Jon was standing in front of the window. He raised his head, moaned, and came at me, the tattered remains of his chest flapping as he ran.
He moved quickly, but I had enough time to bring the knife up and out in front of me. I drove it into his shoulder. He twisted, clawing at my face. I ducked back, pulled the knife free and then struck again. The blade sank into his chest. I leaned into him, forcing him back across the room.
We reached the window. I pulled the knife free and slashed at his already torn throat. The weapon connected with bone and caught. I kicked his knee. It bent inward, and Jon fell back. When I wrenched the blade out, he toppled through the window.
His fingers brushed my shoulder and caught hold of my jacket, dragging me after him. I grabbed the window frame. Broken glass cut into my hand. Jon’s weight carried me forward until I was hanging halfway out the window. Rain splashed against my face. Wind plucked at me.
Letting out a scream of desperation, I pulled myself back into the apartment. Jon tightened his grip. He snapped at my arm. I thrust the knife into the meat of his bicep. Thick black blood poured from the wound, but Jon refused to let go. He moaned and twisted his head to get at me. Hot air washed across my hand, and I pulled it away. His teeth snapped down where I’d been just moments before.
Jon reached out and grabbed my throat, cutting off my breath. I slashed at his wrist with the knife. His nails raked across my skin, but his hand came loose. I slashed the knife across his cheek, opening up a deep gash and unleashing a stream of viscous blood. Jon let out an angry growl and lunged at me again. I leaned back out of his reach and swept the knife upward. It pierced his jaw, sinking halfway to the hilt and cutting off his guttural moans.
My grip on the edge of the window slipped. I yelled and ripped the knife free. Jon came at me again. I rammed the blade into his open mouth, aiming for the rancid chunk of meat that had once been his tongue. His grip finally loosened and he fell, tumbling out of sight.
I wavered for a second, then managed to shift my weight backward, staggering away from the window until my legs caught the sofa. I let myself fall back and sat there, my heart racing.
I’d been stupid. The injury on Jon’s arm had been a bite. I’d missed it, and it had almost cost me my life. The smart thing to have done would be to destroy his brain as soon as the shadow had finished its work. I let out a slow breath for a count of four. I was better than this. I’d have to be if I wanted to survive.
My toolkit was still on the coffee table. I retrieved it and clipped the scalpel the shadow had used on Jon back into place. I brushed my fingertips over the steel handles and the shadow surged within me. I closed the case, latched it, and forced it into the inside pocket of the leather jacket. It was a tight fit, but at least it wouldn’t fall out.
The dull thump of an explosion rolled across the city. The lights in the apartment dimmed for a few seconds. I willed my heart to slow, and counted. At thirty-two, I grabbed the canvas bag and left Cali’s apartment. The lights in the corridor flickered. I hesitated, then decided to take the emergency exit rather than risk getting trapped in the elevator.
By the time I reached the ground floor, my legs were burning and I was drenched in sweat, but I had a plan. I jogged out onto the street and turned right, heading toward the bridge.
Chapter 46
Things Fall Apart
Thanks to Jon, Cali had gotten her wish. Dozens of people had taken to the streets, and every one of them was running for their lives. Some were injured—bleeding from cuts or supporting broken arms. Others were unhurt. All of them were terrified.
I reached an intersection where two cars had collided. One of the drivers had been thrown through the windshield and lay on the hood, her face a shredded mass of torn flesh and blood. Another woman wandered along the road nearby, tears streaming down her face, a dazed look in her eyes.
I skirted around the wreck and continued down the block. At the next junction, I turned right and almost collided with a group of men in work camp overalls running in the other direction.
One of them grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. He screamed in my face. “Run!” Then he was gone.
The source of their terror was a few feet down the road. A small swarm of zombies was loping up the road in my direction. They were closing fast, but before I could react, a car flew out of a side street and plowed into them.
Bodies flew through the air. The vehicle skidded, mounted the curb, and crashed into a store window. One of the zombies pushed themselves back to their feet and lumbered toward the car, the creature’s broken leg trailing behind it.
The bridge was visible in the distance, but there were more zombies in my way. Some wandered aimlessly; the rest were walking purposefully in my direction.
A figure appeared in the doorway of a store. Shots rang out and one of the zombies fell. A couple of the zombies turned toward the noise, but the rest continued inexorably onward. Even with other people thinning the herd, there were too many of them.
I backtracked until I reached a side street. It was narrow and dark, but it would take me around the dead. I tightened my grip on the kitchen knife and ran quickly, trying to make as little noise as possible. My heart rate increased with every step I took—either from the exertion or fear, I couldn’t tell which.
A pair of battered dumpsters stood against the wall about halfway down the street. I stayed left, as far away as I could get, and kept my gaze focused on them. I was almost past when my feet tangled in something. I went sprawling to the ground. Panicking, I scrambled back to my feet. I’d tripped over a bundle of rags. I could smell the rancid odor of death. A tiny hand poked from the bundle; the flesh covering it was ashen. I didn’t wait to see if the thing was alive.
The side street spat me out near an overpass. I ran beneath it, keeping to the shadows. There were fewer people here, but they were just as afraid. They kept their distance from me, watching me fearfully as I ran by.
