Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3)

by S. P. Durnin

  “Weren’t you and Allen thinking about attempting to find a pair of snowplows or dump trucks?” She demanded. “Before George showed us the Mimi, I mean?”

  Jake sniffed and turned away. “It was a stupid idea. They’d have been bogged down back at the Purifier’s compound. Then those things could’ve just climbed right on top of one-another, busted out the windows, and we’d have been dinner. Shit, I don’t even know if those buses Rae and George are helping to outfit for the people in Langley will be enough to keep them safe on the drive to Pecos, and we’ve only got about seven-hundred miles to go.”

  “So, what? We should write them off?” Bee asked cautiously, clearly uncomfortable with the direction their conversation was going. “I mean, Uncle George thinks the buses will work.”

  “No, I’m saying our situation is unique because of the Mimi.” Jake headed away from the dead family, towards the deli section. “These parents made their choice based on the information they had. While it sucks, I don’t blame them for it. The survivors in Langley have made their choice, and are betting on a pair of retrofitted tour buses. I’m saying we’re going to have casualties. That’s a given. We can’t waste time mourning people who are gone anymore. If we do, one of us will get sloppy at the wrong moment and…”

  Kat moved her cart up beside him. “Waste time mourning people. Like Laurel?”

  The muscles in Jake’s neck jerked as his jaw clenched. “That’s different.”

  “How?” She asked.

  “We knew her. She mattered. To all of us.” O’Connor stayed on course for the deli.

  Cho was afraid of what he’d say, but pressed him further. “So... You’re saying people—living people—outside our group, don’t matter as much? That it shouldn’t affect us if they die?”

  Jake stopped his cart before the deli. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  * * *

  Bee nudged Kat’s elbow as O’Connor circled around the long cases into the deli proper. Keeping one eye on Jake, the green-haired girl asked, “Can you believe he said that? That’s cold. I mean, that’s like Uncle George, hard-core cold. Is he okay?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Cho told her in a low voice. “What happened to Laurel affected us all—some more so than others—but I think it may have...broken something inside of him. Real bad. There are still moments where if you look in his eyes, you can see how close to the edge he really is. Jake’s fighting it, but a hurt like that doesn’t go away quickly. I’m worried, Bee.”

  “So what do we do about it?” Bee looked worried. “I mean, if he flakes out again?”

  Kat didn’t have an answer.

  “Are you two going to give me a hand with these things or what?” O’Connor came back around the deli case holding a heavy restaurant-grade meat slicer. The bulky piece of equipment caused the thick cords in his forearms and biceps to pop under his skin, and Kat fought back an appreciative smile. She realized that now simply wasn’t the time for snarky bi-play on her part, but it was a struggle. Several sexually provocative comments immediately came into her mind at the sight of Jake’s obviously muscled arms.

  “Hold your horses, we’re coming.” Cho moved her empty cart forward for him to plunk the meat slicer down. As he bent over lowering the machine into the basket, she did take a healthy eyeful of Jake’s Khaki-covered rear end though. While not all slick and covered only with soap, like in the shower yesterday, he still had a nice bum.

  “Boy. All that running really worked for you, huh?” Bee said with bright smile.

  Jake straightened up again, clearly unamused.

  Beatrix held both hands up. “Just saying. You’re still a total dork, but that’s some ‘Bow-chicka-bow-wow!’ you got going on there. I bet I could bounce a quarter off—”

  Jake pointed behind the cases. “Slicers? Help?”

  “Okay-okay! Looting now. Jeez.” Bee and Kat moved to procure a slicer between the two of them as Jake grabbed yet another himself. “You’re as bad as my uncle. I swear, old people get cranky about the weirdest things.”

  Kat put forth a mighty effort and managed not to giggle at the expression on O’Connor’s face. “Fair’s fair, hero. What, like you didn’t do the same back a few aisles back?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he protested.

  Cho shared a knowing grin with the younger woman as they hefted their slicer into the cart. “Uh-huh. Sure. Do you buy that, Bee?”

