by T. A. Sorsby
‘Welcome back to the program,’ he said, ‘we hope you’re all having a safe and infection-free day out there in sunny Greenfield. These next ones go out to a group of deputies who stopped by the station earlier today. Safe trails my friends, I hope you come back real soon.’
More zeds were making their way out of the centre and into the suburbs. We saw a few of them gathered around the base of a tree as we drove by central park, probably trying to get their hands on a cat or a squirrel that’d taken refuge there. I guess that explained how the dogs could get infected, just need enough zeds to corner them.
The clock on the dashboard spun on, getting on around one o’clock by the time we arrived back at the flats to pick up the stuff we needed for the B&E on the pawnshop. The rain was just about easing off too, but it was definitely getting colder as the day went on.
Damian and Laurel waited with the vehicle while me and Neville grabbed the stuff from Stan’s place. I carried the folding ladder while Neville took the biggest power drill and a box of assorted attachments for un-screwing the bolts on the window bars.
As I was coming out with the ladder, Neville holding the door for me, I noticed Laurel and Damian standing outside, waving up at the apartments. Looking up as we came out with our tools, I could make out Morgan and Anita just a few storeys up, craning over the balcony.
‘How’s it going?’ Neville asked.
‘Plenty of food and water left behind,’ Anita supplied, ‘slim pickings on the medicine, unless you’ve all got killer headaches. Zero on weapons too – standard stuff, kitchen knives and screwdrivers, but nothing we don’t have already.’
‘More coolboxes and ice though,’ Morgan added, ‘so if our tinkerer can’t fix the electrics, we’ll at least have a couple days more chill-power.’
‘You guys got to there from the top floor already?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Negative, we’re going bottom to top, taking it careful.’ Anita shouted back, ‘Met one of the locals, but he didn’t give me much trouble. Were your neighbours always so handsy?’
‘Stay safe, okay?’ Neville called up.
‘You too Dad.’ Morgan answered. The two of them disappeared from view.
A brief pang of guilt went through me, realising I’d asked Morgan and Anita, to expose themselves to danger like that. I hadn’t expected anybody from Castle Tower to be infected, much less lock themselves at home with it and pose us a danger.
I looked at Neville, one hand on his hip, the other on his chin. He wouldn’t have wanted Morgan facing danger without being there, but in my defence, I arranged her an armed, professional escort. Still. I’d have felt better being there too. I hoped they wouldn’t come across any more of our former neighbours.
‘You good?’ I asked him, expecting another argument.
‘She’s in good hands.’ He nodded, and I took that as us being okay.
We got in. The ladder didn’t quite fit, so Damian drove with the boot open while Neville leaned over the backseat, holding onto it. Laurel and I kept our eyes out of the windows, on opposite sides, but there wasn’t a lot of shuffling foot traffic out here yet.
We pulled up at the curb again; two wheels up on the grass verge that separated the road form the plaza. Just as we were getting out, Laurel slid her rifle off her shoulder, frowning.
‘Hey.’ She called out, softly, so only we could hear. ‘Everyone, off the road, up here.’ She bent double as she went, and we all followed suit.
We didn’t know what she’d heard, but there was an urgency in her voice that made us listen. Neville and I dragged the ladder out and ran with it, bent as Laurel had been, for all the good it’d do us, carrying ten feet of ladder. Damian closed the boot and hurried after us.
Laurel got behind the broken fountain and knelt down, keeping her head low. We laid the ladder down flat, vertical to the road, so it couldn’t be seen behind the fountain. We all crouched down, peering through the long weeds and spiky grass that’d grown up through the tiles. Someone must have tried turning it into a flower patch at some point, but that was a lost cause even before this started.
‘Wha-?’ Neville tried, but Laurel slapped him on the shoulder.
I heard it then, the sound of a throaty engine, definitely coming closer. The echo around the plaza made it hard to tell where it was coming from, but we didn’t have to wait long to see. A shiny black SUV drove into sight, heading out of the city. Sat in the pickup-bed were four guys with sizable guns, two of them in camo-gear with matching tactical vests, two more in similar gear, but done up in black.
