by Damon Novak
“And how exactly are we gonna get to you afterward? Bad idea, sis. We’ll just be tradin’ you for them.”
“They don’t have guns. We do. Plus, we got those little shitty radios. If I get messed up and have to run for it, you’ll be able to get me on that.”
I didn’t like the idea, so I started modifyin’ it in my head. I came up with somethin’ – not great, but somethin’.
“Okay, then. Take Nokosi with you, but before you start firin’, you need to find another way out other than through that fuckin’ arbor there.”
“That’s what I said.”
I looked at the hotel. Over the front entrance stood a lattice archway, with an ornate, white fence stretchin’ out on both sides.
We’d already begun to draw attention. Several of the walking dead people had started to move in our direction. I took the DP-12, which we’d kept fully loaded.
“You know what? I’m runnin’ over there first, Lil. Real quick. I’ll just check it out and see if there’s another way for you and Nokosi to get away.”
“Can that dog jump the fence?” asked Georgina.
“You seen her jump into the Rover?” I asked. “Effortless. I imagine if Lilly goes over, so will she.”
“Fair point,” Georgie replied.
“Okay,” I said. “Y’all gun up. I’ll jump over and do some recon.” I popped the glove compartment and grabbed both of the two-milers. I turned ‘em both on.
“Just in case,” I said. “I should be quick.”
I waited for the women to get the guns they were comfortable with, and opened my door, clippin’ the radio on my belt. Nokosi was on alert, her ears pricked, her eyes zeroed in on the shamblin’, undead talent millin’ around the Hemingway house.
I stepped out of the Rover and eased the door closed, leanin’ on it until I heard it latch. I tried to avoid lookin’ at my sister and Georgina, because I thought I might lose my shit and chicken out.
I hurried around the front, and moved past the winch, then rounded the other fender until the truck was between me and the main horde of undead. I felt a bit better with some cover, but I was in clear view to any down either direction of the street, so I didn’t waste time.
My heart was poundin’, and I hadn’t realized I was holdin’ my breath until I let it out. At my first deep breath, I was sorry.
The air was rank with death. I don’t know why it hadn’t hit me worse in other places we’d been, but maybe it was the fact that there was no wind at all, and the old-growth trees linin’ the neighborhood allowed the smell to just sit there and stink to high heaven.
I jogged and reached the fence. Holdin’ the DP-12 with my left hand, I used my right to support myself while I leapfrogged the approximately four-foot fence.
The moment I was over, I tucked myself into a tight copse of Bird of Paradise plants and scanned the area around me.
No zombies anywhere near. It was as though that low fence bein’ closed was enough to keep ‘em out. I crept back out and saw both women starin’ at me. I waved to ‘em to keep their eyes on the dead writer’s house.
They both turned, and I saw about five of ‘em had reached the opposite curb. They were only about forty feet from my car.
I keyed the radio. “Shoot from inside the car if you have to, and if it gets crazy … well, just keep shootin’.”
“Hurry!” came Lilly’s reply.
I re-clipped the radio and ran north along the property until I reached another fence. This one was only three feet. Easy to jump. I scanned ahead and saw that house was on the corner, so if anything went terribly wrong, Lilly could just run around and hit the street on the north side. With the radio, we’d find her.
If we lived. If we didn’t, I was pretty sure Lilly wouldn’t give two shits about her life. She was a girl who loved her family, and I was all that was left.
I pulled the radio off my belt again. “Lilly?”
“Yeah, CB.”
“Okay. North fence, on the right when you get over. It’s only three feet tall, so you can get out that way if you can get ‘em pressed up against the front fence. Looks pretty sturdy, so I think it’ll hold.”
“Got it. Hurry! We’re ducked down out of sight, but a few are getting really close!”
Across the distance and through the glass of the old SUV, I heard the sound of barking. Deep, frantic barking.
“Hurry!” shouted Lilly.
I ran. As I ran, I keyed the radio again. “There’s a shoppin’ bag in my glovey. Take it and put some extra shells in there. Hurry, I’m at the fence!”
