Zombiemandias (Book 2): In the Year of Our Death

by David J. Lovato

  “There’s more!” Jeremy said. An emaciated, nude woman shambled down the alley toward them. The three ran faster down the street.

  “They can’t see the fire from down here!” Annie said. “We should try some back streets!”

  “I don’t know them!” Will replied. He felt stupid. “I only looked at the quickest way!”

  “Run faster!” Jeremy said. A zombie dove for him, he sidestepped it, and it hit the pavement. Will hopped over it and kept running.

  They ran until the street stopped, then turned right. Ahead were even more zombies. Annie lit and threw a Molotov toward the crowd. With the creatures distracted, the teens cut through an alley leading to a parallel street with fewer zombies on it. Moans and cries rattled off the brick walls and garbage cans long knocked over and emptied of their contents. Something made a loud pop! somewhere, and then Will hit the ground chin-first. Pain shot through his head, he tasted blood, his vision went black. When he could see clearly again, he realized he was holding a zombie above him. One must’ve been sitting behind a dumpster and grabbed his feet as he ran past.

  “Help!” Will screamed, sending flecks of blood onto the pavement. He looked up the alley and saw Annie and Jeremy turning back for him. The zombie clawed and scratched, and another was rushing down the alley toward him. Will closed his eyes and prepared for the worst when another loud pop! rang through the alley, and the weight he was holding went limp.

  Will shoved the zombie off of him, and then someone was yanking him to his feet. The person running down the alley hadn’t been a zombie after all, but a young man with a gun.

  “Get up!”

  “I am!” Will said. The guy let him go, and he almost fell down again.

  “You bit, kid?”

  “No, I hit my head.”

  “Well fucking go!”

  The boy shoved him toward his friends, who caught him and dragged him until he was facing the right way and running. Now and then another gunshot rang out.

  “This way!”

  They followed the stranger through an alley. Dumpsters had been stacked to form a wall two dumpsters high except for a spot with only one to serve as a makeshift staircase. The young man climbed this and fired down the alley a few times. Jeremy climbed the dumpster first, helping Will keep his balance as he followed, with Annie behind. They hopped down the other side, into the alley. The shock sent Will to the ground again, but he got up on his own and started running.

  “Green door, on the left!”

  Jeremy turned, so Will followed him. The door flung open and Jeremy dove into a dark room. Will came in behind him, tripped on something, and fell again. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, breathing heavily. He saw Annie enter the room, followed by the guy with the gun, who shut the door and slid a metal bar into a latch.

  “They can’t climb the dumpsters,” he said, wiping his forehead. “And if they do, they can’t get in here. We’re safe, but keep it down for a minute anyway, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said.

  Their rescuer went into the next room, and Will heard him shuffling around. He sat up, then spat blood onto the dirty carpet of the living room.

  “You okay?” Annie asked.

  Will nodded. He felt around his mouth with his tongue. “I think I knocked a tooth loose.”

  Annie hugged him, and he hugged her back. The young man came back from the other room and handed everyone a bottle of water.

  “Where did you come from?” Jeremy asked.

  “This is my home. I’m Neil.”

  “Thanks,” Will said. Neil turned to him. “You saved us.”

  “I saw the fire from my apartment and came to see if anyone needed help. Rest up a minute, and then I’ll get you out of the city.”

  “Wait, that’s you, isn’t it?” Jeremy said. “With the water tower?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Me and my dad.”

  “What do you mean by get us out of the city?” Will asked.

  “You can’t stay. You led a goddamn army of them right into town.”

  “Those zombies were here before us,” Annie replied. “We cut through them. We’re supposed to meet back up with our group.”

  “We’ve been looking for water,” Jeremy said. “For a long time now.”

  “Well you can’t have any of ours. My dad won’t even hear it, trust me. He doesn’t even know I’m out here. You have to look somewhere else.”

