The hand—connected to a zombie with some fight still in it—instantly recoils under the container. Philip jerks backward with a start.
“DUDE!” Nick cries out, and the hand shoots back out and grabs Philip’s ankle.
Philip sprawls to the ground, his Ruger spinning off across the pavement.
The dead man—an ashy-skinned, bearded homeless person in bloodstained rags—crabs toward Philip with the speed of a giant spider.
Philip claws for his gun. The others fumble for their weapons, Brian going for his shotgun while trying to balance the child on his back. Nick thumbs back the hammers on his Marlin.
The dead thing clutches Philip’s leg and opens its jaws with the rigor-mortis creak of rusty hinges as Philip fumbles for his axe.
The zombie is about to take a chunk out of Philip’s lower calf when the barrel of Nick’s goose gun presses down on the back of the thing’s skull.
The blast rips through the zombie’s brain, sending half its face through the air on a geyser of blood and matter, the booming echo of the shotgun reverberating through the canyons of steel and glass.
“Now we’re screwed,” Philip says, struggling to his feet, scooping up the Ruger.
“What’s the matter?” Brian says, adjusting the weight of the little girl on his back.
“Listen,” Philip says.
In the brittle silence, they hear the ocean-wave sound of moaning suddenly change, altering its course as though on a shifting wind, the masses of undead drawn by the boom of the shotgun.
“So, we’ll go back inside,” Nick says in a strident, tense voice. “Back inside the jewelry store—there’s gotta be a second floor.”
“Too late,” Philip says, checking the Ruger, looking down into its breech. He’s got four rounds of hollow tips left in the hilt, and three mags of eight each in his back pockets. “I’m bettin’ they’re already flooding in the front of the place.”
“What do you suggest?”
Philip looks at Nick, and then at his brother. “How fast you think you can run with all that weight?”
* * *
They take off at a moderate clip, Philip in the lead, Brian hobbling along after him, Nick bringing up the rear, past caved-in storefronts and petrified, charred funeral pyres of bodies burned by enterprising survivors.
Brian can’t tell for sure but it seems like Philip is madly looking for a safe exit off the streets—a clean doorway, a fire escape ladder, something—but he’s distracted now by an increasing number of moving corpses appearing around every corner.
Philip blasts the first one at fifty paces, sending a slug through its forehead, dropping it like a bad habit. The second one surprises him at closer range, lurching out of a shadowy doorway, and Philip puts it down with his second shot. More of them are materializing from porches and gaping store windows. Nick puts the goose gun and two decades of boar hunting to good use, taking down at least a dozen of them in the space of two blocks.
The blasts echo up over the skyline like sonic booms in the stratosphere.
* * *
They turn a corner and hurry down a narrower side road of herringbone brick, perhaps a landmark antebellum street that once rang with buckboards and horses, now bordered on either side by boarded condominiums and office buildings. The good news is that they seem to be moving away from the congested area, encountering fewer and fewer walking dead with each passing block.
The bad news is that they feel trapped now. They sense the city closing in around them, swallowing them whole in its glass-and-steel gullet. By this point, the sun has begun its afternoon descent, and the shadows thrown by the massive skyline have begun to lengthen.
Philip sees something in the distance—maybe a block and a half away—and instinctively ducks under the canopy of a torn awning.
The others hunker down with him against the boarded window of a former dry cleaner, and they crouch in the shadows to catch their breaths.
Brian is panting with exertion, little Penny still clinging soporifically to his back, like some kind of sleepy, traumatized monkey. “What is it, what’s the matter?” Brian asks, realizing that Philip is craning his neck to see something in the distance.
“Tell me I’m seeing things,” Philip says.
“What is it?”
“Gray building up there on the right,” Philip says, nodding to the north. “See it? ’Bout two blocks away? See the doorway?”
In the distance, a three-story apartment building rises out of a row of dilapidated two-story condominiums. A massive postwar pile of chalk-colored brick and jutting balconies, it’s the largest building on the block, the top of it reaching out of the shadows and reflecting the cold, pale sunlight off its array of antennas and exhaust stacks.
“Oh my God, I see it,” Brian utters, still balancing Penny on his sore back as he kneels. The child clutches at his shoulders with a desperate grip.
“That ain’t no mirage, Philly,” Nick comments, a trace of awe coloring his voice.
They all stare at the human figure in the distance, too far away to identify as a man or a woman, adult or child, but there it is … waving at them.
TEN
Philip approaches cautiously from the opposite side of the street, the .22 at his side, cocked and ready, but not exactly raised. The others follow along behind him in a single file, all of their hackles up, their eyes wide open and prepared for anything.
The young woman across the street calls to them in a low, hissing whisper: “Hurry up already!”
She appears to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, with long dishwater-blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She wears jeans and a loose-fitting cable-knit sweater that’s severely stained, the red smudges and spatters visible even from this distance as she waves them over with a small-caliber revolver, maybe a police .38, swinging it like it’s an air traffic control baton.
Philip wipes his mouth, thinking, catching his breath, trying to get a bead on the woman.
