The Black Death

by Aric Davis

  “If we go in there, that big asshole at the door is going to shoot us if Free is in even the smallest amount of trouble. We either go in knowing we have to put Henley down or we accept that Free might not be coming out.” Matt gave a look to his arm, where a watch would be if he wore one. “Could already be running a bit late as far as Free is concerned, too.”

  “Look. Free is fine. We’ve been dealing with Sally forever. She knows how things go and how Luther can be when he starts getting really high.”

  “Yeah, and what if Sally is ripping off everybody? You know how I knew you didn’t smoke the black? Sally smokes a ton of it.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” said Danimal. “Sally’s been clean for years. Everyone knows that. She gets drugs and hooch for the girls, but other than cigarettes, she’s clean, never touches a drop.”

  “It’s in her eyes, plain as day,” said Matt as he opened the passenger door to the van, sliding the ax loose from the bag, then pulling the duffel over his shoulder. “I’m going to go get him.”

  “You can’t do that,” hissed Danimal in the front of the van. “If you go in there, they’re going to kill you.”

  “No,” said Matt, “they’re going to try.”

  ***

  Matt crossed the lawn in a fast walk, with Danimal at his heels. The bigger man was having some trouble keeping up, but Matt wasn’t too concerned about Danimal being much help. The man was just too scared, too freaked-out over Free to be in a fight right now. Matt figured there might be some low-level pimp types who doubled as guards in the part of the RV with the girls, but if they went in fast, got Free, and then walked back out to the van, they might be okay. The trick would be to have no shots fired. Gunplay would get everybody going nuts—whores, patrons, and the people he really needed to worry about, the ones with more guns.

  Matt walked between the smoking and waiting men, the ax tucked tight next to his leg so that it would be harder to see in the darkness. He opened the door to the RV and hopped quickly up the steps, moving fluidly, as if he’d been born to be here.

  Henley, the big man with the Stoner rifle, was raising the gun as the door opened, and without thinking, Matt threw his ax. The blade cleaved through Henley’s head, dropping him, and stuck in the “steel” door that he was standing in front of. Danimal shut the door behind them and was staring at the body. Ignoring him, Matt pulled the ax free from the door and gave it a swift kick.

  The door collapsed in on itself—just cheap aluminum, doesn’t matter how strong the locks are—and Matt raced through it, ax in hand, with Danimal behind him. He could see Free’s boots on the floor, just the toes, though, and so Matt assumed he was sitting. He still hadn’t made Sally, and it wasn’t until he was past the bathroom and into the short room at the end of the hallway that he realized she wasn’t there.

  Free was tied to a chair and had a red rubber ball gag in his mouth. He was sweating profusely and struggling at the restraints holding him, but his eyes got a little hopeful when he saw Matt and Danimal.

  “If you’ve got a knife, start cutting him loose,” Matt barked to Danimal before he pulled the rubber ball from Free’s mouth. It plopped onto Free’s damaged neck, making the wound glisten with saliva.

  “Hurry up,” said Free. “She’s coming back!”

  “Where did she go?” Matt asked. “Why did she just leave you here?”

  “She was on her cell when she left, covering the mouthpiece to talk, and then she took off. If she was calling who I think she was calling, it’s not going to be good.”

  “Who, Bucky?” Matt asked. “Would he be able to approve her offing you for delivering another light load?”

  “You talk too much,” said Free to Danimal, who cut through the second leg restraint, and Matt loosened the one on Free’s left arm. Free stood, rubbing his wrists, the ball gag still slung around his neck.

  Matt smirked at the sight and added, “Now you’re free. Let’s get out of here.” Matt led the way, with Free and Danimal behind him.

  Free gasped when they were out of the hallway and he saw the body on the floor. “Damn!” he said. “You killed Henley? He was good people.”

  “He didn’t look too nice when he was aiming a gun at me,” said Matt. “Take his rifle. We don’t need somebody else shooting us in the back with it.”

