Wet Work: The Definitive Edition

by Philip Nutman

  The mutilated soldier near the gun twitched, moaning, strips of flesh gumming his teeth.

  Corvino kicked the dying man’s head, snapping his neck, before stooping to grab the weapon.

  “Corvino!!!”

  He turned, bringing the gun up to chest level.

  “You’re scum like…like the rest of—”

  “Suck on this,” Corvino hissed, pulling the trigger.

  The Pole ‘s body jumped as bullets tore into his torso, a split second before his head exploded in a Roman candle of bone, blood and brains.

  “Fuck you. Fuck you all…” Corvino’s voice dropped an octave as he let the rifle slip from his fingers.

  It was over.

  Over.

  Mitra. Ryan. Harris.

  And now he, too, could rest.

  A dense, black abyss opened up before him—

  —and then he heard

  (???—)

  …the sound of an M-16 as bullets ripped through his chest lifting him off the ground as they exited sternum and shrapnel blood showering the wall the floor as

  (what???)

  his legs stopped working as bullets tore his spinal column and the Pentagon floor polished blood-splashed marble rushed up to meet him—

  Gifford, descending the stairs, continued to fire, the clip spent, metal hitting metal.

  Finally realizing the M-16 was spent, he threw the gun down, slumping against he wall, sliding down into a crouch.

  Nick appeared behind him.

  “Gifford.”

  The pilot ignored him, shaking as he looked at the carnage below. The entrance lobby was an abattoir.

  “Come on, we’ve got to get moving,” Nick said, kneeling down beside him.

  Gifford shook his head. “I’ve had it. This…this is insane. There’s nowhere to go. It’s all gone to hell.”

  “We can make it to the farm, get out into the countryside—”

  “Just leave me alone.” Gifford looked tired and old, his eyes bloodshot, deep shadows etched beneath as if they were tattooed into his skin. He turned away from Nick.

  Down in the lobby, one of the dead things twitched and moaned. Another one—the one Gifford had just shot—tried to move.

  Nick stood up and started walking down the steps.

  Pain flared through his body. He wanted to die. To die properly like he should have done back in the parking area when Lang shot him. I’m tasting the tortures of purgatory, Corvino thought—dead yet alive, shot almost in two, his wounds a network of fierce white agony, his mind denying him peace. He had to get a gun, finish himself off.

  He could see a .45 automatic lying beside one of the bodies near the entrance. He began to crawl, dragging his useless legs, clenching his teeth against the pain.

  As Nick reached the bottom of the steps the body on the floor nearest to him cried out again. He took aim and fired into its head. The dead thing stopped moving.

  The man who’d been trying to crawl stopped, and turned to face him. It was one of the soldiers who’d captured them. The one who’d stopped the other from killing Ellen. The man’s face wore a mask of pain, but unlike the other living dead this one seemed to have a glimmer of intelligence still lurking in his dark brown eyes, a look of relief perhaps.

  “The head,” Corvino said softly, the word barely above a whisper. “My…head.”

  Nick stared at the dead man, an alien feeling of compassion for something—someone—who had once been human fleetingly crossing his mind as he lifted the M-16.

  “Do it,” Corvino said, lowering his head to the cold marble, closing his eyes.

  Nick squeezed the trigger.

  MARYLAND.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7.

  DAWN.

  Nick had been driving all night, his eyes burning from lack of sleep, ghostly images flickering across his retinas as he steered first a Lincoln Town Car, then a Toyota truck across the empty terrain of northern Maryland.

  The Lincoln took him a little over forty-five miles up I-95 before it, like the rest of the world, had died, forcing him to abandon it at the side of the Interstate to walk in the dark for a mile before discovering another vehicle that still ran. That mile, walked alone, was the most terrifying of his life. Under a clear night sky, he’d walked over the emptiest section of highway he’d ever seen. During the distance he covered on foot, the only other vehicle he came across before the Toyota was a wrecked Dodge Spirit lying in a ditch beside the highway, its sole occupant rotting behind the wheel.

