Scavengers

by Nate Southard

  “Oh, fuck.” The first sob jolted his body, and the second brought him to his knees. The tire iron slipped from his hands as his palms squeaked down the door. He had failed. Even though he’d tried his hardest, it still wasn’t good enough to save the woman he loved.

  He buried his face in his hands and let the tears take control. Sobs rolled over him, quaking him. He gave into sorrow so fully he didn’t notice the door open until Carol spoke.

  “Morris?”

  He looked up, his breath frozen in his throat. Carol stood before him, eyes wet and frightened. She was okay. It was really her. His wife was still alive.

  He grabbed her up in his thick arms and pulled her close. “Oh my god. I’m so glad to see you.”

  “I was scared, Morris.” She tried to say something else, and her voice hitched. Instead, she pulled him inside her office.

  She’d killed her boss, a wiry kid fresh out of school named Curt. The kid lay beside her desk, a bulky computer monitor resting where his head should be. She’d never been happy working under somebody almost half her age, but Morris figured that didn’t make her too thrilled with what she’d done.

  “They were talking about upgrading everybody to flatscreens,” she said in a weary voice. “I’m so glad for red tape.”

  Carol broke down twice while trying to relay her tale. Best Morris could figure, Curt had tried to calm an out-of-control employee and received a bite to the face for his trouble. He’d gone crazy soon after and started attacking others. Carol thought he’d killed his victims, but she saw them get back up and attack others. She hid under her desk and hadn’t come back out until the floor was quiet. She thought everybody had deserted the place, but Curt had been hiding. He chased her back into her office and tried to attack her, but he’d somehow ended up on the ground, and Carol had dropped the monitor on his skull while he squirmed and flailed like a turtle stranded on its back.

  Now she huddled in his arms. Morris sat against the closed door, holding her tight. He looked past her desk and out the window. Plumes of black smoke filled the air. As he watched, somebody took a screaming swan dive out a window near the top of the Carew Tower. The other sounds of chaos drowned out the body’s impact.

  “I didn’t think you’d make it,” Carol whispered into his chest.

  “I’d never leave you to this.”

  “I know. It just took so long.” A sob shook her body.

  “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

  “What should we do?”

  He didn’t feel ready for the question. How could he tell her he had no idea? He was supposed to rescue her. Only now he had to cross an insane city just to save her, and he didn’t have the slightest fucking clue how to do it.

  “The car’s in the garage below the building,” she said.

  “The streets are all clogged. It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Morris?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  She held him tighter. “I was so worried.”

  “I know. Just try to stay calm. It’ll be okay now.”

  “It will.”

  Right, if he ever came up with an idea.

  He thought about the city. Cincinnati sat right on the Ohio River, its shape determined by the valley. He’d come down the hill from UC and was now five blocks from the river. Newport and Covington sat on the Ohio’s opposite back. The hills of Kentucky lay beyond them. If they could reach the woods there, they’d have a stronger chance than in the city. He’d swim across the river with Carol on his back if that’s what he needed to do, but how would they reach the water in the first place?

  “The Skywalk,” he said before realizing he’d thought of it.

  “Yeah?” Carol asked.

  “It’ll be less crowded than the streets, and we can just worry about going from building to building. If things get bad, we can always go up a few floors and hide out until they calm down.” It sounded good, workable. Their escape didn’t need to be fast. It needed to be safe. This was their best chance.

  “What do we do once we reach the river?”

  “We cross it. It’ll be okay. I promise.” He believed his own words. He was going to get both of them to safety. Once they were out of the city they’d find their way back to Millwood, wait for everything to get back to normal.

  She gave him another squeeze. “Okay. I believe you.”

  He looked down at her. Her eyes were wet, but he could see the love in them. Giving her the best smile he could find, he leaned down and kissed her.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  He climbed to his feet and then helped her up. Then he grabbed the tire iron, wishing like hell he didn’t need it.

  “Okay, let’s get going.”

  The second floor lobby looked just as dead as when he’d entered the building. Fountain Square still sounded like a slaughter pen. The sounds of hunger and agonized death penetrated the lobby and made Carol shake at his side. He held her close and whispered into her ear.

  “Try to ignore it. And don’t look. It’s below us, so it doesn’t matter. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Her voice was little more than a breath.

  “You ready?”

  “I don’t know. I’m scared.”

  “So am I. But that’s going to help us, right? Keep us careful?”

  “Right.”

  He took hold of her hand and pulled her onto the Skywalk.

  The sounds of violence and the scent of smoke and blood slammed into them. Morris gagged, but he fought through the sensation. He wouldn’t stop this time, not until they were safely inside the next building.

  He charged across the concrete space, taking great strides. Halfway across the distance, he felt Carol’s hand slip out of his own.

  He stopped and looked back at her. She was watching the street.

  “Carol! Come on!” He held out his hand and waved for her to follow. She stood rooted to the spot, her face a blank mask of horror. He could see the wonder churn in her eyes, and he knew exactly how she felt. There was no time for this, though. Every second mattered. Each instant standing out in the open brought them closer to catastrophe.