  Free grabbed the rifle off the floor and took his pistol from Henley. Matt opened the door, then walked outside. The men with their cigarettes were still there, but it wasn’t until the three were walking among them that Matt realized all of them were watching him, Free, and Danimal with coal-black eyes. How did they all get so high so fast? The thought was dashed from Matt’s head when he saw Sally and realized they had a very serious problem.

  She was standing at the far end of the group of men with a knife in one hand, a cell phone pressed to her head in the other, and fury in her eyes. She clicked the flip phone closed, her eyes shifting from Matt, to Free, to Danimal.

  “Get ’em, boys,” she said. “They die, and the ass is on the house tonight.”

  The group of men fell on them immediately. Matt barely had time to get his ax up as a black-eyed man lunged at him. He shoved the man away from him and brought the ax down onto the top of his attacker’s head, splitting his skull and dropping him to the ground.

  Next to Matt, Free and Danimal were cracking shot after shot into the torsos of the men who were rapidly advancing on them. Some of them came bare-handed, but others held tire irons and other clubs.

  Another black-eyed man, fissures of rotting flesh lining his forehead, charged Matt with a large bowie knife. Matt waited until the last possible second, then sidestepped the attack and brought the ax down on the back of his head, making it pop off his shoulders before the body and the head were joined on the ground.

  From behind him, Matt heard a gunshot. It was close, so it had been either Free or Danimal shooting, but that didn’t make things any better. More would be coming, and if they were all turned, Matt, Free, and Danimal were going to be overwhelmed on the lawn. Matt cracked another skull as one of the things came after him, and he bashed another with the backside of the ax as it headed for Danimal.

  “Run!” shouted Matt, but they’d waited too long, and all that was left to do now was stand and fight.

  Danimal had apparently realized that, in order to kill, he needed to shoot the drug fiends in the head. Matt saw snippets of Danimal firing only when they came close enough that he was sure not to miss. Free was still fighting as well, though as far as Matt could tell, he’d given up on the rifle as a gun and was instead using it as a club, apparently unable to find time to take the Glock from its holster. Matt was busy as well, felling and killing two more of the men, before the hookers, johns, and pimps from the whorehouse were upon them.

  As deadly and bloody as the battle already was, Matt saw two things that were far worse, and they were running ahead of the pack on all fours, with black eyes and faces twisted by the flake.

  The two junkies split before they hit Matt, Free, and Danimal’s ever-shrinking circle of safety. One of them was rail thin and looked as though she’d been deprived of food. She had a muzzle made of leather and metal hanging around her neck, and there were deep gouges in her face from it. The other was a monster of a man, tall, fat, and just plain old big in every possible way. Matt was yanking his ax free from the head of another dead ghoul when he came to the realization that the two beasts were attempting to cut off Matt, Danimal, and Free’s slow progress to the van. Deciding the risks were worth the attempt, no matter how dangerous, Matt ran from the circle of killing to try to face them before they could overwhelm the three of them from the rear as they fought off the others who had spilled from the RV.

  Matt came out of the thinned crowd of drug-crazed attackers at the exact same moment that the smaller of the two black-eyed addicts came bounding around the circle of fighting. Ignoring the knowledge that the larger of them would soon be at his heels, Matt squared his shoulders to face her. Grippin
g the ax in both hands, one at the bottom of the shaft, the other just under the blade, Matt watched her charge. Time seemed to slow as she leaped for him, her jaws impossibly spread and baring ruined, gray teeth. Matt swung the ax like a baseball bat, letting his hand that had been near the blade slide down to meet the other one, and the ax was singing in the wind as it met her.

  The blow removed the head from her body in just a single swipe, and she rolled harmlessly in the lawn next to Matt as her arms and legs remained twitching, still trying to figure out what to do. Not sure why, Matt threw himself to the ground next to her headless corpse. It was as if a little voice in his head demanded it. Whatever it was, little voice or just dumb luck, Matt was on the ground as the bigger of the two bounders filled the air where his torso had been just moments earlier. The thing was screaming as it missed, and then Matt was back on his feet and ready to fight.

