She didn’t want to see the insides of their bodies or hear them scream. She was all too aware of what they looked like and what they would sound like. Done. She didn’t care about their names or their motivations for being here. Done. She just wanted to get them the fuck out of the way so she could usher three zombies by. Then she was in the wind. Her responsibilities to them were done.
One man turned off the light of a lantern in the corridor and the others filed out, arms pulling up to the sky and extended behind their backs. Some went into the old-fashioned, dirty yellow and green tents. She’d seen tents like that in Sausalito garages, forgotten in corners and whiling away the decades collecting dust.
What a dull night these poor Shepherds had had. They wanted to make their point but no one had had the courtesy to show up and help them make it. You couldn’t be a zombie hunter if those inconsiderate zombies never showed up for you to hunt them. Micah had no doubt if the world fell into a total and utter disarray, some of these men would still be out here. Not as many, but a few. Their point gave them the fuel to go on. Skimming over their features (white-white-black-white-white-Hispanic-white-indeterminate, et cetera), she noted their weapons and that one man was so old he was hobbling through the grass with a cane.
Her mind supplied the data that she no longer wanted to collect. There was probably a Steve and a Michael, a Dave and a Jorge. Some were married; some had kids. It was possible that one was gay. Some had voted for Wu; others had voted for Zeller. This one over here smacked his wife around until she packed up and left; that one over there was never able to hold down a job and banged off in private to tranny fantasies. And that man over there? He’d volunteered like a champ at the humane society, took in foster kids, a good guy all around who had only one mental blind spot when it came to Sombra C. This was where everything he repressed to play the good guy could relieve itself. In this small collection of men were comrades and enemies and acquaintances and strangers, Libras and Scorpios and Leos and Geminis, and all that really mattered was that she was going to shoot them. They didn’t have anything to say that she hadn’t heard before.
Mars would have had something new to tell her, but he was gone.
When she returned to her post behind the rock piles, everyone was just waking up. They assumed that she had gone off to pee, and since she had pissed in her absence, it wasn’t a total adjustment of the truth to agree. The dithering began as she’d anticipated. Seventy people blocked the north entrance, another encampment of considerable size blocked the east, and a scant thirteen or so handled the south. Zombies didn’t know about the south, so few people wanted to guard or picket there. Roads flowed past the main entrances, bringing bicycle traffic along. Things to do, folks to see. Those were happenin’ places. This side was for the antisocial or the banished or those who clutched to their point so tightly that their knuckles were white as death.
When your side had four and the enemy side had seventy, you didn’t pick a fight. But here? If they were going to get in, it had to be on the south side. They only had so much for weapons, unless they stole before making their advance. The options were to return to Sonoma to look through houses, or to alleviate people of their guns by force, or to infiltrate the camps here and thieve. But those options presented their own problems in risk and resources, the former high and the latter low in supply. Micah half-listened to the rounds of discussion, although she looked completely attentive to every syllable.
Humboldt? Zaley brought it up first, and with deep reluctance. Everyone quieted. Just because one soldier had mentioned that the resistance wasn’t as strong at that harbor didn’t mean it would still be true by the time they got there, if they ever did, or that he was right in the first place. And getting there . . . they were eating the last of the food now and had spent the larger part of their ammunition just getting to Sonoma.
“They’ll open the doors,” Corbin was saying when Micah tuned in fully to the regular programming. “That guard shot someone for me. He didn’t have to do that. If they were full inside, he would have let me get caught out here or waved me off, indicated I couldn’t come in. They’ll take us. We just need to get past these people and reach them.”
“But if they don’t and we get trapped down there-” Austin said.
“We won’t get trapped. There’s another way to do this,” Micah said. “I’m going to give you guys cover fire as you run to the corridor and down it. They’re going to be so busy hiding from me that they can’t go after you.”
“How will you get in?” Austin asked.