The work camp lay between me and the bridge. Most of the floodlights were out, but figures moved about inside. I could tell they were dead before I got close enough to see them properly—their movements were irregular, unnatural. A few more bodies lay scattered around the camp. They were either permanently dead or hadn’t risen yet.
I ran along the chain-link fence beside the camp, keeping one eye on the zombies and the other on the sidewalk to make sure I didn’t run into anyone else—living or dead. There were only a handful of zombies, but a dull droning reverberated off the buildings around me. The sound was too loud for so few zombies, and when I reached the camp’s entrance, I saw why.
A dense mass of the dead was pressed up against the camp’s gates. Most wore the blue overalls of Faraday’s workers, but there was a scattering of men in black uniforms and body armor, too. The crowd’s clothes were smeared with blood and gore, and the air was thick with the stench of death.
Metal creaked and groaned as the zombies pressed against the gate. Several had fallen and had been trampled. They were pinned to the ground, still clawing at the fence in an effort to escape. To get to the bodies.
I counted fifteen of them, mostly men in blue overalls. They’d been shot and their corpses left scattered across the street outside the camp. Whoever had done the killing had taken the time to put a single bullet into each of their skulls.
The crush of zombies at the gate saw me. The droning increased in volume. The chain-link fence made a dangerous grinding sound. My eyes were drawn to a familiar face. Jefferson was at the front of the crowd, his face pressed against the wire, his throat a torn mass of exposed muscle. I briefly wondered what had happened to Gretchen and Danielle, then the thought was gone, swallowed up by the shadow.
I ran toward the bridge.
As though sensing the escape of fresh prey, the zombies redoubled their efforts to get through the gate. One of the supports holding up the fence collapsed. Compromised, the rest of the fence quickly fell. The zombies streamed through the gap. I dodged around the bodies
on the street and hoped they’d provide enough of a distraction to stop the zombies coming after me or at least delay them.
The bridge was a block away. My lungs were aching, and the bag on my shoulder was threatening to slice through my arm, but I kept running until I reached the base of the bridge. Gunfire came from above—the pop, pop, pop of a rifle. There were voices, too. Someone was shouting instructions, ordering people to move back.
The path up to the bridge was along a ramp. It spiraled upward, eventually turning into a sidewalk that ran along the edge of the bridge. I jogged up the slope and ended up fifty feet or so behind the barrier made of containers that we’d seen when we were out on the water killing zombies. Four young soldiers stood behind it. Three of them had rifles and were taking shots toward a wave of zombies who were walking steadily toward them across the bridge. There weren’t a lot of zombies—seven that I could see plus twice that lying dead on the ground.
A few more soldiers stood a little way off from the barrier. There were civilians, too—a handful of clusters of them off to my right. They were talking with another soldier who was gesticulating and nodding, all the while guiding them back down the road.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
It was a middle-aged man in a soldier’s uniform. He clambered over the barrier between the sidewalk and the road, and walked toward me. He was carrying an automatic rifle, but it was pointed at the ground.
I put on a nervous look and glanced behind me. “There’s been an outbreak, at the work camp, and the fence has come down.”
The soldier’s forehead creased in a frown. “You sure?”
I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “There’s at least forty zombies heading this way.”
The soldier swore, then unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt. He thumbed the talk button. “This is Fletcher. We’ve got reports of an outbreak at the Cambie work camp.”
After a brief pause, static crackled from the radio followed by a man’s voice. “Roger that. Any idea how many?”
“Forty, could be more.”
Another pause, then the static voice said, “We’re stretched pretty thin here. Does Morris know?”
Fletcher winced. “I’ll give her the good news.”
“We’ll get support to you as soon as we can.”
“Yes, sir.” Fletcher nodded to me. “Thanks for the heads up, but you’re going to have to go back into the city.” He pointed down the road, toward the other civilians. “We have everything under control.” Something about the tone of his voice suggested he didn’t quite believe his own words.
The trickle of zombies on the bridge was quickly turning into a steady stream. The gunfire from the barrier became more rapid. The shots were less controlled, too. The zombies were still falling, but at least half the bullets were going wide. The far end of the bridge was draped in shadows, but the outlines of dozens of zombies making their way up the slope were clearly visible.
One of the soldiers put his rifle down and switched to a handgun. He let off four shots at a zombie who’d almost reached the barrier. The zombie twisted left. The soldier fired again, and the back of the thing’s head exploded.
Fletcher rubbed his forehead. “Ah, crap. Look, just go, okay. You don’t want to be here anyway.”
Without waiting for my response, he took off, heading back toward the barrier.
One of the soldiers near the civilians, an older woman, jogged up to the barricade. She raised a walkie-talkie to her mouth. A few seconds later, she shouted, “Code seven, people. Fall back. Code seven.”
The effect was instantaneous.
Three of the soldiers standing at the barricade stopped firing. They turned and ran along the bridge in my direction. The one remaining soldier kept firing until the woman grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away. Together, they ran toward the civilians.
