“You okay?” he asked.
She shook her head. “The codeine’s a lifesaver, but there’s still a lot of pain. I think I saw some blood, but I didn’t want Ashley to see it.”
“Can I take a look?”
“I’m not wearing a bra.”
“So turn around, and I won’t look.”
She gave him a pursed smile. He couldn’t tell if she actually believed him or not.
“I’ve seen naked women before, Zoe,” Cole said.
She turned around, and Cole removed her shirt as painlessly as possible, but even so, Zoe let out a few pained sighs. Fortunately, she was wearing a long-sleeve shirt with buttons, which made it easier to take off. The bandage he’d put on her was still in place, but some blood had seeped out from the edges.
“I’ll need to take it off and look at what’s going on underneath,” Cole said.
Zoe nodded.
“It’ll hurt a little,” he said.
“Would it hurt more if I don’t let you?”
“No, but your wound could be infected, which would then lead to death, and Ashley would be an orphan.”
“Since you put it that way,” Zoe said, turning slightly to give him better access to her wounded shoulder.
Chapter 23
Fiona was sitting behind the cash register near the back of the shop where she couldn’t be seen from the front windows as she ate—loudly, he noticed—one of Dante’s Doritos bags. She chased the Cool Ranch flavored chips down with one of the bottles of warm water they’d scored in the back room among more unboxed inventory.
“How’s Zoe?” Fiona asked when he joined her.
“Like mother, like daughter,” Cole said.
“She looked pretty bad last night. I was a little worried she might not make it.”
“She’ll be okay as long as we don’t ask her to do any hand-to-hand fighting.”
Fiona grinned. “That’s where you come in.”
“Why me?”
“Let’s face it, you’ve done this before.”
“‘This?’”
“Fighting. Kicking ass. You’ve done all this before. I can tell that much just watching you handle yourself. Then there’s the gun.”
“What about the gun?”
“You’re comfortable with it. Most people aren’t. Even gun people don’t look as comfortable the way you do around that Glock.”
“You know gun people?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t always from here. Me and my brother—” She paused. Then, “I’m from the Midwest. I’ve been around gun people since I was a kid. Never got into it myself, but I can tell when someone isn’t shy around one.”
Cole didn’t deny anything she said as he sat down next to her on the floor. She offered him some of her Doritos, and he took a couple of chips. It was as if a grenade of flavors exploded in his mouth with each bite.
“Not bad,” he said.
“I used to live on this stuff. I guess I’ll be again.”
“Life’s a circle. You always end up back where you started.”
“Are we talking about her or us?” the Voice asked.
Cole ignored it and said, “Any luck finding something we can use?”
She shook her head. “Unless you think we can use a bunch of old junk.”
“What about weapons?”
“I don’t think this is that kind of antique shop. There isn’t even one of those old swords. Like the one that guy used last night.”
“Katana.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Yeah. Samurai used to carry them in feudal Japan as a sign of their status. Only blue bloods need apply, though. They come in sets—the katana, the longer of the two, and the wakizashi, which is slightly shorter. The latter comes out in close quarters.”
“Damn. You know a lot about this stuff.”
“I studied history.”
Fiona chuckled. “Not art history.”
“Nope. Just history.”
“Probably more useful than the degree I would have gotten if I’d stayed in school.” She held up the bag again. “More?”
“Please,” he said, reaching for it.
Fiona wasn’t wrong about there not being anything useful—at least from a combat point of view—in the shop. He’d noticed it last night even when he skimmed the place. The shop was end-to-end furniture and knickknacks from around the world, some older than others. Hand-made crafts from Europe filled one shelf, while wood carvings from Asia took up another shelf. One corner was reserved for clothing, while old bicycle parts, of all things, occupied another. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the shop’s contents.
In the time since she came down and started snacking, Fiona had opened the cash register—it was elaborately etched in ornate patterns and looked just as old as the rest of the shop’s offerings—and stacked some money on the counter.
“How much?” he asked.
“Let’s just say that whoever owned this place wasn’t doing very well even before the world went to shit.”
“Shop was still open. Along this street, you’d need steady income to pay the bills.”
Fiona shrugged. “Maybe there’s something here making money that we haven’t found yet. Did you check the back?”
“Last night.”
“Find anything?”
“Like what?”
“Like, say, pallets of cocaine or weed or gold bars?”
Cole smiled. “No. Nothing like that.”
“Then I have no idea how this place was staying in business. Everything is so…old. And useless.”
“They found a way, apparently.”
“Apparently.”
She passed the Doritos bag over again, and Cole helped himself to another handful of chips.
He glanced over at the front windows. Besides the burglar bars, there were no curtains, which was probably on purpose so passersby could check out the shop’s antiques. Because of that, Cole could easily see out at the street beyond.
And the cars.
So, so many cars.
Like everything else out there, they weren’t moving.
At least, nothing was moving that he could see. Not that he believed it for a second.
