“You’ve been here before?” Alden whispered, joining them.
“Never inside,” said Xavier, “only out front.”
Pulaski looked at him. “Then you don’t really know.”
Xavier shrugged. “This is one of their places, so it’s likely. I told you earlier I wasn’t making any promises.”
“Yeah,” the pipe fitter continued, “but you sounded pretty damned confident. Enough to take us six blocks in the other direction from where we wanted to go. Enough to keep us from checking out that police car we saw up on the curb.”
The priest looked at him. “That was a death trap. You would have drawn them the moment you stepped into the street, and then what would have happened if you’d reached the car and found nothing?”
“Someone probably already took the shotgun,” Alden added. “You would have gotten killed for nothing.”
Pulaski snorted. “So I got to spend more hours creeping like a rat to get killed here instead.”
“It’s still our best bet,” said Alden, patting the priest’s shoulder. He hadn’t said a word about detouring for his medication. They had only seen one pharmacy, and it was on fire.
“How will we even know where to start looking?” said Pulaski.
Xavier gave him a sideways glance. “You’re assuming we live long enough to get into the building.” He saw the man swallow hard, and tried not to take pleasure from it. “We’ll probably have to go door to door. First we need to get there.”
Alden nodded and moved away, returning a moment later with three plastic water bottles three-quarters filled with gasoline, a rag stuffed into each. The skateboard kid, whose name turned out to be Ricky Hammond, though he insisted on being called Snake, had siphoned the gas from an abandoned car with a length of garden hose.
“I’m less worried about them,” Xavier said, indicating the dead.
“Why?”
“Because 690K doesn’t play around, and they’ll blow you away without even thinking about it.” He pointed to the building across the street. “What worries me is that some of them might still be alive, and holed up in there. If they are, your tire iron isn’t going to do much good. They pack serious heat.”
Pulaski scowled. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” The bluster was gone from his voice.
“We don’t have a choice, do we?” said Alden.
“Of course we do. We can pull out of here and follow our original plan, try to get to the marina.”
“We’re lucky we made it this far,” said Pulaski. “No way we cross half the city and live if we’re unarmed.”
“We could still go check that police station,” Xavier offered, “avoid this place entirely.”
“Except anyone who’s still alive and trying to get out will go there,” said Alden. “We’d find it empty, or get ourselves shot by other survivors. Not many people know about this place, do they?”
Xavier shook his head. “No one stupid enough to risk going up against these guys.”
“Stupid like us,” Pulaski muttered.
“You don’t have to go.”
“I’m going.”
“Then like we discussed,” Xavier said. “Ricky…sorry, Snake. You throw two of the bottles as hard as you can towards the street light. It should draw them off, and we wait until that happens. The rest of you stay here and out of sight while Pulaski and I go in.”
They all nodded.
The priest looked at the twelve-year-old again. “You watch that doorway. When you see us in it again, if they’ve moved back into the street, you throw the last bottle in the other direction to draw them that way. We’ll cross when it’s safe.”
Snake smiled and shook the bottles.
Xavier gripped Alden’s shoulder. “Give us thirty minutes. If we’re not back, get them out of here and head for the marina.”
The school teacher’s eyes announced the doubts he had about being up to that task. “Make sure you come back.”
A minute later, Pulaski lit the bottles with his Zippo, and Snake crept onto the sidewalk. Two balls of fire arced through the night. The kid had an arm, because both hit the pavement almost directly beneath the lone street light, pools of fire erupting and throwing the shadows of cars and moving figures on nearby walls. The dead moaned and moved towards the small blaze, and two shapes slipped out the storefront and scooted across the street, shadows in the fog.
Xavier and Pulaski moved fast, sprinting behind the backs of the shuffling ghouls and reaching the doorway. Silence and darkness awaited them, and they plunged inside, the thin light from outside lost in seconds. They climbed a stairway, Pulaski going first with the sharp end of his tire iron. A landing gave a choice of more stairs going up, or a hallway. At the end facing the street, pale light from outside came through a dirty window and created a bluish glow, not enough to see by. Pulaski lit the Zippo.
