by Gibb, Lew
His plan was to avoid Speer Avenue and the highway by cutting through Riverfront Park and using the pedestrian footbridge to cross the clogged interstate highway into the lower highlands. He would then make his way northwest into Zebulan Picke’s “domain.” He figured approaching from the southeast would be unexpected. Then he would find Rachel and get her out of there.
While crossing the bridge, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of using it before when they’d been stuck in the highlands. It was completely clear of people, zombies, and vehicles. People had been so focused on their usual way of doing things they didn’t even think to get out of their cars and walk. He was one to talk. He’d done the same thing; he’d been so focused on getting the ambulance where he needed to go that he hadn’t considered how he could move faster and come back for the vehicle later. He needed to start looking at problems more creatively.
The dogs had relaxed their postures once they were out of the area of tall buildings. The pair of shepherds trotted ahead, sniffing and investigating things almost like their normal selves. Jerry picked up his pace, noting all the places a zombie ambush could be lurking and steering clear until he realized he shouldn’t have been able to see so well. His eyes could only dilate so far, and the danger was past—at least the immediate threat that had activated his sympathetic nervous system. His pupils should have been back to more normal capabilities. Where was the light coming from? It was almost like a normal night in the city. He dropped back to a walk and put his hand on the butt of his pistol.
A faint glow was clearly visible over the crest of a small rise—in the direction of Picke’s building and Jerry moved toward it. He crested the hill and came to a dead stop. The long, low industrial warehouse building and surrounding chain-link fencing blazed with light.
Jerry ducked and moved to the side of the road. He crept a little closer, using a hedge for cover. The dogs hung back, both once again on full alert. Large white rectangles were fixed to the fencing at regular twenty-foot intervals. Each had the same message spray-painted in black. Jerry recognized the childish scrawl from their earlier visit:
Domain of Zebulan Picke. Stay Out!!!
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Rachel opened her eyes and rolled off the couch, drawing her chef’s knife as she checked the house’s front room. Not finding any obvious threats, she eased up to the window, pulled the curtain back with the back of her hand, and scanned the yard, straining to hear what might have awakened her.
It felt like something was about to happen, something bad that she couldn’t quite pinpoint or put into words. What she could see, which was not fucking much, seemed zombie-free. Her eyes were drawn to a hazy band of light that snaked across the horizon. Like a snake that had just eaten, it expanded in the center and tapered off at the ends. She checked the mantel clock, an old-fashioned windup that reminded her of her childhood. Four a.m.
The stars were a little indistinct at first, like Rachel’s eyes were out of focus, but if she concentrated, thousands of individual pinpricks materialized out of the haze. The sky reminded her her grandparent’s farm where the nightly display of stars had entranced her. It didn’t make up for the suffocating humidity and mosquito bites, but it did make them a little more bearable. The post-apocalypse sky put her childhood memories to shame, and she stared at it while thinking about what might be out there. Maybe some of the shiny dots were even galaxies. She wasn’t sure if you could see a galaxy, but the thought was interesting—that there could be a galaxy out there where someone else, some intelligent life form, was looking up at their sky and possibly seeing Rachel’s galaxy. Somehow, the thought was comforting. Considering that life on her own planet—at least the intelligent life—seemed to be in danger of extinction, it was nice to think maybe life would continue somewhere else.
“Rachel,” Clay whispered.
Letting the drapes fall back into place, she turned toward his voice. She could just make out the lump of his form on the mattress he had dragged in from one of the bedrooms and pushed into the far corner of the living room.
“Sorry, I thought I heard something,” she said. She suspected he was trying to stay close so he could protect her. Or maybe he just wanted to be close to the exit if things went to shit.
“And?”
“It’s fine.” She parted the curtain and scanned the yard again. “I just couldn’t sleep. It’s a little like when my mom was sick. I kept expecting a call in the middle of the night telling me she had taken a turn for the worse. But this time I think it’s about Jerry.”
“You think your husband has a terminal illness.”
“No.” Rachel gritted her teeth. “I think Jerry needs me.”
“Of course, Jerry needs you. We men are incapable of surviving without a woman to tell us what to do.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. “Funny. But that’s not what I meant. I’m worried he’s in trouble.”
“You mean like, with zombies everywhere, and vindictive assholes pushing people out of warehouses—that kind of trouble?”
“You make it sound silly when you say it like that.”
Clay snorted, obviously holding his laughter in.
Rachel dropped the curtain and started pacing in front of the couch. “I know we’re all in the same boat, but this is different. It’s like when you argue with someone, and they pretend to agree with you, or they say they’ll do something, but you know damn well they’re just humoring you and they’re just going to go ahead and do whatever they want.”
“Would this someone be Jerry?” Clay didn’t wait for an answer before he continued, his amused tone still present. “And you told him not to do anything stupid during the apocalypse?”
“Ha ha. No. I just think about how impulsive he is. He went out and bought a crap-ton of MREs before this all happened.”
“That actually sounds like a good idea, in hindsight.”
