And he had that tank of propane to store securely.
**
Two days later, he came upon Colonel Dale again. That was some bit of coincidence, he reckoned. For Dale’s sake, he hoped that it was coincidence. If the man were stalking him or even casually following him, there would be hell to pay.
“Hello, Mr. Cutter,” the Brit greeted.
“How are you, Colonel?”
“I’m well,” he said. “And you?”
“Look,” Cutter told him. “Let’s go sit down.” He indicated what remained of an outdoor café below a bank tower. “I want to compare some notes.”
“Very well,” the Colonel agreed. “I’d like that. I need to tank up on some water anyway.”
In a few moments, they were seated at a little cast iron table and sitting on cast iron chairs. Cutter was facing east, looking toward the intersection, while Dale was facing west, looking toward another street and the interior of the restaurant and the bank building to which it was attached. No other diners, dead or living, made any obvious moves. The sky was clear, the day was not yet hot, there were no biting insects around, and if you could ignore the darkness of every door and window and the shabbiness of the streets you could almost imagine it for a normal day in a normal world.
Cutter sipped at the hydration tube on his pack. Dale had opted to pour himself a draught of clear water into a metal cup that he had produced from a jacket pocket. Dale peeled his gloves off for this effort and sat there, drinking his water.
“Did you know that the Lunds lost their oldest son?” Cutter asked.
Dale set the cup down. There was a minor clink of the cup’s metal against the table’s cast iron. “I didn’t know when we last spoke, but I discovered it the next day. From the old woman who lives on Graham Street. Linda Jarman, if you know her.”
“The old woman who walks around with that wire cart like she’s just going to the store like in the old days.” Cutter shook his head. “I can’t figure out why she’s not dead. I swear to God I can’t.”
“It is indeed a strange thing,” Dale agreed. “The Lord watches over children and madmen,” he muttered.
“What did she tell you? I wish I had known before I spoke to Lund. I bumped into them, you know.”
“No. I didn’t. Did you…”
“Did I bring up Oliver? Damned right I did.” He sighed. “I think I was lucky to walk away from that. Lund’s about to snap, I think.”
“I should think so.”
“What happened? How’d they lose the boy?” Cutter saw a shadow move, but figured it for the wind moving something in a looted store and did nothing more than keep his eyes tuned in that direction.
“It was that bastard over on Tryon Street,” Dale said.
“Fifty-two,” Cutter muttered the number.
“Yes. Old Fifty-two.”
They called him that because of the guns he had stationed on the 25th floor of one of the taller buildings in center city. There was a trio of 52-caliber machine guns up there, solidly placed in windows facing out at different angles. The fellow could see anything moving for blocks in a 180-degree arc. Anything that so much as flinched along that panorama was in his line of sight.
“You telling me that crazy motherfucker shot Lund’s little boy?”
Dale just nodded.
“Didn’t we tell him what would happen if he did something like that again?”
The Colonel nodded once more.
“I know that his rig up there has cleared out a good part of the town of zombies. But he’s killed…well, now he’s murdered seven living people that we know of.” Cutter clenched his gloved hands into fists and tensed, because the movement he had noticed before was repeated, and in a few seconds, one of the walking dead was easing out of the wrecked building and onto the street.
“Something needs to be done,” the Colonel said. “I mean, we warned him. And I don’t think he should be…terminated or anything. But certainly we should take out his capability of repeating such an offense.”
“We’d have to kill him to dig him out of there.” Cutter said it. He believed it. In a way, he knew it.
Before Dale could respond to that statement, Cutter was suddenly on his feet. “Zombies,” he whispered. “Looks like it could be trouble.” Indeed, where one had appeared from the looted storefront, now there were six of them. Enough noise and movement from the interior of the place hinted at many more.
“What do you want to do?” The Colonel asked, putting his cup away and drawing his Glock from its holster on his hip.