“C’mon!” she yells. “Before they smell us!” She’s obviously anxious for them to follow her inside, and it’s very likely she means them no harm; the way she’s swinging the gun, it would not surprise Philip if it wasn’t even loaded. She calls out: “And don’t let any of those Biters see you come inside!”
Philip is wary, guarded, and he pauses on the curb before crossing the street. “How many of you are there?” he calls out to her.
Across the street, the blond woman lets out an exasperated sigh. “For God’s sake, we’re offering you food and shelter, come on!”
“How many?”
“Jesus, do you want help or not?”
Philip tightens his grip on the Ruger. “You’re gonna answer my question first.”
Another nervous sigh. “Three! Okay? There’s three of us. You happy now? This is your last opportunity because if y’all don’t come now, I’m going to go back inside, and then you’re gonna be shit outta luck.” She speaks with the faint drawl of a native Georgian, but has some big city in her voice, too. Maybe even a little bit of the North.
Philip and Nick exchange glances. The distant choir of rusty moaning drifts closer on the wind like a coming storm. Brian nervously readjusts Penny’s weight on his back, and then shoots a jittery glance over his shoulder at the end of the block. He looks at Philip. “What other options do we have, Philip?”
“I agree, Philly,” Nick whispers under his breath, swallowing his fear.
Philip looks at the young lady across the street. “How many men, how many women?”
She hollers back at him, “You want me to fill out a questionnaire? I’m going back inside. Good luck with everything—you’re gonna need it!”
“Wait!”
Philip nods at the others, and then cautiously leads them across the street.
* * *
“You got any cigarettes?” the young woman asks, leading the group into the building’s outer vestibule, securing the door behind her with a makeshift cross-brace. “We’
re down to our last bent butts.”
She’s a little beat-up, with scars on her chin, bruises on the side of her face, and one eye that’s so bloodshot it looks like a mild hemorrhage. Beyond those rough edges, though, she strikes Philip as a fine-looking woman, with cornflower-blue eyes, and the kind of sun-kissed skin you might see on a farm girl—a sort of easy, low-maintenance beauty. But from the defiant tilt of her head, and the zaftig curves hidden under her bulky clothes, she gives off the air of an earth mother, and one does not fuck with earth mothers.
“Sorry, no smokers,” Philip says, holding the door for Brian.
“Y’all look like you got banged up out there,” the woman says, leading them across a reeking, littered chamber lined on one side with eighteen pairs of mailboxes and buzzers. Brian gently puts Penny down. The little girl staggers for a moment, getting her bearings. The air smells of must and zombie. The building does not feel safe.
The young woman kneels down by Penny. “Aren’t you a sweet one.”
Penny doesn’t say anything, just looks down.
The woman looks up at Brian. “She yours?”
“She’s mine,” Philip says.
The woman brushes a strand of matted black hair from Penny’s face. “My name’s April, honey, what’s yours?”
“Penny.”
The voice that comes out of the child is so meek and nerve-racked it sounds like the mewl of a kitten. The woman named April smiles and strokes the girl’s shoulder, then rises and looks at the men. “Let’s get inside before we draw more of those things.” She goes over to one of the intercoms and thumbs the button. “Dad, let us in.”
Through a burst of static, a voice replies, “Not so fast, little girl.”
Philip grabs her arm. “You got power in there? You got electricity?”
She shakes her head. “Afraid not … intercom’s on a battery.” She pokes the button. “Dad, come on.”
Through the crackling static: “How do we know we can trust these yahoos?”
Click: “You gonna let us in or what?”
Crackle: “You tell ’em to give up their guns.”
She lets out another anguished sigh and turns to Philip, who is shaking his head, giving her a no-way-in-hell kind of look.
Click: “They got a little girl, for chrissake. I’ll vouch for ’em.”
Crackle: “And Hitler painted roses … we don’t know these folks from Adam.”
Click: “Dad, open the damn lock!”
Crackle: “You saw what happened up to Druid Hills.”
April slams her hand down on the intercom: “This ain’t Druid Hills! Now let us in, goddamnit, before we grow moss on our asses!”
A harsh, metallic buzz is followed by a loud clunk as the autolatch on the inner security door springs open. April leads them through the doorway, and then down a shopworn, sour-smelling hallway with three apartment doors on either side. At the far end of the corridor stands a metal door marked STAIRS, with criss-crossing boards nailed over it.
April knocks on the last door on the right—Apartment 1C—and within moments, a heavier, older, coarser version of April opens the door. “Oh my God, what an adorable little girl,” the big gal says, seeing Penny, who is now holding Brian’s hand. “Come on in, folks … can’t tell ya how good it is to finally see people who can keep their drool in their mouths.”
April’s sister, who introduces herself as Tara, is plump and rough around the edges. She smells of smoke and cheap shampoo, and is dressed in a faded floral-print muumuu to hide her excess flesh. Her cleavage rises like bread dough out of the top of her dress, a little Woody Woodpecker tattoo on the crest of one bosom. She has the same striking blue eyes as her younger sister, but keeps them heavily lined and decorated with steel-blue eye shadow. Her long Lee press-on nails look like they could open a tin can.
Philip enters the apartment first, the Ruger still in his hand at his side.
The others follow.
