**
When the sun peered back over the horizon, Cutter was ready to leave. He had just been waiting for The Kid to rise so that he could tell him. He waited until the door to the boy’s bedroom opened and the youth came out.
“The deads are all gone,” he told Oliver. “I’m heading out.”
“Okay,” Oliver said, looking every inch a child and not a person who should be stuck in this situation all alone. “You gonna stop by again in a few days?”
“Sure kid.” Cutter stood with his hand on the doorknob. Outside, the wind stirred the leaves of the big poplar tree to which the kid’s place was attached. “You know. The offer still stands. You can go with me if you ever want to. Or do like Colonel Dale said…stay with the Lunds.”
“I don’t need anyone else,” Oliver said. His posture stiffened and a hard look froze his features. “I do just fine right here by myself.”
“All right. I just like to ask. We have to look out for each other.” He opened the door and stepped outside. The air was fresh, the heat was not yet on the city, and the stench of deads had followed the walking corpses to wherever they’d shambled. As he moved across the decking to toss down the rope ladder, the kid followed him out, and tapped on his shoulder.
“I need to ask you something.” Without waiting for a replay, the boy continued, his voice smooth. “If I ever get bit, or if something happens to me. And I end up like…you know, like them. Would you take care of it for me? Put me down?”
Cutter looked down at the boy, seeing him for what he was, a child. He hesitated for only a second. “Yeah, Oliver. I would. You can count on me. I wouldn’t leave you like that. Not for anything.”
Quickly, Cutter was down to the earth and The Kid had pulled the ladder back up. Without a backward glance, he was off, into the dead city.
**
The Kid had been right. The city was home to more of the living dead than it had been in previous months. Cutter had not seen the infestation so severe since the plague had first been initiated. He recalled the running battle he had made across the town the day after things had fallen to Hell, trying to reach the house where his wife and daughter had lived, while the lawyers had been hashing out the divorce proceedings. Things had been slightly worse then, but just barely.
Most of the morning, he had spent dodging from one spot to the next, doing his best not to be spotted by the undead. Of course, you couldn’t stay invisible, so he’d done everything he could to keep moving on, when they spotted him and pausing to put them down without gunfire when running wasn’t an option. His ball peen hammer was crusted in hardening ooze and his right arm was dark with drying blood to his elbow. It wasn’t even noon and already he was tired. If he hadn’t needed a canister of propane so much he would just have retreated to his favorite penthouse and settled in for a long wait. He was provisioned well enough for a prolonged bout of sitting still, but he had made up his mind to get that fuel. Damn the deads.
Just then, Cutter was sheltering in the overhang of a shattered drugstore. The place had been completely looted and he wasn’t there to search for anything of use. It was just a dark, shaded spot for him to pause and take stock of the area. Whenever he could, he liked to stop and soak in the feel of the moment, because it wasn’t just the dead that he had to worry about. There were those living among the survivors who made their way by killing and stealing, and while those were few, he had to be wary of those who were just high-strung and trigger-happy, too. Sometimes he figured those two types had brought more people low than by the zombies.
Cutter crouched just inside the old drugstore, kneeling as low as he could, and leaning against the wall. He had a clear view to his left and right, with a solid wall at his back. The floor was strewn with uncounted shards of window glass, broken bottles, and plastic containers. If anything at all tried to so much as budge in that place, he would instantly hear it. He felt comfortable enough to just rest and look. He stuck the end of his camelback hydrator into his mouth and took a pull of fresh water. Despite the convenience of the simple contraption, he disliked it because the water in the bladder pressed against his back and the water always arrived in his mouth at close to body temperature. It quenched his thirst, but it did not cool him off at all. He figured it was almost like drinking blood and the thought always made him a little queasy. He kept thinking that he would figure out a way to insulate the container from his body, but so far, he’d failed.
Then, pulling at the mouthpiece, he felt rather than heard a presence to his right. Without really thinking about it, he drew the .22, pivoted quickly and quietly, his finger on the trigger, and prepared to fire.
“Whoa!” Cutter looked up to see a shadow standing with hands up, body turned to the side to show a smaller target. “It’s just me,” the fellow said with that slight British accent.
“Goddamn, Colonel.” Cutter holstered the pistol and actually sat back, settling completely to a seated position, his back to the wall. “Don’t sneak up like that.”
“I knew it was you, I stumbled upon,” the Colonel said. “I know you don’t pull the trigger without a good reason.”
“Yeah, well, you might have caught me on a bad day. Please. Don’t do that again.” Cutter peered at the other fellow, taking in his present state. It was always good to keep up with how other people were doing. You had to be aware of little details so that you could tell if they were holding their own or having a hard time. Desperation could turn the best of men into monsters. However, a quick sizing up told him that Dale was doing all right. His complexion was good, he hadn’t lost any weight, and he was sweating just the right amount for this time of day and in this kind of weather. The Colonel certainly wasn’t starving and he didn’t seem to be ill. A safe man to be around just then.
