There was no sound from the shop, and he walked in through the broken window, right to the counter. No one, it seemed, had bothered to loot the florist at all; the broken windows were the extent of the damage. All the flowers had died, wilted, and rotted, the dry ones crumbling to dust and the ones still in water turning to some sort of horrible slime. There were bouquets of plastic flowers here and there, looking uncommonly cheerful and bright among the wreckage.
Behind the counter, Cal found a pad of credit card receipts and a pen, which was dry. He rooted around and found a whole box of pens. He tested a few, stuck a couple in his vest, and took the box out with him. You never knew what items would be useful barter.
Outside, Candy was still covering the shop, while Vin rotated one turn every other second or so, keeping the open area under supervision. Cal walked to the chair and sat down. He put the box of pens down and started to write.
"He's been walking north," Candy said. "The last thing he heard was a talk radio station from New York, so he figures there might be people left alive up there."
"I doubt it," Vin said. "There's nobody and nothing north of Mason Dixon. Why would you stay in a cold area?"
"Maybe they're waiting for the zombies to freeze."
Cal tore off another sheet and handed it to Candy.
"He's been trapped there for two days? Wow."
"I don't buy that," Vin said. "He'd have shit himself a couple of times."
Cal made eating motions and shook his head.
"No food?"
Cal nodded.
"This is silly," Vin said. "He's a drifter, and I don't trust him. We should get out of here."
"Vin," Candy said. "You were the one holding the knife on him. He's been trapped. Cut him a little slack. I mean, he was here first."
"Well."
Cal tore off another sheet, handed it over, and stood up.
"He's leaving," Candy said.
"Fine."
"Wait," Candy said. "Calvin, you should come with us."
"No," Vin said.
Cal shook his head.
"We're heading west, once we get past the panhandle. We think if there's people alive anywhere, it would be Texas."
"Don't tell him that!"
"We've been walking a long time; gas is hard to come by and the roads are pretty well clogged. Would you like to come with us?"
Cal thought about it. It made a certain amount of sense to band together. Multiple people meant safety; it meant someone could stand watch while the others slept, it meant they could carry more gear; it meant they could help each other.
He didn't want to lie to himself, so he allowed the thought that it also meant the zombies would have more targets and thus he personally would have a better chance of survival.
Still, he'd gotten this far on his own. The last group he'd tried to join had splintered apart too quickly; quarrels over leadership were deadly, post-collapse.
"Candy," Vin said. "We're doing fine on our own. We don't need another mouth to feed, and we certainly don't need someone stupid enough to get trapped like that. Shit, he was naked. Why would you take your clothing off in the middle of a zombie mall?"
"I expect he didn't know they were there."
"How do you NOT know zombies are around? They're not known for their stealth!"
Cal knelt and tightened his bootlaces. He pulled his pack over and examined it. Nothing seemed to be out of place. He hoisted it, slipped the credit pad into his vest, gave Candy a salute, and started walking.
"Wait!"
"Let him go …"
When Cal was out of their sight, he could still hear them arguing. Their voices echoed in the mall, no talking customers or Muzak to drown them out. He looked around and focused on a drugstore, smashed and looted like the rest. He made some noise, enough to draw anything inside out, and then made a quick loot in and out. There wasn't much; a few candy bars, a single glass bottle of water, and – jackpot! – a full carton of Slim Jims. They weren't the most healthy thing to subsist on, but they had good calories for the size and they lasted forever. He stuffed the carton into his pack, poked his head out, and left the mall.
Outside, the sun was high in the sky. The days were shorter in the winter, even this close to the equator, so Cal decided to get on the road as fast as possible. He froze under the mall entrance, listening for anything that sounded dangerous.
There was still a slight murmur from inside, but not enough to drown out anything shambling around. He couldn't see anything moving, and there were a number of zombie bodies in the parking lot that hadn't been there the day before; fruit of the traveller’s battle, earlier.
