by Peter Clines
But then he got down to the parking lot and there were so many damned exes there. Hundreds of them, all pressing up against the fence and banging their teeth. He couldn’t even get near the nuts he’d been loosening, not without putting his hand right in some zombie’s mouth.
Made sense. All the new people in Eden had attracted the exes. That’s what happened—they saw people and tried to eat them. Probably what all the soldiers and guards had planned all along.
And then the cable had made this metal-scraping noise and the fence had fallen down. Ten feet away from him. If he’d been any closer the exes just would’ve had him, but he’d thrown the wrench at one and run back into the garden.
And now there were exes in Eden. They’d already drunk-walked in through some of the front plots and passed the whole firefight up front. Three staggered between him and the main building, and there were a couple more wandering through Lester’s goddamned precious peas.
Javi ran down another path between two overgrown garden plots. He remembered the safety rules. If exes couldn’t see you, they forgot you. All he had to do was find a spot to hide deep in the garden.
The assholes at the Mount may have sent him and the others up here to die, but he wasn’t going to go easy.
He turned a corner, tripped over a big plastic bucket, and went facedown in the path. Lester was always nagging people to put stuff away, and Javi blew him off most of the time, but why was everyone else so fucking lazy? They were going to get him killed.
Something rustled nearby and he froze. Dammit, the exes followed noise, too. He’d just been running and panting and tripping over goddamned fucking buckets without thinking about noise. He held his breath and listened.
There was a faint, whispery sound. Not the chattering of teeth. Almost like quick, scared breaths. It came from just ahead of him. The next row.
A little foot slid out from behind a fence of dried wood. It wore a ballet shoe. Pink with polka dots. Javi stared at it as another foot joined it. Two little feet in polka dot ballet shoes, skinny legs in white tights. The polka dots went up the tights, too, where they became long ovals and streaks.
The world slowed down. Even as his eyes went up, he knew those weren’t polka dots on the shoes. Or the tights. Or the frilly tutu that looked like it had old mud splattered on the front, like the clumps dried to its tiny fingers.
Except for a raw gouge on its shoulder, the dead girl’s skin was just a shade darker than the sun-bleached white of the leotard and tights. The ex’s mouth was a gaping hole in its face. The broken jaw hung in three or four pieces, making a ring of teeth inside the stretched-out lips. Muscles tugged the sagging jaw up and down like a gasping fish. It pushed air in and out and made the whispering noise.
The ballerina dropped to its knees and fell on him. Javi threw up an arm to protect himself, and the weight of the ex’s whole body came down on the top teeth as they struck. The broken jaw flapped against the bottom of his forearm as the dead girl tried to chew. Tiny fingers closed on his wrist and elbow.
Javi could feel its teeth scraping on his arm. Not ripping or biting, just dry edges of enamel going back and forth. Every third or fourth flap one of the bottom teeth would hit just right and jab his arm.
A scratch could do it. Just one. All they had to do was break the skin. Fever started in seven or eight hours, dead in a day or two. Desi’d tried to tell him once there was more to it than that, but he understood the basics.
He started to yank his arm away, and his flesh went tight against the little ballerina’s teeth. His heart pounded as he brought his fist around. It cracked into the little girl’s ear and knocked the tiara loose. Another punch twisted the ex’s head back, away from his arm, and he wrenched it away. The little fingers slipped off him, and he scrambled back.
The dead girl crawled after him.
Javi drove his foot into the ex’s face. Its button nose and front teeth crunched under his heel. He kicked again, and little teeth pattered onto the wood-chip path.
The tiny fingers grabbed at his shoe and tried to draw it into the ruined mouth. He pulled away and scampered a few yards back down the path. Once he had distance, he hopped back to his feet.
The ballerina dragged itself after him. Its face was a blackened mess of gore and teeth now. The ruin of its mouth twitched up and down. It stumbled on its knees once, twice, and it was back up on its feet and reaching for him.
He turned and ran. It took him a moment to realize he was heading back the way he’d come, back toward the gate. Toward the sound of clicking teeth.
An ex stepped out in front of him. Its stubbly hair and beard were extra-white against its gray skin. One of its arms was nothing but gore, fingers to shoulder, but the rest of it was clean. The ex displayed a collection of yellow teeth that gnashed at the air.
Javi skidded to a stop and changed direction again. He crashed through a trellis covered with layers of bean vines and ran deeper into the garden. He was pretty sure he was heading for the north fence now, the one by the freeway. There were the tall trees, and the…
He stumbled to a stop, his heart thudding inside his rib cage. His left arm had swung into view, and it just hit him what he’d seen. He held it up in the moonlight. “No,” he muttered.
Muck from the dead girl’s mouth was smeared on the arm. Between the dark streaks Javi could see a jagged scrape an inch long. Just deep enough for a few bright red spots of blood to swell out and mix with the dark filth on his skin.
“No, no, fucking NO!!”
Danielle took a few quick, stumbling steps to the right and put a worktable between herself and the ex. The dead man turned as she did, shuffling to intercept. Its feet dragged on the carpet. It filled the air with the sound of teeth on teeth. The implant post glinted in the front of its mouth whenever its jaw opened wide. She could see a crust on the steel that could’ve been old mortar or dried meat.
