by Ben Tripp
There was a huge train loaded with stuff at the station, but it was covered in dust. It had been there a while. If that was Murdo’s headquarters, things might not be one hundred percent awesome in Hawkstone’s command structure. That is, unless Hawkstone was in the habit of abandoning its command posts.
A whirling dust devil made its way through downtown.
Amy studied Main Street as she approached it. There were bodies lying on the ground. They could be zombies, or just dead bodies. She looked up at the vultures circling high overhead. There were crows in the trees.
•
It was Troy Huppert who persuaded the rest of the men to let Danny go alone. He was the kind of man who kept in the background unless something needed doing. Troy liked Danny. He liked her a lot. While she was away on her adventures he’d tried to figure out how he was going to take some role as a leader—and never got the hang of it. Too many alpha males in their group. It was a relief to have Danny back, the unstoppable alpha female. But now he understood something about her: She was going to do what she was going to do, and they would get by somehow whether she lived or died.
Here she was, telling them she wanted to take her new car for a spin. She was surrounded by wrecked cars and a wrecked world, one hand chopped apart, beat all to hell, the customized police car idling at the open gates, and saying she was going into town alone. Topper and Ernie started arguing right away, the others jumped in next, and you couldn’t hear yourself think. They were all fired up to get down to Potter and make some noise. This was their fight, too. Danny was trying to explain what she had in mind. They weren’t listening. Finally Troy did a sharp two-finger whistle.
“Let the lady explain herself,” he said. It worked. He so seldom pressed his will on the group, he had leverage just by the novelty of it. Danny nodded her appreciation.
“Listen up because there’s not much time,” Danny said. “I been going solo for a while now and I figured out it’s a pretty good way to get things started. It’s not a good way to get things finished.”
“She can be taught,” Patrick muttered. Danny was unconsciously massaging her primitive steel hand protector. “Potter is full of the undead. These Hawkstone assholes are taking our friends there. They used Patrick as bait before, and I think that’s what they’re going to do with everybody else in Potter. That means they’re not so sure Potter is a happening town anymore. The way I see it, they’ll just keep sacrificing people until they hook up with their command unit. That means this is an ongoing situation.”
She looked around at the men, appraising them. Troy tried to imagine what Danny saw: Don, the plump older man, was starting to look like a tough guy, hands greasy, face suntanned. Patrick, with his busted face, looked like toughest guy there. He probably was. The rest were looking pretty fit and capable, too. What had once been a random collection of isolated, scared individuals was now a team, after a fashion. And they were getting stronger, not weaker. Troy thought they might possibly get through this thing together. He hoped Danny felt the same way.
Wulf, on lookout up above on the butte, broke into Troy’s contemplations with a raucous shout: “You better move your ass, Sheriff, they’re coming!”
All eyes returned to Danny. Troy’s heart was racing. He wanted to get moving. He’d do whatever it took.
“If we mount an assault,” Danny continued, “they will fuck us up royally. There is a twenty-mil cannon on that M-eleven-seventeen. There is a Ma Deuce on the Humvee—that’s a .50 caliber Browning. They got all kinds of armament. And they’re expecting trouble. What I got in mind is to use the zeros in town to our advantage, right? I won’t be alone. I’m going to have an undead army at my back. For that, I gotta work solo.”
“No you fuckin’ don’t,” Topper reasoned.
“Just listen,” Danny said. “I’m an expert by now. If I get killed, you all follow these boys and catch ’em at the next stop. But I’m not going to get killed.”
“Oh, really?” Patrick said, in his most arch tone of voice. “How do you know that?”
“’Cause I can’t fuckin’ die,” Danny said, and seventy seconds later she was spray-painting a message down at the intersection.
Then she was accelerating her bizarre machine down Ore Creek Highway to Potter, opening up a long lead on the convoy still rumbling along the road that led from Boscombe Field. Somehow, what Danny had said was frightening to Troy. It silenced the arguments. In a time when death was no longer final, immortality didn’t seem far-fetched. But what chilled him to the core was the way she said it. With regret.