A couple of zombies had reached the barrier. They clawed at the containers, trying to reach the food that lay so tantalizingly close. One of them managed to hook its fingers over the far side and began hauling itself up.
The handful of civilians who had been standing around finally started listening to the soldiers’ instructions and retreated toward the city. I followed their lead.
Ahead lay another, less substantial barricade. This one was built from oil drums. Two wooden huts stood behind it. An armored truck, the type used to transport cash to and from banks, was parked a few feet farther down the road. A spotter stood on top, looking through a pair of binoculars.
The soldiers from the bridge jumped over the barrier and took up position behind it. I caught up with the civilians as they made their way through a narrow gap where one of the oil drums had been pulled aside. Panicked chatter filled the air as the crowd shouted at the soldiers, demanding answers to impossible questions about the zombie threat.
The woman was last over the barricade. As soon as her feet touched the ground beyond the oil drums, she shouted, “Everybody down!”
Soldiers and civilians alike threw themselves to the ground.
A few seconds later, a solid thump shook the ground. A cloud of dust and smoke erupted from the middle of the bridge, accompanied by the sound of concrete shattering. Another explosion shook the ground. Then another. Metal screeched and something heavy slammed into the water. Dust swept over us, cutting visibility. Coughing, I covered my mouth with my hand and squeezed my eyes shut. Debris bounced off my back and landed in my hair. Something hard clanged into the oil drums nearby.
“Zees!”
The shout had come from the spotter on top of the truck. He was pointing back up the bridge. The crackle of automatic rifles cut through the night.
I peered over the oil drum. Half a dozen zombies had made it over the barricade. They lurched unsteadily toward us, through the dusty air. Behind them, the road continued for a few yards then ended in a ragged line of broken concrete. One of the storage containers from the barricade was balanced at the edge of what remained of the bridge, but the rest were gone.
Chapter 47
Plan B
The last zombie collapsed to the ground and the gunfire stopped. The few civilians who hadn’t fled at the zombies’ approach milled around aimlessly. A couple tried to accost the woman who’d been giving orders, but she waved them away and headed to the nearest hut.
One of the soldiers looked at me and let out a low whistle. “That was close.”
I nodded, but I was trying to work out how to get out of the city. There were two more bridges a few blocks away, but if these zombies were the mythical giant swarm Eduardo had talked about, the military might be about to blow up all the bridges.
A shot rang out behind me and I flinched. Someone screamed. A woman stumbled backward into view from behind the security van with a zombie clamped onto her neck. One of the soldiers ran forward, raised a pistol and fired three shots into the zombie. The last one tore off the back of the thing’s head.
The woman pushed the zombie off her and fell to her knees. She reached out to the soldier, pleading. Blood pulsed from the wound in her throat. The soldier backed away, shaking his head. More shouts pulled my attention away from the dying woman. Two more zombies in work group overalls had appeared. The soldier turned and ran.
The door of one of the huts burst open. The woman leading the soldiers ran out. “Fall back!”
A couple of the soldiers fired off shots at the approaching zombies, the rest turned and ran. We charged down the slip road and onto a wide street that ran south through the city. I risked a glance over my shoulder. A swarm of twenty or thirty zombies was advancing down the road—the dead from the work camp. The soldiers facing them down were hitting their targets, and a couple of the zombies fell, but most of the shots hit chests and shoulders and did nothing to slow the advance of the dead.
I peeled off from the crowd, cutting beneath an overpass and leaving most of the soldiers behind. Cali had been right, the center could not hold and the city was falling. I had to find a way out. I c
ut across a patch of grass and onto the seawall, a path that ran alongside the water, encircling the downtown core. The remains of the bridge came into view.
The explosions had shattered all three of the supports. They’d collapsed into the water, bringing most of the bridge with them. Ragged lumps of concrete jutted from the water, along with one of the containers from the barricade. A few bodies floated in the water—zombies who had been caught in the blast or killed by the fall.
The far side of the bridge had stayed more or less intact, but it had collapsed and made a kind of ramp down to the water. Dozens of zombies swarmed down it. A few stopped at the water’s edge, but most continued on, sinking beneath the water.
Something moved on my side of the inlet. One of the zombies had made it across and was hauling itself onto dry land. He clambered over the remains of the western end of the bridge and was gone. Two more zombies appeared close behind him.
Leaving the bridge behind, I turned and jogged along the path. Eventually, it would lead me to the next bridge, but my goal was much closer—the marina was just up ahead.
Two walkways led down to the marina docks. I took the first, my boots pounding on the metal. I ran past the first row of boats. They were too small. I needed something that was big enough to cope with the open sea, but not so big that I’d need a crew.
I reached a split in the dock and slid to a halt. A fireball erupted at the far end of the marina. I ducked, pulling away from the blast. Thick black smoke billowed into the air. The smell of burning metal and plastic washed over me.
Bony fingers latched onto my ankle. I screamed and swept the kitchen knife down at the zombie clinging to the side of the dock. The blade sliced through her forearm, but she didn’t let go. I slammed the heel of my boot down onto her wrist. Bone cracked. The fingers loosened, and I pulled my leg free.
Serial Killer Z: Shadows Page 24