I re-clipped the radio and did my leapfrog thing again. In another three strides, I rounded the front bumper and yanked open the door. Lilly already had several shells in the bag as I handed her the gun. “Here!” I said, giving her my radio and the shotgun. The other radio was on the seat.
She nodded and got out, closing the door with a heavy slam. I almost cussed at her, but then I figured out she’d done it on purpose. Already started her noise-makin’ plan.
Yankin’ open the back door, she grabbed Nokosi’s rope leash and the dog jumped out. Lilly slammed that door, too and ran toward the fence. The dog didn’t miss a step.
I kept my eyes on her until she was over the fence. I was relieved, but not too surprised, when Nokosi cleared it with a foot to spare.
She turned and held the gun up.
Boom!
The shot echoed through the silence of the neighborhood, and it was like she’d banged a gong.
Like swamp water flowin’ through mangroves, the deadheads started their exodus, turnin’ as a group so I could see their haggard, destroyed faces comin’ toward us.
Another shot. That was two, and I intended to keep on countin’. “Down, down!” I whispered, though I was pretty sure she already was. I heard Georgie’s thumbs tappin’ the keys of her phone, and I prayed to God all this shit went like we hoped it would.
I lifted my head to peep over the side panel, and almost met the eyes of one of the hungry, rotten humans. It was a yellow-haired dude in his thirties, I’d guess. I didn’t stay up long enough to figure out anything else about him, except that he had on a black and blood-soaked Metallica tee shirt.
Fuckin’ hate Metallica. Give me some good Garth Brooks anytime. That man-eatin’ fucker probably thought the black rain was cool, like some goth shit.
Lilly fired her third shot, and I logged it in my mental calculator. I chanced another glance out the driver’s side window, and saw the horde was pourin’ out of Hemingway’s front yard like lava flowin’ down the side of a volcano.
“Is it working?” whispered Georgie.
“Yeah. They’re on the move.”
“Can we go now?”
“Hell no! There’s a ton of ‘em.”
“Tell me when. I’m afraid to look.”
“You sure you don’t want to wait here?”
The radio clicked. I pushed the button. “Yeah, Lil. They’re comin’ toward you. Stay twenty feet back from the fence. Try to preserve your shells.”
“Good.”
She fired again, as I raised my face to the window for another look. Now the group was flowin’ around the front and back of the Rover, and I swore I could see the front of the house now.
“Hell yes!” I said. “It’s really workin’! Georgie, crawl to the other side and get a look at Lil. I’ll keep watch on this side.”
I heard her scootin’ over, and a second later she said, “Yes, she’s very visible. They’re pressed against the fence. About … maybe thirty of them?”
“Is it holdin’?”
“I think so, but I can’t tell now. There’s too many of them.”
Buzz-beep.
A second later: “She said they’re at the upstairs window!”
Georgie scrambled back to my side and raised her head. The tint on the rear windows was much darker than the front, so I was pretty sure, with the shadows from the surrounding trees, that she’d be invisible to any of the stinkers
outside.
“There she is!” she said, her voice rising, but still a whisper.
I looked. There, standin’ in the window alongside a very skinny dude in a shirt that looked about a foot too short, was a girl who was almost a carbon copy of Georgina.
They waved like crazy people.
I’m pretty sure they were close to bein’ crazy people.
Boom!
As round number five sounded, I realized Lil was doin’ better than I expected. She might not even need a reload.
The focus of the horde was clearly on Lilly. They no longer even looked at the old Red Rover; their attention had their clouded eyes averted from us.
“Couple more shots and I think we’ve got it. Wish I hadn’t lost my big knife.”
“You’re thinking you’d like to stab them?” asked Georgina.
“I’d like to walk right through ‘em like a crowd of Wal-Mart shoppers, but no matter what a bad rap those people get, these fuckers are worse.”
I didn’t see it, but I swore I heard Georgie smile.
