by Gibb, Lew
Tracy moved toward the kitchen. “I can’t believe it.” She lowered her sword and grabbed the box. “I used to eat this all the time.”
Holly took a step into the area between the couch and the TV, trying to see into the gloomy dining room beyond. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide. She bent over and looked under the big dining table and was about to go around the couch and move farther into the apartment when a high-pitched screech stabbed into her ears and her brain. A squat girl, dressed in all black with a massive black beehive hairdo, shot out of the darkest corner in the dining room. The girl was heading straight for her.
Holly’s sword was already up. She lifted the tip a fraction, aiming for the girl’s left eye, and braced herself for impact. She would step left and let the girl fall while she pulled the sword free and turned toward the hall where the next threat was likely to come from.
The plan went out the window when the girl tripped and stumbled forward. Holly couldn’t shift the sword in time. She missed the eye. Her blade sliced a deep gash down the left side of the round face and snagged a huge hoop earring.
The girl’s head slammed into Holly’s chest and knocked her backward. Then her foot caught in the carpet. Holly hit the floor on her back, and the zombie slammed down on top of her. The beehive smothered her, and the chemical hairspray smell made her want to hurl. Holly’s sword arm hung useless over the girl’s shoulder. The earring rattled against the crosspiece as she tried a couple of weak slashes, but the angle was all wrong. Blood dripped from the girl’s torn earlobe.
Pain drilled into Holly’s left collarbone.
“Shit!” Tracy screamed.
Holly wanted to turn her head and see what was going on, but Beehive’s head shifted, and the girl’s cheek, bloody from her wounded face and earlobe, smeared against Holly’s. Holly almost lost her lunch. She dropped her sword and grabbed a handful of hair that crackled in her fist just in time to stop the girl from biting her nose off. The pistol on her right hip was pinned by the girl’s belly.
An earsplitting scream from Tracy filled the apartment and gave Holly the strength to push the round zombie and roll free at the same time. She yanked the pistol free, jammed the barrel against the zombie’s temple and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
The safety!
The zombie lifted her head. The withdrawal of the pain made Holly nauseous. The girl opened her mouth wide, eyes locked on Holly’s nose.
Holly flipped the safety with her thumb and jammed the muzzle in the gaping mouth at the same time. She pulled the trigger a fraction of a second later. A bloody mist sprayed the ceiling, and the girl’s body slumped. A spray of fine droplets peppered Holly’s face.
Tracy was still screaming as Holly shoved the inert blob to one side and got to her feet. Tracy sounded far away to Holly’s ringing ears. Two more beehived girls in matching tights and sweaters had Tracy pinned against the breakfast bar. Her sword and gun lay at her feet. One zombie’s face was latched onto Tracy’s shoulder. The other was chewing Tracy’s other forearm.
Holly scrambled to her feet, glad they’d found a leather jacket for the woman, and shuffled to her right to improve her angle. Then she stepped forward and shot the one biting Tracy’s arm in the temple.
The zombie dropped like a sack of batteries but dragged Tracy down with her. The other zombie fell on top of them.
Holly watched the zombie open her mouth for another bite. If she fired, she would hit Tracy. She stepped forward and pressed the pistol against the zombie’s head. Just before she pulled the trigger.
Tracy screamed.
Zombie brains splattered the countertop.
Holly pulled her eyes from the mess and dragged the dead girl off of Tracy. When the woman struggled to her feet, half her ear dangled off the side of her head.
Holly’s eyes welled up with tears. She felt frozen in place, and her mouth wouldn’t work.
Tracy bent and retrieved her pistol and sword. “Let’s just go see if this was worth it.” Tracy’s voice was flat and lifeless. She pushed past Holly and started down the hall. Holly followed, still holding her pistol at her side, tears streaming down her face. Tracy tried the first closed door she came to. It banged against something, and a chorus of terrified screams erupted from the other side. “We’re not zombies,” she called. Then she muttered under her breath, “Not yet, anyway.”