  “There is nowhere else,” Will said. “You have to have enough—”

  “Stop it!” Neil said. The three of them looked at him. “Look, my dad calls the shots, okay? He cleared out the building, built a water tower, and barricaded off about a block of the city. Then we cleared out several safe houses like this one. He’s not looking to share any of it. And honestly, neither am I. We worked hard for this, we’re not going to risk losing it.”

  “Look, we’re tired,” Annie said. “Neil, right? We know we’re asking a lot. And we’re not asking you to give this to us for free. We can help you out, keep the city safe.”

  Neil sighed. “Is what you said true? Were the zombies already headed this way?”

  “Yeah,” Will said. “They passed us in the night, and we’ve been following them. A huge… flock, I guess you’d call it.”

  “We’re not unprepared,” Jeremy said. “We have Molotovs. They’re attracted to—”

  “I know they’re attracted to fire. Jesus. How do you think I’m still alive?” Jeremy snorted and looked away. Neil shook his head. “Look kid, I’m sorry. Things are a little tense right now.” He sighed. “Okay, we can go talk to my dad. If nothing else, he has to know about the flock. He’s not going to like seeing you, but if you really think you can help us clear out these zombies… I don’t know. Maybe he’ll listen. Maybe.” Neil stood and headed toward the back of the apartment. “We can get out through the back. It should be a lot cleaner sailing from here, but keep quiet and keep close anyway, okay?”

  “Sure,” Annie said. Everyone stood and followed Neil to the back door. He opened it, then looked into the street one way, then the other, then motioned for them to come.

  “Last chance. I can get you out of the city in an hour.”

  “Take us to your dad,” Will said.

  “You’re the boss, kid.”

  Neil started down the street. Jeremy moved in close to Will. “Shouldn’t we get the others first?” he asked.

  “We’re never going to have a better chance to bargain with this guy,” Will replied. “This whole thing is about the water, right? This is our chance. Our best chance. Let’s go get some water.”

  42

  As the Destroyer of Worlds

  The day was long and difficult, made longer and harder by Nelson’s feelings. When he closed his eyes he saw Uriel’s face, his blood boiled when he thought of how they probably dumped his body outside in a shallow grave. “Clean this shit up.” Or maybe didn’t cover it at all, just left it for the birds, or the zombies.

  They made him work later than usual, and no one spoke to him, until Dean, one of the guards, finally said, “All right, man. You can stop. And hey, good work today.”

  “What?” Nelson said.

  “You made more explosives today than almost the whole week combined.”

  Nelson looked at his work: A room full of explosives of all kinds, some electrical, some with fuses, some simple bottles full of chemicals. He had asked and they had brought him what he asked for, and he had made a room full of death, and Bart and his men would carry that death, store it in Nelson’s home, use it to kill people, just like they killed Uriel.

  “I should’ve let Bart kill me on the highway,” Nelson muttered. Dean opened the door to his bedroom.

  “Hey… you’re alive, man. Just try to make the most of it.”

  “How am I supposed to live with myself?” he asked, but Dean only shrugged.

  “I’ll bring you food later. You can’t leave your room now, you know. You’re on lockdown tonight. There’
ll be an armed guard outside your door all night. Just don’t try anything, okay?”

  Nelson thought of trying something right then, of making them kill him. Instead he let Dean close the door quietly.

  ****

  The only plan he could come up with was to make a mad dash for the explosives. At first he planned to do it when they fed him, but then Nelson realized he could do it whenever; the hotel room doors locked from the inside, not out. He could catch them off guard, maybe light something up and let Ace Crazy Hotel and Casino and everyone inside it crumble when the bombs went off. But inside he knew he would never make it halfway to the storeroom.

  Nelson went to his window, slid the heavy curtain aside, and opened the pane. The desert night was cool, the breeze carried the occasional moan from the city. Far away the lights of Los Angeles glowed, the ones left on by people now scattered or dead, with no one left to turn them off. They were his lights, really, and in a world otherwise pitch black, he found some solace in them. He thought about climbing down, but there was nothing to grab, and it was a long drop.

