by L. ROY AIKEN
“Where did everyone else park?” I ask.
“There’s an underground lot on the south side of the estate,” Rebecca says. “You can’t see it from here.”
“Sounds like the party’s just getting started for them.” I turn around in time to see Rebecca’s eyes flash steel-gray at me from the rear-view mirror.
“Mr. Kerch had them move the DJ booth and bar table further down the lawn. That way they could turn it up.”
“I could swear I saw the DJ leaving in front of us. He was in an awful hurry.”
“He’s grateful Mr. Kerch finds him useful,” Rebecca says. “The kids are running their own party now.”
Kids? Rebecca isn’t much older than the youngest back-lawn reveler I saw. I look to the rear-view, but her eyes—no laugh lines or crow’s feet about them, and steely as a Navy destroyer—remain straight ahead.
“He seemed more frightened than grateful.”
Rebecca says nothing. We race up the slope to the main road. Rebecca takes the turn without stopping. Despite the state-of-the-art suspension we bounce hard coming up on the narrow macadam. She all but floors it once we’re straightened out.
“Holy shit! What’s going on?” I ask.
“If you don’t know then I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Balls!”
“Evans will brief you when he comes to pick you up.”
“Great.”
Rebecca requires no direction to find my house. She brings us all the way to the front porch before parking. That she kills the engine seems strange. I almost wish Tanner was here to explain the etiquette to me. Maybe we’re not supposed to smell exhaust fumes. I sit and wait for Rebecca to open my door. I know to do that much.
I hadn’t realized she’d already grabbed the take-out box from the front seat. Smooth. She opens the door and I ease out of the bossman’s Tank. I expect her to run ahead of me and hold the iron-grated outer door while I unlock the main. Instead I glance down to see her taking a suit-bag and an overnight bag from the back.
I don’t have long to wonder about this when the distant thoom! is cut by a scream. Quick, faint—these people are maybe two miles away—but there’s no mistaking what it is.
Rebecca is up the porch steps with her luggage and my leftovers. “We have to get inside. Now!”
I work the keys and push the door open. Rebecca rushes around me into the house. She pauses long enough to stand by a window looking out on the driveway and point her remote. She winces as the horn honks in acknowledgement and I understand exactly what is going on. I lock up the front door while Rebecca draws the blinds on the windows facing the driveway.
“We’ll need to shut off the generator, too,” Rebecca says.
“Goddamn it!” She’s right, of course. “All right, let’s get the food into the fridge at least. Find a flashlight, some candles. Shit!”
As we make it to the kitchen my text ringer goes off. I set the growler down by the sink and thumb the screen.
ATTN ALL:
Lockdown. Herd 100, 200 or more coming from west side of town, should filter out into fields by dawn IF NOT GIVEN REASON TO STAY. No heroics pls. Evans.
I’m about to click out of this when my text ringer goes off again.
This means you, Grace. Pls let herd pass.
I text him back:
Laying low. Don’t worry about me. Be safe.
I’m putting my phone back into my pocket when Rebecca says, “I found a camp lantern in the utility closet. It’s full.”
“Fire it up. I’ll get the generator.”
Outside on the back patio I almost think I can hear an mmmmmm! from the distance. I cut the generator off. I listen some more. Nothing but the ringing in my ears and some evening birdsong. I slip back inside, taking care to close all shutters and blinds, draw every curtain. We’re still an hour and a half from sundown but the house is dark as a tomb. It takes me a minute to orient myself and find the kitchen.
“Rebecca!”
I take another few seconds to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark. I walk slowly, quietly towards the stairs. The creaking from the ceiling confirms my suspicion and I pound on up.
I see the light coming out from beneath my bedroom door. Which turns out to be locked. I’d hate to kick this thing down; it’s solid wood and probably as old as the house besides. Fortunately I have a skeleton key on my ring. So I could get into the weapons room…where I remember seeing something that might prove useful for what I want to do here. I most certainly don’t want to get blood on this fine hardwood floor.
I have to move fast, though. Fluid, just like my girl in there. I have the key in one hand and my weapon in the other. I close and lock the weapons room. I stand still and breathe for one, two seconds. Three. I go to the door.
I have it open in a second. Rebecca stands on the other side of the room, just inside the bathroom door. Her steely eyes blaze rage and she charges me. It’s only as I pull the bokken back to swing at her shins that I realize she’s buck naked. Thank God. She’s moving like she knows exactly what she’s going to do next so I bring the flat of the wooden blade forward as I dive to the floor, out of reach of any grasping or punching moves. The Japanese practice sword clacks hard against her shin and Rebecca flies forward over me, through the door and into the hall.
I roll to my feet and I’m swinging the flat of the blade hard on her exposed backside and again on her other side, right against the side of her knee. She screams loud and high, enough to hurt my ears where I stand over her.
The scream cuts short as I’ve got my blade and body angled to drive the business end through her belly. She sees the look in my face. Rebecca is a cold bitch, but she’s not stupid.
“Goddamn it!” she says. “I’m supposed to be fucking you!”