His bike was untouched, sideways under the burnt-out wreckage of an enormous SUV. He'd figured nobody would bother examining the wreck; it couldn't have any value, charred inside and out on melted tires. There was decent clearance underneath, though, and he pulled the bike out, checked the tires, and swung on.
Cal's memory told him that there was an Army base nearby. He hadn't heard anything on his crank radio for days now, no shortwave, no HAM, no CB, and certainly no AM/FM since that last broadcast. If there was anyone alive in the base, they were keeping radio silence and waiting it out.
Behind him, he heard the clatter of footsteps. He dropped the bike, turning and whipping his Kukri out in a manner made smooth by too many roadside ambushes.
It was Candy. She was alone, coming out of the mall, rifle slung over her shoulder.
"Wait," she said. "Wait."
Cal checked the four directions, stepped back over his bike to keep it between them, and waited. He re-sheathed the Kukri, but kept his hand down over the handle.
She got within a yard and stopped. Her eyes were wet.
"That bastard," she said. "He won't budge on anything, not ever. It kept us alive, God knows, we would never have made it if he'd been more complacent, but he's just so stubborn."
Cal raised a hand at the mall, made two fingers, and then shrugged.
"I think you mean why did I come out alone?"
Cal nodded.
"He wants to stay and loot. I can't stand it; we don't need anything. I only wanted to stop to rest and stay out the night if we could find a safe place in there. I know malls are dangerous, too many places for them to hide, but I just feel safer with walls and a roof. I don't mean to be insulting, but we didn't expect to find anyone alive."
Cal nodded and placed a hand over his heart. He left it there for a beat, then clasped his hands together and held them up, waving them at her.
"You're grateful we stopped to rescue you?"
Nod.
"I don't want you to feel in debt or anything," she said. "It's just … we've been walking for so long. He keeps talking, won't ever shut up. He's right, they were wrong, look where it got them … just over and over and over. I get so sick of him."
Cal shrugged.
"You don't talk," she said. "That's OK. I just wanted to spend some time with someone who wasn't him, you know? I'll go back to him, of course I will. He's good at this, he's just so … you know?"
From inside the mall, two quick shots.
Candy whirled, Cal pulled his Kukri and they ran towards the entrance.
Two more bodies, fresh. Cal had long since stopped checking bodies to see if he could tell if they were dead or alive when they had been killed; one to the head, everything's dead. It made no difference. The chair by the fountain was knocked over. There was fresh blood in the fountain.
"Oh no," Candy said. "Please no, please God–"
Cal scanned the area. There was no sign of Vin, or his gear; a few shell casings littered the floor by the bodies.
"He must have stopped to reload," Candy said. "He must have got bit. Shit, please don't let him get infected, but they don't bleed–"
The florist shop was nestled underneath a staircase. This mall had no escalators, and Cal didn't see an elevator, not that they would be functioning. He glanced up at a skylight. Still plenty of sun.
&nbs
p; "Vin!"
No answer.
Gunshot from above. Cal looked up and saw something falling; he dodged to the left and a body slammed into the floor.
Santa.
He'd looked bad enough already. The first bullet, the one from Candy and Vin's brief struggle while Cal was trapped, must have skimmed the edges of the brain without destroying it. Cal had seen it before; if any part of the inhuman brain remained, it could still direct the body to some degree. Now, though, Vin's second bullet had left a nice clean hole directly between the eyes. There was no chance of Santa returning next year.
A single shot boomed around the mall. Nothing else.
Candy broke for the stairs.
Cal followed Candy up the stairs, much more slowly, checking up and down with each step. He thought about Vin's holsters. Maybe he'd work on something like that for his own pistol, a small .22 currently empty and useless in his pack. He hadn't seen a horde for so long that he trusted in his own abilities with the Kukri, but now he thought about changing his strategy some.
