by Joe McKinney
His hand went to Alexander—the child felt wrong. He was twisted in the sling, and Maurice could feel the tiny bump of Alexander’s nose pressed hard against the fabric.
The shadow of the naked man fell across Maurice’s body. It let out a growl that sounded like delight without the words to express it.
Maurice’s pants were whole. Cassie hadn’t broken through his jeans. His shoe found her jaw. She kept clawing, unaffected by pain or reason. Her jaw looked off somehow, and he was sure he’d broken it.
“Baybeeeee,” she gurgled, eyeing the sling. She came at him and he cocked back his leg for another kick when the man descended upon him, smiling. He was engulfed in naked flesh.
The naked man had fallen too far forward, its head near Maurice’s cocked leg, which prevented it from lying flat upon him. Its flaccid penis mashed into Maurice’s cheek. Blood had congealed in its black pubic hair, which choked Maurice’s nostrils with a sour, coppery musk.
“Baybeeeee.”
Cassie was on his legs once more, breasts and belly wriggling across him. Somewhere in the shuffle Alexander’s face twisted free and he let out a full-throated cry. Cassie, eyes widening, reached up, batting at the sling. The man reached back, attracted to the new sound.
Maurice punched the naked man repeatedly in the torso, with weak rabbit punches lacking any real momentum. His knuckles rapped against ribs. The man and Cassie got in each others’ way, suddenly struggling with one another instead of him.
He punched the man in the gut once more and it emptied its bowels. Wet, clumpy shit ran down the back of Maurice’s head and neck. The smell was immediate. He struggled, gagging, hampered by the need to keep one hand on Alexander.
Cassie and the man fought more like dogs than people, shaking, biting, barking. Maurice felt a new set of hands pulling at his shoulder. If something else had trundled down the hallway it would be over. They would tear the baby from his arms.
Leslie grunted. She had come out. She tugged his free arm. Cassie and the man hadn’t taken notice. Maurice struggled back towards Leslie, and he managed to pull most of the way free before the naked man whipped his arm around and clasped Leslie’s wrist. She cried out, and man jabbered nonsense, tried to pull her hand to his mouth.
Cassie climbed atop Maurice, straddling one leg. Leslie’s other hand glinted; she had found the scalpel. She ran it along the man’s wrist, slicing deep into flesh and tendon.
The dead thing’s grip loosened. It stood awkwardly, Maurice between its legs, half turned toward Leslie. She pushed it, and the man fell over without resistance, became tangled with Cassie and again they clawed and bit at one another.
Coughing phlegm from stuffy nostrils, Maurice got to his feet.
“Move,” Leslie said. He did. He stumbled down the hall. He thought Leslie would remain next to him, and felt guilt for the coward’s hope. She pulled at the nursery door, demanding to be let in, trying to strike a balance to be heard and not be heard at all.
“Let me in, you stupid cunt.”
He could barely hear Shawnda. Leslie banged on the door, too hard. The dead man turned to her, one moment raking a red gash into Cassie’s cheek, the next staggering toward Leslie.
Maurice stepped back and away.
Leslie saw him, and she saw the others. She ran to him, past him and he followed. His legs and rapid breath brought life back into his chest. He felt sick and exhilarated. He wanted to vomit but his stomach was empty. He could sense Cassie and the dead lumbering behind them. As he and Leslie were about to round a corner, he dared a glance back.
They were far behind. He only glanced, but their faces were clear. Later he would think about the look Cassie had given him—disappointment.
“Allllleex,” she screamed in her new, odd pitch.
They turned down another hall. The hair on his arms bristled when he thought he heard her scream again.
“I left her,” Leslie cried. “Like a goddamned coward!”
They rounded a corner. A gunshot exploded, the bullet crunching into the wall beside Maurice.
“Stop,” he yelled, waving his arms. The cop blinked, his arms shaking, his eyes wild.
