifetime, his friend Tom Riley had made just such a cough. He’d done it in the moments before he’d relinquished his humanity.
The cough came again and Chris traced its origin to a door that stood slightly ajar behind the podium. He took a step in that direction, jumped when another cough came, but kept going until he stood in front of the door. He edged it open with the barrel of his rifle. A small room came into view, perhaps a changing room for guest speakers in days gone by. There was a full-length mi
rror on one wall, reflecting back an image of a military boot. The leg attached to it was clad in jungle camouflage. He shuffled half a step further forward and could see the soldier now. Dave Bamber sat flat on the carpet with his legs splayed before him. His head hung down, bobbing slightly to the steady rise and fall of his chest. There was blood on his face, in his hair, on his shirtfront. A 9-millimeter pistol sat in his lap, its magazine shucked and discarded on the floor.
Chris stepped all the way into the room, kept his rifle trained on Bamber.
“Dave?”
Bamber looked up, his eyes tinged with yellow, a strip of flesh torn from his chin, from his throat, exposing his windpipe.
“Chris,” he said, offering a wan smile that was both sad and terrible.
“Are you hit? Can I –?”
He took a step towards Bamber. Bamber held up a hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’ve been bitten.”
“Aah Christ, Dave I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Bamber chuckled. “They who fight monsters usually end up getting their asses chewed, just a matter of when. You want to do me a favor Chris?” He gestured with his chin towards the AK.
“Ah geez, Dave, I –”
“A mag then? For the 9-mil?”
Chris reached for his sidearm, hesitated.
“I’m not turning into one of those fucking things, Chris.” He coughed dryly. “Time’s wasting.”
Chris removed one of his spare magazines, crouched and placed it on the floor beside Bamber.
“Thanks buddy,” Bamber said, slotting it into his own pistol. “I should have listened to you Chris. All of this was too fast. Not enough men, not enough firepower, too much speed. Rosenthal he…ah, fuck it, it’s done now anyway.”
“You want me to carry any messages for you. Back to Manhattan, I mean?”
“I want you to get yourself back to Manhattan, you and as many men as you can drag with you. Can you do that?”