Cold sweat drenched her clothes. She tried to breathe, but the fear had wrapped around her chest and bound it tight. Her heart was smashing against her ribs, fighting to be free of her chest so it could get away, so it could escape.
The ex’s hands stretched out across the table. Its thighs bumped the edge. It took another awkward step and swayed as the table refused to get out of its way. Another step made the table legs scratch against the industrial carpet, shifting a quarter of an inch before settling back down.
She flinched back and ran into the tool chest. A thin mouthful of air wheezed into her nostrils. Her fists slammed back against the metal drawers.
Lester whimpered. He’d pressed himself against the wall. He chanted something, and it took a second for her brain to realize it was just “no no no no no no” again and again.
Gray hands stretched across the table for her, swinging back and forth through the air. A good five feet separated them from her. The fingertips barely reached past the width of the table.
A thimble of air squeezed between her lips. She focused, pushed, willed herself to take another breath. A deeper one. It filled her chest and put some space between her violent heart and the ribs it had been pounding against. She stopped banging on the tool chest and forced her fists to unroll, her fingers to straighten. She pressed them flat against the drawers.
The ex’s teeth snapped together again and again. Click-click-click-click. It bumped against the table edge again. The impact jarred a few strands loose from its comb-over, and they draped down to hang across one of its milky eyes.
More gunfire echoed from outside. A few shouts and screams. And the sound of even more teeth.
No one was coming to help her. Not anytime soon. Maybe never.
Maybe Cesar hadn’t gotten the fence back up. Maybe he broke the cable. Maybe…
She pushed the thoughts away. They weren’t helping. She needed to breathe. Breathe and stop shaking and deal with this ex, or she and Lester were going to die.
The dead man took another lurching step against the table. The front legs lifted up off the floor, th
en settled back down. The ex’s gray hands groped the air.
She leaned to the side, grabbed the whimpering man’s shoulder, and pulled him closer to the tool chest. A bit closer to the ex, too, but solidly behind the table now.
Her eyes flitted to the left. The door to the courtyard was about fifteen feet away. Less for Lester and the ex. And she’d closed the gate out of the courtyard to the canopy area, where all the weapons were. They could run for it, but the ex would be close behind them. It might catch her.
To the right was a wall of low windows with a view of the still-standing sections of the south fence. She could try to dive through one of the windows, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. By the time she wrestled her way through the frame, the dead man would’ve taken a bite or three out of her calves, maybe even her thighs.
And that didn’t even consider Lester being almost catatonic with fear. So much worse than her. There was no way she’d get him moving fast enough to avoid a zombie.
Left and right were out. A wall behind her. The ex in front of her. She’d done an amazing job of cornering herself behind the table.
Why the hell hadn’t she grabbed a pistol off the rack? Kennedy and Gibbs and Hector and half the Unbreakables did it right in front of her. What had she been thinking, running inside without grabbing something to protect herself?
She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been running scared. She’d been trying to hide.
Now the ex was in here with her and Lester. And Lester was useless. No more hiding. Now she had to fight.
She was Cerberus, damn it. Not the suit. Her.
Click-click-click-click.
The tool chest behind her held electronic tools and components. Nothing useful unless she wanted to try stabbing the dead man with a soldering iron. The big wrenches and hammers were all in the smaller chest across the room, which made the odds of getting away from the ex seem a lot…
Danielle mentally kicked herself and barked out a single laugh. She’d been so focused on the dead man in the ratty blazer she’d been overlooking the best weapon she had. Literally, looking right over it.
The Longshot sat on the worktable between her and the ex, pointed at the zombie’s hip. The housing was off, but the magazine was still loaded with more hex nuts. The weapon just needed to be cocked.
And fired. The trigger was in the front. Within easy reach of the ex’s hands. And mouth.
First things first. The manual lever was under the dead man’s elbow. The same arm with the ragged cuff.
She took a breath, set her palms against the tool chest, and pushed herself off. Her right foot slid forward. Then her left. Her heart threw a few punches at her sternum, but calmed down. She took another step closer. And another.
The gray fingertips went back and forth in front of her face, stretching and grabbing. One hand swiped at her shoulders. The other almost brushed her nose. Small cracks ran through the yellowed fingernails. One of the thumbs didn’t have a nail at all. The ex swung its arms again and again, like a machine.
Danielle understood machines.
Both arms out. Lean left. Lean right. Every three passes some neuron would go off and the left arm would drop down low. Then it would overcompensate and go high, and then return to normal for three passes. A cycle of five. She watched it happen six times, enough to convince her it was a pattern.
On the seventh, as it started to go high, she reached forward and grabbed the lever.
The ex lunged for her.
Lester shrieked. Danielle threw herself back and hit the tool chest again. One of the drawers caught her right on the spine, just below the ribs. The panic twisted around her and squeezed. Her heart slammed back and forth, determined to get free this time.
Her hand was okay. She held it up, forced it open, looked at the back, looked at the palm. Nothing. Not even a faint scratch. The ex hadn’t touched her. She was okay.