A voice squeaked from the other side, “What about the bad girls?”
“No. All the bad girls are dead.”
Holly wondered if the bad girls had been that way before they’d become zombies. Furniture scraped on wood floor, and the door opened slowly a couple of inches.
“It’s okay.” Tracy stepped back, smiled, and held her arms out at her sides. It looked like she had her head turned to hide her bloody ear. The door opened wide, revealing two girls who looked about ten and a boy half their size. They looked at Tracy, then Holly, with wide eyes, like they still expected to be eaten at any moment. “You’re safe now,” Tracy cooed.
The girls shot out of the room and latched onto Tracy. A second later, the boy hit Holly’s legs so hard she fell into the opposite wall.
All three were crying and talking about how their parents had been killed by the girls and they had been trapped in the room since the first day.
Alberto called from the front room. “Are you guys okay?”
“We’re back here,” Tracy shouted, then looked at Holly. “Take them out. I’ll make sure there aren’t any more zombies in here.”
As Holly led the kids to the front room, she thought she heard Tracy whisper, “It was worth it.” Then the kids were throwing themselves at Alberto and talking over each other.
Suddenly, a gunshot echoed through the apartment. The kids started to cry and tried to hide behind Alberto. Holly ran down the hall. The door at the end was open. Inside what looked like the master bedroom, Tracy lay on the big bed with her feet on the ground. Her dead eyes stared at the ceiling, and her pistol lay on the bed beside her. A fan of blood painted the story of Tracy’s death on the wall behind the bed.
When Holly returned to the living room, the three kids were hugging Alberto. She could tell he knew what had happened, so she just shook her head. Then she started to cry. She leaned against Alberto and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I couldn’t help her,” Holly said. “I heard her scream.” Alberto wrapped his arms around her. She sucked in a huge breath and cried for a while. She felt so safe with him. She felt the kids shift to enclose her in their arms. “I couldn’t get up. I tried so hard to get it off of me.” Her tears made a pink splotch on the shoulder of Alberto’s jacket. “She was screaming. And I was pinned under that thing. It was horrible. I couldn’t kill it until after the other one got her. I was just so helpless.”
“You did all you could. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to help herself.”
“She needed me, and I wasn’t there.”
“You killed the one that attacked you, and that is all you can do.” She felt his words rumbling through his chest. “Maybe if she had been able to kill one of the zombies, the two of you could have killed the third one.”
Holly closed her eyes. The scene repeated itself in her mind. Finally, she released her death grip on Alberto and wiped her eyes. “Tracy said it was worth it.” She looked down at the little boy. “We need to get these kids out of here.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Rachel threw herself into the dump truck’s cab and slid across the cracked vinyl bench seat. Big Gulp cups and fast food wrappers shared floor space with an odd assortment of oversized nuts and bolts that were almost buried in dirt clods and gray dust. She yanked her feet out of the way as Clay bounced into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Hollow thuds, like apples dropping in a steel sink, started only a couple seconds later. Rachel pressed her back against the passenger door and Clay cursed. A massive thud on her side made her throw herself toward the cab's center. She turned to find a huge red-haired zombie reachin
g up to grab her, but his hand bounced off the passenger-side window.
The engine roared, and the truck bucked forward. It hesitated, then shot forward again and kept rolling.
The red-haired zombie ran alongside, pounding the door with one hand. The engine pitch kept going up, and he fell back. The pounding was replaced by a series of more muffled thumps. Bodies bounced off the grill and fenders. The truck lurched a couple times as zombies fell beneath the wheels. They picked up speed. The construction site’s fence loomed. She worried about what would happen if they got stuck.
