“The crazy cat lady from down the hall?”
“If that’s who that was, yeah.”
“She got bit by one of those things. I stabbed it in the head and it seemed to die well enough from that.”
“Yeah. We figured that too. Kill the brain and the rest will follow.”
“The bite wasn’t too bad, but it acts like some kind of poison. She was dead within an hour. Wasn’t even bleeding very much.”
“Zombies,” Barcomb said. “All those movies had to come from something. I guess maybe one of those Hollywood fucks, somewhere down the line, must’ve known what he was talking about.”
“Yeah. She died and turned really quick.”
“But, Ash, what were you doing when we got here? What were you doing with her head?”
“It was an experiment. I didn’t kill her. I took her in when I saw her being attacked when I went for supplies. I brought her in, thought she’d be OK, but she wasn’t. After she turned, I disabled her legs and then just cut off her head. It took me a couple hours to work up to doing that, so don’t think I’ve gone all psycho or anything.”
“What was the experiment for?”
A tear rolled down Ash’s cheek. She wiped it away.
“Nothing,” she said. “I was just being a freak.”
Barcomb didn’t believe her. There was something to it.
“You’re not gonna fuckin’ believe this, bro,” Haws said. He laughed.
“Where’s Buddy at?”
“Home turf for you,” Haws said. “They took it back to the police station, of all places.”
“The police station?” Barcomb said. “What the fuck?”
“You think they’ve taken it over?” Haws said.
“Could be. The entire force would be out on the street, I reckon, and they’ve got a cop running their little group. If he had clearance to get in, he could get the others in, no problem.” Barcomb stood up. “It’s a smart move. It’s one of the most secure buildings in the city. It’s got a canteen, a nurse’s station stacked with medical supplies, and the second biggest stock of guns around, after yours, Haws. Even got a morgue to store people in if they lose someone, or if they just want to keep their beer cold.”
“You reckon we can get in there and ruin their day without being noticed?” Haws said.
“Maybe,” Barcomb said. He looked at Ash.
“They’re in the police station?” she asked Haws. “Definitely? They’ve stayed there? What makes you so sure they haven’t just stopped for a minute?”
“The Humvee is in the police garage. The little blue dot on the screen hasn’t moved. The stats are telling me they pretty much went straight there after they fucked us off. They’re staying. They might move on in the morning, but they’re there for the night at the very least.”
“We got three hours until sunrise,” Barcomb said. “We’re gonna have to get moving.”
Ash fidgeted with her fingers, staring at them, thinking.
“Ash, you got a car around here?” Barcomb said.
“My neighbor has a pick-up. It’s nice. He’s on vacation, too, so his apartment is empty. You can bust in and grab the keys. It’s parked in the small parking lot across the street.”
“What is it?” Haws asked.
“It’s a black Ford, brand new.”
Haws nodded. “I've seen the advertisements. That can explode a few zombies along the way if I get bored.”
Barcomb picked up his rifle and checked the ammo in his glock.
Haws slammed the laptop lid closed. He checked his Desert Eagle out. Full clip.
Ash stood up. She walked over to the coffee table and grabbed her Taurus Judge. She took a box of shells down from off a bookshelf and started reloading. Barcomb watched her. She looked good in a red checked shirt and torn jeans. She tied the shirt up at the stomach to stop it flapping around everywhere, exposing her mid-riff. She slipped a hair tie off her wrist and put her long black hair into a ponytail.
“I’m coming with you,” Ash said. “If they’re in the police station, I want in.”
“Why?” Barcomb asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”
Barcomb walked over to her. “You ready for this? This shit is gonna get violent.”
“I want it,” she said. “I need to go. I’ve got something I have to do.”
Barcomb looked at the pool of blood on the coffee table and it struck him what she’d been doing. How could he not have seen it? How could he be so blind?
“Fuck,” he said.
Ash looked at him. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Look, Ash,” he began, “I’m sure it’s not like-”
“I did the experiment,” she interrupted.
Barcomb nodded.
