“People have their reasons. Sometimes bad, sometimes understandable. Never good.”
The two walked across the shadowy kitchen. A 55-gallon drum sat in the middle of the floor with a grate from a charcoal grill lying across its mouth… a makeshift wood-burning stove. On the grate were several pots half full of noxious contents. Scattered on the floor were empty packages that had provided fodder for the drug: ammonia, drain cleaner, brake fluid, and sinus medicine.
“Don’t breathe in too deeply,” Levi warned him. “It’ll mess with your head.”
“Let’s check the other rooms.”
Avery stepped through the adjoining doorway into a bedroom. It was equally dark, the windows covered with both blinds and heavy curtains. In the gloom he could see a dresser with a mirror, a chest of drawers, and a queen-sized bed with the linens stripped off, exposing the bare mattress. There was a different kind of smell in this room—the stench of sweat, semen, and the musky odor of unwashed privates. The odor of reckless sex.
“Stinks like a whorehouse,” said Avery.
Levi cocked an eye at his son. “You’re probably right… although I know good and well that’s a smell you’ve never come across before.”
They were halfway through the bedroom and heading for the door that led to the living room, when Levi heard a scuffling sound behind him. Before he could turn, something struck him hard in the back of the head. With a groan, Levi dropped his revolver and hit the floor, face-first.
A shrill shriek cut through the air and something wild and lanky launched itself from a closet to Avery’s left. At first, he was sure that it was a bobcat, like the one they had encountered on the park road. But as it came at him, he saw it was a woman, dirty and emaciated. Her brown hair was chaotic and uncombed, and her skin was dimpled with raw lesions that looked as though they had been picked or clawed at.
Avery was slow at reacting. He attempted to lift the AR-15 into line, but was too late. The heel of the woman’s hand struck him hard just below his left eye and pinpoints of white light danced before him. He stumbled backward, feeling the assault rifle and its sling being slipped over his shoulder. The edge of the bed hit the backs of his calves and he went down on his back, the springs of the mattress jouncing beneath his weight. Then there was weight from above, as the woman jumped on top of him. Straddling his hips, she shucked the brace of revolvers from their holsters and flung them away, out of reach.
“Get off of me!” he growled. Avery tried to dislodge her, but her bony knees were in his sides, clamping, holding on. He reached for the haft of his machete, but a thin line of pain crossed the back of his hand and he drew it away quickly.
“Un-uh,” warned the woman above him. She brought a straight razor into view, its blade coated with his blood. “None of that now.” With a mostly-toothless grin she brought the razor to her mouth and ran a tongue along the flat, lapping up the red drops that beaded there. “Yum… might get me some more of that later on.”
“Who are you?” Avery asked, struggling to get up.
“I was about to ask you the same question.” The woman leaned forward and ended his fighting by laying the edge of the shaving razor against the side of his neck, just above the carotid artery. “Now what are you doing poking ’round in here?”
Avery breathed raggedly, trying to clear the stars from his vision. He said nothing in reply… just looked up at the one who straddled him.
“You answer Barbie when she speaks to you!” snapped a deep voice from across the room. Risking injury, Avery turned his head and saw a big, burly man with a bushy blond beard standing there. His right foot was planted firmly on the back of Levi’s neck and a .410 shotgun was aimed at his father’s head. His skin was also covered with ugly red sores and his teeth were brown and rotten.
“We… we just came a-looking,” the boy finally answered.
“Looking?” sneered Barbie. “For what? A taste of what we’ve got in the kitchen there?” She regarded him and laughed. “Naw, you ain’t ever ridden the crystal lightning before.” She ran a filthy hand across his face. “You’re too soft and pretty. Ain’t picked the meth outta your sores and ate it like we have, have you?”
Avery felt sick to his stomach, like he was about to puke. “No, ma’am.”
“A polite boy, too.” She pressed the edge of the razor against his flesh, nicking him, drawing blood. “I don’t cotton to that much. I like my men piledriver rough.” The woman began to work her narrow hips, rocking back and forth. “Can you be that rough, boy?”
