Fire Birds

by Shane Gregory

  Skylights in the first building I entered showed a giant empty room except for a few wooden pallets here and there and rows of support columns. I immediately left the building and ran to the next one. The next building was like the first. I was about to go to the next building when I heard several shots of different calibers.

  I cautiously stepped out onto 12th Street. I ran toward West Broadway, almost two blocks away, staying close to the buildings. There were more shots. Straight ahead was the bus station, where Nicholas Somerville was supposed to be, but I didn’t see him. As I got closer to the last warehouse on the street, I could see the door was hanging off kilter on one hinge. The lock facing and the door handle were gone, nothing but a jagged hole. Above the door, there was a tattered vinyl banner that said: DAILY FLEA MARKET: FEBRUARY 5 – APRIL 30 BUY-SELL-TRADE. I crouched low and peeked inside.

  Immediately inside the door, there was a foyer. It had a corkboard on the wall full of business cards and homemade tear-off advertisements. A little gumball machine was beneath it, covered in dust. A little farther ahead was a staircase going up to the second floor and a closed door, and to the left was another door, which led to the main warehouse floor. The smell of tobacco mingled with the smell of death. I stepped inside and looked through the small, diamond-shaped window in the door and into the warehouse. There were tables and booths of items for sale, mostly junk. Several vendors and shoppers were still inside. They had been in there since February. I looked up at the staircase. Then a hand grabbed my shoulder.

  I let out a yelp and spun around. Nicholas Somerville was behind me with a finger to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. “They’re upstairs.”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Two,” he replied. “Andrew and Gail are up there too.”

  Quietly, I climbed the stairs to the door. I had no idea what was on the other side of it. I didn’t know if there were multiple rooms. I didn’t know if Bruce Lee would be there with his automatic shotgun waiting to turn me into sausage. I looked back at Somerville, hoping for a little instruction. He looked back with an expression of expectation. I put my ear to the door to listen.

  “Let’s take her with us,” a man’s voice said. “It might be a while before we find another one.”

  I handed Somerville the rifle and motioned him to step back. Then I pulled out my pistol, took a deep breath, and turned the knob.

  CHAPTER 48

  I took in the scene as the door swung open.

  The room was approximately fifteen feet wide by twenty long. A wall of windows to my right provided natural light. To the left, the room was open to the auction/warehouse floor below. There was a desk under the window, a round table in the middle of the room, and five straight-back wooden chairs scattered around. On the desk, next to a computer, was the AA-12 and Bruce’s messenger bag.

  Andrew was seated in the floor in the far corner, propped against the wall. There were bullet holes in his chest and forehead. Gail was on the table. Her shirt was ripped open, and the man was attempting to get into her pants. Bruce, dressed once more like The Punisher, stood at the railing, looking over the balcony down at the ghoulish flea market.

  Immediately, things happened.

  Bruce turned, reached up, and pulled his sword. The man at the table backed away and his open pants dropped around his ankles. He fell back as I fired, and I missed him. He landed on his butt then tried to get up. I didn’t miss the second time. Gail sat up, and Bruce went for her. I fired a third time, striking him in the upper chest. He took two steps back, stopped at the railing. His sword went down, point in the floor, and he leaned on it like a cane. He bent there a moment, swaying in place.

  Somerville entered the room with his gun raised. Bruce straightened up and frowned at us. His dark sunglasses were crooked and on the end of his nose. He moaned then coughed.

  “The tits,” he said. “The tits in the yellow dress–that was like Uhura’s trap in The Final Frontier. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that?”

  “What’s he talking about?” Somerville said.

  Then Gail stepped up beside me. She lifted the AA-12 to her hip. She was crying. Bruce opened his mouth to speak, and she squeezed the trigger. In less than a second, four spent shells ejected from the side of the machine, and the spray of shot tore through Bruce’s forearm and opened up his belly. The katana fell to the floor with his hand still gripping the handle. His entrails spilled down his lap. He teetered there then his body bent backward and fell over the railing into the warehouse.