At first, Philip barely notices the cluttered living room, the chairs draped with clothing, the battered luggage along one wall, and the oddly shaped musical instrument cases leaning against the boarded sliding door. He hardly notices the small kitchenette off to the left, the peach crates of provisions and the sink full of dirty dishes. The smell of cigarette smoke and stale fabric and dried sweat hanging in the air barely registers in Philip’s nostrils.
Right now, all he can focus on is the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun pointed directly at him from a rocking chair across the room.
* * *
“That’s far enough,” says the old man with the shotgun. A lanky, weathered old duffer, he has the farmer-tanned face of a cigar-store Indian, with an iron-gray flattop haircut and ice-chip blue eyes. The slender tube of an oxygen rig is clipped under his buzzard’s beak of a nose, the tank sitting next to him like a faithful pet. He barely fits into his stovepipe jeans and flannel shirt, his white, hairy ankles showing above the tops of his shit-kickers.
Philip instinctively raises the .22, instantly going into Mexican showdown mode. He aims it at the old man and says, “Sir, we got enough trouble out there, we don’t need any in here.”
The others freeze.
April pushes her way past the men. “For God’s sake, Dad, put that thing down.”
The old man waves the girl aside with the barrel. “You hush now, little girl.”
April stands there with her hands on her hips, a disgusted look on her face.
Across the room, Tara says, “Can we all just dial it down a little bit?”
“Where’d you folks come from?” the old man asks Philip, the shotgun still raised and ready.
“Waynesboro, Georgia.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s in Burke County.”
“Hell, that’s almost South Carolina.”
“Yessir.”
“You on drugs? Speed, crack … something like that?”
“No, sir. Why the hell would you think that?”
“Something going on behind them eyes, they look all jacked up on speed.”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“How’d you end up on our doorstep?”
“Heard there was some kinda refugee center set up here, but it ain’t lookin’ too good.”
“You got that right,” says the old man.
April chimes in, “Sounds like we all got something in common.”
Philip keeps his eyes on the old man, but says to the girl, “How’s that?”
“That’s the same reason we ended up in this godforsaken place,” she says. “Looking for that damned refugee center everybody was talking about.”
Philip stares at the shotgun. “‘Best laid plans,’ I guess.”
“Damn straight,” says the old man, the faint whistle of oxygen seeping from the tank. “I don’t suppose you realize what you done to us.”
“I’m listening.”
“You got them Biters all stirred up. By sundown, there’s gonna be a goddamn convention of them things outside our door.”
Philip sniffs. “I’m sorry about that but it ain’t like we had a choice.”
The old man sighs. “Well now … I suppose that’s true.”
“Your daughter’s the one pulled us off the street … we had no bad intentions. Hell, we had no intentions at all … other than keepin’ from getting bit.”
“Yeah, well … I can see your point there.”
A long beat of silence follows. Everybody waits. The two firearms begin to lower.
“What are them cases for?” Philip finally asks, nodding toward the row of tattered instrument cases across the rear of the living room. His gun is still raised but the fight-or-flight juice has drained from him. “You got tommy guns in them things?”
The old man finally lets out a flinty laugh. He lays his gun on his lap, crosswise, letting up on the hammers, all the tension draining out of his gaunt face. The oxygen tank pings. “My friend, you’re lookin’ at what’s left of the World Famous Chalmers Family B
and, stars of stage, screen, and state fairs across the South.” The old man sets the gun down on the floor with a grunt. He looks up at Philip. “I apologize for the ornery reception.” He struggles to his feet, rising to his full height until he looks like a withered Abe Lincoln. “Name’s David Chalmers, mandolin, vocals, and father of these two ragamuffins.”
Philip shoves his gun back behind his belt. “Philip Blake. This is my brother Brian. And that wallflower over there is Nick Parsons … and I thank you kindly for saving our asses out there.”
The two patriarchs shake hands, and the tension goes out of the room with the suddenness of an off switch being thrown.
* * *
It turns out there was a fourth member of the Chalmers Family Band—Mrs. Chalmers—a portly little matron from Chattanooga who sang high soprano on the group’s bluegrass and old-timey numbers. According to April, it was a blessing in disguise that the matriarch of the family succumbed to pneumonia five years earlier. If she had lived to see this horrible shit inflicting the human race, she would have been crushed, would have seen it as the end-time, and probably would have walked right off the pier at Clark’s Hill Lake.
So it was that the Chalmers Family Band became a trio, and went on with the act, playing the carny circuit across the tristate area, with Tara on bass, April on guitar, and Daddy on mandolin. As a single father, the sixty-six-year-old David had his hands full. Tara was a pothead, and April had her mother’s temper and single-mindedness.
When the plague broke out, they were in Tennessee at a bluegrass festival, and they made their way back home in the band’s camper. They got as far as the Georgia border before the camper broke down. From there, they got lucky enough to find an Amtrak train that was still running between Dalton and Atlanta. Unfortunately, the train deposited them smack-dab in the middle of the southeast side, at King Memorial Station, which was now lousy with the dead. Somehow, they managed to work their way north without getting attacked, traveling at night in stolen cars, searching for the mythical refugee center.
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