“Sure,” Arjun said with feigned indignation. It couldn’t be much harder than operating a videogame controller, could it?
“Maybe our best bet is to go out on burial detail and come back and regroup,” Sonia said. “Reverend Ingram and the colonel will probably be better organized by then. We can stock up on food and conduct a damage assessment.”
“I can stay here with Jacob,” Sydney said.
“No effing way,” Jacob said with a sniffle. “She’s my sister.”
“I’m not leaving one of my children ever again,” Meg said. “He’s coming with us.”
“Okay,” Rocky said to Meg. “Your call. Whenever you’re ready.”
Meg’s eyes went cold and dark with determination. She was fully back from whatever netherworld of sorrow she’d been imprisoned in. “I don’t want to think of her lying out there rotting away. I’m ready.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The courtyard was a mess.
The funeral pyres of corpses had been extinguished by the storm. Blackened limbs entwined, charred bone showing through here and there. The Red Cross tent had been carried away, leaving behind only some twisted surgical cots, scattered medical supplies, and three silver tent poles still leaning together. Skeins of gauze hung from the surrounding trees. Canvas covers had been blown off several of the transport trucks, and an oak tree had fallen across the cab of one, crushing it down to the hood.
The soldiers and civilian workers in the parking lot must’ve had time to evacuate before the worst of the storm hit. Rocky didn’t see any fresh bodies lying around, and soldiers were already at work cleaning up the damage and returning to their posts. Luckily the place was in chaos, because no one staffed the checkpoint at the main exit. Rocky carried the bundled Ramona over his shoulder.
She was so light he imagined only her soul had kept her earthbound all this time. But her weight also made him think of his son and if he’d ever see him again. Was a stranger even now carrying Nicholas to an impromptu grave? Or throwing him on a pile somewhere?
The group made it to the courtyard gate before anyone questioned them. It was the same sergeant that had grilled Rocky earlier and assigned him to corpse detail.
“What do you have there, Maldonado?” the sergeant asked. He looked even older now, as if he’d aged ten years since this morning.
“A body,” Rocky said.
“A deader?”
“No.” He stared at the noncom in defiance, almost daring the man to check his bundle. “You put me on grave detail, and that’s what I’m doing.”
“Graves are for military personnel only,” the sergeant said, the wind quivering the bill of his cap. “And that one’s way too small to be a soldier.”
“It’s my daughter,” Meg said, stepping beside Rocky with an almost palpable willfulness.
The sergeant drew back a little and studied the rest of the group. “So you’ve put yourself a little squad together, huh?”
“We’re going to bury this child.”
The sergeant jerked his head to the truck with a dozen dead people piled in the bed. These were arrayed a little more respectfully than the zombies on the burn pile, but it was an impersonal display of how far human decency had fallen in four days. “Put her on the truck.”
“No. We’re doing this.”
“That’s not protocol, Specialist. We’re under emergency operations here. Besides, civilians aren’t allowed outside the compound.”
“Look around you, Sergeant. This situation is FUBAR, so what difference does it make?”
“We’re building something here. When the structure breaks down, you have to draw a line in the sand and make a stand. That means following procedure and obeying orders.”
“Rules are for inside the base, right?” Arjun said. “It doesn’t look like there are any rules beyond the gate.”
“Yeah,” Sydney said. “Nothing but rubble and zombies.”
“I hate to pull rank here, Sergeant,’ Sonia said. “I’m Sonia Thorpe with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, which puts me second to Reverend Ingram in authority. And we’re going out there. Check with your boss.”
The sergeant pulled his radio from his belt, holding up a finger to indicate that Rocky and the others should wait. “Lt. Allison,” he said after triggering the mic, “I’ve got a Sonia Thorpe here claiming she has authority to leave the compound.” He nodded as he listened. “Yes, sir.”
Rocky couldn’t hear the officer’s words through the static and the brisk wind. But he heard the sergeant ask if Col Hayes had assigned Maldonado to an escort duty. He listened a moment, and then said, “Dr. Perriman?”
“That’s me,” Meg said.