“Don’t do that,” said Avery. He felt himself respond, in spite of his disgust. After all, he was a sixteen-year-old.
“Why not?” Barbie leaned down and hissed into his ear. She ran a hot tongue along his clenched lips, attempting to gain entrance. “Be a helluva way to die, wouldn’t it? Come and go at the same time?” Giggling, she shucked off her tank top. Lank breasts swayed and dangled in his face, pock-marked with weeping sores, the nipples dark and shriveled like prunes.
As he felt her tug at the front of his jeans, Avery’s head began to swim. Oh God, he thought. I’m going to pass out.
Then a woman’s voice came from the doorway at the front of the house. “Get off of him.”
Barbie looked up to see her standing there, pale and skinny, with freckles and red hair. “When I’m finished, bitch. Then you can have your turn.” She jammed one of her hands into the boy’s underwear. Avery shuddered at the touch of her cold fingers. It was like being molested by a corpse.
Kate lifted one of her Glocks and thumbed back the hammer. “I said, get off of my brother.”
The woman frowned at her impatiently. “Mick… shoot her, will you?”
The bearded man grunted and lifted the muzzle of the .410 from the back of Levi’s head, swinging it toward the door.
“Damn,” said Kate. She snapped off a single shot. A hole the size of a dime appeared two inches above the bridge of Mick’s nose, followed by a hole the size of a half-dollar at the rear of his skull as the bullet flattened and punched through. His foot slipped off Levi’s neck and he crashed onto his back in the kitchen.
“Mick?” wailed Barbie, crawling off of Avery. “Mick!” She stood up on the mattress and turned toward Kate. With crazy eyes, she lurched across the bed unsteadily, ready to leap.
Kate tucked the Glock into her jacket pocket, lifted the Uzi, and unleashed a rattling burst of 9mm slugs. The bullets tore into Barbie’s chest, ripping her limp breasts into bloody shreds. The woman fell onto the bed next to Avery, lurching and gurgling, gouts of crimson shooting from her mouth and nostrils.
The boy rolled off the mattress and hit the floor, struggling to fasten his britches.
Kate walked over and crouched beside him. “Are you okay, bubba?” she asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Avery flinched away. “Of course I am!” His eyes were brimming with tears, but he turned his head so she couldn’t see. “Just leave me alone. I’m okay.”
Suddenly, the back door burst open and Jem and Abe came in. “What’s going on?” Abe asked, gun drawn. He crossed over into the bedroom as Jem helped his father to his feet.
“It was a meth-whore and her fella,” Avery said, standing up. “We wandered in on their operation and they jumped us.”
Jem looked at the dying woman. She still held the straight razor in her fist. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?”
Avery shot a warning look at his sister—one that said don’t you dare say anything! —and then forced a swaggering grin. “Hell no! I had her under control.”
“What about you, Papa?”
Levi shook his head. “I’ve got a whopper of a headache, but I’m alright.”
Kate walked over to the bed. The woman twitched and writhed, soaking the ticking of the mattress with blood. The bullet wounds in her lungs sucked noisily as she struggled to breath, blowing frothy bubbles. “I’m sorry,” the girl told her.
“Screw you!” gurgled the woman. Venomously, she spat at Kate
. The girl sidestepped and dodged a wad of bloody saliva. It struck the bedroom wall, thick and stringy, peppered with bits of lung and crawling black specks.
“Abe,” Kate called out. “I believe she’s infected.”
The elderly man reached through the kitchen doorway, grabbed a fork off the counter, and walked over to the bed. He wedged the tines between the woman’s clenched teeth and pried her mouth open. On the roof of her mouth was a moist black sack, pulsing with life.
“What the shit is that?” asked Avery. He scrubbed at his lips with the back of his sleeve, remembering the slick moistness of her tongue against his closed mouth.
“It’s an egg sack,” explained the doctor. “It’s past the larvae stage. She’ll be full of the things within two or three hours.”
