He shook his head. He had to get out of this place. He was ready to go back out. He knew a place within five miles of here where companionship could be had.
Perfect nonjudgmental companionship.
He could hardly wait to get there.
72. Julie
“Oh my God!” Julie cried out, as if the sentence were one word. “Ohmygod!” she said again, blending the words as Booth merged and became one with her. He held her up against the tiled shower wall, her hands pinned over her head, and they were both pelted with water.
They both held onto the moment, as if afraid to let go. Finally, Booth said, “My legs are trembling. Let me put you down.” He let go of her thighs, gently lowering her feet to the floor.
“That was so good,” she murmured into his ear.
He broke their embrace and went to get them towels. Once again, Julie found herself admiring his near perfect physique. He wasn’t overly bulky, but he made Burt look bad. This guy was in the prime of his life. This fact made her wonder whether she could keep someone like him happy. She hadn’t been enough for Burt.
She pushed these thoughts away when Booth handed her a plush yellow bath towel. She was getting cold now.
“You sure have taken good care of yourself,” he remarked.
“For an old lady?” she asked, pointedly not looking at him while she dried her hair.
He made an exasperated noise.
“What are you, maybe twenty-eight?” she asked, turning back to look at him. He was drying his legs, not looking at her.
“I’m thirty,” he answered, letting some annoyance into his tone.
“So very young, still. Seen it all, though, I imagine.”
“I’ve seen a lot, lady. Not enough of you, though.”
Julie laughed. “I’m glad. Got any more practical plans for us?”
“Like what? Do you mean where we should go, or what we should do to survive and be safe?” He was all seriousness now.
There was no harm in telling him what she was sure he already knew. “Exactly! I know we won’t ever make it to North Carolina.”
Booth nodded. “Without a helicopter, I’m pretty sure we won’t make it out of the city. I could be wrong, but—”
“No, you’re right, I’m sure, Sergeant. There has to be someplace we can go, isn’t there?”
“For now, we make a bed out of a bunch of these towels, and we bunk down right here. Maybe over the next few days, Hicks and I can scout out something better, and find some of the supplies we need.”
“Thank you,” Julie said. She knew that she and her son were alive because of the efforts and sacrifices of other people, probably more deserving people. Some gratitude needed to be expressed.
He didn’t answer. He was still standing before her, completely, and quite gloriously, naked.
Julie let the towel drop and demurely stepped closer to him. “Let me thank you some more,” she whispered.
73. Sid
“They’re in that house, right there,” the boy said, pointing his finger toward a ramshackle two-story house across the street.
Maybe ramshackle wasn’t the right word. It looked sturdy enough, but the exterior had an air of neglect. The windows were boarded over, and corpses littered the grass around it. Perhaps ten of the dead were milling around the front yard now. It looked like those inside had fought off some of the things while they boarded up the place.
Sid liked to think he had a good imagination. He was usually right. How much of his intuition was real or luck? He had no idea. He just knew that usually he was right about people and their motivations.
“Thank you, Kyle. You have been most cooperative, and best of all, you may have saved your friends’ lives.”
“What about Sergeant Jacobs?” he asked. “You said he’s dead, but didn’t say how.”
“When my men found him, he’d been bitten repeatedly. He told them where you were, and he asked us to save you, son. Now, we’re just taking it a step further and trying to rescue as many people as we can.”
Tears glistened in the boy’s eyes. “Thank you, so much, sir! Before the sergeant came we didn’t have a clue what to do or where to go.”
Sid put his hand on the teenager’s shoulder. “No trouble, we’re just doing what we can. Now, why don’t you go get them? Take Chato with you.”
“Chato?”
Chato stepped forward. He was a short Hispanic with a lightning bolt carved into the hairline of his crew-cut, right on the edge of his forehead. He had a droopy-eyed look, and a hooked nose. His arms and legs were muscular but stubby, and his torso overly long. He was Sid’s most reliable henchman.
“Go ahead, boy,” Sid said. “Chato will protect you.”
The teenager outweighed Chato by about fifty pounds, but he was a child. Sid could see how scared the boy was; he’d have to either become a man or die.
“Just the two of us are going to fight ten of them?” the boy asked.
Sid nodded, and Chato drew a big hunting knife and started walking toward the milling crowd of zombies. Some were on the porch pounding on the door, and four of them stood watching from the lawn like they were unplugged.
Kyle noticed that Chato was leaving without him, and his cheeks got red. He ran after the other man with both hands wrapped around the haft of the bat that Sid let him keep.
Sid saw one of the zombies spin to confront Chato when the man got within five feet of him. Sunlight flashed on Chato’s knife when he swung the blade high and plunged it into the head of the nearest creature. Sludgy bits of gore flew while the thing toppled to its back on the grass. Chato yanked the blade free, spun on his heels to his left, and nearly severed the forearm of a decrepit lady in a green housecoat. Another slash sliced right through her neck, and she collapsed at his feet.
Sid was amused. Chato didn’t need the boy’s help. Part of him wished he had someone to wager with. He wondered if the boy would even try to help the older man or let him do it all. Chato wasn’t waiting around, that was sure.
