“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Mayor,” Katie answered, shaking his hand.
Jenni shyly shook his hand, studying his face. His smile was pleasant, so she relaxed a little.
“Not much on the radio, huh?” Travis asked.
“The broadcast is on a loop now. Not a good sign, is it?” The mayor settled in his chair, the springs creaking as he tipped back, his hands folded on his stomach.
Travis shook his head and took a seat in a nearby chair. “What about the CB and ham radio?”
“Lots of truckers still out there, trying to find safe places, but some are running out of gas and some have gone off the air. There are not as many out there as there were.” The mayor sighed. “And I haven’t heard a thing from the county emergency coordinator. E-mails are bouncing, and with the phones down…” He shrugged. “We’re on our own. How is the wall coming along?”
“I think we’ll have the area fully enclosed by the new wall by morning if we keep working all night. But another batch of zombies is headed our way. Zombies followed Katie and Jenni here. Maybe around twenty. I have Juan organizing some men to kill as many as they can. We’ll use safety lines this time.”
The mayor let out a long breath as he ran a hand over his balding head. “And we have those zombies down at the rescue center at the school. If they get out—”
“Which brings me to something. That man, Ralph Toombs, who told us the girls were en route? He owns a hunting store.” Travis spoke earnestly and with respect, but Jenni could tell he was subtly trying to steer the mayor in the direction he wanted him to go.
The mayor took in this information, then said, “I have an idea. We could send someone to get some guns once we thin the zombies around the wall.”
Travis hesitated, then said, “That sounds like a good idea. I can try to get ahold of Ralph tonight and maybe send out someone in the morning.”
“See what you can figure out and let me know,” the mayor replied.
Travis nodded. “I’ll get right on it.”
The mayor slowly turned and brought up the CNN homepage on his computer. “Still the same as last night. No updates.”
Travis stood. “We may not get any more, you know.”
The mayor stared at the screen, then carefully typed in another URL. “The government won’t let us be in an information blackout for long.”
“If the government’s still out there,” Jenni said darkly, unable to hold her tongue.
Katie bobbed her head in agreement.
The mayor stared at the women, and Jenni shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “You have a point, but we can hope.”
“That may be all we have,” Travis said grimly. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“Thanks, Travis. Nice to meet you, ladies.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mayor,” Katie said, and Jenni waved at him as they followed Travis out of the office.
Peggy and her son were out of sight, the lights off in her area of the main office. Jenni guessed they were lying down for the night. Travis led them to a side room, where a very young man in a police uniform sat in front of a ramshackle assortment of communication equipment. He looked pale beneath his tan, and his thin blond hair was matted with sweat. Jenni thought he didn’t look much older than Jason. He was a good-looking kid with lovely blue eyes that looked a little lost.
“Hey, Curtis!” Travis said, walking over to him. He quickly introduced Katie and Jenni to him.
“Nice to meet you, ladies.”
“How’s it going?” Travis asked.
The police officer shook his head and said in soft voice, “It’s getting quieter out there.”
Travis laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Have you spoken to that man, Ralph Toombs?”
“He asked about the women. I told him they arrived safely.”
“Good. Think you could get him back on the line?”
“Yeah. Give me a sec.” Curtis turned back to the equipment and fussed with it.
Jenni stood close to Katie. It felt good to be inside city hall. Safer, somehow. But she still felt off balance. Katie looked at her, smiled, and tenderly swept some loose locks of Jenni’s black hair back from her face.
“You okay?”
Jenni immediately warmed under the attention. “Yeah. Just nervous.”
Katie kissed her cheek lightly and slid her arm around Jenni’s waist. “Yeah. Me, too.”
As Curtis turned to his equipment, they could all hear the moans and screeches of the dead rising outside, mingled with shouts of alarm.
The zombies had arrived at the perimeter.
CHAPTER NINE
1.
The Night of the Dead
“You two stay here,” Travis said, and hurried out the door.
Curtis looked at the two women, then lowered his head solemnly. He seemed worn down, tired, and overwhelmed. Katie remembered that Travis said that the local police force had been wiped out; Curtis was likely the only survivor. She had an inkling that Travis had asked him to oversee the communications center to keep him feeling useful . Curtis looked no older than twenty-one, and Katie bet he hadn’t been on the job long.
Jenni grabbed her hand. Her dark eyes were bright with excitement and fear. “If we go upstairs, we could probably see out the window.”
Feeling restless and not wanting to be out of the loop, but also not in the way by trailing after Travis, Katie followed Jenni out of the room and up the stairs. They darted past the dining room and down the hall.
Already other people, workers and their families, were rushing down the corridor to see the battle. A small crowd clustered around the windows, which overlooked the street. Managing to push their way into a good position to see out one of the windows, Katie and Jenni looked down at the men getting into position to fight the zombies. Ladders had been used to scale the new wall and get up onto the trucks. The harness lines glinted in the radiance from the huge lights set up around the perimeter. A series of pulleys and long ropes attached to the crane arm allowed the construction workers behind the line of trucks to hoist the men up away from trouble if necessary. There were three workers to each line. The volunteers up on the backs of the trucks carried shovels and homemade spears with what looked like trowels attached to the ends. Below the armed survivors was a group holding reserve weapons.