The SUV slowed down as it passed the plaza, the armed men taking a look at Damian’s 4x4, scanning the shop fronts. One of them aimed their rifle in the plaza, something too big to be civilian-legal. I closed my eyes, as if he’d feel one less set of eyes on him.
Half-opening one a moment later, he was lowering the rifle. He couldn’t see us for the weeds - and I’d signed a petition to get the fountain cleaned up a few weeks ago.
‘See anything?’ I heard a male voice ask.
‘Nothing. Truck looks abandoned.’ Another man replied.
‘Looks in good nick, ATV, probably just needs a fill-up. We’ll come back for it later.’ The first voice said, before the engine growled a little louder, and the SUV pulled away, engine rumbling.
‘No one’s taking my ride.’ Damian muttered as we all got back to our feet.
‘Who were those guys?’ Laurel asked.
‘Fatigues, tactical vests…’ Neville muttered, ‘and some serious looking guns. Territorials maybe? Not all of them would have fallen in to protect Parliament. Or maybe some of the PMC guys.’
‘Soldiers riding around in an SUV?’ Damian asked, ‘Stealing my ride?’
‘Sound engineers robbing pawnshops for guns?’ Neville replied smartly.
‘Desperate times.’ I nodded, ‘If they are TA, we should still be out of here before they come back. We haven’t heard anything about the TA besides that order to pull back to Orphen, and the Sydow Security guys we saw on the news all had their own trucks.’
‘Lot of acronyms flying around these days,’ Laurel said, mostly to herself, ‘the country’s FUBAR so the TA’s CO makes sure Orphen’s OK, meanwhile the CDC have PMCs setting up DMZs...’
‘And here I am, stuck in the middle with you…’ Neville smirked. She caught it, and gave an amused huff.
We got back to our feet, a little shiver running through me as the fear faded. I tried to brush it off, and clapped Damian on the back.
‘Nobody’s taking your truck. We’ll get gone before they’ve got a chance to come back.’ I said.
‘You sure?’ Damian asked, ‘Going to take a while to get everything out of there.’ He gestured at the co-op, its shutters drawn down.
‘Between Morgan and the fuzz it sounds like we’ll be all set for supplies, why bother?’ Laurel asked.
‘Perishables - if we don’t eat them, they’ll go to waste.’ I suggested.
‘Keeps us out of our tins for as long as possible.’ Neville added. Good. We were back to agreeing with each other.
If this evacuation thing with the radio station was a bust, we were looking at a long-haul stay at Castle Towers. In that case, having a stocked grocery store right across the street was a miracle, and we’d need to strip everything from it we could - every crunchy granola bar, every bottle of overpriced mineral water. Enough food to last one person a month was only going to be enough to get three people through ten days – and we numbered seven.
‘Better safe, you know.’ Damian said to Laurel, raising his eyebrows. ‘If it don’t pan out at de radio station, could be needing more gas for de stove, or we going to need to get a fire going to cook.’
‘Thinking we take a trip out to a camping store?’ Neville asked him, as I picked the ladder up from behind the fountain.
‘I think it’s a plan, for just-in-case.’ He gave a sideways nod.
‘If we have to go full-on survivor mode…’ Laurel mused, trailing
off, ‘lot of places we could go. Stuff to get. Things we can do. Fortify the ground floor for starters, like we should’ve done at Perry’s place.’
‘Not a bad idea. We’ll add it to the list.’ I said.
We set the ladder up under the pawn shop’s upper-storey window, Neville footing me while I climbed. Being a step-ladder rather than one with rungs, I was able to use the topmost step to look through the drillbits, picking out and arranging the likely looking ones.
It still took me a couple of tries to find the right size drillbit to go around the heavy-duty bolts, and even when I did find it, the paintwork over the bars had so many layers that the drill groaned for a second before it actually started to unscrew them.
I started on the centre bar, and by the time I’d unscrewed two of the damn things, dropping them down to the side of the ladder, my arms were getting pretty tired of holding the massive drill, having to reach up to get the bolts at the top. But I soldiered on until four of the bars were out, just enough for me to squeeze through. I’d saved the last bar to smash the window out with.