The dead were slow to react, but there were enough that by the time Chato killed two more the remaining six were advancing on him. Chato backpedalled with his left hand raised as if to fend them off, and his right, with the knife, also raised and ready.
Kyle stepped up beside the smaller man, bat raised. He was trembling, but Sid sensed that he would die before backing off.
The dead approached them in a long, ragged line, almost abreast. Sid thought that might be bad. It would have been better if they were staggered and packed together.
Things happened fast. Kyle swung his bat in a wide arc, clipping two of the things in the head, and staggering another. The second one appeared to shake it off, stepped close to the teen, and managed to tangle arms with him. Chato was dancing away from the pack, leaving two more of the dead in his trail. He was too far away to help Kyle. Even as he watched, the teen was bitten, and two more of the things piled onto him and took him to the ground.
Of course, Sid could have helped, but why? That’s what servants were for.
74. Keller
In the army he thought he’d seen the last of his friends die under horrible circumstances. No one else was supposed to die like this. Keller wasn’t ready, even though at the back of his mind he knew that all of this would end badly. He’d also known Talaski well enough to know that his friend wasn’t living for himself anymore. He was living to help others. That was something they had in common, but they’d taken different paths to do so.
Amy’s hands were wrapped around him, hugging him, and she was speaking to him in a singsong voice. The words probably had meaning, but at that moment, he wasn’t processing anything. Her presence was helping, but he was checked out and only dimly aware of what was occurring in the world at real world speed.
“Matt, come back to me, please…”
His eyes were on his friend. Talaski was sprawled out, lying in a pool of blood, arms and legs splayed, and his eyes staring up, as if trying to see through the r
oof. The ugly wound at his neck ceased pumping, even as he watched.
His friend was dead.
Someone else’s voice was speaking. Not Amy. She was quiet now, holding Talaski’s walkie-talkie. The other voice was coming from the walkie-talkie: “State your approximate location, I repeat…”
Keller was listening, but not listening. Here but not here. Once again helpless as someone he loved passed from this world to the next.
Amy answered, “I don’t know! We need help! Officer Talaski is dead, and Keller is freaked out. Those things have us trapped!”
Keller realized the voice was of that firefighter, Mills.
They had to get out of here. He didn’t want to leave his friend, even if it was only his body. He realized that there was no choice.
There were voices and muffled footsteps and the crash of people falling. The things were in the house with them!
He placed his hand on Amy’s shoulder.
“Listen, Amy,” he said, locking eyes with her. She was weeping, but not panicked. “I need your help, or we won’t get out of here alive.”
“Yes, whatever you need, just please don’t leave me again, Matt!”
For a moment, he was at a loss. When had he left her? Then he realized she meant leaving her mentally. He’d just lost his friend, so what did she expect? She was probably terrified.
“I won’t leave you, Amy. Now get all Talaski’s guns and ammo for me while I cover the door. Then pray with me that we can reload and fire enough to kill so many of these things!”
“Okay, Matt, I will. Just please don’t let them get me.”
“I won’t!”
“You promise?”
“I promise, sweetheart.”
“Thank you,” she said, pressing her lips to his.
The kiss didn’t last long, but it was time they couldn’t afford to lose. A wiry, middle-aged black guy with half a face was at the bedroom door, with a crowd of dead people right behind him.
Keller was struck by how hellish it still was to see these animated corpses coming after him. It couldn’t be real; yet it was. He rose up to his knees, hefted the shotgun, aimed upward from the hip, and pulled the trigger. Most of the top of thing’s head disappeared, taking the brunt of the shotgun blast. The corpse bounced into those behind it and then crumpled to the floor. From this range Keller couldn’t miss, and he fired again and again into the packed mass of waxen-faced horrors. Some of the bodies merely slumped to the floor. Others were trampled under the advancing hungry horde. Keller fired single shots until the drum magazine was empty. Twenty-five twelve gauge rounds did a lot of damage. Even when he missed, he hit something. The family room was a charnel house.
Beyond the family room, the living room was filling up as the dead kept coming in a resolute gray-fleshed, glassy-eyed wave. A wave of dead freaks.
He pushed the release button and dropped the empty drum magazine into his hand, then slipped it back into the top of his backpack. Amy handed him a loaded replacement. He fitted it into the shotgun’s well and tapped the bottom to make sure it was seated properly. He released the bolt and was once again ready for action.
“That’s the last loaded one,” Amy said. “I did find a couple boxes of shells. Want me to check his pack for more?”
His. She meant Talaski.
“Yes, check it,” he answered, “and then be ready for anything. Are your weapons loaded?”
“Yes, and I took Talaski’s pistol and ammo. Is that okay?”
“Are you kidding?” he asked, wiping sweat off his forehead. “I’m proud of you. You want to live and are taking the steps to stay that way.”
“I do want to live, Matt.”
He looked down at his dead friend one more time. “Well then, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Two of the dead were trying to push their way into the bedroom through the open door. One of them, a morbidly obese woman, trampled the other, a small teenaged boy. Keller raised the shotgun and laughed a little, thinking about the words morbidly obese. The little guy she’d stepped on certainly wasn’t moving anymore.