“You’re not even supposed to be here! The plan was to come home and drink alone until I passed out. Not to entertain Frost Ho’s.” I glance down and see she’s waxed thoroughly bare. Having changed my daughter’s diaper on three hundred or more occasions I can’t say I’m comfortable with the sight.
Rebecca shifts to one side and I retrain my focus: “Not yet. You’re going to answer some questions or I’ll gut you and feed you still breathing to the stumblers.” I pull back to wind up for a lunge and she brings her arms tight around her knees.
“What do you want?” she says, eyeing me for signs of pity or weakness.
I shift my balance with the wooden blade and show Rebecca my best psycho face. “Who is Kerch killing out there? And what for?”
She looks me right in my best psycho eyes when she says, “Evans will tell you everything in the morning.”
I swing the flat of the blade fast and hard against the outside of each knee. She screams. I swat her ass again and bring the blade up over her soft middle.
I pull the blade back….
“Stop! No! You saw them! Excess! Trim!”
“I figured that. But where were they from? I haven’t seen them around here before.”
“They’re from that big McMansionland development on the northeast edge of town. Upper-middle-manager types. We didn’t invite the people we can use—the stoners and the party girls, though, there were so many! A lot of them living with one parent, and that parent died. So Mr. Kerch thought he’d kill two birds with one stone. Get rid of all the useless eaters who see the apocalypse as a long vacation.”
“What’s the other bird?”
“Okay, look, if I’m already telling you this, may I please get up?”
I swat her hard and fast on the backside. She yelps. I back into the room and pull Rebecca’s pink silk bathrobe from the hook on the bathroom door. I toss it to her. Rebecca gets to her feet, grimacing at the aching in her knees.
Her breasts stand strong and firm over a taut belly. No tattoos or piercings. Clean and classy. She’ll heal quickly. Rebecca ties on her pink bathrobe, her nipples sharp through the silk. She takes hesitant steps back into the room, making faces as she walks off the soreness.<
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“The other bird, Rebecca.”
She stops, puts her hand out to the bed to steady herself. “Mr. Kerch and Dr. Hearn have been talking about ways to control these things. Instead of risking the lives of useful workers trying to hunt down every last one, you could draw them away. Send them somewhere else.”
“To a rival city-state, maybe.”
“Huh? Oh. We’re all we know about out here.”
“So far.”
“Please. All we’ve got that anyone would want is land. And that’s all Kansas pretty much is. Plenty for everybody.”
“So why bunk all those people at that high school? Why not let them move into some of the empty houses?”
“Oh, come on! They’d just trash whatever they moved into. Living at the school, maybe we can get them into the habit of cleaning up after themselves. We can also see who works and who doesn’t. Mr. Kerch isn’t giving free rides here. You pull your weight, or too bad!”
I think of what Brandon said about escaping. Kerch is getting his plantation organized and locking it down tight.
“Mr. Kerch has big plans,” she says. “If he sent you home with me it means he sees something in you. You don’t want to piss him off beating up his favorite driver! Look, even I don’t get the lobster and shrimp because he says it’s fattening!”
“If you’d been a little more free with the information this wouldn’t have been necessary. Also, walking off with the one and only light source and locking yourself in my room with it is damned rude.”
“Well, excuse me! Where am I supposed to shower?”
“There’s a room a little further down the hall and to the left. It has a classic claw-foot tub you can soak yourself in.”
“On the side of the house furthest from the light. Great. So I still get the lantern, right?
“The former owner was good about putting candles in every room. You can even have this one if you want.” I toss the candle from the dresser to the bed, atop her suit bag.
Rebecca zips it up into her bag, looking warily at me. “So you’re just sleeping alone in here?”
“Eventually. I’ll be in the front bedroom looking over the street. If there’s anything to see in the dark I’ll be looking at it until I’m tired of drinking warm beer. Unless things get really exciting I don’t expect to be up too late. You gotta wake up early?”
“Seven is the general start of the workday here.”
“Great. See you in the morning.”
Rebecca gathers her bags as quickly as her pain allows her and leaves. As soon as I heard her door shut down the hall I change into pajamas and a bathrobe so I can soak my one and only pair of underwear in the sink. With luck I can use the electric dryer in the morning. Assuming they’ve got all this under control by then.
I lock my bedroom door behind me and pad downstairs into the kitchen where my growler is. After satisfying myself that everything is locked up, blinded and secure I return upstairs to the master bedroom overlooking the front lawn and the street below. There’s an ancient wingback chair in the corner with a matching ottoman. I’m settling in as the first thoom! reaches my ears. Followed by a hyaaaannnnnnnh from whatever’s following it.
Jesus, these assholes had better know what they’re doing.
My phone rings a text alert.
Herd calved and away from estate. Bringing them down Oak Blssm Ln sending them east. If have not done so already turn generators OFF. Remain indoors. Set phones to vibrate only, updates when we have them.
