There were survivors behind those walls. Quade stopped being amazed about the zombies and went into action. The smart thing to do was to wait it out until tomorrow, pick through that property in the hopes someone had made it through.
No one would. Quade decided to do something not smart at all.
The second he got out of the van with his gear, a hand closed on his shoulder. He jumped away from it, knowing from the smell what had taken hold.
He’d thought all the deadheads were around the wall, and checked the mirrors and peepholes around the van to make sure. But three stragglers were now behind him, the women with fresh mud on their legs and the man with some fencing caught around his ankle. They’d cut through one of the farms along the way and gotten bogged down. How zombies found mud in this heat to track through was beyond Quade. Some bit of irrigation could be leaking.
They were hungry.
He had come out of the van with the AK-47 in his hands, which he pumped in reflex into the stomachs of the three deadheads. They fell to the road but started to get back to their feet at once, Quade finishing off the man and one of the women before they were fully upright. The second woman stayed on the ground, latching onto his ankle and biting down on his boot. He put a bullet through her crown and shook her body loose.
A dozen deadheads were coming down the road, and doing it fast. More. Christ! Where were they all coming from? Among them was their ringer, a brunette woman in her twenties with the legs of a dancer beneath her miniskirt. She smiled at Quade intimately, kicked mud off her stiletto heels, and chuckled to her deadheads. He didn’t need to speak zombie to know what she was telling them to do.
That was how he had lost the van, from leaping inside and driving backwards to plough them down. This was a new contingent coming to assail that wall and the people behind it. He drove over the deadheads and ended up with the tail end of the van in a drainage ditch. Bullets got him free of the van and the last of this group of freaks, some of who climbed into the vehicle to see what else he had in there. The ringer was on the ground, flat in her torso where the tires had gone over her and made tread marks. She was still alive, blood coming out with her chuckles, at least until he fired into her face with the Glock.
Ditching the van, he ran for the property with a smoke bomb lobbed from his fist to disorient them. Then he opened fire with the AK-47 at every head he made out. When the wind cleared the smoke away, it was to show just how many deadheads he’d taken down. A lot.
Still not enough.
By the time he made it through the garden to the house, he just had one untouched magazine remaining in the pouch. Things weren’t good in the house either. He hadn’t seen so many people in one place except for Crosica in months. There had to be twenty in here with little more than jackshit to protect themselves. The woman had gone out onto the porch roof to lop off heads with a sword. The rest of the survivors were yelling about what to do in the other rooms.
Deadheads were working hard to pull the boards off the windows on the first floor. The people were dropping things on their heads, vases and clocks, but those never stopped the zombies for long. Quade could have told them that, but this was all they had, and they had to do something.
“Should we go up to the roof?” a man said in panic. “We can scale the pipe.”
The deadheads would find a way to get him back down, or eat him up there. Quade had the last magazine, and also the shots left in the Glocks. Most of the people had nothing, their guns abandoned on floors and beds.
Tons of dead were lying in the garden and he counted swiftly what was still walking down there. A hundred. A hundred fifty tops. The ringers weren’t going to let this fight go on all the way to their next sleep cycle. They knew how vulnerable they were during those hours. This would be brought to a close long before they nodded off tomorrow at midday.
He’d lost the van. He wasn’t going to be able to get it out of that drainage ditch without a tow truck. The bodies had been so thick on that part of the road that it pushed him off when he rumbled over them backwards for a third time. Now he had to locate a new vehicle to get back to Crosica.
If he ever got that chance. A gun blasted and people yelled Scarlett! Scarlett! Miss Scarlett! The woman threw herself through the window into the other bedroom.
A boy was in the garden with a gun aimed at the porch where Scarlett had been standing. Quade pointed the AK-47 at the ringer. Killing him was only going to help the survivors by making the zombies more disorganized. But the kid slipped behind tree cover and Quade lost the shot.
Stationed at another window, a woman said in horror, “They’ve almost gotten one of the boards free.”
Scarlett came into the room. She was an attractive woman, tanned skin and thick dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. It wasn’t the time for Quade to appreciate beauty, any more than it was time for introductions.
The survivors from the other rooms flooded in. Their faces were frantic for a plan or direction. Scarlett and the old man named Bridger exchanged looks, seeming to be at a loss for words. Quade smelled something burning and said, “We can’t hold out in here. They’re going to burn the house down to get you to go outside.”
Everyone paled and he asked, “Do you have any vehicles on this property? Functional vehicles?”
“In the garage,” Scarlett said, her voice little above a whisper. Blood was dripping from the point of her sword to stain the carpet. “We hid the children in our bus, and the adults who couldn’t fight.”
God, there were kids here, too! “Does the bus have fuel?”
“Yes. We keep it filled at all times, all of our vehicles. There are also a couple of minivans.”
He didn’t care about the minivans. A bus. That was their way out of this place. They needed to get to the garage. A head came over the windowsill and a man crushed the deadhead in his face with the butt of the gun. Smack. Smack. Smack. Squelch. The deadhead let go and plummeted to the garden.