  He looked around, searching for any psychos. They were alone for the moment. He took a step toward his wife, still reaching for her.

  “Carol, we have to go.”

  That seemed to cut through the haze. She turned to him, her neck moving so slowly he imagined he could hear her tendons creak.

  She smiled at him.

  “Look, Morris. The police are here.”

  He turned away from her and looked to Fountain Square. He was sure his wife had gone insane from the carnage below, but a glimpse at Vine Street told him differently. More than a dozen officers marched up the street, covered in black riot gear and carrying rifles that looked a whole lot like machine guns. They must be SWAT. He wondered if they’d been sent because the National Guard was busy elsewhere.

  He watched as the police took positions behind a cluster of crunched vehicles. One of the psychos noticed the fresh meat and charged. A quick rattle of machine gun fire ripped the mad bastard to shreds.

  “Carol, let’s get moving. Seriously, we have to go.”

  Her smile faltered. “But, the police…”

  “Let’s go.”

  She ignored him, waved her hands over her head.

  “We’re up here!”

  Gunfire split the sky. The roar of the SWAT team’s rifles echoed through the bowl of concrete and glass and sent Morris reeling, hands against his ears. Carol didn’t appear to notice. She kept waving, a relieved smile plastered across her face.

  Morris dove for the ground. He tried to catch Carol and take her down with him, but he landed at least two feet short. He slammed against the concrete in the second before he heard bullets tear through flesh and whipsaw off concrete. He reached for Carol’s legs, but she was jumping up and down. Her voice carried over the din.

  “Up here! We’re up here!”

 
“Carol, get down!” He grabbed hold of her ankle, and she kicked his hand away.

  “Morris, they’re here to save us!”

  “They’re shooting crazy! Dammit, get down here!”

  She stopped jumping and looked down at him. Her face told him she thought he was being silly, a worrywart unwilling to see salvation through his own fears. She actually chuckled at him.

  And then the top of her head exploded.

  Morris screamed, and then another bullet caught her in the shoulder, spinning her around and sending blood fanning out over the Skywalk. A third round punched into her back and burst out her chest, sending slivers of bone into the air in the split second before the impact shoved her to the ground.

  “Carol!”

  He scrambled to his feet but stayed bent at the waist. Hunched over, he ran to her, and even during the short journey he felt an angry wind as bullets whipped over and past him.

  He grabbed hold of Carol and knew at once she was dead. No one could have survived her wounds. The top of her head was gone, only a ruin of fractured bone and torn scalp left. Blood flowed from her chest, like water from a broken tap. She already felt cold.

  No. This wasn’t right. He’d come so far, done so much. She’d killed a man, and he’d killed several more, kicked a woman’s face in as she tried to tear him apart, and not a damn bit of it mattered. He’d failed her, and now she’d never make it five blocks to the river and safety. She’d died because she didn’t know the difference between salvation and a bunch of terrified cops.

  All around him, the gunfire continued. The stench of cordite mingled with blood and crept up his nostrils. He collapsed on top of Carol and cried. Her blood welled against his chest, but he didn’t care. Let it soak him. He deserved it. Her blood was on his hands because he’d failed to keep her safe. He could just lie here and wait, let whatever happened happen. It would be okay. Nothing mattered anymore.

  A rasping shriek jerked his eyes open. He lifted his chin from Carol’s bloodied throat in time to see a man wearing the tattered remains of a dress shirt run out of a nearby stairwell. Blood dripped from the man’s chin, and Morris decided to let him do his worst. Maybe it would be quick. Then he could join Carol.

  “Be home soon, baby,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and listened to the rushing footsteps, the hungry cry that promised death. His breath caught in his throat.

  The cry suddenly became a bleat of pain. The footsteps stopped and were replaced by the thick slap of flesh hitting concrete. Morris raised his eyes and found a splayed, writhing body in place of the maniac.

  The cops had gunned down this body, too. They’d done a much more thorough job, however. The bullets had almost chopped the man’s torso in half. He saw the concrete through the ragged holes in the man’s torso. His wrist oozed blood that looked black and clotting onto the stone walkway, his hand almost ten feet away.

  He should be dead. Morris knew that. A glance at the man’s body told him this sad bastard should have passed out from the pain of his injuries at the very least. But the guy’s eyes remained open, just as full of hate and violence as before the shooting. As Morris watched, the broken man swiped at him with his remaining hand and his jaw clacked in desperate hunger.

  Realization crashed in on Morris’s mind. This man was dead, had most likely been dead even before catching so many bullets. The fat woman with the tattered leg below, the business woman with the broken nails and blood-stained skirt, and Carol’s boss with the bite on his face: all of them had died and kept coming. Something had infected them, had killed them and brought them back to kill others, to spread the infection.

  But not Carol, and not the woman whose head he’d kicked in or Carol’s boss with a computer monitor where his skull had once been. Those had stayed down once put down, the same as those he’d smashed with the tire iron.

