They had been skulking after the horde which had passed them by a few hours prior. The thought process was that the horde would move in one direction unless stimulus drove it in another. The throng of infected traveled in the same track the living needed to go. Wilcox was on point and he held up a hand for the group to stop, but no one could see him through the fog until they were on him. The kid pointed out something through the thick opaque air. It was unmoving and about four feet tall. The soldier looked back at Seyfert who nodded in the affirmative. Wilcox snuck up behind the thing as the group moved forward in unison, weapons aimed in every direction.
Wilcox brought his M4 up to smash the skull of the thing in front of him. He stopped and harrumphed quietly. The thing was a mailbox on a post.
Seyfert shook his head. “We need to tighten up our formation,” he whispered. “We stay within five feet of Wilcox.”
“Wait,” whispered Anna. “Doesn’t that mean there’s a house up there?” She pointed to the mailbox and a break in the road which could only be a driveway.
“Yeah, it does,” Rick nodded, agreeing. “They might have some stuff too and I’m not too keen about walking through this damn fog.”
Seyfert sighed. “I don’t like it either. Hillbilly, what do you say to a sit-down?”
Dallas, normally a talker, said only two words, “I’m in.”
Shifting their direction, the group followed the lane off the main road. The sun had climbed higher, but still wasn’t strong enough to burn off the fog. They were mostly blind as they slunk toward the far end of the driveway.
Without warning, an ornate, fifteen-foot wrought-iron gate loomed in front of them. An equally high brick wall topped with a white ledge disappeared into the murk in both directions. The gate was closed, but no chain kept it locked. Wilcox pushed on it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Up and over?” the kid asked Seyfert.
“Unless you want to dig a tunnel.”
Wilcox put his pack on the ground in front of him. He pulled out an entrenching tool and glanced at Seyfert, the kid’s eyebrows pumping up and down a few times.
“Yeah, I was kidding,” Seyfert told him.
Wilcox reached into his pack again and pulled out a length of black, knotted nylon cord. He attached the line to the folding shovel, threw the shovel over the gate, and hooked it to one of the metal pieces on the first try. The soldier climbed up the rope and made it look easy. He dropped to the other side, brushed his hands together, and smirked.
“Whenever you old-timers are ready, I can—”
Seyfert pointed behind Wilcox and whisper-yelled, “Your six!”
Wilcox spun around to face several dead which materialized out of the fog quickly. He evaded the first groping claws, bringing his M4 to bear. Before he could fire, the dead swarmed him and he went down. To his credit, the kid didn’t panic. He kicked and fought, the dead trying to get bites in whenever they could and he evading them by twisting or punching. He heard suppressed shots from the other side of the gate and noticed more of the things were coming from the mist.
His struggles were mostly silent but he could hear Anna yelling, “I can’t get a shot! I can’t get a shot!”
Pain exploded in his shoulder and he knew that he was doomed. He would be damned if he would let the things tear him to pieces though, so he continued to fight. He rolled left, out from under three of the things as they reached for him. One got a firm grip on his pant leg and he kicked for all he was worth, breaking the facial bones of the young boy who had latched onto him. Wilcox slithered across the driveway, leaving a bit of his forearm behind. Seyfert and Rick dropped the last few and Wilcox stood, holding his shoulder. He glanced at the bodies around him, then at the group on the other side of the gate. He pulled his left hand from his right shoulder. He hissed in pain and his hand came away bloody.
“Might as well just go,” he sighed, hanging his head. “Think I’ll stay here for a while.”
Anna was incredulous. “Horse-shit! Let me see it!”
Wilcox trudged to the gate and stuck his shoulder through the bars. Anna ripped his T-shirt and looked at the wound. It was her turn to sigh.
“I’m sorry, kid.” She reached through the bars with her hand and caressed his face. He looked at her and smiled then she gave him a delicate slap on the forehead. “Idiot. Nothing bit you, you were shot. Grazed, more like.”
His head shot up and stared at her, then struggled to look at his wound.
“Holy shit! Holy shit, I’m not gonna die!”
“You will if you don’t keep yer voice down,” Dallas whispered harshly.
Wilcox brought his head up slowly, narrowing his eyes. “So I’m being attacked by the dead and one of you assholes shot me?” He shook his head in disbelief as both Rick and Seyfert stared at him with blank faces and then pointed at each other.
The walk up the driveway was uninterrupted by the dead or anything else. The fog remained, so the group stayed on their toes. Soon enough a small, circular fountain emerged from the mist, followed by a garage attached kitty-corner to a giant house with a stone front. The three doors to the garage were down and the great oak front door was closed. Steel shutters covered the front windows on the first floor. Only the bottom of the second-floor windows was visible through the dense fog.
“Wow,” Wilcox and Dallas whispered at the same time, no doubt marveling at the size of the home.
Anna glanced at Seyfert. “Should we knock?”
“No. We do an entire perimeter check to make sure no doors are open or windows broken. There were some dead already in here, so we have to assume the wall is down someplace. That means there could be a hundred of them in here and we just can’t see them through the fog.”
“I’ll take Dallas and Anna,” Wilcox whispered. “You take Rick. Circle around the house and meet back here?”