“I’ll come in behind you. If I can’t get in, if they chase me off, I’ll wait until I get another opportunity. Tell those guards to watch for me.” She had been scratching up soil as they spoke, an activity designed to look like a mindless fidget but which had had a purpose. Scooping the loose dirt into her palm, she washed her face in it. “I’m going to look like a feral. One with just enough sense left to pull a trigger. The second they’re not standing near the corridor or looking over at it, run.” She rubbed dirt up her arms and through her hair. Her stamp was showing, but cosmetics remained over Austin and Corbin’s. Dumping a little water onto a rag, she rubbed off the last of the foundation from them. The guards had to see those stamps.
They argued with her, with each other, with the situation. She continued to prepare them for a decision that was already made. It was non-negotiable. They just had to be guided to it. Going through their backpacks, she dumped the non-essentials. Clothes and blankets weren’t going to put up much of a barrier to a bullet if one came their way, and the extra weight would slow them down. Zaley shouldn’t carry anything. As short as she was, she needed to focus on stretching her little legs just as far and as fast as they could go. Corbin didn’t really need a backpack either. He’d have his bow and arrows as a last resort, and that was enough for him. So Austin would carry the little they needed, and all of the sentimental items he liked to lug around. When she zipped up his backpack, it was still relatively empty.
“Micah, I don’t like having you separate,” Zaley said.
That toddler’s room . . . if Micah had to pick a favorite of the odd things she had seen in her life, that was it. The dolls, the star rugs, and the desk so low to the floor . . . It was incredible, someone’s personal history frozen for over a decade. Micah had played a part in making Zaley over into a big girl, and she was proud of her creation. Solemn on the surface and laughing on the inside, Micah said, “I don’t like it either. But we need a distraction to get any of us in. And I’ve got a big distraction right here.” Everyone’s eyes slid to the semi-automatic.
Her idea was voted down, but returned to the figurative table when no one could come up with anything better. There wasn’t a catapult. No one dared to set a fire. The harbor guards wouldn’t or couldn’t throw down ropes on the west side and haul them over. As they wrangled, she tucked her backpack into a rock pile. There was almost nothing in it, just a water bottle and clothes. They thought she was leaving it behind, and when Austin said, “But what about your clothes?” she answered, “They’ll have extra clothes in there.”
Then she patted her weapons into place around her body as everyone put together that her decision was best. The switchblade was slipped into her pocket (Clarissa, I’m sorry) and the stars went into another one (because a hunter had fancied himself a ninja) and the throwing knives were given to the ground as a libation to violence (but a terse libation spoken solely in her head). After the harbor (confinement point) increased its population by three, she’d return for her backpack and maybe retrieve the knives to take along. Or she’d ditch them, depending on her mood. Bullets were a scarce commodity, but knives she could find in spades. These were cheap blades with only one sharp side, and dinged up like they’d been thrown into concrete or brick walls for practice.
Once the libation was finished and her handgun was down the back of her jeans, she picked up her semi-automatic and said, “So, are we doing this or what?” It came out impatien
tly by design, and as they were used to hearing from her. Now they wanted to drag their feet, watch these people over a couple of days to determine the time when the fewest of them were present. But food . . . but water . . . but searchers . . . but but but . . .
Micah just walked away. She didn’t get too far. Austin grabbed her arm before she’d even rounded the piles and said all of them needed to talk about this more and plan it out thoroughly. But his resolve to be an obstruction was weakening, because there was no other way. He wanted to be in that harbor and she was helping him to get inside, so only his fear was speaking. In some ways, he was as controlling as Micah. In the fear that something wouldn’t work, he resolved not to do anything at all rather than take a chance.
She took his backpack, which he was carrying in one hand, and put it over his shoulders. “I’m coming in right behind you, Aussie.” I’m not. He had been so sweet to her over the years, looking out on her behalf when he hadn’t needed to bother. She’d vanish into the trees and that would upset him, but he would get over it. Tightening the saggy straps of the backpack, she tugged and tightened them again to make it stay flush to his back. Zaley and Corbin had their guns in hand.