“I’m not in a herd-thinning mood today, Colonel. I’d just as soon we each go our separate ways. For now, at least. I want to visit with Oliver and I don’t want a crowd of these dead fucks following me to his place.”
“Agreed,” Dale said, moving away very quickly. He paused for just an instant and addressed his companion. “But we really should speak again. About doing something with our 52-caliber friend.” As he began to pick up the pace, he turned back one more time and raised his voice. “And if you want to save Oliver, I suggest you do whatever it takes to get him to allow you to take him under your wing. Else I fear we’ll lose the child.”
“Yes, indeed,” Cutter nodded. Then he was racing off as soundlessly as he possibly could before the zombie could get a bead on either of them.
**
What was it that Cutter told himself every stinking day?
He tried to draw in a breath and found it difficult to do, but he kept trying.
What was that again?
Arms were locked around his torso. Legs were tangled in his own, trying to bring him down. The stench of the dead was all over him.
Oh, yeah. Now he remembered.
Never let your fucking guard down.
There were two zombies latched to him. One had him in an iron grip around his rib cage. The zombie itself was attached to him at an oblique angle and Cutter couldn’t punch, shoot, or grab. The second of the creeps had him by the legs. It was completely behind him, and while he wasn’t sure, Cutter suspected that it was a partial—that is, most of its trunk had been destroyed so that it was now composed of the rotting flesh that remained from the waist up. At least, it hadn’t stood to make his acquaintance with the back of Cutter’s neck. He thought about screaming for help—but he knew that generally just made the deads more anxious. Anyway, the only person he’d seen in the past hour had been Colonel Dale and he was probably very far away by then.
Cutter’s neck was exposed. He had taken that fucking bandana off to mop his brow. He could see the blue bandana on the littered street, lying bright and damp on the hot concrete. The weight of his attackers twisted him around and almost felled him. He got a view of the sky, the nearby office tower with its shattered windows, then parking meters and wrecked and abandoned automobiles lining the avenue, and back to that freaking bandana.
“Fuck!” He rasped it out and struggled. His left arm was in the grip of the standing zombie. Try as he might, Cutter could not free that arm to get to the pistol on his hip. Every time he tried to reach his hammer with his right hand, the zombie’s body prevented it. All the while the thing’s teeth kept clacking together, and all Cutter could envision was those yellow fangs clamping shut through the skin of his neck.
The other member of the pair was grasping at his boots. He tried to look around, tried to see out of the corner of his left eye for any kind of view. For some reason he needed to see them. He wanted to see what dead fuckers had so completely surprised him.
That’s when they were the worst, he thought. When they were so quiet and so patient, just being part of the real estate until you walked past them. Then they were something else entirely, all teeth and rage and hunger.
The sun came into view again as he struggled with his undead assailants. The sun was hot and as unforgiving as the zombies were. It was just there to watch the proceedings impassively. Stupid humans. You can’t avoid extinction, it seemed to be saying to Cutter.
&nbs
p; Finally, he caught a movement down the street and to his left, far beyond the thing that was fighting to take him down. He looked for a moment and what he saw were more of them. Maybe two blocks away, they were streaming into the street, attracted by the noise of the battle. If he didn’t cut himself loose in a minute or two, he was as good as dead.
To Hell with it, he thought. And he just relaxed and let himself fall.
When he breathed out, the release of the contents of his lungs gave him a few precious millimeters so that he was able to twist around. For the first time, he could look his attacker straight in the eyes.
He hated it when they looked like that. Sometimes there was more than just hunger there. Sometimes there was a spark hiding in those lidless orbs that told him there was still something of human evil hiding in there, buried in that pudding brain. That’s what he saw now. A cold, reptilian intelligence was at work that told him this zombie was going to put an end to Cutter once and for all.