“Oh, I doubt that, Mr. Cutter. You have always seemed to me to be quite responsible and very capable. I peg you as one of the most prepared individuals remaining in our fair city.” The Colonel’s pale gray eyes scanned the store and he too, decided to relax as he sat, joining Cutter in a seated position on the floor.
“You’re not shopping for aspirin, are you?”
“Most certainly not,” Dale said, keeping his voice low. “At any rate, this place was completely looted out ages ago. I doubt there’s an aspirin within blocks of this place. I watched the people take these shops apart in the first two weeks after it all went to pieces. Used to have a bit of a flat just across the street there.” The man pointed up at an apartment building across the street and down the block. “Fifth floor. Great view of the street.”
“Still use it?”
“Oh, no. Had a bit of a struggle up there with a trio of bullies who figured me for a poofter.” He pronounced the word ‘poofta’, and Cutter gave him a puzzled look. “Oh. A poofter is British slang for a homosexual. Kind of like calling a man a ‘faggot’ here in the States,” he added.
“Oh.”
“I’m not, you know.”
“What?”
“A homosexual.”
Cutter turned and gave the man a hard look. “Like it makes any difference these days, or did even toward the end.”
“Well, I figured I should say something. The boy—Oliver—hinted that you think he should be careful around me.” He waited for Cutter to deny he had intimated such, or to defend himself. “He needn’t worry, you know. About me. I’m a perfect gentleman.”
“I’m sure you are.” Cutter turned to check the street, looking for movement. Off in the distance, three blocks distant, a deader did come into view, but it slowly ambled off down a side alley and vanished again as quickly as it had appeared.
“But the boy, Oliver. I think we should do something for him. About him. His situation is…well, untenable. It’s only a matter of time before he comes to a bad end. He’s just a child, you know.” For his part, Dale sat up and peered to his own right, checking to see if anything was headed in their direction. He spotted a movement, but quickly recognized it for another scavenger like them
selves. The person—he figured it to be a heavily cloaked woman—scampered across the street two blocks down and ran into what had been an office building. “We really should do something about him.”
“I’ve tried,” Cutter told the older man. “I’ve asked him to move with me to one of my safe houses.” He felt no need to hide the fact that he had more than one lair, but he still didn’t trust the maybe-Colonel with the locations of his homes. “And I suggested the Lunds when he brought them up. That was mighty smart of you. I do think they’d take him in. They’re a good, solid nuclear family. It would be good for him. Better than living with a bachelor like me. Or you,” he added.
“And what has been his reaction?” Dale produced an aluminum bottle and slowly unscrewed the cap, taking a long slug of the fresh water.
“Same as he reacted to your suggestions, I reckon. Nothing doing. The only way I could get him to leave that damned tree house of his would be to tie him up and drag him kicking and screaming. He’s really attached to that place for some reason.” Cutter sighed, thinking of it.
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“His parents built that place.” The expression on the Brit’s face was one of amazement. “How could you not know that? He won’t leave it because his parents put him there to protect him.”
“He told you that?”
“Damned if you Americans can’t be the most incurious lot.” He leaned forward to sketch in the dirt on the tile floor. “See? This is Oliver’s tree house. And here is the great garden…I mean back yard…and here is the big townhome attached to that yard. I went in there some time back, when Oliver was out and about scavenging. I knew I could look about in the area without him seeing or taking offense.
“I went in there and you don’t have to look very far to find photos of Oliver. They were taken back before the world went to shit, but his photos are on the walls and in picture frames on desks, throughout the home. And his parents. There was even a photo album of the construction of that clever tree house. I think Oliver must have been about eight years old when his parents had it built. Totally spoiled the boy. His dad was a banker of some sort. Made a seven-figure salary. They were quite wealthy. Quite.”
“So you’re saying, he won’t leave because his parents built it?” Cutter leaned out again to check the street. Nothing moved but a flock of starlings that lit and quickly took wing again.
“It’s not just that. I think his parents…or at least one of them…set up the tree house as a kind of last redoubt for themselves. And for Oliver should the situation degenerate to that point. I think his parents put him there, set up the razor wire, and took down the ladder, set up the ropes and pulleys.”
Cutter nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“And more than that. I think they died making sure that his tree house wasn’t just secure, but that they told him to stay there. That it was his best chance to live through this. Of course, they probably had no idea that there would be no help coming. That civilization would completely end and we’d all be left…well, like we are.”
“So, what do you suggest?” Cutter stood. It was his way to let the Colonel know that he was pretty much at the end of his socializing for the day.
Dale followed him to his feet. He shrugged. “I don’t know what we should do. I’m no psychologist, child or otherwise. All I’m suggesting is that the boy probably won’t last a lot longer if nothing is done. He had a particularly bad patch this past week. I heard the gunfire. Got himself in a really bad spot and I know I heard him fire off damned near a hundred rounds getting himself out of it.”
Cutter nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t tell me what happened, but I know he went through almost all of the .22 ammo I had given him.”
“I figured you were doing that for him,” Dale stated.