The SEAL shook his head. “Negative. We stick together and protect our zones.”
They moved in a tight formation down the right side of the garages. Two of the rear garage windows were broken, but one was too high to reach. The other had half-inch bars set into the stone. The group came upon a patio and Wilcox nosed his weapon behind a stone fireplace grill and checked over a low wall. Human bones littered the far side of the patio, as did two rotten corpses. A dozen tables, some tipped over and others with complete table settings and formerly white tablecloths, stretched into the fog. A white arbor with dead, dry flowers attached to it was knocked over on its side. Dallas picked up a bottle of whiskey from the stainless steel bar top, opened it, and took a pull.
“Miss that,” he said and put the bottle back.
The rear of the house was covered in gore spatter, reddish brown handprints marking everything. The steel shutters had held though and were still intact.
A lone undead shuffled out of the fog, issuing a horrible wheezing sound. The middle-aged woman was missing all of the right side of her face and throat, her right arm nothing but a nub of humerus bone. Dallas swung his rebar and with a crunch, the thing’s misery ceased.
More bloody handprints and other evidence of a failed siege were evident. Overturned patio furniture, a broken wicker table, an arbor column off its foundation, and a few more truly dead people, all with head trauma.
It took twenty minutes to circle the mini-mansion. When the group was staring at the front door again, Wilcox climbed the four circular stone steps and stood in front of it, looking up.
“Why not?” he asked and tried the knob. He shrugged when it wouldn’t open.
Seyfert put his hand on the Texan and the big man jumped a little. “Dallas, do you think you can climb up there if I can hook a rope?” Seyfert pointed to the covering over the entryway.
“Yeah. You think we can get in up there?”
“I don’t know, but we aren’t splitting up again. We all go or none of us do.”
Wilcox rubbed his shoulder. “I’ll go first.” He tossed the shovel attached to the rope up onto the top of the façade, once a
gain catching it on something on the first try. He put his hands on the rope to begin his climb, but Rick stopped him
“How about you let me take point this time, kiddo?” Without waiting for an answer, Rick scaled the knotted line and disappeared over the top of the circular stone carriage porch.
“Clear,” he told the rest of the group. “Wilcox, come on up.”
“Holy shit,” Seyfert exclaimed when they crawled through the broken arched window of the foyer. He looked up at a massive chandelier, the centerpiece of a marble entrance hall with two winding stairways leading to the upper floors.
Anna’s eyes wandered over the art and statuary. “Must have been really shitty to live in all this squalor. Poor family must have had the misfortune to have been rock stars or something.”
“Dibs on the master bedroom,” Wilcox blurted.
Seyfert was still taking in the splendor of the foyer. He looked at Wilcox and shook his head in the negative. “We stay together, all in one room.”
“I have to pee,” Anna groused. “Can we clear this place, so I can take care of business?”
The steel shutters, which covered the windows on the bottom floor, kept most of the lower rooms in shadow. The group moved as a tactical unit and checked a massive family room with two pinball tables, a pool table, and two huge televisions.
They moved into a beautiful kitchen with green granite countertops. All the appliances were stainless steel. Wilcox opened one of the cabinets and jumped back with a small shout. A mouse skittered away across the tile and disappeared through the door to the family room.
Dallas stared at Wilcox, nodding. “Mmm hmm.”
The young soldier shuddered. “I hate mice.”
The door to the garage was locked from the house side, but the door to what was probably the basement was secured from the other side.
“I bet they have a Lamborghini or something in there,” Wilcox dreamed as he put his hand on the knob to the garage door. “We could get to the coast in—” He pulled the door open and rotting hands grabbed him. They pulled him to them, while at the same time they surged out of the three-car garage. Dozens of dead lurched through the open door, biting and tearing. Wilcox started to scream as they bit into him, arterial spray from his neck splashing the white kitchen wall.
Seyfert fired into the group, Dallas following suit with his shotgun. The big Texan tried to get to his friend, but Rick grabbed his arm. “No! He’s gone! Fall back now!”
The four friends ran back to the foyer and to the front door. Seyfert unlocked the ornate brass entry furnishing and yanked the door open. Staggering figures filled the front driveway and yard area. Several of the dead things were already coming up the steps to the front door. The SEAL slammed the heavy oak door closed, securing the lock.
“Behind!” Anna shouted when she saw the first of the dead from the garage come through the kitchen entryway into the hall. It was a young boy in a suit, his throat cut from ear to ear. Two more adult undead staggered into view, both also with their throats slit. Red eyes locked on the survivors and the things coursed forward.
“Come on!” Seyfert yelled and the group followed him up the winding staircase on the left.
A body in a red-stained wedding dress sat slumped on the floor at the top of the stairs. The corpse had a framed photograph clutched to its chest and a small chrome revolver rested on the floor next to it.
“Dallas, Anna,” Seyfert said calmly, “clear one of the rooms behind us. Find one with an exit window!” The SEAL and Rick aimed their weapons at the undead who had begun to trudge up the long marble staircase. Seyfert dropped to a firing position and squeezed his trigger. Rick followed suit with single shots, choosing targets. The dead kept coming around the corner from the kitchen and thuds from the front door announced the arrival of the exterior contingent.