In their small circle of light they could see that the hall was littered with trash and empty beer bottles. Every door, every inch of wall and even the ceiling was covered in graffiti. The pipe fitter looked at the priest and raised an eyebrow. Xavier looked at the doors, then pointed a finger at the ceiling. They climbed to the next floor.
The thumping came as soon as they reached the next landing, where there were no more stairs, only another hallway like the one below, complete with trash and more graffiti. They froze. It came again, something heavy, bump, bump. It was coming from the right, so they moved left, towards the back of the building.
As he had told the others, Father Xavier had been here once before, nearly two years ago, although he hadn’t shared the details. The building was one of the places where gang members crashed, and he had come for a meeting on behalf of a young man named Reggie Summers. 690K was drawing the boy in, seducing him with the promise of easy money, sex, drugs and little responsibility. Reggie was the son of a woman in his parish, a bright boy who got decent grades and had a chance at a higher education, an opportunity to escape the dead end life of the Tenderloin. Father Xavier had come to meet with the leader of 690K, at the time a twenty-five-year old thug named Smiles. He had come to plead for them to leave the boy alone. They met on the sidewalk out front.
“He’s mine,” Smiles had said, shrugging. “His life, his ass. They’re mine. You’re too late, Father. I already claimed his soul.” The words were spoken without malice or anger, just matter-of-fact. The gang leader smiled and nodded politely at everything the priest had to say, hearing him out. And then another shrug. “He’s mine.” Xavier had gone away defeated and frustrated. Three weeks later Reggie Summers was killed by police after a high speed chase, following a drive-by shooting. He was sixteen.
That was the moment Xavier realized how naïve he was, and began to see the futility of his efforts to turn people away from the lure of sin. It was the start of his slide into doubt and bitterness. And now he was back at the scene of his failure.
They began searching rooms, tensing every time they opened a door, Pulaski’s lighter revealing squalid crash pads containing filthy mattresses, piles of dirty clothes, overflowing ashtrays, discarded liquor bottles and used condoms. The reek of stale marijuana clung to everything, and lyrics of hard core rap heroes were spray painted on the walls. They investigated room after room, and found neither the walking dead or live gangbangers. They also didn’t find the object of their search.
Their watches showed the minutes draining away.
In the hallway once more, they looked at the only door on this floor they hadn’t searched, the one from behind which came the thumping. They both knew what that sound meant, but didn’t know how many the sound represented. On the door, someone with some artistic talent had painted a winking, yellow smiley face wearing a jeweled crown, with ‘690K’ beneath it in script. Xavier tried the knob and found it locked. He pushed on the door, and it rattled just a bit, cheap pine.
“Ready?” Xavier whispered.
Pulaski shook his head, scowling. “We know what’s in there.” He raised his tire
iron. “You said it, this won’t be enough.”
“This room is the best bet. Get ready.” Without waiting for agreement, Xavier threw his broad shoulder hard against the door. It didn’t pop open; it exploded with a sharp crack of wood and came off its hinges. They charged in.
The curtains were pulled back from the room’s single window, letting in enough light from the street so they could see. Even without the image on the door, it was immediately apparent that this was the gang leader’s crib. Leather couches faced an enormous flat screen TV, and a big bed covered in satin, leopard print sheets stood in a corner. On the walls hung framed posters of rap album covers, along with two movie posters hanging side by side, Pacino and Wesley Snipes. A granite topped coffee table sat between the couches and the TV, covered with DVD cases, cigarette packs and empty champagne bottles.
Smiles wasn’t here. The zombie bumping around the room was a heavyset black girl in lingerie, her skin ashy and her eyes a cloudy gray. The long, vertical wounds of her slit wrists were clearly visible as she reached and stumbled towards the two men, making a thick gurgling sound.
