Tom did, and they were in luck. There were three people still standing on the roof looking down at the truck, two men and one woman.
“Hey…” Tom shouted upward, leaning slightly out the passenger window. “Hey… We need to get in! We are coming in through the back!”
Pointing to the back of the building while getting the attention of those on the roof Tom slid back into his seat. Pulling his arm back into the cab from the window, his eyes went wide looking at Noel and Joe.
“Well…” Joe said. “Did they hear you?”
“I think so.” Tom said with a smile. “Soon as I yelled to them, they nodded.”
“Good.” Noel grinned, looking up trying to see them. “What are they doing now?”
“I don’t see them now,” Tom said, looking back out the window. “I think they’re headed down to let us in!”
“Awesome,” Joe said, slamming his palm into the steering wheel with delight. “Let’s get going before we got too much company.”
The truck stopped abruptly at the back of the building. From where they were parked, they could see a part of the helicopter blades peeking out over the roof’s edge. The coast looked clear. There were what looked to be about a dozen shuffling zombies closing in, but they had a minute before they would reach the truck. As they looked out at the surrounding parking lot and the streets beyond, Joe reached out for his pistol. Tom still had hold of it.
“It’s empty, I think.” Tom frowned, handing it over.
“That’s all right. There’s plenty more where this came from.” Joe suggested, nodding at the building. “Plenty of ammo in there.”
He ejected the empty magazine, pulled the last magazine from his belt, and drove it home. The clip clicked. Joe checked to make sure the safety was off, then smiled.
“Okay, let’s do this!”
The expression on Noel’s face was both excited and horrified. She didn’t want to go back out there. Not after all that had happened. The image of Jared’s head splitting open on the cemetery gravel flashed in her mind. She choked up a little, whimpering at the idea that she had to leave the truck.
“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine,” Joe insisted, patting her on the shoulder. “I promise.”
And as if to prove him right, the back door to the precinct swung open. The female from the roof and a really tall man wearing all white stepped out urging them to come inside.
“Look out!” The red headed woman shouted.
It wasn’t her tone that startled Joe and Noel. It was the fear in her eyes and the direction she was looking. Noel turned to that direction to see what was so scary. She instantly wished she hadn’t. The red headed woman at the door had been looking toward the passenger side of the truck. Before she or Joe had time to react, it was too late.
Tom screamed out in pain.
They could have sworn the coast was clear. A shambler had somehow walked up undetected while Joe was fidgeting with the gun.
The creature lunged even further into the cab. Tom’s window was still down. It reared back with a mouth full of flesh, revealing why Tom had screamed. Thick chunks of cheek muscle and sinew peeled away on Tom’s face as the creature drew back. Blood splashed onto the pale ghoul’s face from Tom’s torn skin. The zombie’s throat bulged as it swallowed the meaty chunks. The zombie reached in with his dirt and blood covered hands. Its left thumb sank into Tom’s right eye. Noel heard the socket pop in a squirting display of gore. Tom tried to scream again, fighting get free, but the zombie sank its teeth into him again. This time on the nose. The crunch it made almost made Noel throw up all over herself.
“Oh, my God!” Noel screamed, sliding as far away from Tom as possible.
She pressed hard into Joe, trying to force herself out the driver side. Joe struggled against her, trying to get a clear shot, but between her pressing against him and Tom flailing with the dead thing, he couldn’t.
“Let me out!” Noel shouted, still fighting to climb over Joe.
He tried one more time to get off a clear shot and couldn’t. With that, he opened the door and dashed out. Noel pushed him aside and clawed her way past him. Still screaming from the top of her lungs, Noel disappeared around the front of the truck the second she left the cab. Regaining his balance, Joe looked around. In the distance, there were dead everywhere, slowly meandering toward the truck. Frantic, Joe aimed the gun trying to make his shots count. None of the zombies in the street were of any real threat, yet. Dazed by the chaos, he saw a large figure in all white dash toward the truck. He gripped the gun tightly, aiming it toward the runner. But just as he was about to pull the trigger, he saw the man in white wielding a gun as well. The tall man aimed the gun into the street and fired.
