Ron released the door and it floated up to a stop.
Light flooded into the garage bay.
The gleaming body of a Hummer stood in that bay, its surfaced painted a bright and glaring yellow, the metal waxed to a high shine, only a thin skein of dust hiding the fine lines of the machine.
“Does it work?” Oliver yelled, and it was all he could do not to go running into the bay. But he knew what could happen if you did stupid things like that. He’d seen too many people—some of whom he had loved—caught by surprise by things that could stand still in the shadows, in small spaces where you would not think they could fit, where they could wait, not having to so much as take a single breath.
“Last time I checked, it worked,” Ron said.
“What are you going to do with it?” Jean asked. She turned 180 degrees, surveying the area and saying with her body language what she did not have to say aloud.
“Yeah, I know,” Ron told them. “The streets are so full of crap, I couldn’t drive it fifty yards without getting stuck or wrecking it.” Then he shrugged. “But you never know. Someone could come along and clear these streets. And if they ever do, I want to have a running vehicle that I can drive on those streets!”
And with that, he walked into the bay, opened the doors of the Hummer, checking inside and all around to make sure no deader was hiding and waiting to pounce. His family followed him and sat down inside. Oliver in front and Jean in back, to watch over them both. The key was in the ignition. Ron reached for it and turned it, and gave it the gas. The engine roared immediately to life.
“Oh, my God,” Jean said. “Music to my ears.” She was grinning from ear to ear. “I swear I hated these things before. They suck gas. They pollute the air. They hog the road.” Meeting Ron’s gaze in the rear-view mirror, he could see the love in her eyes and for the first time, he was not worried that she would move on and leave them alone.
Ron’s laughter pattered out into the afternoon light as he pushed the pedal to the metal and let the almost extinct machine roar in celebration of happy days to come.
**
After Ron had hidden the keys once again, and they had closed up the garage bay and made it look once more as if no one had touched the place in two years, they headed off. They had found enough for the day to have made the trip out into the world worth the effort. But it was troubling that it was growing more and more difficult with each passing week to find the basic things that were needed to survive. They could revert to hunting, he knew. The deer population had held steady despite the growing dog and coyote packs. But deer had been so plentiful before the end, so that was no surprise. But when everyone who was left had to fall back on killing game, Ron wondered how well the herds would sustain the hit. Especially if, as the Colonel had informed him, the city was home to far more people than he had ever suspected were living there.
Also, he didn’t like the idea of having to live mainly on meat. He knew that you could do that—many peoples had lived on an almost all-meat diet. But it made him think that he would be too much like the hated zombies to do something like survive on nothing but flesh. As they walked along, he pointed at the explosion of greenery that was sprouting out of every crevice in the asphalt and from every space you could imagine. Limbs and leaves were poking out of doors and windows, gutters and roofs.
“I wonder if we could eat any of that stuff.” Ron stated.
Jean stopped in her tracks, and his first thought was that she’d spotted danger. His breath caught in his chest and his fingers were already reaching for one of his .45s, and he checked to make sure Oliver was near enough to pull in close.
“That stuff is pokeberry plant, she said. You’ve heard of poke salad,” Jean said. And before he could say or do anything, she jogged over to a wild patch of green plants and began to strip the leaves from the stems and stuff them into the blue nylon bag hanging from her belt. In a moment, she had filled the bag with the leaves. “I’ll show you guys how to cook it when we get back.”
“Is it any good?” Oliver asked.
“Haven’t you guys ever had poke salad?”
Both of her boys shook their heads. Jean laughed as they pushed on. “I can see I’m going to have to educate you both. My dad taught me all of the things that grow here in the state that you can eat.” As they walked along, watching everything around them, ready for anything that might come, she went on and they listened to her listing some of the wild plants that one could eat.
As the few miles vanished beneath their boots, they soon found themselves standing at the base of the tower where they all now lived. Their conversation about wild plants was still on as Ron inserted the key into the lock and opened the door.
“You mean to tell me that you can eat kudzu?” he asked.
“Sure can,” Jean informed them. “Not just the leaves, but the stems and the roots, too. I’ll show you how to cook that stuff. If you guys want fresh veggies, I know everything that can grow around here that we can eat. But we’ll start with the poke salad tonight,” she finished.
As they walked into the stairwell, Oliver stopped them and pointed toward the sky.
“That sailor take warning stuff was no lie,” he said. “Look at the clouds.”
Ron and Jean looked north, and sure enough a vast bank of very dark clouds was sailing in from the northwest. The front was moving so quickly that they could see it tracking along, bringing darkness with it as it sped toward them.
Closing the door and sending the bolt home, Ron slammed the metal bars across the door to reinforce it. “We lucked out, I reckon,” he said. “If we’d been out there much longer, the storm would have caught us. We’d better hurry up to the roof.”
The staircase was alive then with the echoes of their footsteps as they climbed up, halting from time to time to catch their breath. “Twelfth floor walk-up,” Jean said. “Charming bungalow roofside.”