“Where did he go?” the cop asked. Maurice didn’t know how to answer. He couldn’t stop staring at the smoking black hole at the end of the cop’s pistol.
“Behind us,” Leslie answered.
The cop looked down the hall. His face was pale and now that he’d stopped the chase, he didn’t seem eager to start again.
“I shot him seven times. I shot him in the head for chrissakes but he just wouldn’t stop.” He turned and ran. There was silence.
“Please tell me you have a car,” Leslie said. She grabbed his sleeve. “Shawnda drove me in today.”
“I parked near the front entrance.”
“Good. Come on.”
The door clacked open, echoing in the concrete stairwell. It swung all the way open, banging against the wall and easing shut behind them. Alexander wailed, loud and constant, the sound filling the echo-chamber.
“Someone’s going to hear us,” he said, half expecting Cassie to materialize, arms reaching.
“Don’t stop,” she said, took two of steps and then did just that. “Goddammit,” she whispered.
Maurice stepped next to her and saw a cop lying in a tangled lump at the first landing. He looked chewed. His arm covered his face. There was no movement, no breathing. Maurice tried to remember if Cassie or the naked man had breathed. Alexander’s cries bounced around and seemed to shake the damn walls and bore into his ears.
“I’ll go first,” Leslie said.
“Wait, no.”
“Welcome to parenthood. Now shut up and wait. If he moves and you come rushing to save me, you’ve killed him,” she said, looking at Alexander.
Maurice watched her descend the stairs, feeling impotent. At first she moved slowly, but the closer she got the more she sped up. When she hit the landing, she stepped past the crumpled cop and hop-stepped down the next row of stairs before looking back. The cop stayed dead.
She looked up at Maurice. For a moment he didn’t move, didn’t think he could, but Alexander’s cries propelled reluctant feet. Hell, even if that poor soul stayed immobile, the child would be heard. Something would come.
Maurice walked slow, picturing the look on the naked man’s leering face when he’d heard yelling: a child’s excitement. As he got closer he saw the damage the cop had taken.
There seemed to be no unmarked flesh. His neck almost looked peeled, vast clumps of hair were missing. How long had it taken something to do that?
His feet stopped at the last stair. Alexander howled and the sound swelled in Maurice’s ears, bounced back and forth through the stairwell. He could hear a faint echo on the upper floors when Alexander sucked in a new breath. He stepped onto the landing, knowing he should move faster, lighter, like Leslie, but every footfall felt like a Frankenstein stomp. He scooted around the cop, his ass bumping the railing, causing his heart to jump up past his lungs and beat in his throat. His ears felt hot.
Stopping let the smell of the dead man’s shit creep around him. The cop clutched a pistol in one hand. A thin skin flap on the back of his hand had been pulled away like a banana skin.
Maurice was no gun nut. He knew it was a Beretta, had heard or read that somewhere, and so ended his knowledge of guns. He stopped. Leslie mouthed “what the fuck are you doing?”
Amazingly, she stepped back onto the stairs. He held out his had to tell her to stop then turned his fingers into a gun, using the thumb to simulate firing. She nodded, and hope washed over her face.
He bent down, Alexander’s renewed cries somehow louder. He patted the child’s butt through the sling, remembering how Bohdin used to wear a groove into the floor pacing and patting Logan’s butt.
Maurice was suddenly aware of the sweat pouring out of him, tickling his brow, itching his legs, and slicking his palms. He begged God for the cop to stay dead. His fingers touched the gun. It w
as tacky with blood. He clasped the barrel, trying to wriggle the weapon from the cop’s grip. He’d pulled it hard enough to lift the cop’s arm before he lost his timid grip on the wetness.
Still in the cop’s hand, the gun clacked against the floor. The sound was louder than Alexander’s screams. He jerked back, again bumping the back rail.
The cop moaned.
Maurice scrambled away, stumbling over the cop and hopping onto the second flight of stairs, he couldn’t help but look back, imagining the cop sitting up and reaching. The cop hadn’t moved. Maurice blinked. Had he imagined it?