No way would she have tried crashing through an eight-foot chain-link fence in the Subaru. But that was why they were at the construction site where Cindy’s husband Andy was site manager—because it had a massive dump truck. The height and heavy-duty construction would be better than a car for driving over zombies, and the elevated bucket could carry passengers. Rachel didn’t need much convincing after her experience with the Subaru. The plan was for Rachel and Clay to make their way a half mile to the site, grab the truck, and drive it back to a spot a block away from the house. Any zombies attracted by the sound of its arrival would be gone when they all returned the next morning to load up and head for Denver. They decided it would be a good idea to get it done before dark so the zombies would have the night to disperse.
The sun was behind the mountains, but there was still enough light to see where they were going, and they made it to the site without encountering any zombies. The dump truck was parked beside the supervisor’s trailer, just where Andy had said it would be. The trailer’s door was ajar, so they entered, found the keys for the truck, and even collected several pairs of leather gloves and a nice pair of steel-toed boots that fit Clay almost like they were his own without any problems. Rachel knew things couldn’t keep going so well. She kept looking for the zombie hiding in the closet or behind the file cabinet that would attack them, but none materialized.
It was when they left the trailer that things went bad. Really bad. Rachel brushed against the door, and the hinge let out a squeal that she felt in her molars.
The only explanation for what happened next was that everyone that worked at the site had become a zombie and been locked in at some point. Then they’d all decided to sleep in the partially completed office building. That must have been why no less than fifty zombies in work boots and safety-orange hoodies boiled out of the shadows. She and Clay had made it to the truck just in time.
At least they wouldn’t have a repeat of the clusterfuck at the pharmacy.
The truck smashed through the gate without slowing. She didn’t even feel them hit. One second the gate was in their path, the next, one side pinwheeled through the air and impaled itself in the windshield of a parked van. In the rearview, she saw the other side hanging like a loose tooth from the top corner. Then the truck lurched through a turn that threw her against the door, and they were speeding away from the enraged pack of construction workers.
Rachel looked forward. There was movement to her right in the McDonald’s parking lot. A tall, shirtless zombie with blonde Einstein hair and the reddest eyes she’d seen yet hurdled a fallen bicycle and sprinted toward the truck.
“Damn, that one’s fast,” Rachel said. “Really fast.” He seemed to adjust his angle for a better chance at intercepting them. “Holy shit. He’s going to make it.” Rachel was glad they weren’t in some POS wagon. They could run right over him just like they had the others. Except he wasn’t aiming for the front. He was heading straight at Rachel.
When he was fifteen feet away, the zombie took a flying leap that made her wonder if maybe he played for the Nuggets before the apocalypse. He had more than enough tattoos on his muscular arms. The zombie baller slammed into Rachel’s door so hard his front teeth clacked against the window, snagging the chrome frame of the side-view mirror.
“Fuck!” Rachel jerked her head back.
The zombie dangled one-armed from the side-view mirror’s chrome tubing, and his flaming eyes locked on her. It looked like the blood was about to boil out of his eyeballs. He reached up and grabbed the window ledge, seemed to get his feet under him, and raised up so his head was above hers. He extended his arms, pushing himself further up and back, still focused on her as his neck stretched and his mouth opened.
“Oh, fuck!” Rachel screamed, and pushed away from the window.
His forehead shot forward and hit the window with a sound like a gunshot. Glass exploded into the cab and ricocheted off her face. She spit a chunk of glass that had gone in her mouth and felt a trickle of blood run down her cheek.
The zombie’s hand shot forward and grabbed the front of Rachel’s jacket.
Blood streamed down his forehead. He yanked her toward him, mouth gaping so wide she could see his molars were riddled with silver fillings.
Rachel jammed both hands against the door frame. She only just stopped him from pulling her out. Still, he was outside the cab, and she was inside. The zombie reached in and latched onto her jacket with his other hand.
Her left arm gave out, and her ass lifted off the seat. Then her right arm buckled, and her head was outside.
She looked down.
He had one foot braced against the door, straining to pull Rachel out.