  “Nelson.”

  Nelson looked around for Abril, but his room was empty.

  “Nelson, I’m at the window.”

  Nelson poked his head outside. The window from the next room over was open, but he couldn’t see her.

  “Abril?”

  “The guard is gone. I overdosed his laxative. If you’re going to escape, now’s your chance.”

  Nelson went to his door and turned the knob slowly. It opened, and he looked both ways, but saw no one. He went back in and grabbed his spare glasses, pocketed them, closed his door behind him as he left, then went into Abril’s room.

  “Go away,” she said from the chair where she sat, looking out at those same lights.

  “Come with me,” Nelson replied.

  Abril half-smiled. “There’s nothing left for me.”

  “You could help people out there, Abril. The world needs people like you, people who help others, people who aren’t afraid.”

  “I’m too tired now.”

  “Abril,” Nelson said. He tried to look her in the eyes, but she looked away. “I’m going to blow up the building.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Abril replied. “You should hurry, before the guard comes back.”

  “I’d like very much for you to not be inside it when I do.”

  “Nelson… I’m done. I’m just done. Why don’t you understand? It’s a simple equation. You blow up the building, and you rid the world of almost a dozen terrible people.”

  “And one person good enough to make sparing them all worth it.”

  Abril shook her head, sighing. “Nelson, go. Do what you have to do. I might leave. I might not. I haven’t really decided yet.”

  Nelson glanced at the hallway. He had left Abril’s door open a crack, and he thought he heard footsteps. “Abril… if this works, and I get out, I’ll be at Hoover Dam. When you’re ready, come find me.”

  Abril looked up at him. “When I’m ready,” she said.

  He went swiftly down the halls, tip-toeing but running. He rounded the last corner before his work room and slammed into something; he and Tom both fell on the ground.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Tom asked.

  “Looking for the bathroom,” Nelson said. For a split second Tom saw everything as normal, and that was all Nelson needed. He slammed his bald head into Tom’s face, felt Tom’s nose shatter against his skull. Tom cried out, putting both hands to his nose, which began gushing blood. Nelson grabbed Tom’s rifle and pulled, but it didn’t come, it was strapped on. Tom reached down for it, but Nelson was already above him. He yanked on the gun, lifted the strap over Tom’s head, then twisted. The leather strap wrapped around Tom’s throat, and Nelson twisted again, then again. Tom’s face went purple, his attempts to free the strap from around his throat grew weaker and weaker, and then he stopped moving, and Nelson waited two more minutes before he let go.

  He took the rifle with him just in case, but the explosives room was unguarded. It was not, however, unlocked. Nelson looked around; he didn’t know if anyone slept on this floor, especially in the closest rooms. Worst case scenario, the cavalry came in and he would bottleneck them in the door and make a last stand. Nelson slammed the butt of the rifle into the doorknob again and again, until it came free. He studied the inner workings of the door, moved a little metal bar, and the door came open.

  No one had woken. The building was as silent as it had been. It almost seemed wrong, how completely and totally not-silent the place was about to be, how peaceful it was now, full of these people, and how violent it would become in their parting.

  Nelson put his best work in the building’s best spots, hope that Abril had escaped at the forefront of his mind, fear that he’d be caught a close second. He had to use the bombs with the battery-powered timers and keep time himself, counting seconds in his head and setting the next one to blow concurrently with the last. Finally he was finished, and he headed down the stairs, over the bloodstain in the middle of the main room, and out the door. He climbed over the shopping carts, which rattled and clanged, but he no longer had to worry about the noise. He only had to worry about getting out of the blast radius.

  Nelson went out through the barricade, now walking fast instead of running, but he stopped in his tracks when someone said, “Hold up.”