Because they were still out there, like the one in the white shirt hiding in the alley across the street. Even now, Cole wondered what the man was brandishing, waiting to either stab or bludgeon him over the head with. A baseball bat, maybe. Or a very long crowbar. Or possibly another sword.
The possibilities were endless.
And sure to be painful.
Cole got up and moved to the front of the store until he was standing against the door at an angle that allowed him to see out the windows but still remain mostly hidden. There was nothing happening on the sidewalk immediately outside or the street beyond. The quiet was unnerving, especially when all he could see were cars, refuse, and the bodies. Too many bodies.
The number two million flashed across his mind’s eye. That was how many people lived in the city the last time the government took a census. Two million souls. How many of those had become crazed?
Why had they been infected in the first place? Was it something in the water? In the air? In the food supply? Why was he spared? Fiona, Zoe, Ashley, and Dante?
And what about Emily?
He fished out his cell phone and stared at the screen. No reception. Of course, no reception. Not that that stopped him from trying to dial, then text Emily’s phone anyway.
Nothing.
Not a goddamn thing.
“What did you expect?” the Voice asked.
He didn’t bother with a response. Instead, he focused on the phone’s battery level. Low. Too low. And without a way to recharge it…
He put the phone back into his pocket. It was still his only lifeline to Emily. Until it ran out of battery, anyway.
“One bridge at a time, buddy,” the Voice said. “One bridge at a time…”
From somewhere behind hi
m, Fiona said, “This place is cozy and all, but we’re not going to spend the rest of the day here, are we?”
“No. That’s not the plan.”
“So what is the plan?”
“Get back into the minivan. Reach the highway. Head to Bear Lake.”
“That’s everything?”
“Pretty much.”
“Sounds like you have it all figured out.”
Cole smiled to himself. “Not quite.”
“Which part?”
All of it, he thought but said, “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense for too long,” Fiona said. “The wait is killing me.”
“More famous last words!” the Voice said, laughing its familiar, stupid laugh.
For two minutes and change, Cole watched two men trying to kill one another. They were in the alley across the street from the antique shop. The same one where he’d seen the man in the white dress shirt earlier. One of them might have been the same guy with the long metal weapon, but Cole couldn’t be sure. He didn’t have a clue how they’d come to clash, but maybe one of them was spying on him when the other one sneaked up on him from behind.
“Serves the bastard right,” the Voice said.
By the time their frantic movements snagged Cole’s attention as he stood on the rooftop, the crazies were already spilling onto the pavement in a tangle of arms and legs and sunlight flashing off their weapons of choice. They didn’t make any sounds whatsoever—or at least, none that he could hear from his perch—but he imagined a lot of grunting and growling until the one wearing a gaudy bright yellow jogging suit rose up, straddled the other, and ended their struggle. Jogging Suit drove something small but very sharp into the neck of the man underneath him, and Cole swore he could see the arc of fresh blood splattering the brick wall of some kind of gift shop nearby.
For about thirty more seconds, Cole watched Jogging Suit plunging his weapon into his victim’s chest, over and over. When he was done—finally—Jogging Suit stumbled to his feet and, like a drunk after a long night of drinking, backpedaled clumsily into the alley until Cole couldn’t see him anymore.
Jogging Suit’s victim—by now, Cole was certain it was the man in the white shirt he’d spotted earlier—lay dead underneath the setting sun, a bright red pool of blood spreading out on the sidewalk around him. The blood was amazingly red, or maybe that was just the sunlight playing tricks with Cole’s eyes.
“Seeing a way to Bear Lake?” a voice asked softly behind him.
“Not yet,” Cole said.
He looked back at Zoe, coming out of the rooftop access shack. She was careful not to let the door slam after her, even though Cole didn’t think it made much of a difference. Any crazies in the area would have already been alerted to their presence since last night. The fact that many of them hadn’t shown themselves yet—besides the two trying to kill each other seconds ago—didn’t mean a damn thing to Cole.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
Zoe pursed a smile. “Better.” She was favoring her left arm, her right dangling loosely at her side. “The girls and Dante are playing Monopoly. They seem to be having fun. Unfortunately, board games were never my speed.” She took a bag of Skittles out of her pocket. “Want some?”
He grabbed a fistful. “Where’d you get these?”
“Dante.”
“Kid’s well-prepared.”
“I don’t want to think about where we’d be if he hadn’t shown up yesterday. He didn’t have to do what he did, you know.”
Cole nodded. “I know.”
“And yet he did it. Do you think we owe him our lives?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure about a lot of things these days.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She shrugged—though did it mostly with her left shoulder. “For everything, I guess, but mostly for the not knowing about what’s happened to your wife. It must be driving you crazy. I’m lucky; I have Ashley with me. She’s the only thing that matters in my life.” Zoe sighed and peered out at the brightening and quiet city beyond the rooftop. “I can’t even imagine how crazy I’d be going right now if she wasn’t here and I couldn’t be sure if she was okay.”