The sergeant clipped his radio to his belt. “Your story checks out, Maldonado.” He stepped aside and waved to the guards at the gate. “Let ’em pass.”
Rocky adjusted the dead girl atop his left shoulder and led the group through the gate. Outside the walls, Sonia’s observation was proven accurate: the tornadoes had torn up the commercial blocks around Promiseland, yet the facility itself was virtually untouched except for a few shattered windows. Even the stained glass in the steeple and the prominent cross had withstood the intense winds. Rocky found himself wondering if indeed a miracle had spared the church.
They picked their way through the ruins with Meg leading them. In places, it was difficult to tell where the streets had been, since most of the signposts had been torn away and cars shoved around as if they were made of cardboard. Bodies were strewn here and there, but the group ignored them. They passed a few cars that sat upright with their wheels more or less intact, but they didn’t bother checking for keys. Even if one of the vehicles started, the street was too cluttered to allow passage.
They came upon a Nabisco truck flipped on its side, the rear doors yawning open. Hannah stuffed her backpack with Ritz crackers and saltines, while Sydney and Arjun filled their pockets with Oreos and Chips Ahoy! cookies. Jacob accepted a cookie from Sonia, and Rocky was glad to see the boy had emerged from his sorrowful daze.
“Too bad this wasn’t a Budweiser truck,” Sydney said. “I could really use a drink.”
The humor was welcome amid the grim surroundings and even Meg smiled. “I think we’ve only got a block to go,” she said. “We turn right at that Waffle Express.”
The round-the-clock breakfast restaurant was little more than a shell, with no windows, the sheet metal stripped from its eaves, and loose bricks piled around the sidewalk. But a couple of soldiers stirred inside it, apparently having taken cover there when the tornadoes hit.
Rocky hailed them and said, “Any deaders around?”
“Probably all got blown back to hell,” one said. “But I don’t want to be out here after dark.”
“Better get back to TOC soon,” Rocky said to them.
“What’s that mean?” Arjun asked him.
“Tactical operations center. The church.”
“Have you seen my husband?” Meg asked the soldiers, and then described him as tall, dark-haired, and wearing black-framed eyeglasses.
“We encountered some civilians before the storm and sent them to Promiseland,” one of them said. “Since then, we haven’t seen anybody. At least anybody alive.”
They continued along the ruined boulevard past apartment complexes, a bus station, an ice-cream shop, and a row of office buildings that had lost their roofs. Occasionally they’d see people in the distance moving among the wreckage, but they didn’t interact with them. At one point, a couple of helicopters swooped overhead from the east, their rotors battling the wind. A few jets also soared high above the clouds, unseen and fleeting, and occasionally the muffled sounds of distant explosions rose above the noise.
They came upon a house whose garage door had blown away. Sonia and Hannah rummaged in the garage, finding a pick and shovel, as well as some hand tools that could be used for zombie extermination. Hannah wanted to search the house for firearms, but Rocky was worried about gettin
g caught out after dark.
The cemetery lay on a slight rise of land above a creek, nesting in a pocket of urban forest. Some of the markers and monuments had toppled, and the grass was torn away in patches.
An uprooted tree was jammed against the bridge that crossed the road ahead of them. Jacob stopped at the bridge and looked down into the churning, muddy water, where a pale, bloated body drifted downstream. He had Mister Grizz clasped to his chest like a talisman.
“I’ll take her the rest of the way,” Hannah said to Rocky. “I owe her that much.”
Meg nodded approval and Rocky gave over his burden. He was glad to have free access to his M16. He had a feeling he’d need it soon, and Arjun didn’t look too comfortable with the Glock dangling by his side. The windstorm had left behind a thick layer of black clouds that veiled the sinking sun. Heat lightning flashed in brilliant silver threads.
“Think Ramona will like this place?” Meg asked Jacob.
“Yeah. It’ll be sunny here if the sun ever comes out again.”
Everyone looked at the cemetery under the gloomy sky, with glowing pockets of fire in the distance. It seemed like nowhere in the world would ever again provide eternal rest.
“Hey, guys,” Arjun said.