Number six went off. I eased around to look out the other window. I could no longer see Lilly. As long as I heard that gun, I felt okay about it.
The radio squelched, then: “I can’t see the Rover anymore, CB! You clear yet?” I heard Nokosi barkin’ in the background, but hadn’t heard it until she keyed the radio. I guess the bodies of the walking dead still had sound-deadening properties – no pun intended.
I quickly scanned north and south, then pushed the button. “Okay, they’re all yours! Don’t lose ‘em!”
I heard another loud report from her shotgun. “Hurry! That fence is beginning to bow!” she said, her voice takin’ on an increasing nervous tone.
I didn’t want to hear that. I sat up and looked at Georgina. “You ready?”
“Yes, hold on a second.” She held her phone. “Should I have them just run out to us?”
I shook my head. “No. If there are more we can’t see, they could get hurt. Put down your phone, get your gun and let’s go.”
She held up the 9-millimeter she’d had when Clay, Tanner and I first encountered her. “I have this. I’m okay with it.”
[RM1]
“Let’s move,” I said, but put a hand on her shoulder as she went to open the door. “Hold on. I’m fightin’ tellin’ you to stick close to me, ‘cause that might sound sexist.”
Despite everything, she smiled at me. I could see in that smile, the faith that she’d be huggin’ her daughter in a few moments. I prayed it was true.
“Cole Baxter, men are men and women are women. We’re different. You’re conditioned to be the protector. I’ll fight alongside you, but if you feel like protecting me, I have no problem with that. I’ll do what I can to protect you, too. Now stop fucking around and let’s go save my daughter.”
We both threw our doors open and jumped out, breaking into a run. I felt like we were fuckin’ Mulder and Scully, only better lookin’.
We were damned sure runnin’ out into an X-Files kinda world.
Ω
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Knowin’ what was roamin’ around the world made bein’ outside way more intense than I expected. Seems I was startin’ to let the whole zombie apocalypse thing freak me out a tad.
I swore I could hear the choking-moans of the changed humans, comin’ from every shadow I could conjure up in my now paranoid imagination.
As we charged through the open, wrought-iron gate that led into the yard, now hangin’ from one hinge, I spotted somethin’ I’d been wishin’ I had; a close combat weapon. Quiet, too.
Last thing we needed to do was draw that stinkin’ horde back over to Hemingway’s place before we got out.
“Hold on!” I said, loud enough for her to hear me, but as low as possible.
I bent down to pick up a ¾-inch diameter rod off the grass. It was one of a whole bunch of ‘em. Each 3-foot rod had an eyehole at the top, with a white, plastic chain runnin’ through ‘em. From the ones still stuck in the grass, I could see they used to create a guide barrier to direct the tourist pedestrian traffic where they wanted ‘em.
I hefted it, looking at the end that stuck into the ground. It came to a nice point. It would make a nice hand-to-hand weapon if it came to that – the eyehole end for knockin’ zombies in the head, and the pointed end to jab into their eye sockets.
“Good,” she said, tucking her gun away. “I’d rather not shoot with the kids inside.”
“Shoot if you have to,” I said, picking up a second rod. I pulled the chain through and dropped it on the ground.
We slowed to a walk and approached the front porch when the phone in Georgina’s pocket gave another buzz-beep.
It sounded like a goddamned gong in my head.
I stopped, on alert as she pulled it out and read the text.
“She says there’s –”
Three loud reports came from across the street. I tensed up. She wouldn’t waste ammo. Lilly might be in trouble.
“Let’s go!” I said in a loud whisper.
“She heard noise downstairs. When there were so many, it was always noisy. She thinks there might be some inside, too!”
“Didn’t they go downstairs?”
“Not since they shut themselves in the upstairs room. They were too scared, Cole! I don’t blame them.”
She was right, and I knew it. My mind was on Lilly. It was then I realized I’d left my goddamned radio in the Rover.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I kicked the door. Yeah, I fuckin’ know, I should’ve just turned the knob, but I wasn’t thinkin’.