In fact, Danny could absolutely die. That thought was uppermost in her mind. She saw the Hawkstone convoy at the crest of the hill into town, and she knew showtime was about to begin. The problem was, as far as she could tell, she had captured the only zero in town. The desert around Potter was swarming with them, but the city had been cleared out. Without zombies, she had absolutely no idea what to do.
When she had told her guys back at the junkyard she was going to have her own army of the undead, it sounded crazy—but she felt like a snake charmer by now. She knew what to do, and what she could get away with. The men understood that. If they came along with her, somebody was going to get jumped on or bitten and then the whole scheme would fall apart. This was Danny’s show, and hers alone.
But now, sitting in the interceptor in an alley with a view of the hill and Main Street, she was starting to panic.
Where the hell were the zeros? It had never occurred to her the place would be free of the undead. She had taken it for granted they would be here. That was always the fatal mistake: taking anything for granted. She should be grateful the place wasn’t swarming with walking corpses, and yet they had become part of her world. She needed them.
Danny watched the convoy stop, and saw the Hawkstone mercenaries shoving the civilians out of the White Whale. She saw her friends begin the march down the hill into town, hands raised, like prisoners of war.
She briefly lost sight of the ASV and the Humvee. They were among the buildings of town, now, moving in and out of view, creeping along behind the hostages. Danny was positioned among the low, wood-framed buildings on the hill that rolled down through Potter and ended in the steep embankment above the train station.
She decided that plan B was going to be plan A without the possibility of her own personal survival. That would have to do. In a few moments, the hostages would cross the end of the alley that opened on to Main Street. She would let them pass. Then the ASV would roll by. She would let that pass. When the Humvee reached the end of the alley, she was going to charge.
With any luck, she wouldn’t break her neck on impact, and the attack would draw the attention—and the fire—of the ASV crew. At that point, with the guns pointing in the opposite direction, the hostages were going to have to scatter and run for it. Danny expected they wouldn’t need coaching. Patrick and the rest would come get them later on. Danny was sure her men weren’t far behind, probably waiting on the other side of the hill to see how things went down. By that time, the Hawkstone boys would be long gone. At least Danny would have the satisfaction of killing one of them, if she hit the Humvee squarely in the driver’s side door.
Danny’s good hand was slick with sweat on the wheel of the interceptor. By now, the mercenaries would be able to see the decoy she’d set up—the decoy that required a street full of zombies. It would give them something to wonder about. But it was no longer part of the plan.
Murdo told Parker to stop. He was up in the turret with Estevez, suffocating from the man’s rank armpit smell. The women, led by the veterinarian, stood in the street ahead of the ASV. The hotel was off to the right, on a steep embankment with the train station below it, the rest of town to the left, on a hill. There was a park up there, dying from lack of irrigation. Rows of shitty brick and clapboard buildings. This was a two-story town at best. It was all mud-colored from the dust and sand. There were bodies on the ground, but they didn’t look like zeros. They we
re bird-eaten and stiff. There was no sign of a Hawkstone welcoming party. Nothing. The town was deserted.
Except up ahead, halfway down Main Street in front of the hotel, there was a police car. Or what used to be a police car. It had some kind of frame built around it and wire mesh over all the windows, and a massive timber fender that made the front end look like a siege weapon. The roof lights were flashing red, white, and blue. Even two hundred yards away, Murdo could see the silhouette of the driver inside. Wearing one of those campaign hats. Whoever this lone-wolf cop was, they had about ten seconds to get the fuck out of town.
Then Parker said, “Radio for you, boss.”
“Tell him to get the fuck out of the way.”
“It ain’t a him, Murdo.”
A trickle of premonitory alarm ran down Murdo’s back. He climbed awkwardly down inside the ASV and jacked himself into the passenger seat, from which he could see the cop car up ahead through the narrow fore window. The civilian women were starting to put their hands down, looking around, looking back at the ASV. He thought of telling Estevez to shoot one of them, to keep the rest in line, but he didn’t think Estevez would be able to stop at one. Instead, Murdo took up the radio handset.