Rocky turned. The trio of figures heading toward them might be refugees from the storm. They looked injured and exhausted, their torn clothes flapping about them. Yet they didn’t move as if they were together—they were simply near one another and walking in the same direction.
“Deaders,” Hannah said.
“I’d rather not shoot them,” Rocky said. “The noise might attract more.”
Sonia hefted the pick she’d scavenged, and she still carried the knife Rocky had given her. Sydney tapped her shovel handle against the ground. She also had a hammer tucked into her belt. “I’ll back them up,” Arjun said to Rocky. “You get the others to the graveyard and pick out a spot.”
Rocky decided he’d have to trust the women to handle the situation—a happy ending didn’t appear anywhere in sight, and they’d need to learn some defensive skills if they were to survive. Sonia had already proven herself when she’d been attacked on the bus. Arjun and Sydney were wild cards.
“Okay,” Rocky said. “But don’t let them close on you. Remember what I said: quick thrusts, in and out clean, go for the head only.”
Meg, Jacob, and Hannah had reached the entrance of the cemetery, and Rocky jogged to catch up. An ornate wrought-iron sign read “Greenlawn Memorial Gardens,” and the stone entryway was strewn with plastic flowers and faded wreaths. A mausoleum at the top of the hill had cracked open, and the wind had carried away the dust of those interred there. Jacob picked his way across the rough terrain to a patch of upended turf near the fence.
“Here,” the boy said.
“It’s perfect,” Meg said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Take this,” Sydney said, passing Arjun the claw hammer.
He held it in his left hand, keeping the gun in his right. He swung the hammer a few times to test its balance, but the blows were weak and awkward. He’d either have to switch it to his dominant hand or be ready to fire the weapon if necessary.
The zombies were scarcely twenty yards away now, and they didn’t look so fresh. Arjun guessed they were among the first wave of victims, which meant they’d endured two days of decomposition. Yet their flesh was intact for the most part—if not for the blotched, gray skin and strange eyes, they might’ve passed for homeless vagrants hunting for a bottle instead of human flesh.
With the frothing black clouds, the lightning, the howling gale, and the distant glimmers of fire all around, Arjun felt like a warrior in a dark fantasy videogame trekking across a bleak primordial landscape. But videogames only offered aural and visual sensations. They didn’t deliver the pungent aroma of rot and smoke, the stinging grit against your face and the tears caused by the wind, the weight of the crude weapons in your hands, or the taste of fear that corroded your tongue.
“One for each of us,” Sonia said, swinging the pick like she meant business.
Sydney held the shovel’s blade upside down and pointed before her, jabbing at the air every few steps as the deaders drew closer. “I’ve got the dead bitch on the left.”
Arjun didn’t know if the two women were feigning bravery or if they truly didn’t care, and he was more afraid of letting them see his anxiety than of getting bitten.
The gun made him feel a little better, although he wasn’t even sure if the safety was off. Hell, he didn’t even know if it had a safety. He was pretty sure from his research that Glocks didn’t have a conventional safety, but he’d never touched a real gun in his life. There was a slidey thing in the middle of the trigger that he believed counted as a safety, but if he needed to use the gun, he was just going to yank on everything until something went pop.
But he had only two bullets and there were three zombies. The math didn’t work out.
When they were within ten yards of the deaders, Arjun saw them not just as unnatural avatars from a fictional milieu, but as people who had only recently been human. Sydney’s target might’ve been someone’s mother, sister, or aunt, caught out shopping in a spring skirt and peach blouse, clothes that now hung around her in rags. Her dark skin was marred with disease and filth, pus leaking from her eyes. An open runnel of flesh ran up one leg, and the torn meat looked rancid, with maggots roiling in the wound.
Arjun, who was walking in the middle, was stuck with a teenager, barely old enough to drive, but larger than Arjun all the same. The kid wore a Lebron James basketball jersey and Nike shorts stained with putrescence. A deader had bitten chunks out of his neck and shoulders, and ivory-colored bone gleamed with each lightning strike. Arjun’s stomach lurched at the smell of it, and he fought down a hard knot of rising vomit.