Ron would have laughed, but he was too winded. All he could do was smile and push on. And soon they were at the top, unlocking that last door and peering out to make sure the coast was clear. Then the door was shut and locked behind them and the gravel was crunch-crunching under their feet as they headed to home and hearth, such as it was.
“Ron, look.” Jean had her hand on his shoulder and he drew up, turned, and looked where she was pointing.
“Jesus H. Christ,” he said. Ron didn’t like cursing in front of Oliver, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself. His eyes were on one of the buildings across the street from his makeshift penthouse. It had been a nondescript office building in years gone by, and was two floors taller than the structure on which his blockhouse was planted. The place was as broken and open as any other in town, and he was never surprised occasionally to spot a few zombies in the windows or even having made their way to the top to wander aimlessly before going back into that gutted place.
But, now, this time, there were dozens of the damned dead things on the roof. The door that opened up on the top was standing wide and even as he watched, there were shamblers coming out of it to stumble around on that roof and mill about as if looking for something they had expected to see, but which surprisingly, had been taken from them. There were zombies of every shape and size and state of decay. New ones with the clothes they’d died in still on their backs, and deaders so far gone that the fabric they’d once worn had been peeled slowly off by a thousand little violent acts, until all you could see was a map work of wounds covering their darkening, wattled flesh.
“Must be forty of fifty of them,” Oliver said. He was actually on the roof counting them, using one of his fingers to tick them off as he went along, and whispering the numbers under his breath.
A few of the things had turned to look across the space between the two buildings and noticed Ron and his little crew. Over the wind that was growing in strength with each second, he could hear their cries and moans as they saw the three humans as just that: living humans.
“I’ll never be able to figure out h
ow they can tell we’re alive,” Jean said. The wind was picking up and her fine hair was being whipped around, covering and uncovering her piercing eyes. “One guy told me once that they can smell our sweat. Or can tell that we’re not rotting. But I don’t believe that. Not for a second. There’s something else going on with them.”
“They can see our souls,” Oliver said. Ron and Jean looked down at him, meeting his eyes. “That’s what my mom used to say. She said that they could see our souls in us, in a way that we can’t see them ourselves. Like there’s a light inside of us that comes out of our eyes and that’s what they see, and that’s why they hate us and want to kill us. They think they can eat us and get their souls back.”
The two adults stared at one another. It was something neither of them had ever heard.
“It might be that,” Ron said. “I guess it could be that.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Oliver said. And as he said that, the message seemed to go through the crowd of deaders. They turned as one and migrated to a point along the rooftop that took them as close as they dared to the living. Over the keening wind, they could hear the zombies growing ever more agitated.
“We should shoot them all while we have the chance,” Ron said. But as if to answer him, the wind suddenly came with a fierceness that was actually savage. The clouds that had been a quarter of a mile distant, were directly overheard. Lightning flashed. Thunder almost immediately followed the flash, letting them know that the electric bolt had struck down very close indeed.
“Inside,” Ron yelled. Together they rushed to the blockhouse and he unlocked the heavy door and pulled it wide. As one, they tumbled into the house and locked the door securely behind them and just as the door was locked up tight, the wind slammed like the fist of God onto the north walls. The little fans in the vents went wild, whirring at such a speed that he could imagine them coming free of their mounts in the concrete block and be sent whirring like miniature blades through the house.
Then the rain began to slash down, raking the roof and the outside walls like millions of tiny bullets. They could hear something like rocks striking again and again atop the roof and on the sides of the house.
“Hail,” Jean announced. “Now it’s hailing out there!”
“Red sky at morning, sailor take warning,” Oliver quoted. He was not laughing about it, and he was not smiling.
Around them, the house all but shuddered as the wind became more and more powerful and ever more violent with each second that passed.
“Hell of a storm,” Cutter said to them. No one replied. He looked at them. Both were staring at the ceiling, as if expecting it to be pulled off to leave them exposed to the wind and rain.
“Look,” he finally said. “I’ve been through worse than this up here.” He was lying, but it was a white one. He had to make them feel better. “We just need to sit tight and go about our business.” He smiled and pulled at the bag of leaves that Jean had brought with them from the streets. “The poke salad! You’re supposed to show us how to cook poke salad,” he reminded her.
“Yes, you’re right,” she sighed. “I’d better get busy, because you have to wash the heck out of it.”
“Why is that?” Oliver asked.
“Because if you don’t wash it and boil it right then, it’s poisonous.”
“Poison?” Ron and Oliver reacted in unison, and although she eventually set heaping spoonful’s of boiled poke salad on their plates, neither did more than pick at the stuff.
**
During the night, the storm continued. It roared at them, and even Ron was worried that the walls or roof might not hold up. The building he’d chosen was as solid as any, but it was exposed up there to the full force of those winds. Moreover, he was worried about the shed he’d put together where he poured his molten lead, made his bullets, and kept his gunpowder. What if it was pushed down? What if all of his propane, burners, and chemicals were tossed over, turned to trash and muck? If those things happened, then he’d be forced to find replacements for it all, and he didn’t want to think of what he’d have to go through to put that collection of tools back together.