Joe looked back.
The runners they had corralled away from the building were coming back. It was only a matter of moments before they would be on top of the truck.
“Oh shit,” Joe said, trying to regain composure.
The tall man in white fired two more shots into the running crowd, and then reached up pulling the ghoul out of the passenger side of the truck and off of Tom. The creature fell to the ground and the man shot it in the face three times. With each shot, the head jittered and blood splashed out onto the pavement. It didn’t stay down. The ghoul started to stumble to its feet again.
The tall man in white shoved the creature down again, then said, “Help me get your friend out of the truck!”
Joe nodded, aimed his handgun into the oncoming mob, and fired a single shot. There were too many. Making his way around the truck, he helped the man in white pull Tom from the truck. His white clothes were instantly smeared in red as they pulled Tom free and carried him inside.
Joe set Tom down on the cold tile floor. The old holy man started to say something, but his mouth pooled with blood and dripped down next to him.
There was one last thing all of them saw in the police station’s back lot before the door slammed shut. Tom’s red truck disappeared in a cacophony of bitter grunts and mangled bodies beating against it.
The persistent beating at the precinct’s back doors began.
THIRTEEN
“Hold on there, Tom. You’re going to make it.” Noel said fighting back tears, and holding the old holy man’s hand. If he was aware that she was there, she didn’t know. She hoped he was beyond pain in his catatonic state. Lying with his back against the cold tile, his body started shaking beyond anything she had ever seen. Blood pooled around his head onto the floor. His white shirt that proudly displayed John 3:16 was covered in blood making it almost unreadable. He coughed as he tried to speak. His head jerked to the side, sending even more crimson plasma smearing across the tile. His teeth showed dark red in between as he winced silent in pain.
The zombie that had attached him had nearly destroyed his face. His right eye had been punctured by a gnarly finger. Meaty white chunks and matted blood clung from the open socket. His other eye was bloodshot red from fighting through the pain. His upper lip on the right side of his face was torn away. The mangled tissue reminded Noel of Two-Face from old Batman cartoons she used to watch as a kid. It took her all of her willpower not to look away. The tip of Tom’s nose was missing. The rest of it was crunched to distorted pulp.
His coughing fit finally stopped.
Noel squeezed his hand tighter.
“I… need… ible…” Tom groaned between jittering convulsions.
“What, Tom?” Noel leaned closer.
“My… my books.” He winced in pain.
Noel looked over her shoulder at Joe. He shrugged, not knowing what to do.
“The Bible,” she said. “He wants one. Get him one… now! He’s dying for Christ’s sake.”
The red headed woman stepped over and handed Noel a book. Noel took the book and realized that she had been given a telephone book. It didn’t matter. Big, yellow and bulky, Tom embraced it with a sigh of relief.
A sharp pain returned and distorted his bloody face further. Tom
groaned in agony.
“The… Lo… is my streng… I shall not want…” He coughed up blood, holding tight to the book. “Joe… Joe… are yo… there?”
“Yeah, buddy.” Joe said. “I’m here. We made it, Tom. We made it inside.”
“I need… to promise me…” Tom said, splattering bloody between coughs. “My… my wife. My… ife… Joe.”
“I hear you, Tom.” Joe said soothingly. “I hear you man. She’s here now, brother. Say hi, man. Your wife… She’s here, man.”
Noel looked up at Joe in surprise and shoved a knuckle into his leg. Joe shrugged his shoulders and pointed down at the mess that was Tom. Maybe he was right. A little white lie wouldn’t hurt, would it? She thought.
Joe coughed again, then said, “I… I love you, honey. Be strong.” He believed she was there with him. His words were clear as he forced back the spasms and jitters of pain. He reached out to grab her hand. “We will be together soon, dear. Let the Lord keep you.” His hand fell limp to the floor before he was overcome by another fierce fit of coughing.