More ringers could be coming even now with their deadhead packs, down that road and cutting through the farms. Quade got a quick rundown of the house’s layout from Bridger and went out to the hallway. The AK-47 hung from the strap around his chest. He wanted to save that last ammo until he had no choice.
Taking an axe from a woman barely strong enough to hold it aloft, he began down the stairs. The air was carrying more of the burned scent. One of the ringers was carrying matches or a lighter, pressing it to leaf litter or even to the boards over the windows. If the deadheads had gotten through a window, all the ringer had to do was reach in and set fire to the curtains.
The light grew poorer the further he descended to the first floor hallway. Deadheads were scrabbling at the boards within the dark spots of rooms. The other survivors crept down behind him, Scarlett still upstairs and doing what he had asked in closing every door on the second floor. Nothing stopped deadheads for very long, but any of them making it through a window on the second floor would be forced to take a moment and figure out the knob.
Fuck you, Wence. Fuck him even if that story was a lie. Quade wanted someone to blame. He thought of the kids in the bus. None had any chance of being Grady, but Quade wanted him to be in there. Somewhere on the first floor, glass shattered.
A shaft of light was coming from the third room back from the stairs. Within it by the door, and the one thing that was visible, was a washing machine. A toolbox rested on the lid since it couldn’t be used without electricity.
Glass. He also saw glass on the floor.
A squeaking was followed by a thump in there. The light brightened more. Motioning to the others to wait, Quade slipped down the hallway. He looked through the cracked door and a deadhead looked back to him. This one was a naked and balding old man, his legs in a disarray beneath him from climbing through and falling in. More hands waved in the window, trying to get hold on the sill to pull up. The wood there was rotted from the humidity of being in a laundry room or something else, and breaking from their weight.
He backed out of the room and closed the door. One of the men had come down the hallway with a chair, which he wedged under the knob. The others passed in dining room chairs to block the doors along that stretch of the hallway.
Quade passed the staircase again. To his side was the dining room, where two windows had been covered with boards. Light was peeking in, fingers forcing themselves through a small gap between the boards and tapping on the glass. Scarlett came down the stairs, the saber still dripping but more slowly, and whispered, “This way.” Someone thumped on the other side of the laundry room door.
Quade followed Scarlett through a living room. Glass shattered in another part of the house, people gasping behind him to hear it. A voice mumbled in prayer. The smell of smoke was getting stronger.
Like the garden, this place was monstrous in size. They went past a big kitchen, which was dimly illuminated since a board had been freed from a window. It was the top one though, so the deadheads were having a hard time getting in. One was jumping up and down out there to hit the glass. His fingers curled around the board underneath it and he hung there. It wasn’t going to be too long before his weight brought that board down.
Scarlett nudged open a door to a room in absolute blackness. Quade searched his pockets bear spray bear spray alcohol wipe penlight, and took the penlight out. Shining it in, he and Scarlett went down three steps to a library. Under the shelves were cots lined up in neat rows. Too many books had been packed into the shelves, which dipped in the middle from the weight, and more books rested in piles on the floor between the cots. There weren’t any windows in here.
When the last person was in, Quade said, “Can that door be blocked?”
Scarlett coughed. “It has a hook latch, but that’s all.” A woman did the hook latch and a man tried to wedge a cot beneath the knob. At the far end of the library was another door, Scarlett saying, “There are four doors in the hallway beyond this room. One goes outside, one to a linen closet, one to a bathroom, and one to the garage.” She gestured to show Quade the approximate placement of the doors.
When his hand reached out to the knob, it turned with his fingers still millimeters away. Quade flew forward and pressed his body against the door. A deadhead pounded on the other side. Another door squeaked open out there, sounding like the one to the linen closet. They had beaten their way in through the door to outside, unless they did it through the garage. That meant the kids were gone, along with the rest of the people in there.
“Is the inner door to the garage locked?” Quade whispered.
“Yes, with a deadbolt. But I have a key,” Scarlett said. She checked to make sure. If the deadheads couldn’t get into the garage or the library, they might go back outside and attempt to get into the house another way.
The library door was pressed on harder. Quade put all his weight against it, Scarlett doing the same at his side and a tall man’s arms coming over her head to do likewise. It creaked and dust sifted down. Suddenly, three people dashed back to the door with the hook latch and pressed on it. Quade hadn’t heard anything back there, but they had.
“The house is on fire,” a woman whispered. “I can hear something crackling.”
Just a little longer, Quade thought. The deadhead thumped his fists or his head on the other side. Another thumping started from a second zombie, in a different place but close to the first. The penlight in his teeth, he turned his head to see what was going on behind him. The people were standing on the stairs and shoving at the door.
“Oh God, we’re going to die! We’re going to die!” another woman said hysterically. She was strung out between both groups, helping with neither of them.
“Shut up, Shirley!” Scarlett hissed. The deadheads pounded with more enthusiasm. They had heard Shirley’s voice. Couldn’t understand the words, but they were savvy enough to know a voice meant people, and people meant meat.