  He’d walked in the dark, afraid to use a flashlight in case it attracted attention. Fortunately, a quarter moon shined down from the cloudless dark sky to guide him, and no sign of anyone living or dead lurked near the highway. The silence, the emptiness, felt surreal.

  Leaving the D.C. area had been the most difficult part of his journey. Sections of the Interstate were blocked with auto wrecks: multiple vehicle pile-ups, burned-out National Guard trucks and a crushed body-disposal vehicle—its rotting contents strewn across the road like multicolored ticker tape. He’d navigated his way around the accident as best he could, the Lincoln’s wheels snapping bone, pulping putrefying flesh as he drove over several corpses lying near the guardrail.

  Fortunately, zombie activity was minimal, and most of the living dead he came across seemed to be falling apart. He saw some with missing arms, others with their heads lolling awkwardly to one side as if their necks were broken, and one crawling by the side of the highway, its legs crushed. None of them attempted to bother him, but if they did he was ready. He’d taken two MAC-10’s, three handguns, and as much ammo as he could carry before leaving the Pentagon. Let ‘em try and get him. He was ready, and by God, he was going to make it to Elliot’s farm one way or another.

  What he’d seen at the Pentagon was obviously happening to all the living dead. They were coming apart at the seams mentally and physically. Whatever force had reanimated them could only sustain their rotting flesh and decaying minds for so long.

  There’s no one—no one—around, he thought, aware of the loud crunching sounds his boot-heels made on the dry tarmac. After days in D.C. filled with constant gunfire, burning buildings, periodic explosions as a gas station or a gas main blew, the silence unnerved him. Absent even was the familiar vibrating rattle of cicadas issuing their mating call. Just the heavy tread of his policeman’s boots as he walked north, a solitary cell traveling through a dark artery of a dead organism.

  He was relieved to find the Toyota, its driver slumped backwards in the cab, head lolling to one side as if the guy who’d been driving had fallen asleep at the side of the road. Nick pulled the body from the vehicle and slid into the cab, pleased to find the key still in the ignition and the battery charged.

  He continued his journey, heading up I-95, trying to avoid the outskirts of Baltimore. Sporadic pockets of fire smoldered away from the highway. He took no notice.

  Ten miles beyond Baltimore, he swallowed some No Doz he’d found in the glove compartment, washing the tablets down with tepid water from his canteen. He was so tired his last reserves of adrenaline were almost gone, a terrible soul-deep exhaustion pulling his body into the truck’s comfortable upholstery.

  Keep it going. Got to keep going. The thought had become a mantra.

  Sandy.

  His eyelids were weighted with sleep and he wound down the window hoping the night air would help him until the caffeine kicked in.

  Sandy, darling, are you still alive?

  Keep going. Don’t think about it. Concentrate on the highway.

  He hummed a few bars from “Roadhouse Blues.”

  “Going to the Roadhouse, gonna have a real good time.” He chuckled. “Yeah, gonna have a real good time.”

  The truck rounded a bend. Two hundred yards ahead on the right was the sign for Keaton. Only a mile before the exit. He sighed with relief. Twenty miles to go. Eyelids flickering, he floored the accelerator, taking the truck up to eighty. He hoped the rest of the journey would be easy.

/>   Dawn’s first light faintly pricked the horizon as Nick steered the Toyota off the tarmac onto the winding dirt road which led to Elliot’s farm. As the first furtive rays of the sun pushed back the twilight rim of night, he saw how empty the landscape here was. Having seen nothing but stone and steel, shattered glass and twisted urban remains since the start of his descent into Hell, the lush green of the fields looked alien to his bloodshot eyes.

  He was nearly there. But what if there’s nothing, no one? What then?

  Sandy.

  He’d been deceiving himself with irrational hope. Love. Blind, desperate love for a woman who was probably dead, who had most likely never made it out of New York. Now he was about to find out a crushing truth. She wouldn’t be there and he had come all this way for nothing. But then there was no reason for him to stay in the rubble of Washington. Life without hope rendered any action meaningless. Better to try than to die frozen in inaction. After all, he was alive and had escaped from Hell.