“Did you—”
“Move, you idiot!” Leslie hissed through clenched teeth.
“You heard him?”
“Yes. Jesus Christ, are you insane or something?”
Maurice looked back at the cop. Leslie started to walk, to leave them.
“Wait. He might still be alive,” he said.
She stopped. She looked at him, looked down the next flight of stairs. She wanted out of there. Maurice wanted the same thing. He wasn’t sure if he was being smart or incredibly stupid, but the cop wasn’t coming after him.
“Shit,” Leslie said. She walked back up the steps.
“Put your knee on his back?”
She always seemed to be thinking one step ahead of him. He may have killed her and she’d already saved his life once.
He knelt on the cop, hoping he wasn’t pushing the life out of a dying man. She felt his wrist for a pulse. The moments drug out. He felt confined. Something banged against the door one or two floors up. Leslie jumped back. Maurice tensed, his heart thundering in his chest.
“This was a mistake,” he said.
“You think?”
“Well?”
“I’m not fucking sure.” She stuck her hand against his neck for a few seconds and then stood up. “He’s dead.” Maurice reached down and took hold of the gun. With one hard yank it came free of the cop’s hand. He stood up.
“I heard him,” he said, starting down the stairs after her.
“I did, too. If he’s not one of them, he will be.”
The cop moaned again. They didn’t stop. Maurice didn’t look back. They passed the fourth floor.
“They’re all different,” he said. “Cassie was so much faster than the other one.”
“I’ve been listening to this crap on the radio for hours. Nobody knows anything. I’ve heard twenty different explanations for what’s happening and as many theories for how the sick behave. Only a fool would think that a virus or a poison or whatever the fuck it is would affect everyone exactly the same way.”
They passed the third floor in silence. Alexander had stopped crying and was breathing rhythmically. When they passed the second floor they hear a door high above them bang open. They froze. The door clacked shut and nothing followed. Maurice leaned forward and craned his head up the stairwell, not sure of what he was expecting to be able to see.
Several floors up, a figure peered down at them. For a moment Maurice just stood there. The person was too far away to tell if they were alive or one of them.
Leslie stood beside him, looking up. The other person didn’t say anything, didn’t ask for help, didn’t moan like an animal. The form dipped out of sight, and the stairwell echoed with the sound of footfalls hammering toward them.
Maurice and Leslie broke into a run, their pursuer closing the distance between them. Maurice wanted to believe that it wasn’t one of them, but a regular person would say something. A regular person wouldn’t run full speed down flights of stairs towards strangers.
He heard the footsteps stop, and then he heard a crash, as if the person had jumped the last few stairs on a landing and hit the wall. Leslie reached for the door to the first floor. For a terrifying second Maurice imagined the door not opening, the thing above them descending, getting closer and closer, and when the door popped open, there would be five of them, ten of them, and they would all reach for Alexander.
Nothing came in. They ran into the hallway.
END OF PREVIEW
PREVIEW
SCAVENGERS: A ZOMBIE NOVEL
By Nate Southard
"Nate Southard's Scavengers has got everything fans of the zombie genre crave: huge cannibalistic crowds of the undead, violent, almost continuous action, mounting paranoia and dread... Not since Richard Matheson have we had a writer so adept at dangling the average American guy on the end of a rope so we can watch him twitch and turn in the wind."
-Joe McKinney, author of Dead City and Flesh Eaters
“Nate Southard. Dude’s gonna be huge one day… one of the best new writers of his generation, and something new by him is always cause for celebration. I’m a big fan.”
-Brian Keene, author of Dead Sea and Ghoul
Blake stared in shock at what remained of Rundberg. Like most everybody else in Millwood, he hadn’t seen any destruction up close and in person. He remembered grainy, frenzied footage on the news channels, garbled radio broadcasts full of panicked voices. He’d heard a few stories from those who’d escaped more populated areas and made their way to Millwood, but nothing had prepared him for what he saw on Front Street as they entered Rundberg. Maybe a show about Beirut he’d watched years before, but that was only an approximation.