  “Not for a second.” Bee’s green ponytails bobbed as she shook her head.

  Cho put the back of one hand against her own forehead. “Oh my! These generators are so heavy!”

  Both girls then leaned on opposite sides of their cart, arched their backs, and stuck “da booties” out

  Jake turned quickly away from the provocatively posing women to pick up another meat slicer, and kept a tight rein on exactly where his eyes settled. Turning his pants into a pup-tent placed quite high on his Things One Must Not Do list at that particular moment.

  Besides.

  One wardrobe malfunction per day was his limit.

  * * *

  After cramming six of Rae’s eight requested meat slicers into their carts along with the generators, Jake, Kat, and Bee made for Costco’s front door. In the end, they hadn’t managed to brainstorm a way to remove—or transport—the pair of large, walk-in freezer doors in the deli. That would earn Jake a verbal lashing from their group’s buxom brunette, but she’d just have to make do with steel plate from Mooney’s construction stores.

  What in the blue-hell did she want them for anyway? O’Connor wondered as he used his shopping cart to push the door open.

  After muscling his knock-wheeled basket through, Jake managed to hold the grimy portal open until both women had maneuvered their own carts outside. They briskly trotted towards the Troll, eager to get loaded, get gone, and get back to Langley with their loot. That was in no small due way to the family, still close together in death, back inside the store. While his odd group had seen their share of mutilated bodies, and would without a doubt carry memories of horror and loss until their dying days.

  It didn’t seem as if Jake had been affected by their gruesome find, but that was only because he was almost numb to the horror of it all now. After being savagely beaten by the Purifiers, nearly bleeding to death—thanks to the same group of psycho’s number two man sticking a German RAD dagger deep into his left— shoulder—and having to kill a zombiefied member of their group—Karen Parker—he’d been a physical and emotional wreck. At the time, Kat had been amazed he’d managed to stay vertical while they finally killed Poole and the rest of his little band of murderous malcontents, then flee the oncoming horde of creatures into a nearby transformer yard. That had been enough to traumatize anyone, but Laurel’s spectacular death—when she blew the Nazis’ clubhouse to smithereens and burned it to the ground—had been too much. The unruly-haired writer’s already-brutalized psyche couldn’t take another blow like that, and had finally shut down.

  Just before his heart had stopped.

  When that happened, Cho had gone into a panic. She’d long ago accepted that Jacob O’Connor was the real deal. An honest-to-goodness hero in the best sense of the word. Perhaps not the biggest, even though he was a hair over six feet tall and two hundred and twenty pounds of cabled muscle. Maybe not the baddest—but only madmen had no fear the hungry dead, and fear them he did—even though he’d fought them hand-to-hand and beaten the nasty things into oblivion with his crowbar. He was however, courageous, selfless, honest, and brave, and Cho wanted him desperately.

  But he was a hero.

  That terrified her. Kat was well aware that heroes didn’t get to live to a ripe old age, then pass into the afterlife peacefully surrounded by their friends, family, and loved ones. They led short, violent, pain-filled lives, which usually came to untimely and—more often than not�
�bloody endings. She all but knew that was what the fates had in store for Jake and railed against it daily, mentally begging them to spare him. For the vengeful sky-beasts to relent and release their claim to him. For them give him over to her, so the two of them could find a measure of peace, if only for a little while. Cho had even promised the gods she’d make the journey with him into death, when the time came. She’d sworn to commit seppuku—Japanese ritual suicide—and follow him to the Pearly Gates. Or down to the underworld, if that’s where he went.

  Heaven wouldn’t be paradise without him anyway.

  O’Connor and Kat began hefting their supplies into the rear of the Humvee leaving Beatrix to stand watch, slowly turning in a complete circle as she kept an eye out for any sign of movement. Bee was a bit of a bubble-head—like Kat if truth be told—but her uncle had trained her well.