“Calved”? Like a glacier? The thoom! of the bass is getting louder, closer. Is this Oak Blossom Street? They can turn left instead of right, send these things back into town or south to the Interstate.
The bass is vibrating objects where they sit on level surfaces. I can just about feel it in my bowel. It’s not steady—they could draw every deader for miles that way—it’s as if the guy in the car, truck or whatever was manipulating the volume on the subwoofer. He only turns it up when he seems to need it.
The moans of hundreds of hungry dead buzz the windows as sure as that subwoofer bass. I can only imagine what it would sound like outside. I move to open the window then realize, no, the smell. Not just me smelling them, either. Granted, I’m up a steep knoll and there’s no wind but—
I crack the cap on my growler bottle and down a gulp of tepid pale ale. The last rays of the sun angle through the tunnel of trees along this lane. I watch the low-riding red Cadillac roll slowly down the street. This guy could have turned left. He could have led that black parade back into town, or south towards the Interstate, sent them walking down I-70 clear to Baltimore.
I wonder if it’s coincidence that the Caddy stops right in front of my house. Of course, I have no idea who lives across the street. The Caddy does have to stop from time to time so its entourage can catch up. Whether or not it really needs to THOOOM! right there is subject to debate. I really fear for the windows with this one, but they hold, thank God.
I see the driver through his open window; I recognize him as one of the older teens at the high school. He’s got that timeless greaser sneer going on, his arm hanging out, tapping the side of his door, the scent of his warm, living flesh another draw for his following.
I see them as they pass the privacy hedge between me and the house next door. The sun fails behind them, as if their passing drains the very light from the world. Men in suits, men in black denim and wife-beaters. Children in pajamas, mothers in their gowns. And then the ones who didn’t obviously die of the Flu first. The ones whose heads hang to one side because the meat around the collarbone is just so damned convenient. The defensive wounds on the arms. Huge chunks of flesh torn right through the cloth by jaws driven with the force of senseless rigor mortis and rage-purposed hunger. Yeah, some of those children in pajamas…blood-black-stiff pajamas….
The first rows sport glistening new blood-bibs, the chin-to-crotch remains of Natalia’s high-end slacker community. In Emory Kerch’s Hard Workin’ New World, the party really is over. It’s dripping down the front of a homeschooling mom in her shift, staining the power tie of that sales rep.
That same tie is crimped from where someone had grabbed it in an attempt to steer those hungry, meat-clotted teeth away from her own face. Or his face. You can guess who those are stumbling up a couple of rows behind. They’re damned hard to look at, with the skin pulled away, the muscle exposed beneath their eyes, around their mouths. I wonder if they died right away from the shock or they had to bleed out first.
Their collective moaning forms a low hum, like an epic cloud of flesh-eating flies. They reach the rear of the Cadillac, close enough to touch. The arms of the ones in front go up, they pick up speed. And just as they’re about to touch, the kid lets his foot off the brake. The horde lets loose a collective hyannnnh! in their frustration. The kid releases a thoom! in response.
I get up from the chair to go to the window on the other side of the room. The driver is making a point of stopping in front of each house. Kerch is letting everyone know he’s not making exceptions for anyone.
Well, good for him, I think, taking another gulp from the growler bottle. All governments rule by terror. Kerch’s terror just happens to be more terrifying than most. I wonder what that Paulson guy said to Kerch to bring this on. I noticed Paulson wasn’t there at the party.
It’s tricky what this kid is doing, especially with the multiple stops. He’s got 300 or so deaders stumbling up after his Caddy. They bunch up in the middle. So many rows deep, the ones along the edge who are just following the horde don’t see the moving vehicle, don’t smell the live meat dangling out the window. They can’t see, but they know there are structures up on these knolls. Where people used to live.
I see some of these gray, ripped faces turned towards my window and I freeze. A shift in shadow might be enough to bring them up the driveway. Them and 300 of their friends. Oh, Jesus. I’ll need to get Rebecca to kill me for sure because there is no way this is going to end well….
I’ve got to hand it to Kerch. In less than two weeks he’s taken the most grotesque human catastrophe since the Black Death and made it work for him.
All I want is a change of underwear and a quiet place to hole up. After I make sure my family is really gone, that is. I need to do that much first. But that’s it. I have no need to rule the world. Nor do I care to help some other alpha dog rule the world. It was bad enough when everything was “normal.” Now….
I listen as the Caddy and its grisly entourage disappear into the dusk. The kid isn’t wasting his time stopping in front of the empty houses towards the end of the lane. He’s rolling straight out to the road leading down to Old Man Sanderson’s fields. Standing there in the near perfect darkness I take another hit from my growler jug. I feel like I should have a cigarette. Can’t say why. I quit smoking 20 years ago.
I turn and walk right into—Rebecca? I stumble backwards with the jug sloshing in my hand. I nearly fall into the window before I get my feet steady beneath me.
“Oh calm down, it wouldn’t be fair in your condition! Look, I know you don’t want to be bothered but I need a glass for my cognac. I was hoping you could get it for me. Or give me the lantern and I’ll look for myself.”