Most of the homes along the right hand side of the road were now little more than blackened shells or skeletons. Almost all of the trees had died, though a few showed a splash of green leaves amid the branches that were mostly charcoal. Across the street stood a collection of houses that looked a few hundred years older than their actual age. Window frames had lost their glass and roofs had caved in. Just past Catalpa Street, somebody had driven a Ford Bronco through the front of a one-story. The driver’s door hung open, but the window had shattered, and Blake made out the reddish-brown streaks of dried blood on what remained of the glass. More cars had been abandoned up and down the road. A broken skeleton, the skull shattered and the flesh long picked clean, lay splayed across the front of a Toyota that had wrapped around a tree. Blake thought the victim had probably flown face-first through the windshield and into the thick trunk. Probably lucky in the long run.
“Where the fuck are they?” Chris asked.
“Quiet.”
Chris turned around and raised his voice. “They can hear the fucking truck, Blake. My voice isn’t gonna make things worse. Shit, who knows if they’re even going to show?”
He gave Chris the finger, received one in return. He turned away and scanned the area again. As much as he hated to admit it, the guy did have a point. Where had all the dead gone? He didn’t guess they would have moved on in search of food. Some of them might have done just that, but they’d never be lucky enough for the rest to follow suit. Besides, the stink of rot and death was stronger here. It clung to the town like a fog.
He wondered why Morris was taking it so slow instead of gunning it for the grocery store. Looking past the cab, he found the answer. A snarl of twisted, black metal lay in the middle of the street. Another wreck. Morris piloted around it. Blake looked down into the wreckage and found no bodies. They’d either been dragged free or crawled out on their own after the fact.
“Jesus.”
A wheezing cry split the air. Blake jumped before moving to comfort Jeremy, sure the kid had lost what little of his nerve remained. When he reached out, however, he found Jeremy’s mouth shut. The boy looked scared, his eyes darting in all directions, but he remained silent.
Oh, shit, he thought. Here they come.
————————————
“Got one,” Eric said, excitement sparking his voice like electricity through ancient wiring.
“I see it,” Morris answered. He didn’t need to follow Eric’s pointing finger. He’d seen the thing the second it left the half-collapsed home and darted for the street, arms swinging like overcooked pasta. Its gray, sagging flesh soaked up the sunlight and made it something sickly. It charged onto the pavement and came right at t
hem. He met its pale, hungry eyes and zeroed in, taking aim. He caught a hint of movement somewhere behind the thing, but he shut it out.
This is it. No turning back now.
The street was clear between the truck and the zombie, the distance closing fast. Morris took a deep breath and held it. Hate rose in him like fire. This monstrosity was everything he despised, and he would destroy it.
He stomped on the gas, and the truck roared.
“What are you doing?” Eric asked.
He didn’t answer. He felt his jaw tighten, but he wasn’t aware of clenching it. His fingers choked the wheel, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. Somewhere far away, he heard Stevenson yell, “Oh shit!” If he’d checked the rearview, he would have seen the man duck below the cab and cover his head with both arms.
He felt the engine rumble with angry life, saw the running corpse rocket toward them, and then zombie and truck collided.
Visibility disappeared as the dead man burst like a tick, a soupy mix of black fluids splattering the windshield. The creature’s head bounced off the glass and went flying. A rope of intestine followed, twisting over the filthy glass like a dead snake. The smell intensified, and Eric moaned into his hand.
Morris hit the brakes as the thing’s legs powdered beneath the truck’s tires. The pickup slid to a stop in the middle of Front Street. He realized he was holding his breath, so he let out his air and took in more. He felt a little better, kind of satisfied.
He turned to look at Eric, found him staring in disgust at the filth-covered windshield.
“Sorry about that.”
“Can we go, please?”
“Sure.”