  The iron. He searched the area for the weapon and found it near the concrete rail. He grabbed it in his fist and found his feet again.

  He watched her, his ears deafened by the gunfire and screaming below him, and he knew he should take her with him. Tears stung his eyes as he warred with his thoughts. Murderous corpses had swarmed the entire city. It was so much worse than when he’d thought they were simply crazy. He didn’t want to die and come back like them, but he didn’t want to leave Carol behind. Her weight would slow him down. He’d never make five blocks while carrying her. And she was already dead.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said between sobs.

  He turned and ran for the river.

  ————————————

  “Hey, Morris.”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t bother looking up to see what Stevenson wanted. He focused on Eric’s body, illuminated by a flashlight he’d laid on the floor not a minute earlier. What remained of the man’s head emitted a thick scent of blood and singed tissue, like a stew made with bad meat. The smell reminded him of the charnel pit in Fountain Square, the cloying stench of blood and gunpowder and so much death. Carol’s face flitted through his memory, and he blinked his eyes before deciding Stevenson couldn’t see him crying in so much darkness anyway.

  Regardless of the stench and the memories it triggered, he kept working. Eric had created this entire plan and given Millwood some sense of hope. He figured the guy deserved a little dignity in death. He’d already unwound the sheet from Jeremy Motts, and now he used it to cover both corpses. Of course, they’d need to fill the truck’s bed with supplies before they worked on stowing the bodies, but he intended to take both back to Millwood. He’d bury them himself if he had to.

  “Everything okay up here, Morris?” Stevenson asked as he walked back into the area.

  He didn’t hear any mocking in the man’s tone. If anything, Stevenson sounded calm, maybe even a little at peace. Maybe they’d both had enough time to cool off a little.

  “Looks like we weren’t the first ones here,” the man said.

  He glanced to his left, eyeing the pile of rotting corpses there. No shit, he thought. We weren’t the first ones here by a long shot. Then it occurred to him what Stevenson meant, and he felt a ball of worry form in his chest. The glimpses of empty shelves jumped into his mind.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Whole place is pretty bare. We got some dry goods, still. Amazing enough, there’s even some beer. Most of the stuff we really need though, no such luck.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to think past the sudden feelings of anger and hopelessness. They’d known this was a possibility. Eric had even told them to prepare for it. Deep down, however, he’d always felt it wouldn’t be a problem. Rundberg was a small town, and he’d figured the people there wouldn’t storm the grocery stores like folks from Cincinnati or Indianapolis. He’d thought people would keep a more level head in the small towns. It looked like he’d been wrong.

  He heard something unzip in the truck’s bed. A moment later, something flared on the other side of his eyelids. He opened them to find Stevenson with a flashlight in his hand. The steel Maglite’s beam probed his eyes like a policeman’s. He held up a hand, and the beam flicked to the side, leaving an orange fog in its place.

  “Sorry,” Stevenson said. “What do you want to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the shelves.”

  “What do you think we should do? Far as I figure, we should just pack up what we can find.”

  “Right, but I mean after, I guess. We could check the nearby houses, see what people have stocked up. Might be enough to give us a full load.”

  Morris considered the suggestion. As ideas went, it wasn’t the worst he’d heard. They were down to two people, though. Any way you sliced it, the odds worked against them. Could the two of them really drive around in the truck, get in and out of a few homes before the dead overwhelmed them? He didn’t think so. They could maybe make their way through one house, two at the very most, but the strong odds said they’d die while trying to carry groceries out of the first home they raided.


  “Let’s see how it looks when we’re done,” he said. “No point in making any decisions before then.” He turned away from Stevenson and wiped the remaining tears from his eyes. Time to get started.

  TWENTY-TWO

  No car in the garage. Didn’t that just figure?

  Blake wanted to frown, but the throbbing pain in his leg wouldn’t let him control his face. He’d managed to make it out of the living room and to the garage without screaming, but his teeth had ground together so much he feared they might crumble. The sweat on his face felt like a bath of hot gel that stung his eyes. He wiped it away every few moments, but it always returned. Maybe he had developed a fever. He groaned at the thought. A temperature couldn’t possibly be a good sign.

  He stood in the garage doorway. Maybe he could find a car in there if he spent a year digging through all the assorted crap the home’s owners had stockpiled. He suspected, however, he wouldn’t find anything but new and wonderful layers of crap, maybe a rodent or two. Over the years, he’d met plenty of packrats. Most of them possessed at least some concept of limitations, though. Whoever had owned this house didn’t appear to have the same problem.

  On the other hand, the assorted piles of knick-knacks and other junk gave him plenty of things to lean on as he made his way through the space designed for two cars. His trip from the living room had been an exercise in hopping, grunting, and then catching himself on whatever wall happened to be closest before he could crash to the floor. If any zombies had found him, they probably would have remembered how to laugh right before they tore him to pieces.

  That thought did wring a frown out of him. Right now he needed to worry about surviving long enough to reach Morris and Eric and even Chris so he could get back to Millwood. Let him get patched up. Then he could get back to wondering if zombies would laugh at him or not.