Rachel screamed something incoherent, tried to push away and looked at his face. He was only six inches away. His front teeth were jagged, broken off by the window. Blood from his forehead ran into his mouth.
A stray lock of his hair flapped in her face. It whipped around and stuck to her lip. She shook her head and spit it out. The movement saved her when he lunged for her face.
Pain flamed in her shoulder, so intense she was sure he had bitten through her jacket. She looked ahead. They weren’t going that fast. She’d had a vague sensation of slowing when the window exploded. If she let herself be pulled out, maybe the zombie would break her fall.
She lost her grip on the window frame and started to go out. Her other hand found the door handle. In desperation, she yanked it.
The door opened in slow motion and pushed the zombie’s foot off the step. A leather work glove flew past her face, hit the zombie, and tumbled out of sight. The zombie’s legs cycled in the air.
Rachel dangled by only one arm. Her stomach muscles screamed with the effort of keeping her body from sliding out.
A gunshot hammered in her ears, and a hole appeared in the zombie’s shirt just below his armpit.
Another shot. Another hole. This time in the side of the zombie’s cheek. Blood ran from the hole and down his chin.
The zombie released her jacket and dropped from the still-moving truck. He hit the road flat on his back, then his feet flew up and over his head in a perfect layout backflip before he crumpled and bounced twice like a discarded doll before slamming into a parked car.
Rachel squirmed her way back into the cab, slammed the door, and collapsed against the seat.
Clay was driving one-handed. His other arm was extended toward her side of the truck, pointing his pistol at the space where the zombie had been.
“What the hell?” Rachel panted and her hands shook. “I haven’t seen them move like that before.”
Clay dropped the pistol on the seat between them and grabbed the wheel with both hands. “Damn, I never shot anyone while driving before.”
She could tell he was talking too loud, like someone wearing headphones, yet his voice felt distant to her ringing ears.
Rachel took a few more deep breaths. “I thought I was going out the window.”
“Maybe it was a fluke.”
A few zombies jogged and shambled toward the truck from the surrounding houses, none of them with the speed and leaping ability of the skinny guy.
“I hope so.” Rachel tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bit her lip. Sweat ran down her neck and between her breasts. “I don’t know what we’re going to do if we run into a whole mob of those NBA zombies.” Rachel leaned her head back against the seat. Now all she had to do was
get back to the house without attracting another horde, make it through the night without being eaten or killing Cindy, and drive everyone home in the morning.
“Wait for me, Jerry,” she whispered. “I’ll be there soon.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Would it be cowardly to ask Alberto to spare me the horror of having to kill my wife’s dog? Jerry sat on the floor in the “quarantine” apartment next door to his own, waiting to find out if Mandy would become a zombie dog. Rachel’s black and gray shepherd hadn’t left his side since he’d brought the dogs over. Dogs were very good at reading human emotions and intentions. It was part of their evolutionary skill set.
Mandy scooched closer and wedged her head under Jerry’s chin. He ruffled her ears and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. It was strange to be taking comfort from her when he was waiting to see if her life would be over. Her fur was still wet from the bleach-water bath he’d given both dogs—or maybe it was from all the tears he was dripping.
He still couldn’t believe how fast things had changed. Finding the dogs alive had given him hope that everything would work out all right. That Rachel had survived and that she could make it home. That they would be a family again and face the dangers of the new world together. But now, because Jerry had to be a good person instead of doing what he should have to protect his own, that whack-job Zebulan Picke—if that was even his real name—had ruined everything. Tracy was dead. Rachel was lost to him. He was about to lose her dog. If Mandy turned into a zombie, he would find that asshole Picke and…what? Kill him? Jerry wasn’t sure he could do that. His whole life was about helping people. Saving lives, not taking them. Jerry was still trying to come to terms with all the zombies he’d killed, especially since their calls had started changing. And to top it all off, there were three more kids to take care of. He had no idea how to take care of kids. How would he keep them safe when he couldn’t keep his own dogs safe?