Taking a firm grip on one of the remaining bars with my left hand, I raised the bar over my head with my right, bringing it down with as much force as I could.
There’s a peculiar thing that runs through your mind, or at least some people’s minds, when they’re about to deliberately break something. It’s a moment’s hesitation, dating back to childhood. Once you’ve broken this, you won’t be able to fix it. It’s going to be loud. And you might get in trouble.
Bung.
As it turned out, the window was made of sterner stuff than I’d thought. I almost lost my balance, hugging up against the bars as the ladder wobbled slightly before Neville stopped it. Just a second later, my ears popped as the dog we’d not-heard earlier threw itself against the window. My heart skipped a beat as I flinched back, almost letting go of the bars before I realised if I couldn’t smash the window with a metal bar, a dog wasn’t going to bite through it.
I couldn’t see it through the drawn curtains, but a beige coloured lump banged up against the glass again, my hearing fading in and out of white noise as it silently snarled and howled at me.
‘Window’s like, toughened glass or something.’ I said down to Neville, ‘We got anything heavier than this?’
‘Could shoot it out?’ he suggested.
Laurel took the hammer out of her belt-loop, and offered it up to me. ‘Save the gunshots for a last resort.’
I threw the metal bar away, where it clattered to the cracked concrete, and accepted the hammer from Laurel. It had a bit more heft to it than the bar did. I noticed Damian concealing the bars and bolts in the overgrown fountain, hiding the evidence in case those guys in the SUV came back and saw something amiss.
Again, I pushed through the urge to hesitate, swinging the blunt head hard against the glass. A tiny spiderweb of cracks spread out about for a foot on the window.
‘Give it beans, you big girl!’ Laurel encouraged, almost laughing.
I chuckled, swinging the hammer again, three more times. With the last swing it cracked through the window, expanding the crackling web across the whole pane. When I pulled the hammer back out, it took a big sliver of the glass with it, and the rest of the window began to collapse, falling like sharp snow onto the pavement in front of the shop. I looked down to see Neville still bracing the ladder with his feet, but he’d thought ahead, had already put his hood up to avoid the falling glass.
The rapid rustle and crack of moving fabric snapped my attention back to the window, where the outline of a gaping maw, complete with teeth, was straining up against the curtains. Canine spittle marked the cheap fabric. Thrashing is head this way and that, snapping its jaws shut, it was actually managing to tear through the thin material, reducing it to sodden rags as it tried to get at its next meal.
*
Twenty Two
Reflex took over, and I lashed out with the hammer, cracking the dog right on the nose. There’d have been a howl or a whimper if it were a normal dog, but all I heard was a thump as it fell to the floor on the other side of the window.
I hooked the hammer around one of the bars and took out my gun, cocking the hammer back and taking a deep breath before using my other hand to lift up the curtain.
The room beyond was sparse, but clearly lived in. Bland green wallpaper, inoffensive worn red carpeting, the bed was unmade and clothes were spilling out of a wardrobe that had probably been put together out of a flat-pack. A desk with a home-computer sat across from the bed, the only thing that stopped the bedroom from looking like a cheap hotel room.
That and the shining-eyed Rottweiler struggling to get to its feet. Blood dripped from its muzzle where it was missing a tooth. I aimed, fired, and watched the dog collapse to the carpet, a pool of blood rapidly spreading from the hole in its chest, giving the faded carpet back its colour. The smell of gunsmoke tickled my nostrils, but underneath it was the unmistakable scent of the dog’s, you know, business, which it must have been doing somewhere in the room.
‘Is it dead?’ Laurel asked.
‘Yeah.’ I said, taking the hammer and passing it back down to her. ‘How loud was the shot?’
‘Muffled,’ Neville replied, ‘still loud, but probably enough time, distance and drapes between those guys in the SUV and us.’
‘Still,’ Laurel hummed, ‘I’m going to head over to the corner, keep an eye out.’
‘I’ll open the door from the inside, give me two minutes.’