Cole didn’t say anything. Instead, he popped some of the sugary junk food into his mouth.
“Fiona seems convinced you’d get us to Bear Lake,” Zoe said. “Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“You lied.”
“No.”
“But you don’t have a clue how to do it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Slow and carefully.”
“So, no.”
“Nope.”
“Can’t you at least lie to me, too? Give me some hope?”
She hadn’t said those words like a woman who needed him to lie to her; more like a grown woman who understood how the world worked, but nevertheless wouldn’t have minded a little white lie every now and then.
“Sure,” Cole said. “We’ll make it.”
“That’s better.”
She was about to say something else when he put one hand up to shush her.
“What is it?” Zoe said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper.
He saw it out of the corner of his eye, and Cole turned now to get a better look. He also moved closer to the edge of the rooftop and looked down, zeroing in on—
A white hoodie, bobbing its way through the throng of vehicles about sixty or so meters up the street. Cole hadn’t seen where the figure had come from, but it was already in the middle of the gridlock traffic when he first noticed it, crouching behind the crumpled back bumper of a black Ford.
“Where the hell did he come from?” the Voice asked.
That’s a good question.
“I know. That’s why I asked it.”
Oh, shut up.
At first, Cole thought the man—and it was a man, he could tell by the shape—was crossing the street and trying to stay hidden as he did so, but that wasn’t it. Instead of going from one side of the sidewalk to the other, the man was venturing up the street.
Then Cole saw it: a parked squad car about twenty meters away from the figure. At the angle the hoodie was moving, it would lead him straight to the law-enforcement vehicle.
“Cole?” Zoe said, stepping closer to him “What is it?”
“Someone’s trying to steal a police car.”
“Why in the world would someone be trying to steal a police car? You can’t drive anything off that street.”
She was right, he thought, as he watched Hoodie vanish inside the cop car, then come right back out moments later with a pump-action shotgun. Sunlight glinted off the long black barrel of the weapon as it slipped out of the open door.
“We could use that,” the Voice said.
Yeah, we could definitely use that…
Another flicker of movement as the crazy in the bright yellow jogging suit reappeared out of another alley down the street and charged through the stalled traffic. Pure adrenaline helped the man to make up twenty meters in almost the blink of an eye.
Damn, he’s fast.
Cole looked back to Hoodie—
The man hadn’t seen the crazy coming at him. Hoodie had no idea there was a crazed killer with a knife charging up the street from behind because he was looking in the wrong direction. Hoodie was slowly moving between cars, maintaining his low profile even as he headed back toward the other sidewalk.
“He doesn’t see him,” Zoe said almost breathlessly. “Cole—”
“Behind you!” Cole shouted as loudly as he could.
Hoodie froze at the sound of Cole’s voice before glancing frantically around him. Then the man turned and spotted Jogging Suit weaving through the abandoned cars.
“Thank God,” Zoe said.
The crazy still seemed to be moving at impossible speeds, making up ground between himself and his
would-be victim in the blink of an eye.
Goddamn, he’s fast.
But not fast enough, because there was a loud ear-ringing boom! as the shotgun bucked in Hoodie’s hands. Jogging Suit flew off his feet as he caught the full buckshot load in his chest from less than five meters away. Pieces of buckshot pinged! off a nearby street sign and others pelted a storefront window.
Even before the crazy’s body had settled on the pavement, a second figure appeared out of the alley directly below Cole, which meant the man had been hiding next to the antique shop all this time. That was also where the Grand Caravan was parked.
So what did that mean? Was the minivan toast? How many other crazies were just waiting for them to poke their heads out into the alley?
“Another one,” Zoe said, spotting the second crazy running out from underneath them.
This one was barely a teenager, and he was grunting so loudly as he dashed through traffic toward Hoodie that Cole could hear it from the rooftop without even straining to listen. Something that looked like a sword but could have been a machete of some type swung wildly in the crazy’s hand as he flew across the street, zigzagging around cars.
This time, Hoodie didn’t need Cole to warn him. The man sensed the second attack and spun, racked the shotgun, and fired.
Boom! as chunks of a white sedan’s windshield spiderwebbed against an onslaught of buckshot. But enough of the deadly lead rounds found their target that the teen running alongside the vehicle was knocked off his feet and vanished between two cars.
“What’s he doing now?” Zoe asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Cole said.
He tracked Hoodie as he began moving again. The man didn’t get very far, before halting about ten meters later down the sidewalk. He lifted the shotgun and fired again—boom!—at something in front of him.
Cole followed the trajectory of the shot, just in time to witness a woman in a flowery one-piece dress collapsing between a van and a blue KIA.
Hoodie was racking the shotgun when a fourth figure—another woman, this one in jeans and black T-shirt—appeared out of nowhere and leaped onto the hood of a Chevy. The woman was catapulting herself into the air when there was another loud boom! and she seemed to fall out of midair as if she’d slammed into an invisible barrier.
Fall of Man (Book 1): The Break Page 18