This was the last time she would see any of them. She took a mental snapshot to carry along wherever she went. Zaley’s strawberry blonde hair was loose down her shoulders and back. There was a nervous expression on her face. It was one she wore a lot, perpetually uncertain of her footing in the world, just like the dawn was on the earth. Standing by Corbin, she rubbed her damaged upper arm absent-mindedly. Then her fingers gathered together into a knot and pressed into her stomach, Zyllevir giving her the blues.
Corbin was trying to watch the men before the harbor, his brain breaking down numbers and bullets and alternatives. His neck tilted to the watchtowers. His arguments for Humboldt had had a perfunctory feel. This was the end of the line for them. The next few minutes would either bring him down to the ground or push him forward to his future. The gun was being throttled in his right hand, and the binoculars were likewise pinched in his left one.
And Austin was supposing that Humboldt wasn’t so far away after all. But his feet were turned to the harbor, not west to pass around it. They were doing this. Her eyes slipped over his handsome face and figure as he asked for the binoculars. There wasn’t anything for him to see, but he was stalling to gear up for a last battle. Thinking of all the other failures in his life and attempting to foresee if this would be yet another one.
It wouldn’t be. She would make sure of it. She kissed his cheek with grit on her lips and said, “I’m going to draw them east along the wall.”
“Micah, wait!” they said as she walked away.
Honey- Her mothers’ scolding voices were back in her head after a long absence, and she smiled to feel Clarissa’s presence in a small hand slipping into her own. I’m such a fuck-up, Clarissa. You shouldn’t have worshipped me so much. But the girl was eight-and-a-half, and no matter what Micah did, Clarissa still thought she hung the moon. If Mars had known what Micah chose to do at the campsite in the shadow of the mountain, he would love her still, too. Make excuses. Micah hadn’t been worthy of that love, but she’d received it regardless.
She cut through the trees, seeking the best position. Then she took out her switchblade and nicked herself with the tip to have one more weapon on her side. Blood dribbled out of the cuts on her forehead and hands. Smearing it into the dirt washed into her skin, she pierced her stamp to make it look like the ink was leaking down her neck and over her chest.
She crept up the slope, moving from tree to tree for shields. The noises of the men came to her, the staccato stomping of a guy kicking the wall to knock flakes of dirt off his boot, a baritone raised in a request for someone to hit North for their share of hardboiled eggs. A man volunteered to go and quit the camp, a basket swinging from his fist with boyish enthusiasm. He was going east around the harbor, where the ground was flatter than on the west side. One day, that man would chalk up his life to chance. I went out for eggs right before it happened. The vagaries of life, just like Micah’s lie that the community center was only open one night in December for the holiday party. If she had chosen any other lousy day, then she wouldn’t be here now.
She didn’t mind being here. It wasn’t any more or less dull than anywhere else she could have been.
The place had been made for her, a shadowy nook between two trees that had a bush between them. She crouched down behind it. The others weren’t anywhere, hopefully moving with equal care to the trees directly across from the corridor. The lantern had been removed from it; now it sat beside a tent.
The sounds were of birds and men, and both were twittering. No Ned went to get them you have a good night of sleep God I miss the morning paper go to bed the sheets are nice and warm . . .
Someone farted. Someone laughed about it. Someone poured water into a tin cup. Someone took the cartridge from his gun to look at the bullets. Micah took that as a sign, and advanced. Wanting to spare her semi-automatic for this part, she took out her handgun. It had three bullets.
A feral baying broke from her throat as she charged up the last of the slope. Heads jerked around, eyes frantic to locate the source. She pulled the trigger and swung behind a tree for cover, rolling along the trunk and bursting out the other side to fire again. The twittering changed to barks. Who’s shooting it’s coming from the woods where who where help . . .
Her first shot hit a tent; her second made the old man double over and drop his cane. The tin cup slipped from his fingers and its contents sprayed over the grass. His hand didn’t go to his piece. She had gotten him in the stomach.