“That isn’t the point.” Rachel’s voice rose to a high-pitched hiss. She was still conscious of how well the zombies seemed to be able to hear. “Yeah, now it looks like a good decision. But before this all started and we didn’t know what the fuck was going on, it was kind of crazy.” She paced some more. “He doesn’t think well in the moment, and I’m afraid he’s going to do the wrong thing.”
“I thought you said he was a paramedic?” Clay’s sleeping bag rustled as he got up. She could barely see him as he walked over to the window, parted the drapes, and looked out. “Don’t they have to think under pressure?”
“It’s not the same.” She shook her head. “One thing Jerry always says about his job is that it’s not his emergency. That’s how he can distance himself from the situation and think logically about what needs to happen—because he’s not the one in danger. When his adrenaline gets flowing, he can’t think. I’ll give you an example. Someone cut him off on the highway a while ago. Jerry jerked the wheel and did a good job of reflexively avoiding the accident and keeping the car on the road.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. When he has to react, he can do it. But it wasn’t till ten minutes later, once he calmed down, that he blurts out what he should’ve yelled at the guy. I think he’s spent so much time cultivating this calm demeanor that now he can’t let his fight or flight instincts take over when they need to.”
Clay’s head moved in what she assumed was a nod. “That’s what has you worried? That the zombies aren’t going to wait around for him to think of something good?”
“Exactly.”
“So you’re the one with the quick tongue?”
“Jerry and I complement each other. He’s better at standing back and figuring things out. I just react and get the job done.” Like the apocalypse. For some reason, she was surviving and even helping others without really thinking about how she was doing it.
“Well, maybe you should get some sleep then. You aren’t going to be much good to anyone if you don’t get a little rest. If things work out, tomorrow we’ll
get you home, and you can start looking out for Jerry as well as all of us.”
After Clay went back to sleep, Rachel couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out. She tossed and turned for an hour before she realized she had already slept longer than any night in the past ten years. Going to bed at sunset could change your internal clock in a hurry. Usually, she was so stressed about whatever party she was catering she would wake up in the middle of the night and start making lists of things she needed to bring or questions for the client.
Rachel gave up on sleeping and decided if she was going to help Jerry, they were going to need to get an early start. She geared up with her knives and her zombie outfit, grabbed an armload of the supplies they’d piled in the hall, and eased out the front door. As she stared across the front lawn, the feeling that Jerry needed her was stronger than ever.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
A pair of small wind turbines on opposite corners of the warehouse’s roof spun slowly in the faint breeze. That explained both why the lights surrounding the building and the parking area were lighting up the sky, as well as the light leaking around the loading doors that lined the entire side facing him. Jerry focused on the near corner of the warehouse’s roof. After about three minutes, a lone figure appeared and traversed the top of the wall closest to Jerry before turning the corner and disappearing down the other side.
It had taken him much longer to reach the compound than he’d anticipated. He’d moved away from the light, then somehow gotten turned around and lost track of the light. Without the beacon to guide him and with the city he’d lived in for ten years looking completely different in the almost pitch black, he’d ended up going the wrong direction, northeast instead of northwest.
If it hadn’t been for the dogs and their ability to see, or smell, the zombies—at least some of them it seemed were night owls—he probably wouldn’t have made it at all. Jerry had read that dogs’ eyesight, especially at night, was supposed to be inferior to that of humans, but the dogs always seemed to know when zombies were near before he did. Even when the wind was from the other direction. The apocalypse seemed to have focused the dogs’ thinking as well as Holly’s.
Watching the dogs tear into the zombies reminded him they weren’t just the furry, sometimes entertaining companions he was used to, but predators who occupied a spot pretty high on the food chain. Sure, they had figured out how to get a cushy life of soft furniture and regular meals in exchange for being cute and obedient. But the dog was a descendent of the wolf and still had the hunter’s DNA. When Jerry whispered “Go!” it was a little scary to watch them fly at the nearest zombie and finish it off in seconds.
While he was daydreaming, the roof guard appeared again. Jerry checked his watch. This time, the circuit had taken about five minutes. It had been as short as three and as long as fifteen, depending on how long he talked to the other guard who was stationed at the gate on the opposite side in an SUV. The guard was dressed in head-to-toe camouflage, just as Picke had been, that looked brand new, and he had an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. Why these guys thought jungle-camo was the thing to wear in the city, Jerry couldn’t figure out. It probably made Picke feel more like a commander to have everyone wearing a uniform. The man slouched around the far corner and disappeared. The more he’d seen of the setup, the more convinced Jerry was that Rachel was being held captive inside and the less patient he was for waiting around.
When the guard hadn’t returned after ten minutes, Jerry moved across the building’s front, shuffling in a crouch in case there was a stationary sentry he hadn’t noticed in his hour-long reconnaissance. Kodi and Mandy padded along at his sides, stopping when he did and moving when he gave the release command. After traversing the building’s more decorative front, where there were a couple of maples and a parking area, he dropped to the pavement and hid beneath a pickup parked on the street fronting the compound. The opposite side of the warehouse was identical to the one he’d just left, with loading docks all along its length and a random selection of semi-trailers parked against the building and along the fence line.