“I cut off that crazy cat lady’s head and she still kept on ticking. She was still in pain.”
“That doesn’t mean-”
“It does mean that, Darren. It really does. Don’t sugarcoat this shit for me.”
Darren put a hand on her shoulder.
Ash looked up at him. Her voice wavered as she spoke: “My husband’s head is in the morgue in a box,” she said. “In the basement of that building, his head is probably screaming in the dark right as we speak. Jimmy’s head is awake and one of them. If we don’t do something, he’s gonna stay that way. I can’t live with that.”
“You’re right,” Barcomb said.
“I have to do this,” Ash said. “I have to finish him off. If I don’t, I know he’ll be like that forever. These things never just die by themselves. He’s gonna suffer and suffer. Maybe there’s nothing left of him in there, nothing of his personality, but I can picture him now and I want to be sure. He would do the same for me.”
“It’s gonna be a Hell of a fight,” Barcomb said.
Ash wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Everything’s a Hell of a fight now.”
Barcomb petted her hair. “We’ll put Jimmy out of his misery, right after we put those other motherfuckers into theirs.”
“We don’t got time for this namby- pamby shit,” Haws said, walking past and grabbing his sledgehammer. He smiled. “Let’s go fuckin’ get some.”
Chapter 9: The Station
Ash knocked on her neighbor’s door and waited a moment, just to be on the safe side. Haws kicked in the door in one go and he, Barcomb and Ash entered, guns drawn. The layout of the apartment was mirrored to Ash’s, but the decor was totally different, much more modern. There were a lot of shiny white surfaces. Barcomb hated it immediately. It looked like a hospital waiting room.
“The keys should be around here somewhere,” Ash said.
“I’ll see if he’s got anything else we can find,” Haws said, walking into the lounge.
Barcomb and Ash searched all the standard places in the hallway where people leave their keys. There was no sign.
“Sure he didn’t take it with him?”
Ash nodded: “The keys are here somewhere.”
Haws strolled from the lounge to the bedroom. He’d picked up a bag of potato chips along the way somewhere and was munching them down five at a time.
A noise came from the bedroom. Something like a “Huh.”
Barcomb took a look.
“Oh, shit,” Barcomb said.
Several chains hung from the ceiling. A rack on the wall held whips, sex toys were stacked in clear plastic boxes against the wall. Ash walked in and put her hand over her mouth.
“OK then,” she said.
“So, are you big buddies with this neighbor of yours?” Haws said, raising an eyebrow.
Barcomb picked up a leather mask in the shape of a pig’s face.
“This,” Ash said, “this is some weird shit. You think there are zombies in the Caribbean? I’m not sure I want this fuckin’ guy to come back and live next to me.” She pointed at Barcomb’s leather pig mask. “That’s hot, though.”
Barcomb put it on and looked at Haws.
Haws stared at him. “Dude,” he said.
“How do I look?”
“I spent all night murdering the re-animated dead,” Haws said. “I nearly got myself killed a few times out there, man. But this shit? This is the most scared I’ve been all night.”
Barcomb laughed and took off the mask. He looked at it, said, “No shit,” and threw it aside.
Ash walked out the room. “I’m gonna see if he’s got any fluids around here that aren’t lubricants. I need a drink.”
Haws started unclipping the chains from the ceiling.
“What you doing, man?” Barcomb said.
“Chains, dude. You never know.” Haws threw them over his shoulder.
“You’re a thrifty motherfucker, let me tell you.”
“Keys!” came the shout from the kitchen.
*
The street was clear but for a few screamers sprinting by, presumably chasing after some noise or other they heard ten minutes ago. It hadn’t escaped Barcomb’s notice how dumb these zombies were. One of the screamers kept falling over. It had a big bite in its leg, exposed by the short shorts the woman the zombie used to be was wearing. She must’ve been out for a jog, Barcomb thought, because she still had big, chunky headphones around her neck.
The parking lot was almost pitch black. Ash took out her cell phone to use the screen to light their way through the cars.
“You getting any service on that?” Barcomb asked quietly.