The dead man lifted itself off the table. Its remaining front tooth had broken on the Longshot’s exposed framework. Now it had a jagged fang next to the steel post. The better to bite with.
Its blazer lifted away from the weapon. The lever sat back and cocked. Armed and ready. She’d pulled it back. She didn’t even remember getting her hand on it.
She released the knot of muscle in her gut and took a deep breath. A calming breath. Her mind and heart were racing, but she was pretty sure it had just been two or three minutes since the ex had wandered in through the side door. No more than four.
It hadn’t lunged. It wasn’t smart enough to lunge. She’d gotten under it, and when it went after her gravity had taken over and given it speed. It had fallen on the table, not lunged.
Danielle forced herself to breathe slowly and studied the ex. Its build, its jeans, where its shoulders sat. She took a small step to the right. The dead man leaned after her. It bumped the table again. The gray hands stretched for her and fell short by almost two yards.
The ex’s stomach pressed against the Longshot’s muzzle. A hex nut at this range would tear through the dead man’s gut and shatter the spine. It would still be able to crawl, but not fast enough to stop her from running out, grabbing a pistol, and blowing its head off.
The Longshot’s trigger sat on the front left. If she moved around, the ex would follow and spoil the shot. She might get it in the hip, but she wasn’t sure that would do enough damage to cripple the dead man. Was there a way to make it crouch and put its head in front of the muzzle? Probably not.
She’d have to reach across the weapon again to fire the Longshot. Or figure out a way to release it from behind. But that would take time she didn’t have. The side door was still open, and other exes were out there.
The dead man’s teeth slammed together, and she heard a harder click when the jagged front tooth struck the enamel below it. The steel post and broken tooth could rip through her shirt sleeve. And the contact suit. And her arm.
The impact of the shot would knock it away. Even with gravity on its side, it wouldn’t be able to reach her before she reached the trigger. It couldn’t.
Danielle glanced over at Lester. The man had slid the rest of the way down the wall and into a crouch. He pushed himself back into the corner of the wall and tool chest, his arms still over his head.
She shook her hands at her sides and squared her jaw. Sucked in a breath. Tried to ignore the trickles of cold sweat crawling through her clothes.
The table rocked as the ex tried to shamble through it again. The dead man’s gray fingers grabbed at the air in front of her. The chattering of its teeth seemed to grow louder in anticipation.
Danielle reached for the trigger.
The ex dropped toward her arm, jaws spread open.
Gibbs was slowing the gardeners down.
He knew it. He was pretty sure they knew it, too. Cutting across the soft earth of the gardens was just too much work with the mechanical foot. And slogging through thirty feet of soil clogged up the joints. The gears in his ankle and toes were stiff, his limp was even worse, and it was slowing him down.
It wasn’t by much in the big scheme of things. But it was enough that the huge ex with the trap and the others with it kept up with movie-monster efficiency. They lurched and staggered and managed to stay about twenty feet behind his group.
He needed more space. Enough time to stop, line up his rifle, and drop all of them. If his math was right, he had nine rounds left in the magazine.
They stumbled onto another path. He recognized it. There was a display of birdhouses with peeling paint and a grove of tall cactus plants. He stopped and waved them down the path. “This way,” he snapped. “Back to the main building.”
Desi and the rest of the work crew ran past him. Gibbs herded them along and picked up the rear. The path was hard dirt with patches of wood chips. Much faster. His mechanical foot hit the ground, and he felt it give a bit as the impact shook some soil out of his joints.
They ran to the end of the path, where it opened up onto a small lawn. Up ahead
he could see the toolshed and the greenhouse lit up in the stark floodlights of the main building. Danielle had the side door open and waiting for them, a bright rectangle in the dark. There were two exes between the group and safety. Easy to dodge.
He stopped and swung up the rifle. The ex-redneck was just under thirty feet away. Not a great lead, but enough of one. The zombie’s single white eye made a great target in the low light. Gibbs lined up, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger.
The eye vanished. The redneck dropped. The animal trap pinged against a rock as it hit the ground.
Gibbs shifted his aim onto the next ex, a dead man with thinning hair and a baggy brown suit. His first shot missed. He growled, re-aimed, and the ex lurched just as he fired.
A gray-skinned woman in a lab coat tripped over the fallen redneck and tumbled onto the path.
Gibbs fired a third shot, and the dead man in the brown suit twitched once and collapsed. He tracked it down as it fell, then panned the rifle over and put a round through the top of Lab Coat’s head. Six shots, three dead.
More exes came up the path behind him. More than he’d thought. At least five or six. He lined up on the next one, realized he didn’t have enough ammunition, and took a few steps back.
His foot—his real foot—slipped on a patch of wood chips and loose dirt at the edge of the lawn. There was plastic under them, some kind of anti-erosion thing Lester had talked about over dinner the other night. Gibbs went down hard. The impact rang in his tailbone and jarred the rifle from his hands. The strap tangled around his arm, and he fumbled to get the weapon back in his grip. His metal foot kicked at the path, but the spike-heel just plowed through the dirt.