  Gail put the weapon on the table then turned to Andrew. Somerville and I went to the railing and looked over. Bruce Lee was on his back on a table of used comic books. The zombies from the flea market, hungry since February, swarmed in for a meal.

  I moved over to the window. The crowd around the Firebird had doubled in size. More moved toward it like metal filings to a magnet.

  “Do you have a car nearby?” I asked.

  “I did, but it’s blocked now,” Somerville said. “We’ll have to find another.”

  “Tim is hurt,” I said. “I left him and Laney over on ninth. We should go before too many of those things gather. I don’t want to get stuck in here.”

  I picked up Bruce Lee’s messenger bag and looked inside. There was one more loaded magazine canister for the AA-12, another box of 12 gauge shells, an MRE, a bottle of water, a small bottle of vodka, and a few Star Wars action figures. I put the strap over my shoulder and grabbed the big gun.

  My eyes fell on the 500 year-old Japanese sword. The museum director and history-lover part of me wanted to take it to preserve it for another 500 years. I wondered how many lives had been lost on that blade during those five centuries; I wondered how many lives it had protected. The last life it had taken, so far as I knew, belonged to Sara. Originally, it had been an instrument of honor, but now it was a murder weapon. I couldn’t stand to look at it.

  “Grab Gail and let’s go,” I said.

  Gail wailed that she wouldn’t leave the pastor, so Somerville scooped her up and packed her out on his shoulder. Once we were outside, he set Gail on her feet and grabbed her wrist.

  “Pastor Andrew–” she cried.

  “He’s dead, darlin’,” Somerville said in a sympathetic tone. Then he pulled her shirt together to cover her bare breasts. “We can’t take him with us. I need you to run for me now, okay?”

  We set off north on 12th. Before we could make it to Depot Street, we had to duck into another warehouse to avoid an approaching cluster of the undead.

  “We can go through and out the back door,” I said in a hushed voice. “I was in this building earlier. It’s empty. It’ll put us out right by the tracks. Once we get on the tracks, follow them to the grain company.”

  Our footfalls echoed around in the big empty building, but the zombies outside didn’t notice. They were too focused on the Firebird’s horn. We went from front door to back door in a straight shot. Once out on the railroad tracks. Gail saw Dan out on the grain bin.

  “Oh no,” she said, tugging her shirt together tighter. “He can’t see me like this. I don’t want him to see me this way. I don’t want him to know.”

  “He’ll understand,” I said.

  “That ain’t what she said, is it?” Somerville shot back. Then he took her wrist again and pulled her from the tracks and toward a house.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Pit stop,” he said. “It won’t take but a minute. We’ve got a minute to let this girl keep her dignity don’t we?”

  We ran down the gravel embankment, into a shallow ditch, then back up to a white board fence that separated the railroad property from the backyard of the home. Somerville helped Gail over the fence then climbed over himself. Once I was over, we went to the back door. Somerville kicked it in, and we went inside.

  We were greeted by a pair of taut, brown corpses dressed in rags. Somerville clubbed them down with his rifle then stomped their heads until they quit mo
ving. Then he moved clumsily around the house until he found a bedroom closet. Gail and I followed him in. I didn’t see him. All I could see were clothes flying out of the closet onto the bed. Then he came around the door with a shirt.

  “Here,” he said. “This will do.”

  “It’s nothing like my shirt,” Gail said. “He’ll notice.”

  “It’s blue, ain’t it? It’s checkered, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s plaid, but–”

  “He’s a man, ain’t he?” Somerville said, shoving the shirt into her hands. “Darlin’, he won’t notice. Trust me on this. Now get dressed so we can go.”

  She stared at the shirt a moment then looked at me. I nodded. She smiled through her tears and stood on tip-toes to kiss Nicholas’ cheek.