Noel had never seen someone die like this up close before. She didn’t know what to make of it. Sure, she’d seen Jared get smashed into the gravel, and Trevor flip out on Kelly. She had witnessed Kelly’s dad meet his end too. But this… this was different. Somehow this old holy man, despite the pain, had managed to put a smile on his face. It was hard to make out the smile among the mutilation, but it was there. He projected an aura of peace. She envied him in an odd way. He possessed something she’d been looking for all her life; hope. Noel had been an Atheist for as far back as she could remember. She didn’t believe in anything after death. Why should she? A person didn’t remember anything before being born, so why remember anything after… right? If that were the case, then even now in death, why did Tom seem so content? Was there something to it that she was missing?
Still holding tight to his hand, she thought back to all of the theological debates she and Jared had shared. That was one thing she had loved about him. He acted as if he had life all figured out. He was the type of person who would thoroughly research a subject before forming an opinion. She silently laughed at herself as she sat watching Tom die. Maybe she had it wrong all along. Tears ran down her face. There was something joyful about seeing him go. She originally had thought she was going to hate Tom. All of those holy rollers were all the same. Blasphemy this and repent that. Maybe she wouldn’t have liked him as much if she had been able to spend more time with him before all of this madness. She doubted that thought upon rethinking. Tom was real. Genuine. Jared probably would have disagreed.
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t feel it when Tom’s hand relaxed in her grip.
Stepping away from Noel, Joe decided to use the moment to introduce himself to the others.
“Hey, I’m Joe Montoya.”
“Hi, I’m Dane.” The tall man said, shaking Joe’s hand awkwardly with his left.
“Are you one of the cops that was sent out with the cleanup crews?” Chelsea asked, not introducing herself.
“Cleanup crews?” Joe said in obvious confusion.
“No offense,” Dane said. “But we can get to all of that later. We need to do something with your dead friend here… Before he. Well…”
“Yeah…” Joe sighed, looking down at Noel and Tom’s battered body. “Before he wakes back up.”
“Exactly!” Dane said, snapping his fingers sympathetically.
“Well, what are we going to do with him?” Noel asked, looking up while still on her knees beside Tom’s unmoving body. “Sure as hell can’t go sticking him outside, now can we?”
The back door to the station shook hard and rattled on its hinges. The dead outside weren’t letting up. At least that meant the concentration of zombies in the front had moved to the back of the building. The back door would be much easier to reinforce than the ones in the station’s lobby.
“Where do you suggest we put him?” Dane scanned the room for a solution.
“We could put him in one of the cells,” Joe suggested.
“That’s perfect.”
Tom’s clammy hand suddenly gripped tightly on Noel’s palm. It startled her to attention. His one good eye looked as if it was rolled into the back of his head. She screamed, trying to pull away as he leaned forward. The book in his other hand dropped to the floor as he lashed out.
Just as his undead head lunged within mere inches of Noel’s delicate arm, a single gunshot pierced the room. Tom’s head kicked back. His body went limp as blood spurted from the back of his scalp.
“Oh, my God. That was so freaking close!” Noel said in a gasp.
“We need to move him, now!” Dane said, lowering the pistol.
It was still warm in his grip as he shoved it between his belt in the small of his back. Chelsea’s stare froze on Tom’s dead body. She clenched her stomach for a second and then turned away.
“Oh… I think I’m going to be…” She vomited uncontrollably in the corner of the room.
The warm splash of wet leftovers hit the cold tile floor at her feet. And when there was nothing left to puke, she continued to retch in painful dry heaves.
“Here, help me with him.” Dane stepped forward, gently pushing Noel aside. “I take it you know where the holding cells are and you’ve got access to them, right?”
Joe nodded, grabbing Tom’s lifeless body by the legs. The two men lifted the body in unison. Blood and gore stuck to the tile as it pulled from the floor. As they pulled him away, blood and brain fell from his head slopping to a small pile. Chelsea, looked at it for a second, wretched, and then turned away to puke some more. Noel watched as they dragged Tom off into another room that undoubtedly led to the holding cells.