  The larger junkie seemed more hesitant than the first one had, moving laterally, then switching direction to bounce on all fours the other way. If the movement was meant to be distracting, it was working. Matt had left Free and Danimal to their own devices only moments ago, and he had no idea if they were even alive anymore. Not that it really mattered, at least as far as his own safety was concerned. If they were dead, then he would be, too. He couldn’t fight off the horde and this thing alone.

  Matt watched as the beast circled him, never quite leading him back to the fight, but not allowing him to progress any closer to the parking area, either. As dumb as the thing was, it wasn’t unintelligent, not completely. When it did finally charge, it did so deliberately, much slower than the girl had, and much less likely to miss. Matt squared his shoulders to the thing, ready to fire another Babe Ruth swing at the neck of the beast, when he realized his mistake. It hadn’t been circling him at all. The thing was setting him up for an attack from behind. Unable to check his six, and knowing he had only one option, Matt charged the lumbering brute, breaking into a run with the ax aloft above his head.

  The beast trembled when it realized its plan had failed, and then it started its own charge at Matt. It instinctively raised its arms to protect itself from the inevitable overhead ax strike, and Matt kicked the thing in its withered genitals, dropping it to its knees, and then punched the blade of the ax through one massive ham of a forearm and halfway through the beast’s neck. Blood jettisoned from the arterial wound as the brute screamed, and Matt yanked the ax free. Turning at last, he was able to see that three more lumbering zombies were set upon and dividing him from his friends of circumstance. Leading the three was the somehow even worse-looking Sally, and Matt went for her first.

  He took her unfortunate head off with one well-placed slice of the ax, severing it at the base of the neck and making her starved and meth-addled corpse look almost better without the overly made-up and rotting head. The other two zombies he dispatched quickly as well, their staggered formation a threat only if they had hit him from behind. Attacking like this, they were easy fodder with a few well-placed blows with the ax, and when the last of them fell, Matt returned to the fray.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Free was firing the Glock now, finally having found the time to retrieve it from his jacket, and Matt saw him fell three attackers, one after the other.

  The crowd of attackers had been thinned, and Matt did his best to disable the few that blocked his view of Free and Danimal. Matt dropped the last of them with a blast from the ax, and it fell with the lower jaw still attached to the body, looking as though it were yawning as it dropped. It wasn’t until Matt called to Free that he realized Danimal was missing.

  “They fucking killed him, man!” shouted Free, a madman with the gun amid the pile of bodies.

  It was true. Danimal’s body lay at Free’s feet, and next to him was one of the whores. Danimal’s face had been battered nearly beyond recognition, and a stiletto stuck out obscenely from his neck. The woman had been shot three times, twice in her neck and once through the forehead, likely as she killed Danimal, from the look of things. Matt knelt and took Danimal’s pistol and then the keys from his pocket while Free looked on incredulously.

  “You’re stealing from a dead guy?”

  “We need this stuff more than he does.” Matt flipped the keys to Free. “You’re driving, back to town right now.” Matt turned, realized Free wasn’t coming, and spun back around. “Free, it’s time to go.”

  “We can’t just leave him, man,” Free said. “He was like a brother since we were little.”

  “Do your brother a favor,” Matt hissed, “and start listening. There will be plenty of time to mourn later, if we live.”

  “You mean there’s more of them?”

  “Please, get in the van, and I’ll explain. But we need to get to town, and we need to get there now, before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Free asked as they walked to the van, his legs finally moving. “Seems to me like the world has already done gone to pot. My two best buddies both died today.”

  “You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t after what just happened.” Matt swung the van’s passenger door open and climbed in. “But there could be a lot more where that came from if we’re not careful. What you need to do, at least for right now, is listen to me and do exactly as I say.”

  Free turned over the engine on the van and got Danimal’s rolling bucket of loose bolts into drive and away from the parking lot, then pulled onto the gravel road.

  “All right, I’ll listen,” said Free. “Can’t say not listening has ever done me much good.”