Dallas came back huffing. “I got better than a window! I got a door to a third floor. We checked, it’s clear.” Seyfert fired twice more and got off his knee.
They began to move past Dallas, but he stood his ground. “One sec.” He grabbed a large stone statue of a horse, jockeyed it into position, and toppled it down the stairs. It broke when it made impact with the steps and chunks of stone rained down on the approaching infected in a mini avalanche. Many of them went down with broken bones, and several of the ones in front fell backward into their brothers.
Anna stood in front of the door to the third floor, waving them on. Stairs ascended a skinny hallway into brightness, Seyfert vaulting two at a time with his injured leg as he climbed them. Dallas shut the door behind him, but it had no lock. Rick, Seyfert, and Anna cleared the three upstairs bedrooms together, while Dallas covered the entry at the bottom of the stairs they had just come through.
Rick noticed a pull-string in the ceiling and quickly yanked a foldaway set of stairs down with a series of creaks.
Dallas backed into the short hallway and looked left at the extended stairs. He looked up and shook his head. “Not my first rodeo with this type o’ thing, Hoss.”
Rick nodded. The sounds of the infected searching for them on the floor below rattled Dallas a bit. “I really don’t wanna go up there. Didn’t end so good last time.”
“Consider the alternative,” Rick whispered.
“So we came from a basement surrounded by them things to an attic surrounded by them things? Our fortunes ain’t improved much.”
“Wilcox…” Anna began, “he was there and then he was just…gone.”
Seyfert sighed. “We didn’t clear the area properly. He never should have opened that door like that.”
“A year and a half ago, it was okay to just open a door!” she snapped and immediately regretted it.
“Your doors and mine were very different, even then.”
She nodded. Rick moved to one of the third-floor bedroom windows. He could just barely see through the fog. Dozens of infected were moving against the house, searching for a way in.
Divisadero Street, San Francisco
“William, I must know. How is it that you can move through the dead with impunity?”
Billy looked confused. “What?”
Cyrus sighed and stubbed out his cigarette on the glass-topped diner table. “I asked you how—”
Billy stopped him. “No, I know what you said, I just don’t know what impunity means.”
Both members of the New Society who were standing looked at each other. One shrugged. The other began to disarm Billy and check through his pack.
“Ah, it means without punishment.” Cyrus could see that Billy still didn’t understand. “You are able to walk through throngs of the dead without them eating you. I want to know how.”
“Oh! Oh, that’s easy; I’m nuts.” Billy passed his shotgun to one of the men.
It was Cyrus’ turn to look confused. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s okay, not everybody gets me right off.” Billy furrowed his brow in thought. “But… but I thought you did. I mean, we were in the same level of the booby hatch.” The thugs again looked at each other, this time with concern. Billy started talking to himself, muttering under his breath.
“Ali could do it too, but not when she was on her meds. I wonder if Lester is taking meds? Nah, he can’t be, they don’t want to chow on him either. And the Slim Jims! They all wanted to eat both of us then, but we got away and maybe it was the Slim Jims? Nah, that’s just crazy. But I’m crazy, so maybe two crazies make a right? I dunno I’ll have to—”
“William,” interrupted Cyrus.
“—think about it some more and Martin had ideas so maybe they know what’s going on, but if Ali—”
“William,” Cyrus said a bit louder.
“—can do it too, maybe Lester and me and her should get together and—”
Cyrus had had enough and slammed his palm on the green table. “BILLY!”
Billy jumped a bit and looked at Cyrus, his eyes wide. He blinked a few times. Cyrus looked him in the eye, his gaze captivating. “
How do you do it? How is it that you can stroll through the dead without them attacking you?”
Billy shrugged. “No idea. I was kind of hoping you would be able to tell me.
I thought it was because I’m crazy,” Billy changed the tone of his voice a bit, “but you are waaaay more crazy than I am, so I was thinking the zombies would bake you cookies or something.”
Cyrus began to say something, but Billy put his index finger up, his focus elsewhere. It looked like he was listening for something. A wicked smile creased the young man’s face and he slowly turned his gaze to Masta G and Cyrus.
The cacophony of hisses, moans, and rasping hacks that accompany a vast legion of the undead now flooded the diner. Everybody looked nervous, but Billy laced his fingers together and put his hands behind his head. He threw one foot up on the diner table.
“Run,” he said in a menacing whisper as the terrifying noises reached a crescendo. The smile on Billy’s face grew even wider. He cupped his hands together in front of his face and yelled, “Yoo-hoo! Dead people! Come and get it!”
“He is crazy!” one of the men breathed.
They were all peering through the diner window at the first of the dead as they shuffled into view across the street. The creatures must have been drawn by the recent sounds of vehicles and weapons fire. They were searching in all directions.
The men were momentarily stunned by the approaching dead and got as low and small as they could. Billy removed his leg from the table, grabbed his pack, and bowled over the two guards as he ran for the door. He burst out into the street and yelled to the crowd of infected.
From inside the diner, Masta G stubbed his cigarette out. “You,” he said and pointed at one of the guards, “go get him.”
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