God, I hope they’re going to be okay. Last thing I need is for Joe to get bitten too. That was too freaking close, Noel thought, looking down at her arm, reflecting on how close Tom’s bloody teeth had almost gotten.
There was no one else in the room, but the red head and her. Noel felt alone. She didn’t like being away from Joe’s side. She desperately wanted him to come back. She felt safer with someone she sensed she knew. The red head and that Dane character didn’t know her. Joe was her friend and so had been Tom. But now Tom was gone. He was gone just like Jared and her friends. She wanted to cry. She wanted to give up. She was finished running. She was finished with freaking out like Kelly had done. She needed to be strong, if not for herself, then for Joe. He needed her just as much as she needed him. At least that was what she hoped.
She tried to compose herself and turn her attention to the red head in the corner, but she couldn’t. Her emotions were getting the best of her.
The door that Joe and Dane carried Tom through closed. The noise pulled Noel from her thoughts and back into reality. The reality was that the dead were trying to get in and she needed to see about getting on that helicopter and get the hell out of Clarksburg. But before she could do that, she needed to feel better about being in the police station. The last thing she wanted was for the dead to spoil her chance before she caught that ride. The dead continued their persistence at the back door.
She eyed the door. She looked around the small room. She’d have felt better with something blocking the door.
The room didn’t have much furniture in it. There were a few tall filing cabinets and a large number of cardboard boxes containing folders thick with documents. For a moment, Noel wondered if there was a file with Jared’s name on it in one of those boxes. The amount of times he’d ridden in a cop car, there had to be.
She stood to her feet and eased her way around the gore-filled puddle of blood. She went to the first row of seven filing cabinets. She tried to pull it away from the others, but was only able to move it an inch or so. Putting all her strength into her effort, it began to tip rather than slide forward. This wasn’t what she had intended. A little top heavy, the cabinet tipped too far forward and slammed hard as it fell to floor. The crash startled Ch
elsea away from her corner.
“What the hell are you doing?” Chelsea asked, wiping her mouth and then brushing her hair from around her ears.
“Moving this cabinet,” Noel insisted. “We need to barricade the door!”
Noel nodded at the back door as it shook with each beating of a fist. Chelsea’s eyes went wide. She froze for a moment.
“Well…” Noel said, leaning over the cabinet. “Are you going to help me move this or what? It’s kind of fucking heavy.”
Chelsea didn’t respond. She just kept looking at Noel and then at the door as it continued to shake. Noel watched the woman’s eyes scan the bloody mess in the middle of the floor a few times. Realizing the woman probably wasn’t going to snap out of it, she tried pushing the cabinet herself. It slid a few inches and stopped. Her arms ached and she was breathing heavy even though she hadn’t been at it long. The cabinet was either super heavy or she was really out of shape. Or both.
Leaning into the cabinet again, Noel pushed past her limit. Beads of sweat ran down her brow and stung her eyes. She closed them to avoid the burn and continued to push. The cabinet started to move. At first, only a little. Then, it started to move with ease. Noel opened her eyes to see the red head beside her helping push it across the floor. They exchanged a brief smile. The scrape of metal against linoleum cut through the air as the cabinet reached the door.
“Hi, I’m Chelsea.” She said, breathing heavily.
“Hey.” Noel said. “I’m Noel. Here… help me get another one. I want to make sure those fuckers can’t get in. And if that means I have to move every one of these cabinets, then so be it.”
Chelsea laughed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Let’s do it.”
It took a lot of effort between the two little ladies, but they managed. It took some time to push an additional two cabinets to the door. Noel was surprised that Joe and Dane hadn’t made it back yet. At the moment though, it didn’t matter. She was freaking exhausted. Pleased with their efforts, the two leaned against the last cabinet they had laid in place.
“I like your hair,” Chelsea said, trying to make small talk.
Rancid: A Zombie Novel Page 15