“Police band,” Parker said.
“This is the unit commander,” Murdo said into the microphone.
“Let them go,” a voice said. Low, dry, and cold, but a woman’s voice. Murdo had heard that voice before. An iron fist clenched itself around his heart.
My fucking God, he thought. Back from the dead.
“I guess we didn’t finish you off,” Murdo said, trying for a jaunty tone of voice. He wanted to get a little patronizing chuckle in there, but it came out as a kind of click in the back of his throat. He swallowed. His mouth was dry. She couldn’t possibly still be alive.
“Let them go and I let you live,” the voice said. Murdo found himself studying the grotesque vehicle down the street. Was it wired up with explosives? Suicide bomb? Was there a rocket launcher on the back? He couldn’t see anything. He cut his eyes up around the rooftops. Could be a trap. Could be that sniper was still around.
“Quit bluffing with us, bitch,” Murdo said. He was letting his nerves get away from him. He was sitting inside an impregnable steel fortress. Even rockets wouldn’t be effective against the mighty M1117. Even a car bomb. Somebody might pick off Estevez up in the turret, but Murdo was untouchable.
“Get on the horn to Backup One,” Murdo called up to Estevez. “Tell them to look for a sniper. Tell them to light up anything that moves.”
Estevez relayed the message on his satellite radio. Ace and Flamingo were back in the Humvee; with Flamingo on the heavy machine gun, Murdo had a further tactical advantage. Anybody who exposed him- or herself to attack the ASV would have to face annihilation from the Humvee.
“You got ten seconds,” the woman on the radio said.
She has balls, Murdo thought.
At least one aspect of her plan worked like a charm. Danny had watched the women troop past the alley entrance. Amy was out front. Danny’s heart heated up at the sight of her, maybe the last sight she’d have. Then the ASV went past, its huge wheels turning slowly. Nobody saw her. They wouldn’t. She had thrown a couple of hotel bedspreads over the roof of the interceptor and parked it in the shade of a carport, well up the alley; it was only another abandoned vehicle in a town full of them. This interceptor was the one she had parked on the scenic outlook during her first foray into Potter, leaving it behind in favor of the Mustang. Nobody had molested the vehicle in the interim; it slept beneath the blue tarpaulin, dreaming of high-speed chases. It was a damn good car. Almost—but not quite—a pity to destroy it.
A few seconds after the ASV, the Hummer crept into view. And stopped—three-quarters of its length exposed to the alley. The driver’s door was dead center of the intersection.
There was a man up on the machine gun, and a man at the wheel. Danny could see their faces. She could see their mouths moving. She watched as the gunner spoke on his walkie-talkie. So they were, of course, strategizing their next move, while Murdo, the boss, kept her on the radio. She was using the radio in her car, but of course, Murdo didn’t know that. Danny had to time this thing right.
If she waited too long, Murdo would instruct his man on the cannon to blast the customized police special apart, which would mean firing right over the heads of the women hostages, or possibly through them. If Danny attacked too soon, they might still have the advantage of adrenaline, and get a bead on her. She was delaying only long enough for them to become accustomed to the situation, letting them focus their attention ahead, put their machines into neutral gear, maybe even switch off the motors.
The decoy was turning out to be useful, after all. Murdo thought he was talking to the figure inside the custom special, the one wearing the Smokey hat. He couldn’t possibly know it was a living corpse, handcuffed to the steering wheel.
The idea was to crush the Humvee’s driver, then shoot the gunner before he could bring the .50 caliber machine gun around. If she could still move after that, Danny was going to draw fire from the ASV. The women were going to escape. She was in the groove now, like a sniper with the target in her sights, finger compressing the trigger, a couple of foot-pounds of pressure away from making the shot with the target completely unawares.
And then a new variable entered the situation.
As one, the crows rose up.