“Hell, no!” Cutter yelled. Screaming at them never seemed to do any good, but it made him feel better. As he said it, Cutter and his giant leeches hit the sidewalk together. Even more breath was knocked from Cutter’s lungs and he actually rolled free of the damned thing. Before it could react, and even as the one on the ground was crawling up his legs toward his face, Cutter had his hand on his trusty ball peen hammer. He freed it from its Velcro straps and swung it fiercely at the taller of his attackers.
The metal head wasn’t pointed precisely, and so it slammed against that wet, running skull and bounced off. However, it had the effect of forcing the dead one back a foot or so as it went to its knees to come at him again. In the meantime, he looked to see that indeed the other one, while not gone from the waist down, possessed a pair of truly shattered legs that would no longer allow it to stand. Cutter gripped the hammer anew and sent the metal head smashing into the thing’s puss-riven face. Two blows and it ceased to move.
Then the other one’s hands were on Cutter again. It latched onto his right arm and he felt the hammer skid out of his fingers. Before he could do anything at all, he watched in horror and anger as the thing used its grip on Cutter’s forearm so that it could bend forward and bite. He watched as its teeth—bright, straight, and not at all yellow—crunched down on his wrist.
As always, the three layers of fabric on his body saved him from being bitten. He would have bruises, but he had not suffered a skin penetrating, and thus fatal bite. However, his hammer was gone, lying on the sidewalk where he couldn’t reach it without leaving himself open for attack. So he reached down with his left hand and pulled his pistol free.
The gun bucked under his grip. The .45 caliber bullet flew free of the barrel, plowing into the thing’s head. Brain matter and bits of skull flew and the back of its cranium blossomed in a great petal of organic matter. The zombie fell like the sack of guts it now was.
Gasping for air, Cutter crawled forward and found his hammer. Picking it up, he stood, blinking the sweat from his eyes, feeling the salt sting of it there as it blinded him for a second.
The slouching mass of zombies that had been two blocks away were now much closer than he had figured. Some were moving toward him from just beyond the lengths of two pickup trucks sitting dead on deflated tires to his left. “Goddamn,” he said. Staggering, he wobbled on his feet, feeling the effects of the mortal struggle and the pounding heat of the day. Knowing that it didn’t really matter how much noise he made at this point and in this situation, he aimed the gun at the nearest of the shambling obscenities trotting toward him. The pistol barked once, twice, three times. A trio of the rotting things fell where they were hit, holes where their faces had been.
He turned and looked back the way he’d come. There were even a few zombies moving in that direction, but only a few. The empty sockets of opened doors all around were not attractive to him at this moment, so the way he had come was the way he was going to have to leave. Behind him, a few groans lifted and soon they became that horrible rasping roar, he feared more than anything else. The city of the dead was on the move; they had his scent, and they were after him.
Cutter ran. He didn’t trot and he didn’t jog. He ran flat out. Doors were opening around him. Windows were filling. The dark places and the ruined buildings were disgorging their dead and vicious tenants.
The supply, no matter how many they seemed to kill was endless.
Cutter gasped the hot, muggy air of summer. And he ran.
Wherever he looked he could see them stumbling out of shadows and from alleyways, dark tunnels that led to underground parking decks; from stores that had once housed any type of shop you could mention. They stepped out of doorways and into the hot sun. Each one seemed to look directly at him, those dead eyes blazing with something completely and implacably evil. Cutter was tired. He was winded and sore. Fatigue poisons were building up in his muscles. His side stitched in pain from running and gasping for breath. Zombie didn’t feel these things. Zombies didn’t seem to feel anything at all, seemed to fear nothing at all, and wished only for his dismemberment.
He couldn’t stop. Once again, he was on the run, turning over in his mind the lay of the land and trying to decide what, if any, option was opened for him. Cutter had to survive. He had to.
From his right, a knot of zombie lurched out of the otherwise empty and shattered trailer some trucker had dumped in panic. They were on him in an instant, their hands like blue-black claws wanting to tear into his flesh. Even though, all he wanted to do was keep moving, he was forced to stop, take careful aim, and pull the trigger again. Three more shots and each shot was true and there were three more stinking, putrid, disease-ridden corpses lying in the street to turn into a running paste of fluid and maggots.