He could hear Amy rummaging through Talaski’s stuff behind him while he watched the woman move with ponderous grace into the room. She was about five feet away when he centered the shotgun’s sight on her forehead and squeezed the trigger. The roar was barely audible over the ringing in his ears, and he didn’t even pause as she collapsed. He advanced across the room, skirted around her still twitching corpse, and fired another round into the trampled boy.
More people were coming. He could hear them moaning and grunting from the back of the house.
“Amy, can you gather the stuff up and follow me?” he asked.
“Almost ready,” she said.
He didn’t have time to respond, because in the next moment, several more people entered his field of vision. He hefted the shotgun and braced himself. Amy’s fingers grabbed his shoulder, and when he turned, she handed him the walkie-talkie.
“Call Mills.”
Her voice was loud and clear.
He keyed the mic.
75. Trish
She kept watching him, and looking at the raw, torn flesh where Mills’ ear used to be. He was going to die on her.
“Are you sure they bit your ear off?” she asked.
He looked at her, and she thought he was gritting his teeth. “I have no idea, Trish, but you better be ready to shoot me. Who knows, maybe one of them just yanked it off. In all that mess, I don’t know what happened. Never mind any of that now. We need to figure out where Talaski and the others are.”
Trish didn’t want to voice the thought, but it sounded like they were trapped to her. The shopping center where she’d left Morgan was coming up on their right. She wondered how far from there Talaski’s group was.
“Mills, this is Keller, over?” a voice said from the walkie-talkie.
“Keller?” Mills answered with a question. “Where are you, man?”
When they learned of one another’s locations to a degree, Keller said, “Go right through the parking lot and into the neighborhood beyond. Hopefully Amy and I will be able to get out of this house.”
“Any idea of landmarks to look for?”
“Listen for shots! That’s all I can think of.” Trish turned the siren off while Mills slowed way down and took the right turn into the parking lot. A zombie went down under the wheels. There was no steering around them, and they had no instinct for self preservation.
Trish wondered if keeping the siren on would have been better, so Keller could go to them. The truck was so loud, she doubted whether they would be able to hear any shots, but kept the thought to herself.
The trip across the grocery store’s parking lot was brief, and Mills steered them toward an exit into the neighborhood to the north. More of the undead things collapsed under the truck’s wheels, and then they were on the neighborhood street.
Mills remarked, “We need gas sometime soon.”
Trish didn’t know what to say about that. With no power, she didn’t know how to get gas out of the dead pumps for a car, let alone a fire truck. Mills’ declaration was like some immutable fact that she had no power over. Before long, she knew, they’d be walking.
The scene outside her window was appalling. People had fought hard to resist this plague or whatever it was, and had died hard. Bodies were everywhere. Some houses were burned to the foundation. Others were almost perfect. Lawns immaculate, except for the usual convenience store drink cups or plastic bags discarded by kids or bums.
She saw a group of teens standing in a circle in one driveway, smoking. None of them even looked up when the truck roared past. It looked like one of them was giving them the finger, though.
Mills slowed down a bit. They drove down the street, looking and listening. Dead people were coming out of the neighborhood in droves, probably attracted by the sound of their engine and the squeal of their brakes.
They travelled down two more blocks of houses in what was once
a relatively nice neighborhood. They crossed over an intersection, and at about the same time, Trish and Mills noticed a yellow sign that read Dead End.
The walking dead inhabitants were everywhere, as if the fire truck were an ice cream truck, summoning them with the sound of its engine. They slowed to a stop.
At that moment, Trish allowed herself to accept what her head had been screaming: they weren’t going to find Keller and that girl. And now they had driven into a dead end in a big truck with no room to turn around.
She looked over at Mills. He was pale, so pale, and his head was back on the headrest, with his mouth open. His eyes were closed. Blood trickled down his neck.
She couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. Maybe he was in shock?
Something slapped hard against her door. A hand appeared at the bottom of the window with half moons of dried blood in the jagged, untrimmed fingernails. There were more thuds, and Trish tasted blood when she bit her own lip.
Too much…too much…
She grabbed Mills’ shoulder, and screamed in his ear, “Wake up! Please wake up!”
76. Kincaid
In the distance Kincaid could see a medium-sized boat approaching. It had to be Gretchen with the shipment. He hadn’t told them he’d be on a boat, but she’d be careful. The plan was to meet at the island. He was about as close as he could get in the shrimp boat. He’d use the jet ski to get the rest of the way.
He still couldn’t decide what to do with the woman and her kids. Here he was, with Tanglewood Island in sight, and no plan. No plan for that, anyway. He was in the wheelhouse, steering, trying to keep the boat in deep enough water by glancing at the depth finder, when he heard steps behind him, coming up from below deck.
The person, whoever it was, stopped right behind him.
“I didn’t kill them, you know,” he said.
Someone took a deep breath.
“Both of them should still be alive.”
“Should?” the woman asked. “What did you do to them?”
“I just did what was right, justice for what they did,” he answered.
Dead Tide Surge Page 23