“Nothing. Went down an hour ago and that was it. Something must’ve taken out the towers,” Ash said.
“That or the government want us all to shut up and stop talking to each other,” Haws said.
“I was wondering when you were gonna start developing some sort of weird paranoia about this whole thing,” Barcomb said.
Haws laughed.
“Well, the British have claimed responsibility, those Limey fucks,” Barcomb said, “so don’t think about it too much. Have you heard anything much, Ash?”
She stopped beside a car, crouched down and shook her head. They all crouched and waited as a zombie with half its face burned off walked past as fast as its rotten legs would carry it, which wasn’t very fast at all.
Ash whispered: “I saw some of it play out on TV. I was watching the Devils-Rangers game and they kept cutting away to talk about riots in New York City. Eventually the crowd started to thin out because people were getting home to check on their friends in the city and that kind of thing - at least that’s what the announcers were saying.”
“Where’s this happening?” Barcomb asked.
“Everywhere,” she said. “No explanation. No theories beyond extremely unlikely scientific shit and hysterical religious crap. They think it’s part of some British experiment gone wrong, but their government’s not talking much. Half of them are dead anyway, I think.”
“No real explanation means there’ll be no real cure,” Barcomb said.
“Shooting them in the head is a cure,” Haws said.
The burnt zombie had gone, so they got up and moved. Ash pointed to the back corner of the lot. “There,” she said.
A bright red Ford F-150 sat alone. It looked clear, so Barcomb, Haws and Ash walked over, keeping an eye on the buildings towering above. Shadows shifted in the windows, frantic, running, thrashing. Every apartment building was its own separate Hell with its demons, its tortured souls, its flames. Barcomb saw a woman banging on the inside glass of a window in the distance. She was just a near-faceless shape. The faceless shape banged on the glass. Her Hell was coming to an end. Another shape came up behind her. The window turned black with sprayed blood. Barcomb looked away.
Ash clicked the keys and the car lit up. Haws opened the driver’s door. “Give me the keys,” Haws said.
She tossed the keys to him. Barcomb caught them midair.
“Get in the back, Haws,” Barcomb said.
“Alright, bro. Do me like that,” he said, grinning, “but make it right.”
He took the Motorhead CD out of his back pocket and shoved it in Barcomb’s hand. Ash rolled her eyes.
*
Elizabeth Police Department was housed in a turn-of-the-century townhouse, five stories tall with a clock tower, an underground garage and a front yard and an impound full of burning cars and half-eaten corpses. Barcomb slowed the pick-up down to a crawl. Haws rolled down a window and stuck his head out to get a closer look.
“Stop the car,” he said.
Barcomb stopped and turned off the headlights.
“Where they gonna be at?” Haws said.
“The Humvee will be in the garage, man,” Barcomb said. “Where they’ll be, I don’t have a clue.”
“What’s the best way in?”
“It’s a police station. There’s no good way in. How much firepower we got?”
Haws held up his Desert Eagle. Ash held up her Taurus Judge. Barcomb had a glock and an AR-15.
“I got one and a half magazines for the AR-15,” Barcomb said, “and a couple for the glock.”
“I got about ten more cartridges,” Ash said.
“Two clips,” Haws said, “and the sledgehammer. That’s it, but that’s enough.”
“No,” Barcomb said. “It’s not. They don’t have many guys, but they got the station.”
“Who knows how many more dudes inside,” Haws said.
They sat there a moment, watching the building. The windows were all barred. The garage door was shuttered close. They could see no movement and only a few lights were visible on the top floor. A city bus had crashed through the fence around the rear lock up, where all the impounded cars were kept, but the area was swarming with the undead. It looked like people had flocked to the police station when the trouble started, but there was no help left to give. All they'd done was put themselves in one place for the zombies, a movable buffet. There was a lot of ice hockey fans too. The stadium wasn't far. The plane crash on the overpass must've brought a lot of the zombies over looking for barbecue. A handful of the zombies were fighting with one another, ripping organs out of their opponents and chomping on them. It was a mess, a mess without end because it was a fight none of them would ever win against themselves.