She took aim and shot twice more, missing with the third bullet and striking a man with the fourth. That one had come from her semi-automatic; the empty handgun was thrown away. Everyone was panicking and snatching out their weapons, some diving down to the ground to shield their heads and others trying to mark her in the trees. She’d shot a third man by the time one got off a shot in return.
It missed. She was going behind a tree by the time he pulled the trigger. Peeking around the side, she was annoyed to see that most of them weren’t following. Of course they weren’t. These weren’t soldiers. They were former mechanics and writers and food service workers. They were retired and unemployed. They only fought when they had the advantage. One was dashing for the corridor to take shelter in there from her gun.
That wouldn’t do. Oh, that wouldn’t do at all. Micah ran out of the trees and into the grass, where she opened fire and nailed him in the back. Then she swung around as one man fired his handgun at her. And missed. There was no excuse for him to miss at a distance of fifteen feet unless he was legally blind.
This was the best they could do. It was pathetic.
“Oh, shit! It’s a feral!”
And someone won the grand prize. Yes, she was a feral, but not because of her Sombra C. She had always been a little feral. She aimed at that blind man’s head and fired. Blood splashed against a tent and he crumpled to the grass.
She didn’t look up to the harbor guards. She didn’t look over to see if her friends were coming along. She just ran around the tents and shot at the Shepherds, ducking when one threw a knife at her. Shadows moved within a tent and she shot through the fabric as she straightened. One man ran away in hysterics to the east side of the harbor, screaming for help. She shot at him but missed.
Four were still, and the shadows in the tent had stopped moving. One man crawled on his belly to the trees. Three were throwing themselves behind tents to use them as cover. Two others took aim at her, one with a handgun and the other with a semi-automatic.
The one with the handgun went down. She hadn’t felt herself pull the trigger. Then she ran at the second man, unnerving him as he fired. Nothing struck her and horror overcame him. Either out of bullets or the gun was jammed, he threw it down and whipped a handgun from his holster. She flipped her gun around and butted him in the face before he could get
off the shot. He reeled back, dropping the gun, and she brought hers down on his skull.
He didn’t fall. He pushed her away violently, but she dug in her heels after a step back and then threw herself at him. A fist flew through the air and she moved aside, slamming her forearm into his and knocking him off-balance. Her blood slicked along his skin. His reaction times were off from the crushing blow she had given his head. She kicked him in the side and sent him down. When he squirmed at her feet like a worm, mumbling please please, she hit him with the gun and he was quiet. The skin over his skull opened. He’d spend the rest of his life pissing into an adult diaper, if she was lucky, a daily reminder that he tried to make his point and lost. She had made hers.
No one was shooting at her now. They were hurt, dead, hiding, or running away.
The man below her stirred and stilled. Running her fingers through what was leaking from her neck, she wiped the redness into the rip of his flesh. Even if he recovered from his concussion, he wouldn’t recover from his Sombra C. Fuck you.
As she straightened, a man grabbed her from behind. A thick arm wrapped around her neck and pressed hard into her throat. Tucking in her chin, she hit nothing but a fleshy, living rope choking off her air. She dropped the gun and her hands went to his arm to pry it free, at least make space to breathe. When she had been in martial arts classes, her teacher had warned not to get caught in a hold like this. It only took seconds before the victim was rendered ineffective. But it was too late for prevention. She hadn’t heard the guy slipping up behind her, and now here she was.
At least she was bleeding on him.
He adjusted and she sucked in a tiny spurt of air. This wasn’t a good hold, an experienced one, and he wasn’t that much taller or heavier than Micah. So he wasn’t controlling this game. She leaned back hard to knock off his foothold a little, and as he was pushing back, she stopped abruptly. Dipping to the side as they rocked forward, she swung her leg behind the man’s and twisted her body, struggling to slip her head out from under his armpit.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 171