Sonia’s was a soldier, fresher than the others, likely taken out by either the tornado or the military’s attempt to clear the territory of zombies. He sported no visible wounds, but his head cantered at an impossible angle, wobbling against his shoulder with every jerky step. All of them hissed and snarled in harmony with the wind, crying their hunger with whatever passed for breath in those decomposing lungs.
“Are we good?” Arjun said, forcing his voice to hold steady.
“Ready to rock’n’roll,” Sydney said.
“I’ve been waiting all day for this,” Sonia added.
Arjun couldn’t break his gaze from the infected teen in front of him. That mouth yawned with a vacuous need, teeth straightened by orthodontia, tongue squirming like a slug in its dark wet hollow. The eyes gathered the coruscating light and reflected it back like slimy mirrors. And lithe, trembling arms reached for Arjun, fingers dirty and curled.
Arjun was only inches from its grasp. At the last moment, he switched the hammer to his right hand, nearly dropping it in the process. He raised the tool high and away from his body, sidestepped the deader’s lunge, and swung with all his strength. The blow nearly pulled him off balance, and the hammer head missed its target, sinking into the meat of the teen’s back with a dull thwat.
Arjun gathered for another blow and the thing clutched his T-shirt. It yanked him into its grasp, that slavering mouth close enough to his ear that foul spittle misted his lobe. Desperate, Arjun drove the hammer handle into the teen’s throat, which shut off that damnable hissing. Adrenaline surged through him—the high from this struggle was more intense than from any virtual-reality scenario—and he raked the claw across the creature’s face, dislodging a couple of those perfect teeth that so badly wanted to sink into him. Purplish blood oozed from the wound.
Beside him came a snick as Sydney drove her shovel home. Arjun had been so enthralled that he’d forgotten about the others. He dared a glance at her and she was poised like a Viking, driving the blade under the deader’s jaw and digging deep into the bottom of the skull. She must’ve severed the spinal cord because the deader flopped like a sodden
rag doll.
“Dig it, bitch,” Sydney said, with a disturbing manic glee in her voice.
Arjun swung the hammer sideways against the teen’s temple, crunching bone, but the teen refused to go down. Arjun was tempted to use the Glock but he didn’t trust his left hand. And he’d have to alter position to shoot, which would leave him vulnerable.
With a desperate cry, he lifted the hammer as high as he could and drove it straight down just as the teen leaned in for a nibble. The hammer head smacked against the top of the zombie’s skull and penetrated a good two inches. Arjun tried to withdraw it but it was lodged there, bits of pinkish gray matter squirming out from the wound. The teen tensed in a mighty spasm and then quivered as it collapsed.
“Help her!” Sydney shouted, and Arjun snapped from his triumphant rush to see Sonia on the ground, fending off her undead attacker. She’d driven the pick into the soldier’s chest and a gaping hole leaked gore, but it wasn’t deadest yet. She used the pick handle to bar its assault. But its mouth was dangerously near her face, drooling and groaning with hunger.
Arjun didn’t have time to retrieve his hammer. He punched the soldier in the back of its crewcut head with the butt of his handgun, but the zombie didn’t respond.
“Get out of the way!” Sydney cried.
Arjun stepped back as Sydney swung the shovel, flinging infected blood and torn meat onto Arjun’s skin. The blade hit flush against the back of the soldier’s head with a dull clang, but still its mouth moved in for a taste.
Sonia’s eyes widened with horror. Without thinking, Arjun leapt onto the soldier’s back, nearly pushing the deader all the way down onto Sonia. He rode the zombie like a rodeo cowboy, tightening his knees against its flanks and yanking the collar of its field jacket as if it were a set of reins. He succeeded in raising the head a good six inches.
That was all the room Sydney needed to thrust the shovel into the soldier’s face, peeling off a chunk of cheek and spooning out a slimy eyeball. Together, he and Sydney leveraged the soldier off of Sonia, who rolled to her feet and gripped the pick handle with both hands.
Arize (Book 1): Resurrection Page 24