  During his yearly, three-week long visits to see his brother each year in San Francisco, George Foster had been sure to show his niece how to handle herself at an early age. Against his sister-in-law’s shrieks of protest, George had bought her a .22 rifle, taught her how to use it properly and safely, and shown her not a few dirty tricks when it came to self-defense. Because if his instruction, Beatrix had been the skinny seventh-grader who’d kicked the snot out of a would-be bully three years her senior, and nearly twice her size. A few years later, she’d been a big hit at prom in her white, tea-length ball gown—which showed off her newly developed cleavage and slim waist—and thick-soled combat boots. Six months later, she placed third of her age group nationally in the US Competitive Shooting challenge, which earned her a full scholarship to Wright State. Bee had been approached by numerous military recruiters, all nearly drooling with eagerness over the thought of her signing up for active duty and then eventually transitioning into one sniper program or another shortly thereafter. With a straight face, she’d told them she’d only enlist if she were allowed to wear the female ensign dresses from Star Trek. She asked to have it in writing too.

  That caused many a hopeful recruiter to not bother her further.

  Bee held her weapon with confidence, index finger next to the trigger—but not on it—as she swept the immediate area. Save for a few stray dogs moving past on the next block down and the odd piece of stray paper blowing across the surface of the parking lot, there was very little to be seen. She still kept a careful eye out though. Kat and Jake had told them all about the fast-movers they’d encountered during their escape from Penny’s former group, and the thought of ghouls capable of sprinting over short distances scared the living crap out of her. Normal zombies were bad enough, but runners? If Beatrix were given the choice, she wouldn’t set foot outside the Screamin’ Mimi until they were safe and sound in good ol’ Cal-ih-forn-i-ay. The others needed her though, so—as Uncle George said—she ‘gutted up.’

  Despite the shaky feeling in her knees.

  O’Connor and Cho wrestled the last meat slicer into the Hummer’s bed and he quickly hefted the tailgate. Kat dashed around to the rear passenger door, leapt inside, crawled over the seat into the bed, and shot the double bolts closed, securing the rear against dead entry once more. That done, the ninja-girl opened the Hummer’s turret hatch, climbed onto the roof, and waved her arms over her head while looking at the distant fire truck where Elle lay in wait. The trio saw their blonde sergeant quickly make her way across the hoses, leap from the edge of the high bed, and begin to run in their direction. As she approached at flank speed, Elle was frantically motioning for them to get in the vehicle.

  “Something’s wrong. Everybody mount up.” Jake hopped behind the wheel and began charging the glow-plug.

  Cho dropped back into the cab, shutting the hatch again as she did so and took the navi-guesser seat. “Gee, I wonder what it is this time. Para-military douche-bags? Members of a vegetarian doomsday prepper cult? A pack of sex-crazed lycanthropes with the clap living in an abandoned hospital?”

  Beatrix leaned forward between the seats, causing the left side of her bosom to brush against Jake’s bicep. “Where did the last come from?”

  “I’ve always had a good imagination.” Kat smiled tightly but kept her eyes on the trotting blonde soldier.

  Elle arrived slightly out of breath after running with her heavy rifle. “You guys are never going to believe this! I was using the Long-Arm to scan the area near the hospital and I saw—”

  “Horny werewolves?” Kat perked up, surprised she’d actually called it right.

  “What? No! Jesus Christ. Sometimes I honestly think you’ve fried your brain with all the blue hair dye.” Elle secured the rifle in the rear and reached for her carbine. “There’s a goddamn sign painted on the hospital!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The quartet had approached the Craig General Hospital cautiously, leaving their Humvee and Elle four blocks back—in front of Hall-Halsell Elementary School—so as not to alert the numerous, mobile corpses clustered about the main entrance. After cutting through half-a-dozen backyards sans contact with anything rotten and drooling, O’Connor had pried the backdoor of a house facing North Forman Street open so they could take a breather. The home was in decent condition, all things considered. A bit dusty, and it smelled a little stale after being closed up for months, but there were no zombies inside, so Jake, Kat, and Beatrix were willing to overlook the need for some Febreze.

  Once they’d cleared the house, the trio clustered near one of the windows that faced the hospital and took a good look at their objective.