  “You really are a saint,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  Somerville and I waited quietly on the front porch for Gail to change. The shirt was a little big on her, but she tied it at the bottom to make it fit better. The front of the house faced 9th Street. We followed it toward the grain bins.

  “What the hell?” Somerville said as we drew near the wrecked van. “Corn? There was all that corn in there this whole time?”

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  “Well, hell, there’s enough food there for an army.”

  That statement brought to my memory Bruce’s story about finding the trailer full of MREs. It made me sick that we’d never know where that was.

  “Tim and Laney are in here,” I said. “This red house.”

  We went up on the porch, and I knocked. “Laney? Laney, it’s us; don’t shoot.”

  The front door opened, and Laney met us with a gun in her hand. Behind her Tim was sitting up holding a bandage on his arm.

  Laney said to Gail, “When did you change your blouse? Have you been crying?”

  Gail looked back at us with a worried expression.

  “He won’t notice,” Somerville said.

  “I’m going to go get Dan and one of those trucks,” I said. “You get Tim ready to move.”

  I ran down the road and stopped at the black Suburban that had chased us. I put the AA-12 into the back of the vehicle then Bruce’s heavy messenger bag.

  “Dan!” I yelled. “Dan, come down!”

  I climbed into the van through the rear door then I set the gray tote out. By the time I was loading the tote into the Suburban, Dan was walking toward me.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “We’re leaving,” I said. “The men are dead.”

  “Where are the others? Are they okay?”

  “They’re in the red house over there,” I said. I didn’t tell him about Andrew.

  “So that’s it? That wasn’t so bad.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Easy friggin peasy.”

  “We should get this corn,” he said.

  “Maybe, but not right now. The dead are gathering in, and Tim is hurt. We should move him.”

  “Whoa!” Dan said. “Look at that!”

  He was looking to the sky. I looked up to see an aircraft coming over. The front section where the cockpit would have been was bulbous. The fuselage was thin. It had struts similar to some of the small craft at the Grace County Airport. It looked like a cross between a crop duster and a bug.

  “Shit,” I said. “What’s that doing here?”

  We rushed back to the red house in the pickup. Dan ran in and hurried the others out. He, Gail, and Nicholas climbed into the back seat. Tim and Laney got up front with me.

  “What are they doing here, Tim?!” I yelled as I pulled away and took a left onto North Street.

  “You called them,” he replied. “I told you not to.”

  “Called them?” Somerville said.

  “An hour minimum! That’s what you said. An hour! It hasn’t been an hour. I didn’t even get the damn thing activated!”

  “You must have,” he said. “Maybe it’s not for here. Maybe they’re on their way to somewhere else.”

  “Really?”

  “Probably not.”

  “What is going on?” Dan said. “Where’s the pastor?”

  A large mass of the undead were moving up North Street as we came to the intersection with 8th Street forcing me to take a right.

  “We need to put a lot of space between us and that car,” Tim said.

  “I’m trying to do that!”

  I got to the intersection with Broadway and looked to my right. We were two blocks from the tracks, the lumberyard, and the warehouse where Andrew and Bruce Lee had died. The Firebird was mostly blocked from my view, but the crowd of zombies it had attracted extended out in a wide circle.

  “There it is,” Gail said. “I see the airplane.”

  A streak of white came out of the sky. The Firebird hopped into the air, flames venting from its windows. Scores of bodies sailed up and outward on the swiftly expanding inferno. The hot shockwave rolled into us and shoved us sideways. The creatures that were not instantly consumed or knocked down, stumbled around in the fiery street like walking torches. The lumberyard and bus station burned. The warehouse containing Pastor Andrew’s body had partially collapsed.

  Everyone was silent. We could hear the roar and crackle of the fire from our location two blocks away.

  Finally Somerville spoke. “So…so you called them?”