  “We’re going to the sheriff. Don’t talk. You’ll get a turn in a minute. We’re going to go to the sheriff, and you’re going to tell him where this Bucky asshole is, and if he’s not the one making this poison, you’re going to tell him who is...Because we both know that everyone around here is going to die if we don’t stop this shit from spreading.”

  Free was quiet for a few minutes, speaking only as they turned onto Main Street. The traffic light lay in the street, smashed, and the lights in all of the businesses were lit. A pair of bodies lay in the road in front of the bar, one of them wearing an apron. Matt assumed it was Mort.

  “Looks like everyone’s already dying,” said Free.

  ***

  Matt had Free park the van in front of the police station, right behind Frank’s cruiser. Matt got out first and wasn’t surprised to see that a barricade had been erected inside the station: Flo’s desk had been turned on its side, and the glass door into the station had been shattered. Judging by the shells on the floor, Matt assumed the door had been ruined by gunfire. He pulled open the door slowly, entering first, with Free in tow.

  “Stop right there,” called a female voice—Flo—and Matt did, Free bumping into him lightly. “Tell me your names.”

  “Flo, it’s Matt. This is Fr—”

  “Your full name.”

  “Matt Cahill.”

  “Don Freeman.”

  Matt turned to look at Free. “Don?”

  “Free, man. Since high school.”

  Flo appeared from behind the makeshift barricade, holding the pump gun Matt had seen her with earlier, and she waved her hand toward them. “Hurry up, get back here!”

  Matt and Free ran to her and then knelt behind the desk with her. “What happened?” asked Matt, and she shook her head.

  “Frank pulled over a couple of guys DUI about two hours ago, right outside of Mort’s. They both went crazy when he got out of the car, beat him up pretty bad. He shot and killed one of them, but the other one ran across the street and broke back into the store. Frank was going after him when Mort came out and attacked Frank. Frank ended up killing him, too, but Mort had a knife. Frank came back in here and collapsed. I tried to call EMS, but the phones are down, land and cellular, and no one is responding on the CB. Two more men tried to break in. I had to shoot at them. I’m not supposed to do this part of the job. This is why—”

  “You’re doing great,” said Matt. “Yo
u did everything you could have, and I know you’re worried about Frank, but this will be okay.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it,” she said, her eyes shifting from Matt to Free. “The whole town is acting crazy.”

  “You’re right,” said Free. “Right down the shitter.”

  “Where’s Frank?”

  “He’s in a cell, through there.”

  “Next to the junkie?”

  “You’ve been gone a while. That guy beat himself to death on the bars hours ago.”

  “I’m going to talk to Frank. You two stay here. Don’t let anyone in here if you can help it. You’re doing a good job, Flo. The name test is a good one. Make sure anyone else who comes in can do at least that before you put your guard down.”

  “My guard down? I’m half expecting to need to shoot Free the second you turn your back.”

  Free scowled at that, but Matt smiled. “Any other day, maybe you would have. But Free is doing just fine right now.”

  ***

  Matt walked into the sheriff’s office small jail, nervous for Frank and also nervous that Free and Flo would be overrun, or perhaps even turn on each other. Seeing the blood on the cement floor from where the doped-out teenager had smashed his head didn’t help things, and seeing Frank in the cell next to the stain, that door open, made Matt feel much, much worse. Frank was lying on the simple jail bed, his breathing labored but rhythmic. Matt could feel Mr. Dark in the room, even if he wasn’t there. Ignoring that as best as he was able, Matt turned from Frank, his eyes returning to the mess from the dead hophead in the other cell. Then he opened the door to return to Free and Flo. Feeling as if he had the puzzle but was still missing far too many of the pieces, Matt swung the door closed, hearing the locks slam home. Frank still wore a gun on his belt, and with the door shut, at least they would have a harder time getting to him. Sparing Frank one last look, Matt left the room.

  Free and Flo were hunkered down behind the desk exactly where Matt had left them and looking no happier for it. Matt took a deep breath and told them what had to happen.