Moaning loudly, some of them screeching, thirty or so zombies clustered under the men, beating the sides of the trucks, eager for the flesh of those above.
Katie’s heart jumped a little as she caught sight of Travis running up one of the ladders, still fastening his harness, his shovel under his arm. Of course he would be part of this. He was not the sort of man to send others to do something he wouldn’t do himself.
As if his appearance on top of the truck was a sign, all the men squatted down and rammed their weapons down as hard as they could into the heads of the dead below. Katie could see the shovels busting open zombie heads and trowel-ended spears being driven through the eye sockets of upturned faces. When a zombie managed to grab a weapon, the living man immediately let go and was handed a new one. Katie wondered if the person who was lost in the earlier battle had fought with a zombie for his weapon. In this new world, you had to learn fast to survive.
In a few minutes, the construction workers took out at least ten zombies, but the truly dead remained standing and pressed up against the trucks due to the constant push of the undead behind them. The men had to reach farther out to strike the living undead. One man lost his footing and swung out over the crowd. Juan shouted, and immediately his towline was drawn up and back. Zombies tried to grab his feet, but the man was pulled to safety.
“Shit,” someone said nearby, and Katie couldn’t agree more.
Her eyes continuously strayed to Travis. His height and long arms gave him a greater reach than many of the other fighters as he drove his shovel down with a strange, staccato rhythm.
“He is kicking so much ass,” Jason said from behind
her as he joined them at the window, standing on his toes to see over their shoulders.
Jack managed to wedge himself between Katie and Jenni to get a view of the action below. He let out a series of low, disapproving growls.
Travis yelled something, and all the other men backed away from the edge of the barrier. The great mechanical arm of the excavator came swinging over their heads; the scoop was loaded with what looked like big sandbags. Travis gestured, guiding the driver of the machine to just the perfect spot, then made a downward stroke with his arm. The driver released the load of heavy bags right into the center of the remaining zombies. Most were effectively crushed.
Out of the original throng of thirty zombies, maybe five were still staggering about, tripping over their dead comrades. They were too far away from the perimeter to kill with the spears, and Katie knew the townspeople wouldn’t risk shooting at them and possibly drawing more zombies.
Travis motioned again and the defenders retreated down their ladders, moved the ladders over to the wall, then scrambled up and over, into the construction site. Once the ladders were hauled back in and everyone was safe, cheers erupted throughout the complex.
Katie turned to Jenni and saw that her face was very flushed and excited.
“He’s amazing!” Jenni giggled, hugging Katie.
Katie returned the embrace and said, “Yep, he is.”
At that moment, Travis looked up at the window. His gaze met Katie’s and he smiled.
2.
Another Moment
It had to be the best peach cobbler Katie had ever eaten in her life. Even cold and with no ice cream to top it off, it was the food of the gods. She shoveled another bite into her mouth, savoring the sweetness on her tongue.
For the time being, she was alone in the dining room. Jenni and Jason were off walking Jack and spending some quality mother–son time together. Until this moment, Katie hadn’t realized how much she needed a chance to finally relax and let go of the terror and stress of the last two days. Now the quiet around her was soothing. It was growing late and those not working on the wall were turning in for the night.
Feeling like a glutton, she stood up and served herself another piece of cobbler, snagging a bottle of water on the way back to her seat. The night pressed against the tall windows lining one wall of the spacious room. She had never been afraid of the dark before, but she felt haunted by the darkness hovering outside the glass. Ignoring her fear, she took another bite.
“Mind if I join you?” Travis slid into the seat across from her, clutching a cup of steaming coffee in one hand.
Katie broke the sugary crust of her cobbler with her spoon, staring at the glistening peaches beneath it. She wasn’t sure she wanted company, but didn’t want to be rude, so she said, “Not at all. Taking a break?”
“Yeah. Just a small one.”
“You don’t sleep much, do you, Travis?”
“Not really. I’ve always been one of those people who don’t get enough sleep. Of course, I’ve hardly slept since all this went down.” Travis ran his hand over his stubbly chin. “Or shaved. Or eaten. Or anything, really.”
“Here. Have some cobbler. I shouldn’t eat any more, anyway.” Katie shoved her plate across to him.
Travis smiled slightly as he snagged a plastic spoon from a nearby cup filled with utensils. He dug in with relish.
“Jenni and I saw a few survivor holdouts on the way here, but nothing like this. It really is amazing how y’all got this up and running.”
“We got lucky,” Travis admitted. “Yesterday we were supposed to break ground. We were going to rebuild a historical building that burned down a few years ago. This whole area is about to undergo—was about to undergo—a serious reconstruction. A local developer, Steven Mann, was keen on turning downtown into a tourist attraction, complete with a rebuilt vaudeville theater and the hotel”—he gestured with his spoon in the general direction of the tall building—“as the focal points. Anyway, I was on my way to work when the reports started coming in.”