  The dirt road curved sharply to the right, the Toyota’s suspension bouncing over the rutted soil. Through the screen of trees, he caught his first glimpse of the two-story farmhouse. It looked the same as it did the last time he and Sandy had visited back in October last year, the house’s whitewashed timbers sagging under the weight of the old sloping roof. Eliot had been talking about replacing it for as long as he and his wife had lived there. Little chance of that happening now, Nick thought as he maneuvered the Toyota between the dried mud ruts of the road.

  He pulled into the drive, the truck slaloming to a halt atop the dry, dusty soil as he braked. He saw the screen door on the porch swing open, moving back and forth, the rusted hinges creaking slightly under the touch of a light breeze.

  The place looked deserted.

  He started to call out as he jumped down from the cab, stopping himself to draw a deep breath. What if there were dead ones inside? Maybe Elliot and Anna, slowly rotting, dozing between feeding. He remembered the movie, Night of the Living Dead. That had taken place in a deserted farm house, the few survivors barricading themselves inside, fighting off the hordes of zombies. Wouldn’t it be ironic for the zombies to be inside, for him to walk into their waiting arms?

  Fuck it, he was ready.

  He clicked off the safety on a MAC-10.

  No truck in the driveway. No vehicles anywhere in sight.

  Just the screen door moving slowly in the dawn breeze.

  He sighed and walked up the worn wooden steps onto the porch, turned the doorknob with his left hand and opened it, Ingram at the ready.

  The front door led into the dining room. The kitchen was to the right, the living room beyond that. The table was laid for three, plates and cutlery arranged neatly on woven mats, napkins folded precisely beside the forks. The only thing out of pace was the salt shaker laying on its side, a pinch of salt spilled out on the tabletop.

  As he stepped into the kitchen he smelled the pile of garbage strewn across the floor before he saw it. A small animal had gotten into it somehow by the looks of it, searching for a tasty treat, and had spread the trash all over the linoleum.

  The lounge too, was vacant, the only indication of inhabitation a pile of videocassettes in front of the VCR. Conan The Destroyer, Close Encounters, Singing In The Rain. Stories from a dead age.

  He tried the bedrooms, checked the cellar.

  The house was empty.

  The truth deflated him. Nick locked the doors and walked slowly back upstairs to the nearest bedroom. He collapsed on the single bed, falling into an immediate, dreamless sleep, tears struggling to fill his tired, burning eyes.

  AFTERNOON

  Totally exhausted, Nick slept like the true dead. And so he didn’t hear the old school bus growl its way up the dirt road. He murmured in his sleep, his eyes rolling beneath their lids as turbulent dreams held him in a nightmare’s embrace.

  He was in a house in Arizona, standing in the living room, his father a bloated, rotting, red-nosed figure slumped on the couch. Will Packard opened his eyes but the sockets were empty.

  “Get me a beer, you worthless son of a bitch. I’m thirsty,” his father croaked. “Now.”

  “No,” Nick said. “You’re not my father. You’re just a drunken old bastard.”

  Will Packard pawed his crotch. “You came from these boy. You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. And you’ll do as I say.” He grinned. His teeth were bloody. “I can eat you alive if I want to. Little pig.” He belched, moving his hand from his crotch to his belt, undoing the buckle. “How many more times do I have to beat that into your little skull?”

  Nick wanted to run but he couldn’t; his legs felt like they were cemented into the floor.

  Will Packard heaved himself off the couch, an empty bottle of Jim Beam falling to the stained rug.

  “Time to take your medicine,” he said, pulling the belt free from his soiled trousers, his sightless eyes two dark, evil pits.

  Nick was seven years old again, the man before him a towering shadow of fat and muscle. Will laid a thick, meaty hand on Nick’s shoulder, shaking him.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Nick?

  (Nick)

  The rough hand shook him again. He wanted to scream as the eyeless face of his rotting father leered down at him and—

  “Nick!”

  Hands were shaking him. A voice—

  He opened his eyes wide, gasping. He pulled back from the hand, instinctively reaching for the gun.