The roof guard was leaning over the low wall surrounding the roof and talking with the guy in the Chevy Suburban that was facing the front gate. Their voices were only low murmurs, and Jerry couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but the words bitches and hos featured prominently, as well as various constructions of the word fuck. When he first heard them talking and realized they were probably talking about their female prisoners, Jerry’s ears rang with the blood pounding through his head and the thought that Rachel could be one of them.
It seemed like they might be at it for a while, so Jerry eased his way back and circled the property to the opposite corner, farthest from the sentries where he wouldn’t have to negotiate the concertina wire lining the fence’s top. He had no interest in attempting to get the dogs over an eight-foot fence topped with two feet of wire sharper than one of Rachel’s knives.
He’d found the spot during the two hours he’d been checking the place. Actually, Mandy had found it. He’d been crawling along with his head down when she appeared on the other side of the fence. Following her back, he’d found a spot where the ground sloped away from the building and the fence had been undermined by the dirt falling away over the years. After only a few minutes of scraping dirt away with his hands, he had a hole big enough to crawl through. The dogs followed easily, and they worked their way forward between the fence and the parked trailers to a spot just behind the SUV where they waited until the sentries got tired of bullshitting and the roof guy started another circuit.
The man sat in the SUV with the side door open and a foot propped in the gap between the door and the windshield. Jerry waited till the sentry above passed again. The man in the car waved, but there wasn’t any conversation. After giving the guy a minute to round the corner, Jerry drew his pistol and sprinted for the Suburban. He slowed to a walk as he reached the rear of the vehicle, then tiptoed up and pressed the barrel of his gun against the guard’s head.
“Don’t make a sound,” Jerry whispered. The guy flinched but didn’t say anything. “Scoot over. Slowly.”
“Don’t hurt me,” the guy said, sliding along the bench seat to the other side.
Jerry took a step back, keeping his aim on the guy’s face, and whispered, “In.” Both shepherds hopped up without hesitation and bounded into the back seat just like they did in Jerry’s truck.
Kodi stuck his head forward and sniffed the guard’s ear. The man flinched away and smacked his head on the passenger-side window. “Don’t let him bite me,” he said, wedging his body into the corner between the dash and the passenger door. His eyes were wide, and he held his hands in front of his face.
“Relax. He’ll be cool if you are.” Jerry slid into the driver’s seat and propped one foot on the door, imitating the guard’s previous position but keeping his eyes, and his pistol, on the trembling man. Kid, really. Stringy black hair to match his stringy beard and arms. The guy looked like any one of the hundreds of twenty-something miscreants that had invaded Denver since the legalization of marijuana. Jerry was sure before he got his new fatigues the kid had been wearing ragged jeans, shiny with dirt, and a jacket to match. He had nothing against weed. It caused a fraction of the health and behavior problems alcohol did, but these guys hung out in the parks all day, throwing trash everywhere and killing the grass because they never moved. “How many?”
“What?”
Jerry didn’t have a clue how to interrogate someone or how he would know if the guy lied to him. He leaned forward with what he hoped was a hard stare.
Kodi perked up at the motion and leaned forward, sniffing, probably wondering if the guy’s ripe, unwashed stench concealed anything edible. The guy seemed to misinterpret Kodi’s happy grin as a threat because his eyes went even wider. Jerry decided he could use the fear. “If you lie, I’ll let Kodi here have you for breakfast.” The sentry pressed harder into the corner and looked li
ke he might pass out.
“How many of you are there in this little gang with Zebulan Picke?”
“Um.” His eyes flicked away from the still-smiling dog and back to Jerry. He seemed to realize he wasn’t in a position to make things up. “Okay. It’s Zebulan and me—I’m Stevie, by the way—and Robert and Georgie.”
“You sure?” Jerry shifted his gaze to the two shepherds.
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m telling the truth. Just the four of us. We’re taking turns on guard duty. Four hours on and four off. Then during the day, just one guy on the roof and one guy takes care of the women.”
“Women?” Jerry’s vision grayed out a little, and it was all he could do not to shoot the guy right there. If this guy had touched Rachel…
Both dogs reacted to Jerry’s tension, leaning against the middle seat with their teeth bared and snarling at the sentry who looked like he might throw up.
Jerry took a deep breath and relaxed his grip on the pistol. “What women? What do they look like?”
“I don’t know, man, they’re just chicks. You know?”
Jerry barely restrained himself from smashing the guy in the face with the gun. “Tall, short, blonde, brunette?” The confused look continued. “Start with the hair.”
“Dude. I don’t know.” The guy threw up his hands, and Kodi let out a little bark that made him jerk back and try to smash himself into the dash. “Two are blonde,” he squeaked out. He had his head turned away, but his eyes were locked on Kodi, making him look like a demented doll. “The rest got dark hair.”
“What else?” Jerry was so wound up he couldn’t even think of anything specific to ask.
“They’re all pretty hot. Zebulan, he doesn’t like you to call him Zeb, he won’t take any fatties or ugly ones. If you don’t want a beating, you send the ugly ones on their way. Dudes, too. Except if they say they’ll follow Zebulan’s orders.”