Cutter damned himself for letting slip that he either had access to ammunition or could produce it. Either way, he had made a mistake. He had lasted for as long as he had by keeping people at arm’s length. Too much familiarity was certain to cause complications.
“Well, I can see that you want to be about your way,” the other man said. “But the last thing I want to say is that if you ever want to reconsider those other options, I’ve mentioned…well, let me know.”
“The rebuilding stuff. The starting over.”
“If you want to put it that way, yes.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I have before,” Cutter said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Very good. I guess I can’t ask for more than that these days.” Without another word, the Colonel pivoted on his heel and leaped out of the shattered window through which he had entered. Cutter did the same, moving off in the opposite direction. Neither man looked back.
**
Two hours after leaving the good Colonel had brought Cutter no closer to his goal. He needed a new tank of propane. It was the only fuel that got the metals hot enough to cast new bullets. There was always charcoal to melt lead, but he was into other materials to make ammunition that was more lethal. It had to be propane and he needed to get it back to his place as soon as possible. It wasn’t that he was completely out. He still had a good forty gallons untapped, plus some of the smaller canisters he’d been lucky enough to find stashed in a house he explored. That little adventure hadn’t cost him more than the sweat it took to beat a couple of deads into mush, so the payoff had been good, when compared to the effort.
What he really wanted was another forty-gallon container, or at least a twenty-gallon tank. The large holding tanks in the big box stores and U-Haul centers had all been bled dry months before. His only good bet these days was to luck into the smaller tanks in garages and storage buildings around abandoned homes. However, even then it was just pure luck to find one. The first thing that people had fallen back on was cooking on grills when the power went down.
He figured it was possible that the area was completely tapped out. Nevertheless, he was going to spend at least another week looking before he gave up on his own neighborhood and ventured further afield. He had safe houses scattered as far as four miles from his favorite pad, so if it came to that, one of those could be his base of operations for a while.
Cutter was standing in the overgrown backyard of what had been a really nice four-bedroom executive’s home at one time. The place had been posh in its day, but now the weeds and the rats had taken it over. Some rats were so bold that they trotted along in plain view of him, as he stood and surveyed the half-acre of formerly green grass surrounding an in-ground concrete swimming pool. The pool was almost full, but a mat of green slime covered it. Even where the algae was broken the water was dark and green. A sulfurous stench burped out of the water from time to time.
On the cracked patio with a new forest of sweet gums and poplar seedlings reaching through the gaps in the cement, he had found a very nice stainless steel grill. The kind that was many BTUs and which went through propane like nobody’s business when it was running. There were three tanks sitting in the bin beneath the burners, but each of them was quite empty. He’d picked them up, one by one, feeling the light heft in his gloved hands, holding them up and shaking them just to make sure there wasn’t a gallon or two sloshing around inside, still under pressure. No such luck.
The only place left there for him to search was a shed at the very back of the lot, built tight up against the tall stucco security wall that was now covered with English ivy that had spread like a mottled disease over the brown surface of the stucco. Slowly, he headed back to the building. He figured, it was probably 200 square feet. There was a good possibility that he might find something useful in there. Peering around, making sure nothing was hiding in the tall weeds around the pool, he made it over to the storage shed.
The door had a stout lock on it. A pretty good one, he saw. It wasn’t even rusted, even though it was crusted over a bit in the residue of dozens of rain storms and the fall of dirt and dust over the months. It had been a long time since a
nyone had been there. Probably more than a year. It had been obvious to Cutter that the original owners had tried to make a stand there. They had probably thought that the brick and stucco security wall would hold back the shamblers. If that was all there was to it, they might have been right. Of course, they hadn’t been able to properly fortify the front of the house, through which they came and went. From the state of the place, they’d tried to put up a good fight before they’d ended up losing. Having searched through the mess, he couldn’t tell if anyone had made it out alive or not. It was hard to tell when there were so many rotting arms and legs lying almost everywhere you looked.
So, he thought, what to do about the lock. He certainly wasn’t going to shoot it, and he didn’t want to hammer at it. That would make far too much noise and bring on unwanted visitors, zombie or otherwise. However, this little space had not been opened in probably as much as a year. There could be a hoard of needed materials in there. He had to know.
Cutter unslung the .220 and propped it carefully against the wall. Then he took off the pack and opened it up, immediately pulling out exactly what he needed; his crowbar.
Without hesitation, he shoved the crowbar in the loop of the padlock, placed the end of the shaft against the door, and pulled back, drawing the tool toward him with great force. It wasn’t the lock he wanted to break, but the hinge. With a brief shriek, the metal tore free of the solid wood and Cutter reached out quickly to catch the lump of steel before it could hit the cement and make any more noise. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no zombie had come through the house, curious about any movement or noise he had made.
Because he’d been so careful to turn to look back, he didn’t notice the pair of shadows that came out of the depths of the shed, hands like claws, arms reaching for him.
The impact of the weight surprised him and slapped him backward. One hit him low at the knees, and the other came at him higher, with arms gripping his waist.
The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) Page 6