At the top of the stairs, Candy was kneeling by Vin's prone figure. She wasn't speaking, wasn't making any noise at all. Cal walked over.
Vin was dead. A ragged bite in his arm showed his motive, the round hole in his own forehead showed the cause.
"I shouldn't have left him," Candy said. "But he made me so mad. It's not my fault. Not your fault; you couldn't have stopped this. He was careful, usually so careful."
Cal walked past them and looked around. No movement. He came back and knelt by Candy, watching her. She wasn't touching the body; it wouldn't have had time to become infectious, but there was no sense inviting trouble.
"I guess it's just me now," she said. "Unless you want company. It would make sense … but you have that bike. I'd need something too. It's not going to work."
Cal shrugged. He didn't want to leave her there, but if she wouldn't go with him, it wasn't his problem. He had stopped thinking of altruism the day his superiors had sent him to Florida to try and quell the outbreak before it tipped.
"Listen," she said. "Can you stay with me here, for a bit? I need to get his things, and dispose–"
Her voice broke. Cal waited. He wasn't good at personal, and he couldn't fill her silences.
"We'll burn him, if we can find anything. I know gas gels after a while, but it should still burn, right? Will you help me?"
Cal shrugged and nodded. It wasn't like he was in a hurry.
A couple of the cars in the parking lot still had gas in the tanks; gelled, as Candy had expected, but they managed to puncture them enough for the gelled gas to slip through into a container. Candy took Vin's pack, emptied his pockets, but left him clothed.
"His boots won't fit me," she explained, "and I don't want to risk his clothing. No extra risks; he said that, all the time. It's why he didn't want me inviting you along."
They brought the gas up to the body, and Cal broke a skylight with a rock after a few throws. The gelled gas heaped on the body instead of soaking in, and they lumped it inside Vin's jacket and around his legs and head.
The body burned just fine.
"I guess you should head on north," Candy said. Cal watched her in the fading light. She wasn't crying anymore, but the lines in her face had deepened. "I'd only slow you down."
Cal scribbled on the credit card pad, tore the sheet.
"I don't think you should be alone," she read. "Well, for what? I've got no chance on my own, and I don't want to get you killed too. I don't even know you."
Scribble, tear.
"I bet there's a bike or something in the mall, if we search hard enough," she read. "In a back room, or locked on a rack where the looters couldn't get to it."
Cal nodded, gestured.
"Why would you want me along?" she said. "I'm a middle manager from Orlando. The only reason I'm alive is because of Vin. I don't have any skills."
Cal thought about this. It was true; there was little reason to take an unskilled person along with him. Pragmatism ruled all in zombie territory. Finally, he wrote three words, tore the sheet, and handed it over.
"You can learn," Candy read. She looked up at Cal, and then laughed, a hard bark with no humour behind it.
"I guess you've got something there," she said. "It's getting dark, though, so we'd better hole up for the night and search at dawn."
Cal nodded.
They re-entered the mall and searched for a store with a security gate and no back exit. Many of the gates had been torn out by looters. Cal finally checked the florist, and sure enough, the security gate was still rolled up into the ceiling. There was no lock, but he laid a few chairs alongside the gate, legs stuck in so they'd fall and crash if the gate was moved.
The broken windows were another problem entirely. Cal finally settled for stacking more chairs, gathered from all over the mall, up in front, so there was no way an outside force could get past without knocking them over. It was good enough for the night. Without a travelling partner, the only way he'd sleep was in a tree or with much more security.
Cal was exhausted; he hadn't slept since the night before, but he offered – with gestures – to take first watch. To his relief, Candy shook her head.
"I'm not tired at all," she said. "You go ahead and rest. I'll wake you at dawn."
He didn't argue.
They found her a bike. It was somewhat rusty, and it took Cal several patches to get the inner tubes properly inflated, but in the end they set out on the road together. Cal kept his pace slow; he didn't know how good she was for endurance, but soon they were whipping along the coast highway at a respectable clip, slowing only to weave around the wrecks and abandoned cars that littered the highway.