“What should we do with her?” asked Levi. “She’ll be dead in a couple of minutes.”
“She will be just as dangerous dead than alive,” Abe told them. He looked around. “Who’s going to do it?”
“I will,” volunteered Kate. She reached inside her pocket for the Glock.
“No, sis.” Avery retrieved one of the .357 Magnums from the floor. “She’s mine.” He pressed the muzzle of the revolver against her temple. “Filthy-ass bitch.”
The others turned as the boy fired. The hollow-point slug disintegrated the upper part of her head, painting the bedroom wall with bloody brains and fragments of skull.
“Damn,” cussed Levi. “A shame, the hell this world has come to.” He looked over at Avery, disturbed by what his son had just done, but understanding nonetheless. “Jem, go out to the truck and bring a gas can. We’re going to burn this place to the ground.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy came back in a couple minutes later with a five-gallon container of gasoline.
Avery reached for the gas. “I’ll do the honors. It is my specialty, you know.”
Jem handed it to him without hesitation. “Go to it, bro.”
Avery saturated the body of Barbie and the mattress beneath her, then splashed the floors of the bedroom and kitchen. As he worked, the others left the house and gathered at a safe distance on Birch Street.
He had finished with the gas and was leaving through the back door, when Avery spotted a woman’s purse on the kitchen table. He took a billfold that protruded from the top and opened it. The driver’s license read Barbara Ann Tucker. A beautiful woman with chestnut-brown hair and clear blue eyes smiled back at him. There were other photos in plastic windows: a wedding shot of her and a handsome man in a tuxedo, the woman happily embracing two small children, and another of her in a nurse’s uniform in a hospital corridor with a co-worker making bunny-ears behind her.
Looking at the pictures, Avery began to feel badly about what he had called her before pulling the trigger.
A helluva lot can happen in three months’ time, he thought as he took a match from the box in his pocket.
He laid the wallet on the table. Then he stepped through the doorway, pitched the lit match inside, and ran for the street before the meth could blow.
Chapter 14
The following day was Sunday.
They rose with the dawn and set off down the highway, leaving the ugliness of the past few days behind. The weather was clear and bright, and the autumn trees were glorified in rustic hues of red, yellow, orange, and gold. The rural countryside rushed past them, untarnished, even more beautiful that it had been months before. The roadway was clear, except for a few wrecked and overturned vehicles, and they came across only a few Biters. They paid them no attention, passing them by and continuing onward. The zombies would stumble after them for a few hundred feet, snapping and snarling angrily, and then eventually lose interest as the scent of gas fumes and living flesh faded from their infested nasal passages.
Once Levi and his band of travelers had looked behind them and, far in the distance, seen a swirling cloud of blackness. Not gathering storm clouds, but eager buzzards circling in flight. Such a flock would have heralded a large number of Biters. It was possible that those imprisoned in the hotel had somehow escaped, but it was unlikely, given how well Billy had kept them contained for as long as he had.
“Do you ever wonder?”
Levi glanced over at his wife. “Wonder about what?”
“What drives them? Makes them move from one direction to another? Seems like they would have some purpose for doing so. Are the buzzards herding them… or is it the other way around? Are they running toward something… or from something?”
Levi shook his head. “Can’t say I’ve given it much thought. Just staying one step ahead of them is enough for me to ponder on.” He knew what his wife was getting at; that was the way the two of them were different. Nell’s thoughts leaned toward meanings and purposes… spiritual things… while he mostly dwelt on stone-cold reality and getting by from one day to the next.
He glanced at the swirling darkness in his mirror one last time, but didn’t concern himself about it any further. Eight- and twelve-cylinder engines covered more ground than decayed feet and an unbalanced gait. Levi bared on the gas and the others followed. They moved eastward and, slowly, the oppressive cloud fell behind and vanished from their sight.