I used the barrel of my gun to clear the glass from the top and bottom of the window, before stowing it away and grabbing a hold of the bars on either side of the gap. I started climbing through the window, caught my leg on the sill, and fell forward onto the bed.
‘Smooth.’ I said, getting to my feet and brushing off the dog hair.
Revolver back out, I stepped out of the pungent bedroom onto a landing with two other doors and a set of stairs leading down to the right. The door to the left was open, looking into a tiny bathroom with an absolutely foul looking shower, hadn’t been cleaned in years. The door to the right was closed, but there were no doggy-claw marks on the door, so I didn’t think anyone would be hiding out in there.
Carefully, I turned the handle and pushed the door open, taking a step back and aiming my gun. Nothing moved in the room beyond, a living room with a tiny kitchenette shoved in the back corner. I walked inside, weapon still ready, aiming it around the room like an enthusiastic rookie on a police TV show. The pawnshop owner, or maybe that kid he’d had minding the store, they could be around here somewhere.
Two mismatched sofas faced a mammoth widescreen – one sofa ancient, in orange and brown stripes, the other modern, all leather. Next to the TV were three games consoles, two of them just different models of the same, and just like everything else in the room – from the odd bookshelves to the mismatched weightlifting bars – they had little white tags on them, marking them for resale.
‘Looks like he lives with whatever his customers sell him.’ I thought to myself, looking closer at the books and seeing an entire shelf devoted to the same tacky bestseller from a few years back. The white tags did not read for a lot of shillings.
I gave the place a quick once-over for weapons, pulling out the drawers of a mahogany desk and lifting up the shutter on an antique bureau, not finding anything bigger than a letter opener. Nothing in the kitchen either – like Anita had said, it was all knives and screwdrivers, nothing major. Unless he’d already sold them on, I figured the guns would all be downstairs.
So I left the living-kitchen-come-storeroom and took to the stairs. There was door at the bottom, meant to separate the residential from the commercial, but it was left open. I emerged into the shop proper, a fairly large room with waist-high display cases along the walls, various stands and shelves arranged in the middle, and a glass-topped counter to the right of the stairs.
I didn’t register any of the items on display, was just checking for dange
r first. That’s when I saw a cupboard just behind the counter, built under the stairs. There were scratches on the door. Claw marks from the ghost dog. Someone might have been alive in that cupboard.
Can you imagine it? Trapped in a cupboard under the stairs, sitting for hours or days in the dark, with no toilet, no food and no water? As I got closer, I caught it, the smell coming out of the cupboard was foul, and so I figured I’d help the poor guy out. Least I could do after I’d smashed his bedroom window in.
Amateur hour, top to bottom.
‘Hey!’ I called out, opening the cupboard door, ‘It’s safe now, the-shit!’
A rancid figure lurched out of the dark, baring broken bloodied teeth in an animal gesture of hunger. The store owner. I tried to block its reaching hands with mine, pushing them out of the way and trying to shove it back into the cupboard.
But I failed, shoved it back into the side of the doorframe, dropping my gun in the process. It lurched forwards again, mouth hanging open, grabbing onto my shoulders and pushing me back into the counter. A shock of fear shot through my mind and I saw myself being pinned down to the counter while the zombie ripped my throat out. It pushed me further over the counter, bending my back and leaning in to bite.
Terrified adrenaline kicked in once more. I shoved the zombie’s shoulders with all my strength, throwing it to the side, but it gripped so tightly onto my jacket that I had to roll with it. I ended up on top, pinning it to the counter now, our positions reversed. I grabbed the front of its shirt and tried to slam its head against the glass.
It was too strong. They aren’t limited by muscle pains or human endurance. It’s like they use the full muscle power of their body, all the time. It started to pull me closer, while I struggled to push away, keeping my hands pressing down on its collar bone, away from its mouth.
‘Fuck you!’ I yelled, suddenly reversing tactics, pulling the thing up instead of pushing against it.
That gave it what it wanted and then some, letting its own strength carry it past me and into the side-on position of the open cupboard door, where the impact of the blow shook its grip loose of my jacket.