Amy saw it at the same moment. All over town, the crows started clacking and cawing and flapped into the air. Survivors, those birds. They would be the dominant species someday. When Amy saw them take flight, she knew the danger was no longer from the cannon mounted on the rolling castle behind her. It was somewhere out there in town, not far away, coming closer. Possibly all around them. Where were the undead? She knew the place ought to be swarming, and yet she and her fellow survivors were the only bipeds standing.
The vehicles had stopped behind them, and Tattoo-Face had told them to stop, so they did, but now they were just standing around like idiots, out in the open. They were staring at the strange police car. It looked like some squat, prehistoric swamp creature, snouted like an alligator.
At first, Amy thought it was some crazy local yokel playing Road Warrior to pass the time of day. Then she thought, Maybe it’s Danny. But the figure inside the car, although difficult to make out behind the wire mesh and steel pipe, didn’t move like Danny. It almost appeared to be struggling. Besides, Danny was dead.
“Hey, guys?” Amy said, keeping her back to the ASV and her eyes on the custom police special.
“Yeah.” It was Becky who answered, but the other women stopped whispering among themselves.
“Couple of things,” Amy went on. “First thing, we got this cop in front of us and Turdo behind us, so I think there might be some shooting. Don’t move—” She added this when she heard feet scuffling in the dirt on the pavement. “Don’t do anything sudden.”
It was important she keep her voice level and even, so nobody panicked, but they needed to do what she said.
“What I think we better get ready to do is run both ways, okay? Side to side. If you run down the middle of the street they’ll get you. And everybody scatter. Go a different way. We can get out of sight in a jiffy if we go left and right behind these buildings.”
“When do we run?” a voice hissed. It was Linda Maas. She was clutching Michelle and Jimmy James to her bosom, frightening them even further.
“I’m not done,” Amy said. “There’s another thing. See those crows? They fly away when there’s zombies around.”
“They just did,” said Pfeiffer, her voice cracking with fear.
“Yes they did,” Amy continued, her tone as level as she could muster. “Crows just love to do that. So when you run, don’t run off anywhere you can’t get out of. Okay? Just get away from these bad guys behind us. If I were you I’d double back the way we came in.”
It felt as if they had been standing in the stree
t for a long time. In reality it was under a minute since Murdo had called the procession to a halt. But with every second that passed, they got closer to something happening. The crows told Amy that. Even if the shooting never started, something else was going to happen. The shooting, however, was sure to begin—and soon.
“Amy?” It was Michelle. So far Amy had kept her feelings out of the situation. It was a simple matter of survival, like trying to get control of a car that was skidding on ice. When Michelle spoke, it added a personal element. She was reminded there were kids in the backseat of the skidding car. Amy took a breath. So little time left.
“Yeah.”
“Should me and Jimmy James go the same way or should we scatter?”
“You two scatter in the same direction.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Amy thought she might choke up, if the girl didn’t stop talking. Although Amy was facing the wrong way to see anybody except the odd shape of the cop inside the custom car, she could picture Michelle, her scabby knees, the blue hair with the pale roots starting to show.
The crows reached altitude and circled over town, the vultures above them, wheeling in the upper atmosphere. Any second now.
“Amy?” It was Becky again.
“You guys ready?” Amy was tensing to run, although she hadn’t altered her posture.
“Hang on, Amy. Uh…Who’s that?”
Amy looked over her shoulder. Becky was holding her friend by the shoulder; Amy couldn’t remember the friend’s name. She was pointing off toward the hotel. Amy followed her line of sight. She saw it, too. There was someone watching them from the parking lot of the hotel, crouched behind a minivan. Amy looked around again at the silent town. There was someone else hiding up there in the park. A couple of people. Watching, motionless, hunkered down among the dead bushes.
“There,” said Linda Maas. Amy looked where she was pointing. Beneath one of the dust-coated cars on Main Street beyond the police cruiser, the dark shape of a pair of feet was visible. There were others, too. The scene looked empty at a glance, but they were far from alone. Amy wondered who they were, and why they were taking this risk.