It wasn’t until eleven o’clock that morning that they spotted a second cloud, hovering above the rural town of Woodrow. Its mass and motion were much less severe. Not more than three dozen buzzards soared in the vast blueness overhead. Their progress was slow and lazy, not frantic and hunger-fed, as though they had been there a long time and intended to remain for a while longer.
“What do you think is going on there?” Levi asked Abe when they had stopped for a bathroom break.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, polishing the lenses of his spectacles on the front of his shirt. “The buzzards don’t seem to be changing position, so it seems that the object of their attention isn’t either. It is as though they are simply standing in one spot. Certainly not common behavior for Biters.”
They were returning to their vehicles, when they heard a noise in the distance. “What is that?” asked Jem. “A church bell?”
“A dinner bell is more like it,” Levi said. “If there are Biters within a mile of that bell, they’ll come running… or shuffling or whatever they do.”
“Not necessarily,” Abe mused. “Not if the bell ringer has no concern whatsoever about a forthcoming attack.”
Nell sat in the cab of the pickup truck, staring through the windshield. She had been doing that a lot lately, as if searching for something. No one knew precisely what that was… not even her.
“Let’s go see,” she told them.
The church on Bailey Street in Woodrow was a traditional one—immaculately white with high-peaked, stained-glass windows and a tall steeple with a cross at its pinnacle. Its bell had stopped tolling fifteen minutes ago and now the building stood there reverent and full of praise… as respectful of the sanctity of the Sabbath as a structure of timber, nails, and shingles could possibly be. Inside, there was praying and singing, old-time hymns like “Bringing in the Sheaves” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” sung by a gospel choir that was far from the Caucasian persuasion.
When they arrived, they discovered several things. One was that there were cars parked on either side of the street. Not abandoned cars, but working cars. Cadillac coupes and big Buicks, as well as a white church bus with Calvary Hill Baptist Church painted on the side. Secondly, the church was surrounded by a sturdy chain-link fence a good eight feet high with curled razor-wire on the top. And, third, there was a fifty-by-one-hundred-foot compound constructed of steel poles, concrete, and chain fencing located directly to the left of the church building… a compound full of Biters, perhaps two hundred or so.
When they parked on the street out front, they saw that the double gate in front of the church was guarded by a large black man, as bald as a cue ball and as big in the chest and shoulders as an NFL linebacker. He was dressed in a dark gray fedora, gray pin-striped suit, white shirt, and red t
ie. He also held an old-fashioned Tommy gun in his dark hands, complete with wooden stock and barrel magazine. He looked like a gangster from the 1930s… if Al Capone had been an equal-opportunity employer.
Levi ducked his head and looked out the top half of the windshield. The buzzards continued to drift slowly overhead, while a dozen more perched on the top edges of the zombie compound. They would have been inside, picking at the decayed flesh of its occupants, if there hadn’t been a lid of chain-link stretched tautly across the top, providing a barrier between the two.
“Well, we know what’s going on,” he told his wife, “although I can’t figure out why. What now?”
Nell stared at the front of the church for a long moment. “I want to go in.”
“Are you sure? Who knows if King Kong there will even let you cross the street.”
She laid her hand on the door handle. “He’s a church-going man. He isn’t going to shoot me.”
“Want me to go with you? Or maybe Kate?”
“No,” she simply said, her face tense. “This is something I need to do alone.”
Levi reached out and touched her shoulder. “Then give me a kiss before you go.” She leaned toward him and their lips joined for an instant. “Are you okay?”
“I hope to be.” Then she was out of the truck and crossing the two-lane street.
Halfway there, Nell raised a friendly hand. “Howdy.”
The man regarded her appraisingly, then smiled. “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Mighty pretty church you’ve got here.”
The smile broadened. “We’re right proud of it. Can I help you?”
“I know I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion…” She looked down at her clothing: jeans, a flannel blouse, and a denim jacket. “…but would you mind if I come in for a few minutes?”
“The Lord’s house is always open for business,” the big man replied. He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Is that what you have… business to take care of?”
The Buzzard Zone Page 9