  CHAPTER 49

  For them, the loss of Pastor Andrew overshadowed everything else, including the drone attacks and Sara’s death. The pastor was dear to them, and I could sympathize, but I had not yet had an opportunity to mourn for Sara. I wanted them to mourn for her too. There was no reason why they would–they didn’t know her–but I was angry that she got so little attention from them. It was possible that Grant was going through more heartache than I, but I couldn’t bring myself to see him. He stayed in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out. I sat with them all that afternoon while they cried and read passages from the Bible. In all of it, I felt left out, like I didn’t belong. I’m sure Somerville felt the same way, but he didn’t let on.

  As could be expected, there was a telling and retelling of the events of the day. They tried to make sense of it and figure out if anything could have been done differently. Accusations were never made, but I knew some of them blamed me.

  I didn’t want to fight anymore. I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t even want to feel angry. I thought the best way to avoid all of that would be to get away from the others for a while. If we stayed in the area, I wouldn’t be able to avoid them indefinitely, but I had to have some time alone. Even so, I knew I would need them eventually.

  There was no more talk of them securing and preserving the town. They had seen downtown Clayfield the same as I. The next day, after some discussion, they all packed up and moved back to the airport, even Nicholas Somerville. Cheryl invited me to join them, but I declined for the time being. I stayed with the Lassiter farm because it was familiar, but I didn’t plan to live there forever. There were too many ghosts there. Eventually, I would move my supplies and livestock to another location and start again.

  I was alone for more than a week before I saw any of them again.

  Then one afternoon, two pickup trucks stopped in the road in front of the property. One was pulling a flatbed trailer, to which was strapped an Amish buggy. The other pulled a long livestock trailer. The door opened on the one in front and Nicholas Somerville got out. He opened the gate. I went out on the porch to watch.

  They drove the two trucks in and parked. Somerville got out and waved. Cheryl got out of the second truck. I went out to meet them.

  “We’ve been worried about you,” Cheryl said.

  “No need,” I said.

  Somerville extended his hand, and I shook it.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said. “I wanted to say bye just in case I don’t see you again.”

  “Biloxi? I kind of thought you would have already gone.”

  “Not without saying goodbye. Anyway, Dan and I had to drive up to
Riverton to get fuel for the plane, and Grant wasn’t feeling up to the trip until now. Barring any trouble, I should be back in less than a week with Judy.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Then he turned and pointed at the buggy. “We brought you some presents.”

  I looked at the buggy and nodded, unsure what to say.

  “We’re trying to make amends,” Cheryl said.

  “You haven’t done anything to make amends for,” I said. “Neither one of you have.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” Somerville said gently. “It’s dangerous, but more than that, it’s lonely. You’ll go crazy if you keep to yourself too much.”

  “I think that’s happened already,” I said.

  He sighed and looked at Cheryl then back at me. “Well, anyway, we brought you a buggy. Dan and Tim took a couple more of these over to the airport. It won’t be long before the cars won’t work no more, so–”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, “but I don’t know how to operate one of those. Besides, I would think they wouldn’t offer much protection from the dead.”

  “The dead will be gone by winter, hon,” Cheryl said. “What then? Are you going to walk everywhere? Everything sure is spread out and far away when you ain’t got a car to get you there. And what if you need to carry a load of something for a distance? You’ll need a wagon like this.”

  I shrugged, “Okay. Let’s unload it. Wouldn’t hurt to have it, I guess.”

  “I’ll back the trailer over there and we’ll unload it by the barn,” Nicholas said and got into the truck.

  “There’s more,” Cheryl grinned and took my hand. She led me to the back of the livestock trailer. “Have a look.”

  I peered inside. There were two more horses and four goats. In the front of the trailer, secured in the storage was a cage holding three chickens, including a rooster.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said.

  “We all went out to the Amish community today,” she said. “This is some of what we were able to save. We’re going to leave one of these horses with you. We figure they have experience pulling a wagon, so it might be easier for you if the horse knows what it’s doing. We’ll take that gray horse with us. You can have one of these goats and all of the chickens. We have more.”