Xavier leaped left, up onto the bed where he discovered the sheets were tacky with blood, a sticky box cutter lying near a pillow. Pulaski froze, staring at the girl with his mouth hanging open as she closed on him.
“Kill it!” Xavier yelled.
Pulaski dropped the lighter, grabbed the tire iron with both hands and drove the sharp end into her belly. The girl grabbed at him, getting a fistful of his hair and pulling herself forward. The pipe fitter shrieked and jerked away, but she didn’t let go and stumbled after him, the tire iron poking out of her.
Xavier came in from the side, throwing a hammer blow of a punch at the side of her head, then three more. The dead girl’s head rocked to the side and she fell against the TV, knocking it over, but not releasing Pulaski’s hair, dragging him down.
“Get it off me!”
Xavier was about to land another punch, but she turned her head and he faced snapping teeth. Instead he jumped back, looking around as his shoe crushed a plastic bong lying on the floor.
The girl got her other hand knotted into Pulaski’s hair, and she pulled.
“Ah, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” He strained back against her, trying to pry her fingers loose, but she was a big girl, bigger than him, and now she was bringing those snapping teeth to his face.
Hanging on a wall near the corner was a ferocious-looking tribal mask with crossed spears behind it. Xavier darted that way, but ignored the spears (he figured they were cheap replicas) and snatched something off the floor beneath the mask. He came up with an ebony statuette of an African fertility god with a gigantic, curving penis. It was solid and heavy, and he raised it over his head and brought it crashing down on the girl’s skull.
There was a crunch, and her fingers jerked open. Pulaski fell backwards. Xavier hit her again in the same spot, grunting with the force of the swing, and her head caved in. The girl’s body slumped against the wall and slid over onto the floor.
Both men were breathing hard, and neither spoke for a moment. Finally Pulaski approached and yanked the tire iron out of her belly. “The head,” he gasped.
Xavier swallowed hard and nodded. “The head.” He tossed the fertility god onto a leather sofa.
“I thought I was gonna piss myself,” Pulaski said, looking at the priest. “But I was so scared, I don’t think I could have squeezed a drop if I wanted to.”
Xavier checked the front of his sweat pants. “I thought I did piss myself.”
They stared at each other, laughing like two crazy people, and then looked at their watches in the glow from the window. “We’re out of time,” Pulaski said.
They searched the room quickly, neither wanting to go through all this and leave empty handed. They were rewarded. In the closet, hidden behind stacks of sneaker boxes, they found a combat shotgun, a pair of automatic handguns, and a big, snub-nosed .44 Bulldog revolver. Inside several of the shoe boxes they found boxes of ammo for everything. A Timberland boot box held half a dozen loaded magazines for an assault rifle.
They found the AK-47 concealed in a cut out hollow in the bed’s box spring.
“Satisfied?”
Pulaski grinned, loading the shotgun.
They tore apart the closet until they found a pair of nylon gym bags, putting the handguns and magazines in one, the boxes of ammo in the other. Xavier checked the Bulldog, found it loaded, and slipped it into a pocket of his sweatpants. He slung the AK-47 over a shoulder, and they went back downstairs, stopping again in the doorway.
The fire had gone out, and once again bodies moved slowly through the fog. There were more of them now.
“Use your lighter,” Xavier said. Pulaski lit it, holding it high and moving it up and down, like a night club owner signaling a stand-up comic that his time was almost up. There was no response from the darkness of the looted dollar store. Xavier checked his watch. They had been gone for forty minutes.
“Do it again.”
Pulaski did, and then they waited. Nothing. “They’re gone. The teacher did what you told him and took off. We’re on our own.” He nudged the priest with his elbow. “Let’s find a back way out of here.”
Xavier stared at the dark shop across the street, imagining Alden trying to get the two teenagers out of the city alive, knowing the man wouldn’t make it. The list of people Xavier had failed just added three more names.