As the hours passed, they all tossed and turned, sleeping together in one big bed on the floor of the main room. Jean had thought it best that they huddle together as long as that storm raged, and Ron figured she was right on that count. Oliver had almost regressed in many ways from the stoic, almost-adult he’d been when they’d brought him in, to something akin to a very young boy, now that he was safe among a pair of foster-parents. In the dim shadows, Ron would open his eyes occasionally to see Jean hugging the boy to her, or running her hands through his hair. He smiled.
And then, very early in the morning, when it seemed the storm had finally vented, the winds had become even more powerful. Ron had not thought that possible. But there it was, the sounds of the winds like a vast machine roaring all around them, like a monster gnawing at the fabric of the place, trying to consume all matter.
They were all sitting up. Ron almost reached for one of his guns, but realized that was a stupid gesture and did his best to get a grip on his emotions. “I think it’s a tornado,” he decided to tell the others, to face the truth. His words were almost muffled beneath the earthquake screaming of that wind. They could hear things being torn, being tossed. Heavy things were tossed solidly around, some of them striking the walls of the house, landing like heavy fists battering against those walls, trying to get in. Ron hoped that he was not losing his propane sources. It had taken him a long time and a lot of effort to scrounge those heavy bottles of liquefied gas. The stuff was precious to him and he wished he had been able to bring at least a few of them inside.
But, almost as quickly as those monstrous winds had appeared, they tapered off until there was nothing but a small patter of rain on the roof. The winds were gone.
“Oh, thank God,” Jean said. She turned to Ron and kissed him on the lips, then leaned and kissed the top of Oliver’s head. “Thank God,” she repeated.
“I’m glad that’s over,” Ron whispered, afraid that if he spoke too loud the wind might hear him and come back. “Now, let’s get some real sleep,” he told them.
Finally, they were able to close their eyes, and sleep and exhaustion met them in agreement and sent them into soft, cool dreams.
**
“Who wants country ham and pancakes?”
Ron opened his eyes and blinked the sleep from them. He sat up and peered around, seeing Oliver just stirring and rubbing at his own eyes, groaning in complaint at having been awakened.
“Sounds good to me,” Ron announced. He realized that they were down to the last little bit of pre-mixed pancake batter. When it was gone…well, it would be gone. They’d have to think about finding seeds to grow wheat, cows to tend and milk, and gathering up lost chickens to put up in pens and harvest the eggs. Maybe the mysterious Colonel Dale could help them do all these things in the coming months. Someone would have to do it, or it was going to be a primitive life of hunting and gathering for a long time to come.
“Why don’t you sit and watch me cook?” Jean said. “You guys look really ragged out. So just relax and I’ll have us eating in no time.”
“Well, I just want to do a couple things, first,” he told her. He was thinking of his work station out on the other side of the roof. He was certain that he’d heard the debris from its destruction being slammed against the walls of his house. To just satisfy his curiosity and to set in stone how much work he’d have to do to replace it, he would first have to get a look at what kind of damage the storm had cost him.
“I’m only going to stroll around the roof and see if my ammo kits made it through. I doubt it, but I need to see,” he added.
Without so much as pulling on his boots, standing there in his stocking feet, he unlocked the door and opened it.
A dozen zombie hands were already reaching for his face as he pulled the door open. He immediately recognized one of them as having been on the
roof across the way just before the storm had chased them inside. It snarled and pushed in, three more behind it.
He’d fucked up. He kept repeating that to himself as the weight of the deaders drove him back. Always, at the back of his mind, he knew that eventually he would do something stupid and die from it. All he’d had to do was look through the peephole and see what was outside. But he had not done that. Ron had been so self-righteous that he knew in his mind, those dead things could not get through his locks and doors and up his staircase to his rooftop home. Not even if they could see him from below, and not even if some had watched him from adjoining towers. Ron was too good, and now he’d done something stupid. It would, he realized as the dead, cold, grasping fingers reached for his face, be the death of him.
He wasn’t even wearing gloves or boots, and no helmet or ski mask protected his face. They would push him down and begin biting him and feasting on him. Then they’d do the same to Jean and Oliver. And, as if he’d already predicted the outcome, he fell back as three of the monsters got their hands on him and pushed him down, tumbling on top of him, growling, gnashing their yellow fangs rooted in black and scarlet gums.
Somehow, he got his feet on the gut of the one directly on top of him and he used all of his strength to shove it off. The energy of the movement caused the pair of others to fall aside.
Then the shots rang out. A .45 roared and the pop of that damned .22 in Jean’s deadly hands began to sound. The deader he had shoved with his feet went down, its head a mass of darkened paste when the slug from the .45 in Oliver’s hand sent it to Hell. Another pop and Ron did not even have to look to know that all three of the things were down for the count.
Standing, he ran to Oliver and did not even have to look for his pistol as the boy shoved it into his hands. Without a word shared between them, he turned toward the door.
The oblong doorway of light was full of shamblers. They had packed up tight in the threshold struggling with one another to gain entrance all at once. And they’d clogged the door with their stupid, rotten mass, trying to get in to eat the family inside. Ron had no doubt that each of them had done something very similar in the past. Well that was all right, because they’d never get to do it again.
The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) Page 8