A drop of sweat rolled down Quade’s forehead from the exertion of keeping the door closed. It wasn’t made of very thick wood. If they took to punching it, they would get through.
Scarlett muffled a cough into her shoulder. Quade did that too, wanting those deadheads to think that the quiet meant their living meat had moved on somewhere else. Time was running out, whispers passing through the group that smoke was coming in through the crack in the other door. Shirley made a sound and an older Mexican woman hissed in a temper, “You cry and I slap the shit out of you!”
Pound. Pound-pound. It was now on the wall beside the door. The people were doing their best to muffle their coughs from the increasingly rank air. The pounding moved farther down the hallway and stopped.
They couldn’t wait any longer. Quade motioned to Scarlett and the man, who released the door reluctantly. She pulled out a ring of keys and pulled the penlight down, pinching the correct key in her fingers before nodding. Quade passed the axe to the guy and got the AK-47 ready.
The door opened with a creak that made all of them wince. No one was on the other side. The linen closet had been opened and trashed, towels and sheets strewn over the linoleum. The door to the garage was right there, the deadbolt gleaming in the light. Quade stepped out of the library and moved to the open door that went outside. The boards had been ripped off and the glass broken. Blood was smeared on the shards both on the floor and stuck in the frame. Beyond it was another garden, and what appeared to be a little barn. Scarlett hurried to the lock to let them into the garage.
A deadhead was on Quade in an instant, launching itself onto his shoulder and wrapping its legs around his thighs. It had come from the bathroom, a woman whose cheek had rotted away to nothing. When she turned her head, he saw right into her mouth. He swallowed on the yell from shock and bashed her into the wall as her teeth sank into his vest. When she couldn’t pierce it, she snapped at his neck. He slammed his helmet against her face and hit the wall a second time. Fingers raked into his cheek, digging in to free some meat. Quade caught her hand and turned it out violently, rolling her arm over and bringing her body with it. She fought to stay where she was, locking her legs at the ankles and impervious to the pain.
The battle was silent, save the thumps of their bodies hitting the walls. Scarlett was still at the door, her movements frantic and the others clustered around her. The deadhead bit at Quade’s face and he freed her hand to shove his own up her chest and to her throat. His fist closed there and held.
But she wasn’t done yet, oxygen or not. She jammed her finger into his eye. Unable to help it, Quade yelled from the pain. He drew a Glock and pressed it to her head, pulling the trigger. Her limp body struck the linoleum.
The yell and blast had called the nearest deadheads to this spot. Blinking hard, Quade jerked shut the door to the garden, snapped the latch, and settled there to await their approach. The fire was close with that telltale crackling.
A ringer. Coming up behind two deadheads was a man, not dressed as well as the others, but definitely a ringer. Quade shot him and the deadheads. Emerging from the barn, five more zombies headed for the door. Their bodies were slick with fresh blood.
Scarlett had gotten into the garage. She stood outside the open door and ushered the others in. Quade opened fire, sending down three deadheads and only wounding the fourth and fifth.
Coming to his side, Scarlett blinked from the smoke and considered the barn in misery. “My kid went to hide in there.”
“I’m sorry,” Quade said. He killed the fourth deadhead when the guy got to his feet.
“Is there any way we could-”
“No. I’ve got almost nothing left. We need this little to get out of here.”
She didn’t cry or plead with him. She just turned away to the garage. A crash and stumble told Q
uade that deadheads had penetrated the library. Scarlett cried out and pulled shut the door to that room.
More zombies rounded the side of the house, filling the broken window with a crowd of heads. Quade unleashed the bear spray and backed off as one pushed on the door. When it didn’t budge, he hiked up a leg to climb through. A shard sank into his heel. The bear spray wasn’t hurting him, but his eyelids had closed in reflex.
Shouting for Scarlett, Quade rushed for the garage. She let go of the door and fled in after him. Deadheads broke it open and pushed into the hallway, their gray eyes on Quade and Scarlett. Getting the door together, they slammed it shut in the faces of the zombies. Quade hunched against it while Scarlett did the lock. This door was heavier. It hardly rattled from the pounding on the other side.
Lanterns glowed on the workbenches of the big garage. It was so big that it fit an entire school bus and a pair of minivans. He couldn’t see into the bus since the windows were covered, even the one in the front. All of the vehicles had been backed in, which was going to make it easier to pull the bus out.
Along one workbench was a window. The boards had been taken down and deadheads were scrabbling at the glass. The guy with the axe was waiting there, prepared to swing the instant they made it through. A child was crying for his gramma in the bus, a woman calling back something soothing in Spanish.
Quade and Scarlett rounded the back, where she stopped dead and said in horror, “Someone will have to be outside the bus to push up the bar on the door.” Both doors to the driveway were trembling from deadheads beating on them.
“Push the bus as close to the door as it can go. I’ll open the bar and you nudge the door open with the bumper. Just do it,” Quade said. She swung inside, yanked down the black drape over the windshield, and shouted for Bridger to give her the bus keys. Quade climbed up onto the hood.
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