A small shadow emerged onto the far sidewalk, and there was a glimmer of fire. A second later there was a whoosh as the Molotov cocktail sailed through the fog, away from the street light. Flames spreading across the hood of a car got the dead moving in that direction, an eerie keening rising from the shuffling figures. Within minutes the street was clear, and the two men hustled back to their group. There were smiles of relief all around.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” Snake said, grinning at the priest. “I forgot that you guys had the Zippo, and I had to dig through the counter back there to find another lighter.”
Xavier shook the boy’s hand. “You did great.” He hefted one of the gym bags, and Pulaski showed them the shotgun. “We all did. We’ll figure out the weapons later. Right now we should get out of here, find a place to hole up until morning.” He dug a few magazines out of the bag and shoved them in his pockets, then slipped the Russian assault rifle off his shoulder.
Pulaski pointed his chin at it. “You know how to use that?”
The priest inserted the magazine, snapped back the arming bolt and thumbed the weapon to safe. His face turned grim. “Yes.” Then he led them out the back.
FOURTEEN
Berkeley
It was close to midnight by the time they finished up, and Skye thought she might just collapse right where she was and sleep on the tar roof. Everything ached; her knees and thighs burned from holding the same position for hours, her right shoulder felt like someone had been hitting it with a hammer, and her arms were iron bars. Were it not for the soft, yellow ear protectors Taylor had given her, she knew she would also be deaf.
“You did well for a first-timer,” Sgt. Postman said. “It’s about repetition and discipline, but talent plays a part. You’re not afraid to pull the trigger, and that’s important. And you listen, even more important. Practice will make you better.”
Skye smiled, gathering from Taylor’s expression that the sergeant didn’t hand out many compliments.
“We’re almost done,” Postman said.
“Almost?” Was he kidding?
“You’re not finished until you clean your weapon, lady.” Postman produced a cleaning kit, informing her it was an extra and hers to keep. Apparently he had been planning this for a while. Then the two soldiers spent an hour teaching her how to break down the M4, and how to clean, oil and reassemble the weapon so that it was ready for action. This was all done by the glow of a flashlight.
“I’ll clean the sniper tonight,” Postman said, “but only this once.” He threw her a wink
.
Taylor walked with her to the other side of the roof, where he had spread a poncho out on the tar. “Use your pack for a pillow.”
She eyed the lumpy, camouflage backpack, filled with MREs and spare magazines. It sure wasn’t the pile of down pillows on her bed back in Reno.
Taylor chuckled. “You’ll be asleep so fast you won’t even notice it.”
But she wasn’t. Her tired body was loaded with adrenalin from the evening’s shooting, and now that she had time to sit and really look around, she was too awed by what she saw to close her eyes. Berkeley lay in darkness, vast stretches of black punctuated by tiny pockets of light, generators or perhaps patches of the power grid which hadn’t gone down yet. None were close to them. Fires burned in the night, some as small as a lone, burning vehicle, others wild infernos as entire blocks burned unchecked. The air reeked of smoke.
The bay was a flat black field with only the occasional pinpoint of light, a small boat maybe, or buoys, and the great city beyond was burning. The Bay Bridge, normally a ribbon of light, was nothing but a silhouette, and she couldn’t even see the Golden Gate. Some aircraft flew high above, their blinking lights no different than on any other night, and there were helicopters buzzing over San Francisco, though less than had been there when the sun was up. Nothing flew over Berkeley. A light fog was coming in, and soon the city across the water would be masked.
A ghost town, she thought.
She watched Taylor and Postman break down their own weapons and begin cleaning them, hands moving with practiced efficiency. She had been clumsy, and wanted to be able to do it with their speed and confidence.
Skye had learned so much today, and aching more than her muscles was her head, trying to remember and process the day’s many lessons. Sergeant Postman was a good teacher, direct and patient, but also quick to correct with a stern voice or firm grip when ignorant hands did something wrong. Very different from the weary, soft and even bitter teachers in high school. The sergeant knew his job well, and insisted that you learn, without excuses.
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