  Sandy stood beside the bed. With her were two men, a teenage girl and a small boy.

  Jared.

  He was still dreaming. The nightmare was…the nightmare was—

  “Nick!” she sobbed. “You’re here. You’re really here!”

  A tear splashed his hand and he knew then that he wasn’t dreaming, that Sandy was alive. They were together again. It was going to be all right. He wasn’t alone any more. His wife had survived—thank God—and, by Christ she was here, touching him, crying and—

  Sandy doubled over onto the bed, her body heaving as she coughed.

  He sat up, reaching out to her. Her face was flushed. She coughed repeatedly, but he was too relieved to see her to acknowledge the significance.

  “I’m John Briggs,” said a man with the silver gray hair. “And this is my daughter, Janet.”

  He placed a paternal hand on the young redhead’s arm. She smiled weakly.

  “Dick Austin,” said the younger man. “We talked on the phone.”

  Jared just looked at Nick, his face pinched, almost old in the bedroom’s shadows.

  Sandy coughed again, trying to stifle the harsh rasps by burying her face in the sheets. Nick squeezed her hand, his heart racing at the surprise of being roused from the nightmare to find his wife leaning over him. Sandy squeezed back in return, lifting her face from the bed. She tried to smile, but her chest hurt.

  “Are you real?” Nick asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Is it really you?”

  She swallowed painfully, a desperate expression carved into her face as she threw herself into his arms.

  She was hot with fever, but he didn’t notice.

  She was here!

  “Let’s go downstairs. They need to be alone,” Briggs said, taking Jared by the hand and leading him to the door. The boy looked back at Sandy, reluctant to go, but Briggs gently urged him onwards. Jane smiled respectfully, taking Jared’s other hand.

  As the door closed, Nick hugged Sandy tighter, crushing her into his chest as if he still didn’t believe his eyes.

  “Hon,” he whispered into her ear. “Oh, baby, I thought you were gone forever.”

  He kissed her firmly on the mouth. She responded, pulling away suddenly as she started to cough.

  “I’m sick,” she wheezed.

  He loosened his hold as her body was racked with dry, gasping spasms. The shock of his awakening over, he realized she had the virus. She was dying.

  No! Not now…not after all—

  Sandy
pulled away slightly until the bronchial fit passed, then looked up, tears in her eyes. Tears of love and pain.

  “Hold me.”

  They lay together for several hours, limbs so entwined they were one person not two. But they didn’t make love, and they hardly spoke. Sandy shared the barest bones of her journey from New York. He spared her the details of what he’d seen in Washington. It didn’t matter. They were together. They had made it through a firestorm of death and destruction to the peace of the farm.

  And she was dying.

  Nick ran his fingers through her hair. Late afternoon sunlight burned behind the window blinds. The sounds of the others in the kitchen barely registered. It was so fucking unfair. Against all odds they’d reached a haven, but the torment wasn’t over. Maybe it’s have been better if he’d never seen her again, just come to terms with her death and concentrated on keeping himself alive.

  She lifted her head from his lap. “We should go see the others.”

  “In a while.”

  But he didn’t want to get out of bed even though he was hungry, and the aroma of cooking food drifting up from the kitchen made his stomach rumble. He hadn’t eaten in over thirty-six hours, but he didn’t want to break the connection.

  Sandy sat up.

  “Come on,” she said, coughing.

  “Don’t—”

  He pulled her back to him. “I want to hold you.”

  She let him, but didn’t respond with her previous passion, resting her head on his chest like a little girl in her daddy’s arms. After a while, she spoke again.

  “Let’s go. Soon I won’t have the strength to go down.” She paused. “I’ve seen others get this way. I’m going to die.”

  He hushed her, held her closer. She resisted, struggling to sit up.

  “Face it. I’m going to die. Feel how hot my head is?”

  She placed his right hand on her forehead and he turned away. “It’s just the beginning, but I know what’s coming. It happens fast. My lungs ache. It’s painful to breathe. I’ll be dead by morning.”