It was dark out, but the street lights outside the station were still going. Barcomb had parked the car in a dark spot across the road were the lights had gone out, but they couldn't get to the station without being in the light or without having to slaughter two dozen zombies.
"Top floor is probably the best bet for where they're holed up, given that's where the lights are on, but it's a big building," Barcomb said. "That might not mean shit. Getting in is the problem. We can't just ram the car in there."
"I can kill the shit out of some zombies," Haws said, "but that's gonna get noisy."
"Either of you guys got a knife?" Ash said. "I got an idea."
*
Ash jammed the knife under the zombie's chin. The point peeked out of the top of its balding head. It was a sixty-something man with a creepy moustache. Haws grabbed it under the arms and dragged it into the back of the pick-up.
"You sure about this?" Haws said.
"What's the plan here?" Barcomb said.
"OK," Ash said, shoving the knife in the zombie's stomach and slicing it open. "We can't get through the front door. We gotta go through the zombies."
"What, you trying to make us smell like zombies or some shit?" Haws said. "They do fuckin' stink. Maybe that's not a bad idea."
"Don't be a dumbass," Ash said. "Zombies are dead. Most of them are real fuckin' dead. They don't even have noses left on their faces, they're so rotten."
"How do they smell?" Barcomb said.
"Fuckin' terrible!" Haws laughed. He wiped some of the zombie’s blood on his face.
"Children," Ash said. "I'm dealing with children."
Barcomb apologized and said, "I guess the smell thing is a dumb idea anyway. I mean, we could make ourselves smell like them or whatever, but we don't know that that's how they sense people. Mo
st of them sense people like anyone alive. And, like you say, Ash, some of them don't even have a nose to smell with any more. Regardless," Barcomb said, "these fuckers attack each other as much as they attack the living. They just want to eat. They prefer warm meat, but if there's nothing about, they'll start on anything."
"We disguise ourselves in case any of those assholes are watching from the station," Ash said.
"And we quietly kill the ones who pay attention to use as we go," Barcomb said. "It's not great, but it's better than sitting here with our thumbs up our asses while they do God only knows what to Munday and the others."
Barcomb took a scoop of blood from the zombie's stomach and smeared it on his face. He took off his black tactical vest and stole the zombie's floral print shirt.
Ash laughed.
"Really brings out my eyes, right?" Barcomb said.
*
Barcomb, Haws and Ash didn't make the most convincing zombies - they had simply tore up their clothes and covered themselves in blood - but Barcomb hoped it would be enough to fool anyone just glancing out the window. He hated that they had to be doing this. Every extra minute in the city was another minute of tempting fate. He knew the smart move was to leave, but he couldn’t let Munday be taken and he genuinely thought Dutroux was telling them the truth about Torrento's little fortress in the hills. Duke was just some dumb college kid, but that didn't mean he deserved to die. And those fuckers, whoever they were - whoever that cop was - they looked like bad news. Barcomb had learned pretty fast in Elizabeth to read people. In the police force, you had to; you were a walking target if you didn't. You'd end up like Reyes, confused, bleeding out, and then dead.
Ash was pretending to limp across the street. Barcomb would’ve laughed at her hammy acting if it wasn’t for the fact that they were about to walk through a horde of bloodthirsty re-animated corpses. Haws carried his sledgehammer in one hand, dangling it down low to hide it behind the crowd. In his other hand he held a shard of glass. Barcomb had a knife and his AR-15 was strapped to his back under his shirt. Ash had a knife too, and her Taurus was tucked into her jeans which were now ripped in enough places for Barcomb to get somewhat distracted as she ambled in front with her ridiculous zombie impression.
There were so many unknowns heading into this place. Barcomb was trying to manage everything in his head. He had no idea how many motherfuckers were inside. He had no idea how many guns they had. He had no idea if the zombies had got in. Shit, Barcomb thought. I don’t even know if Munday, Dutroux and Duke are still alive.
Officer Barcomb vs. The Undead Page 8