  Nelson raised his arms, turning slowly, and saw Dean sitting on the hood of a car. How could he have forgotten the guard outside? Nelson cursed under his breath; it wasn’t like him to miss a variable.

  Dean raised his hand and Nelson prepared for the end, but instead of shooting him Dean only lit a cigarette, then took a drag. By the light of it he realized it was Nelson. “You’re not supposed to be out here.”

  “Yeah,” Nelson said. Between drags it was dim, and Nelson hoped Dean didn’t see him slowly working his hands toward the rifle.

  “You can go,” Dean said. He took another drag, noticed Nelson’s hands on the gun, then laughed. “I wasn’t going to stop you. I would’ve done it already.” He turned and looked at the casino, then back at Nelson, his eyes wide. “Hey, is that place about to come down?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t think you’d sneak off and leave anyone around to come after you. How’d you even get this far? It doesn’t matter. You’re the genius they said you were.”

  “Not by half,” Nelson said. “Just lucky. And I had help.”

  Dean threw the cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. “How long we got?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “You mind if I take off? I won’t come after you. Don’t even know where Hoover Dam is. I just want to be done, you know what I mean.”

  “I do. Know what you mean. I don’t mind.”

  Dean nodded, and he started walking down the street, into town. Nelson headed in the opposite direction, more the way he had come. He crested the closest thing to a hill, then hunkered down behind a car and turned to watch. He didn’t want to, but he had to see it through.

  It was louder than he could have imagined, and even as far away as he was, the blast knocked him down. Seconds later he heard what sounded like rain as bits of concrete and rubble fell all around, some of them pelting him, most of them tiny. He took cover behind the car again. His ears were ringing, and through that some car alarms were blaring along the highway. The rain of rubble stopped, so he looked toward the casino. Where a black rectangle had rested on the horizon was now a black plume, visible thanks to the distant city lights.

  Nelson wouldn’t be able to hear moans or footsteps over the car alarms, but he knew they would come, so he made his way to the side of the highway and started walking back toward Hoover Dam.

  ****

  It was a long walk made on little food and no sleep. He had no water, but he knew he would make it.

  The sun beat down on him, twice he had to stop and shoot at an oncoming zombie, but mostly he was left with his tho
ughts.

  Somewhere on Route 93 Nelson tripped and fell to the ground. He got to his knees and screamed, screamed at the top of his lungs into the desert air, then sat there by the road.

  He had tripped on the same shallow grave as before, he realized. When it was clear nothing was coming to get him, he took a handful of dust and placed it on the grave. He didn’t know whose it was, but he hadn’t gotten to bury Uriel, had probably buried Abril, and it seemed like a just contribution to the world, the first one he’d made in a long time, hopefully the start of many more.

  When Hoover Dam was in sight a thought occurred to him: He would get back home and, in all explainable and measurable ways, it would be like nothing at all had changed. Yet somehow, the opposite was true.

  ~~~~

  43

  On an Empty Street

  Burke could never order another person shot, but killing him didn’t make Bailey feel like things were right. There was no atonement in answering death with death.

  She went a few hundred yards in the opposite direction of Burke’s men, now Gary’s men, and holed up in a house to make sure they didn’t come back this way. When she woke up one morning to the chirping of birds, she was pretty sure they weren’t coming back. When the snow was gone, she was certain.

  Through that winter and the early spring, Bailey spent her time chopping trees for firewood, searching the nearest houses for food, even trapping squirrels and rabbits when she could. All the while the memories stuck with her: Cliff and Alyssandra, that man she’d killed in the road when she first joined Mike, even Burke. There had to be a way to make things right.

  Bailey never found her answer. Instead, one came to her.

  She woke to the sound of voices, and at first thought Gary had turned the men back this way after all. She listened through the still of the morning, but only heard two distinct men talking.

  Bailey headed for the window and looked out. Two men were arguing about which way to go, and nearby a girl stood silent, staring at her feet.