The jamb splintered, and it flew inward. The moment it was open, Georgie and I staggered back.
At least ten of ‘em were comin’ at us. They’d probably already been drawn to the front of the house from the shotgun blasts from my sister, across the street.
There was no linin’ up, no leavin’ the buildin’ in an orderly fashion. This wasn’t the regular Hemingway tour anymore. Nope. These fuckers pushed forward all at once.
But that worked to our advantage. Those nasty, rottin’ monsters all crammed in the doorway together, creatin’ a nice clog of walkin’ dead humanity. I jammed my gun in the waistband of my jeans and two-fisted my pointed rod, jammin’ it into the skull of the one closest to me. Yeah, I’d have shot ‘em all, but I didn’t need to compete with my sister and draw another couple dozen back to us.
The first son-of-a-bitch was probably a fifty-somethin’ year-old dude, with bone exposed on both arms. I could see several bites where the skin hadn’t peeled off yet, and it flashed through my mind how scared the dude probably was just before the wounds were inflicted.
The rod sank deep into his left eye socket, after hittin’ and slidin’ off the bridge of his nose. His rickety knees bent forward and he dropped like a stone.
Georgina had chosen the other end, swingin’ the rod for all she was worth. It had good weight to it bein’ solid steel, and the end with the loop on it turned out to be a good skull cracker.
She brought it up over her head, then swung straight down, crackin’ a petite redhead right on the top of her noggin’. I figured she wasn’t as amenable to jabbin’ as swingin, and she did a fine job.
Turns out I was right; Dr. Georgina Lake didn’t hesitate. She raised it and slammed it down on the girl twice more, and the young rotter dropped to the worn wood of the porch next to my guy.
The clusterfuck seemed to break up all of a sudden, and now three more came at us. We both staggered back to the railin’, and I turned my rod around, usin’ Georgina’s method. I swung it in a flat arch from right to left at the same time she did, and we took out two more.
Mine was probably only twenty-three when he changed; his right eye dangled out of his face, and his nose was completely gone. It looked like he’d been scalped on the left side of his head, so when my rod slammed into it, I saw it kink inward, and the crack of his skul
l made me almost puke.
Georgina’s was a grandma. To her credit, she didn’t hesitate, but the lady had to have been damned old before she converted into a freak. Her gray hair was too perfect to be anything but a wig, and that was borne out when Georgie’s rod slammed into the left side of her head.
She was so frail, she toppled sideways, the wig getting caught on the rod. Her head hit the doorjamb and her neck snapped.
Damned brittle bones.
As though we were synchronized fighters, we both decided to flip our rods around at the same time. I think she initially did it to yank the gray wig off of her weapon, but now that we had the pointy ends facin’ outward, we went with it.
Jab. Jab. Jab. Drop. Drop. Drop.
At our feet was a pile of twitchin’ flesh, blood and gore, the dark juice leakin’ from the collection of dead zombies, makin’ the deck boards slippery.
We had to be careful not to fall as we awaited any further onslaught of the dead.
Another one staggered through the door, stumblin’ over the pile of death and down to the deck, her feet caught in the tangle of body parts at her shamblin’ feet.
I raised my rod and brought the sharp point straight down through the back of a little girl’s skull. Her fingers splayed out, revealin’ blackened nails, some torn away from clawin’ at somethin’. She had on a blood-matted, yellow dress, and I winced as I felt that rod sink into her brain, killin’ her for the second time. The high-pitched keening from her young vocal cords ceased mid-growl.
Her skull had been substantially softer than the big ones I’d killed. I was disgusted and horrified at what we’d been forced to do. Gators were one thing; children and old people were another.
I hadn’t realized Georgie, without a zombie of her own to battle at the moment, saw it all. She screamed.
“I know, I know!” I said, turnin’ my face to see the sadness and terror on her face.
It was my mistake. Hers, too.
The deadhead that stumbled heavily from around the corner did what the others had; his feet got caught in the tangle of dead at our feet.