They passed a massive car dealership, still decked out in holiday colours. Cal wondered if there was another dead Santa inside, wandering aimlessly among the cars, and then it was behind them and he gave it no more thought. It was the end of December, and Cal decided that anything still alive in the North could wait for warmer weather.
The road stretched out ahead along the Florida panhandle. If they continued on the coast, they'd pass briefly through Alabama and Mississippi, and then a long stretch through Louisiana. Soon enough they'd need to stop and get some serious supplies for the road, food and water and so forth. Cal had been just winging it, day by day, but he knew that the road would only get rougher.
The next town, maybe. They'd find something that hadn't been used up yet.
Candy rode beside him, stone-faced. She'd get better in time, get more experience, and wouldn't need him anymore when he decided to move on. She'd forget about Vin, and about Cal in time, assuming they made it alive. Cal lifted one hand and switched on his radio, attached to his combat vest, and set it for a cycling scan, listening for anything at all.
"Go west," Candy said, the rushing air whipping her words away. "Go west, young man." She laughed.
Cal smiled. She'd be OK.
THE END
ONE DEAD WHORE
By
Wayne Simmons
He was a gentleman.
Carla should have known that meant nothing around London's East End in 1888.
As a lady of the night selling her malnourished curves for a little bread and a lot of gin, she of all people should have worked out by now that the so-called gentlemen were, almost always, the worst. Gentlemen had frequent little ‘holidays’ from their prim little wives. Gentlemen clients were rare, it must be said, but those she had regularly were the most demanding. Compared to her usual scrubbers, their manners were atrocious.
Take, for example, wee Eddie from the butcher’s shop. Carla’s heart went out to him so much that she'd on occasion tossed him a free one. Dear little Ed, about as far from being a gentleman as England was to France, would save up his pennies for months before tripping along to the shadows of her patch, sweaty-palmed and meek, looking for nothing more than a strong-handed wank and a cuddle. It almost would have been a pleasure if the poor fucker weren't
so bloody ugly.
With a gentleman it was never a pleasure. It was nothing but sick shite. Violence. Indecency. Indignity. Carla was no angel by any stretch of the imagination, but she still had good high-church values. Or would have had, of course, if her love of drink hadn't outstripped all else.
Of late, it seemed, any clients were rare, though, so when a gentleman came looking for her, she wasn’t going to say no. She didn’t know what big a mistake that was then …
… but she knew now.
Carla, like everyone else, blamed the recent murders for the drought in business. They were the most troubling thing to hit London since the Great Fire. Everyone knew about them, and everyone was on edge. Five girls, all friends with whom she'd shared a bottle, had run afoul of her gentleman. They'd been mutilated. Bits of them had been removed and taken away. They'd been gutted like sows in seconds. Letters had been sent to the press. Authorities were taunted. It took strategy, precision and a malevolence Carla couldn't even begin to understand.
That same gentleman had decided to claim a very special part of Carla while she lay like a torn and festering rose on the bloodstained cobbles. As her vision receded into blackness, Carla felt a long, slender knife tear into an all-too-familiar place beneath her skirts …
… he was a gentleman, after all.
Her eyes flicked open like a switch.
She was still lying where he had left her, in the cold, filthy dark of one of Whitechapel’s many backstreets. Those who had happened by her corpse had wisely ignored her, probably more concerned for their own lives than her dignity. Her blood had congealed into the stones. Her heart didn’t beat, and her flesh felt even colder than the scum of frost coating her dress. Carla was no longer alive, of that she was sure.
But she wasn’t dead, either …
With no heartbeat, there came no panic, and so Carla rose from the ground with relative ease and nonchalance. Her first steps were a little unladylike, her limbs refusing to shake off a certain manly shuffle she associated with ironsmiths, but soon her seductive stride returned.
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