Warm air filled his lungs as he gaped wide, trying to oxygenate himself, to make ready for another dash to safety. Madly, he looked around, and everywhere he looked, the dead were coming. But north, back toward his best home, his place of safety—that way was less dangerous than all the others. Once again, he was running, his boots slapping the crusted streets, grass and small shrubs slapping at his shins as he moved. In the back of his mind there was a little voice telling him to shed his pack. Lose the thirty pounds and you can move a little faster! Just dump it and go! But he couldn’t do that. Not yet. If he did that, he was all but admitting to himself that he would never make it back. That was the last act of desperation. That was almost total surrender. He kept his pack, felt the straps digging into his shoulders, the weight holding him, and slowing him down; but he wasn’t going to toss it aside.
Not yet.
But soon. In a few minutes. Maybe a few seconds. If nothing changed, then he would toss it aside and go. He’d leave it. Later, he could come back for it. Zombies weren’t interested in that shit. They didn’t want MREs. They didn’t want ammo clips. All they wanted was his meat and his blood.
The pack was heavy.
Maybe it wasn’t really surrendering if he dropped it.
Maybe it.
Was. Just.
Survival.
Cutter slowed down. The army of dead to his rear was coming on. They had picked up the pace and they were almost to a point where they were moving faster than he was. Ahead of him, there were more appearing from buildings, spying the race, seeing him run, hearing the moans of the soon-to-be-fed. Once again, Cutter had messed up. This world was one where you could never let your guard down. Not for a day. Not for an hour. Not for a single second.
Maybe.
Maybe this is best, he thought.
Maybe it’s time for it to be over.
Maybe this is the day you end.
The sound of a small caliber gun came from the intersection ahead of him. Was it Colonel Dale? He looked left to where the sound had come. At first, he didn’t see anyone. Had the shot come from above street level? Behind him, the groans had risen to that moron roar of hunger that always came when a hundred or two hundred of them thought they had a shot at a mouthful of living hu
man. Only this was more than that. This was the roar of a thousand. The street behind him had become a seething river of dead, walking maggot-meat.
He paused to slam another clip into his .45. He reached back just briefly to touch his .220 with the tips of his gloved fingers to make sure it was there. It was security of some sort. Guns were all that was left to him these days. Guns, ammo, and disgust. Cutter took a step, then another, and looked forward, trying to see who had fired the weapon.
It came again. The little firearm popped and he recognized it immediately as .22 caliber. Someone was firing a .22, but he couldn’t tell what they were shooting at or where they were standing. Minding his own position and the advance of the enemy all around him, he jogged on, looking, peering, glaring at anything that moved, trying to figure out who was shooting and if they could be of any help at all.
Pop. There it was again.
Why were they firing like that? One shot. A long pause. Another shot. Another pause.
Pop. It came directly from his left and he looked to see.
Someone was backing up the street, coming toward his position. He squinted, trying to make the person out, to see if it was someone, he knew. Over the past few months he had come to recognize a lot of people, and knew probably a hundred of them by name. But this figure was a new one. He didn’t recognize this one at all.
From a distance of about a hundred yards, it looked to be a very fat man backing toward him. The guy was wearing really dark, baggy clothes. He was wearing what looked to be a sagging pair of green stretch pants, a voluminous purple sweatshirt hoody, and black gloves. Every few feet, the guy would stop and reach into what appeared to be a bag and load his weapon and fire. The guy was stuck with a single-shot .22 pistol! He was more fucked than Cutter!
Looking behind, Cutter raised his pistol and unloaded a barrage of shots into the pale, dead, fly-ridden mass flowing toward him. He fired five shots and three zombies fell into still heaps, their pushy brethren stumbling over their (now actual) corpses, and buying Cutter a split second or three.
The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) Page 8