“The race riot story?” Katie asked. “I heard those the night before.”
“Yep.” Travis sipped some of his cooling coffee, looking thoughtful. “It sounded weird to me. I couldn’t figure out why there would be race riots breaking out all over the country. There’d been nothing on the news that would instigate that sort of violence. It was just so random.”
“It made no sense to me either. None of the news did before the other morning,” Katie admitted. She ran her finger down the outside of her water bottle, wiping away the condensation. “At least not until I realized it was zombies.”
“It still doesn’t seem real, does it?”
“But it is.” Katie found herself drawing an L into the beads of water on her bottle and stopped herself. “What happened next?
“Well, by the time I got here, we were already hearing horror stories about what was going down in the cities. Peggy and the mayor had already established an emergency center at the city hall. Truckers were reporting all sorts of crazy stuff over the CB and ham radio that was no better. The county’s emergency coordinator told Reyes to hold tight and not pay attention to the chatter. FEMA would let the county know what the towns needed to do to stay safe. We were all on edge, not sure what to think. It sounded like an April Fool’s joke, except it’s still March. Juan kept saying it was zombies, but we all just blew him off.” Travis shrugged. “I mean, it sounds crazy.”
Katie sighed and ran a hand over her blond curls. “Yeah, it does. Completely.”
“Anyway, the mayor decided that the best thing to do until we were sure what was going on was to get everyone in town out to the new high school. He told us we could go ahead and start to break ground, but he wanted the civvies safe.” Travis leaned toward Katie. “The mayor is in the back pocket of the developer, you see.”
“Ohhhhhh,” Katie said.
“So we went to work, but kept getting distracted by all the stories pouring in on the radio. So, anyway, Curtis comes by and tells us that there was an attack at a service station down the road and the officer on the scene had to put down the attacker because he was so violent. They took the lady this freak attacked down to the clinic. He was real jittery and I didn’t blame him. It all felt wrong, you know?”
“I think I know what you mean,” Katie answered. Once the world had begun to unravel around her, it had been hard to accept what was going on.
Travis shook his head. “It was just so fucked up. Anyway, we start to finally move the equipment into position to start digging when we hear a big commotion down the block. Those cars out there come racing into the downtown area, careening like crazy, and crash. All hell is breaking loose in those cars, and we can see them rocking and hear screaming and what sounds like growling. Blood splats all over the car windows, and it sounds like a horror movie. Suddenly there are these … things … crawling out of the cars and they start running down the street toward us. Now, it’s not normal for a man to have his intestines tripping his feet and he still keeps running.”
Katie winced at the thought and vividly remembered the first zombie to attack her. The grievous wounds on the man who nearly dragged her out of her car had been a clear indication that things weren’t right. “I saw something very similar.”
“It’s unbelievable when you see it.” Travis shoveled more cobbler into his mouth, chewing as he reflected back on what he had seen. “Four of the zombies ran straight for us, and Juan—he’s a crazy son of a bitch—just swept them right off the road into a building with the arm of the excavator. The whole time he’s yelling about zombies, and honestly, at that point, we believed him. Two of those things didn’t get up. Their heads were bashed in. But the other two, despite having obviously broken arms and legs, were staggering toward us. So we grabbed some shovels and dented their heads in. About that time, Curtis comes back and says that some shit was going down at the clinic and that the dead were walking again. The mayor was freaking out because he saw us take out
the four zombies from the cars, but we calmed him down long enough to listen. We told him that anyone bit needs to be tossed out on their ass. Because in zombie movies…” He shrugged his shoulders, the disbelief of that moment reflected in his expression.
“The bite is what makes them zombies,” Katie said helpfully.
“Yeah. And so far … well, damn … so far, it’s clear to me and I think everyone else who ever watched those movies that they got a lot right.” Travis gazed steadily at Katie. “Even though I saw it, I found it hard to believe … but I couldn’t afford not to believe.”
Katie agreed silently, her eyes meeting his. Finally she said, “You have to believe, because you have to survive.”
“Exactly. So we convinced the mayor to call the school and tell them to toss out anyone who has been bitten. There are only four other cops in the whole town, but none of them answer Curtis’s calls. Anyway, things are looking bad. The principal at the high school, who used to be the mayor here, tells Reyes to go fuck himself four different ways and upside down. Finally, he admits that they have bitten people in the high school and that the school nurse is taking care of them.”
Katie winced. “When we went through Emorton, the school there was completely filled with zombies.”
Travis leaned back in his chair with a weary exhalation. “Yeah. Within fifteen minutes, we lost all communication with the school. Then we knew we were in for a shitload of trouble. So we parked the construction trucks to block off any vulnerable areas and packed sandbags and cement bags around them. The hurricane fence could probably hold back a good number, but if the whole town decided to come visit…”
“It won’t be pleasant,” Katie agreed.
“So that is when we started building the wall. We recognized that we most likely would not be getting help from the outside. The mayor is still hoping, but the rest of us have realized that we’re most likely on our own. And as Texans, we’re okay with that.” Travis shrugged and began to eat again.
As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 13