  There were zombies in the parking lot. Lots of them. Not thousands—like the pod they’d encountered while assaulting the Purifiers—but enough to make them all nervous about being discovered. The things shambled about the grounds outside, seemingly drawn there by some stimuli the survivors couldn’t identify offhand, occasionally bumping into (and off of) the thick safety glass windows that ringed the main entrance. The entire exterior of the hospital was smeared with a mixture of nasty, up to a level of about seven or eight feet high along the walls. Blood and other noxious body fluids, bits of flesh scraped along the rough cinder-block, even occasional limbs lay forgotten on the ground from a few of the more ragged looking creatures.

  The sign was what held their attention though.

  Jake assumed it had been made from bed sheets roughly stitched together two-high and three wide, because it wafted slightly in the weak breeze outside. The banner read simply, Alone! Alive! Help!

  “Well. That’s pretty straightforward.” Bee tilted her head and looked over Kat’s shoulder.

  Jake continued to scan the hospital with his binoculars. “It gets the point across.”

  “I guess so.” Kat leaned against the bedroom wall and toyed with the hilt of her sword. “Do you think whoever ‘Alone!’ is, is still ‘Alive’ in there?”

  A wry expression grew on Jake’s face and he passed her the binoculars. “Uh, yeah. You could say that. Take a look at the fifth floor window. The one that’s broken out, up by the nearest corner.”

  Kat raised the glasses to her eyes and zeroed in on the spot he pointed out. O’Connor witnessed her surprise when she saw a slim, scruffy looking man in perhaps his late-fifties, wearing hospital scrubs, standing in the gap.

  “Holy crap! There’s a guy right there!” She exclaimed, and focused the optics a bit. The man seemed to be yelling at the dead below. “What the heck is he doing?”

  “If the spot under that window is any indication, I’d say he’s using the toilet.”

  Not taking her eyes from the lone man, Kat asked, “What? Why would he do that? Wouldn’t there be plenty of bathrooms

  in there?”

  “Remember inside the Costco?” Jake snorted.

  As Cho watched, the man abruptly turned around, ‘dropped trou’, hung his rear end out over the windowsill, and—

  “Ugh! Jeez!” She quickly passed the glasses back to Jake. He raised them again as she s
huddered. “Gross! Who’d think doing something like that is good idea?”

  “Well, our disgusting friend over there’s been alone for who knows how long. It could’ve affected his mind in all kinds of fun ways.” The binoculars lowered to track something as it fell and laughed quietly in appreciation. “Good aim though. Hit one square in the pie-hole, right as it looked up, too. That’s talent right there.”

  Kat gagged.

  “The whole tendency for toilet humor has gotta be a guy thing.” Bee told her.

  Jake sniffed. He’d thought it was funny. “Fine. Since you two are busy critiquing my material, here’s the plan...”

  * * *

  Jake and Beatrix crouched behind an abandoned garage across from Craig General’s emergency room entrance. They’d doubled back a block before quickly scurrying over the road to provide themselves a bit of distance, hence less chance of attracting unwanted (read: any) ghoulish attention, and quietly worked their way north again though overgrown yards. Foster’s niece had complained under her breath the whole way, positive they were both going to contract Lyme Disease from ticks hiding in the tall brush, but managed to keep up without making any undue noise.

  Jake wished once again for different companions. He was pretty sure Obi-Wan Kenobi never had to put up with this kind of crap. Except from Jar-Jar, and look how that turned out. That stupid twit all but created the Galactic Empire, for God’s sake.

  “You should’ve brought Kat along instead,” Bee whispered for the twelfth time.

  “She’s better at driving the Hummer than you or Elle, so she’s the bait this time.” Jake checked the magazine on his M-4 again. Yup. Still full. “She might even be better than I am behind the wheel. Stop whining.”

  “I’m not whining,” Bee whined. “I just hate Nature! It’s bad enough we have to camp out in the Mimi half the time, now I have to crawl through a jungle too?”