My fingers clenched around the box. “Tony is not that much of an asshole.”
“No? Bet you twenty bucks he’ll ask me to make some noble sacrifice, or just pop me off while you’re in the bathroom. He’ll tell you a zombie ate me.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” At least, I hoped he wouldn’t. Tony might be slightly off-kilter on his best days and downright obnoxious on his worst, but I couldn’t picture him murdering Dax. “You’re part of the crew. He won’t do it.”
“We’ll see.” Dax didn’t sound convinced. “You know, you picked up the wrong ammo.”
I left my guns with him to reload while I ferried our food downstairs.
How Tony managed to set up a welding station in the middle of the hallway I may never know, but weld he did—with a pair of cheap plastic goggles over sunglasses and a blowtorch that looked like it had had originated in the Soviet Union. The Road King leaned against the wall as he hunched over it, attaching two gray tubes to the motor. He gave no indication that he’d seen me.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Tony!”
He shut off the torch, then popped off the goggles to admire his handiwork. “Ugliest pair of staggered pipes in the world, but they’ll do.”
“Where’d you find them?”
“Ford on the bottom, Bobby Rossum’s tailpipe on the top. Poor girl’s getting uglier by the minute, but what can you do.” He pointed at the boxy item. “Gonna try to get that on the back end.”
I gathered my courage. “Dax says the bike’s only built to carry two.”
“Dax doesn’t know shit about motorcycles.”
I stared at him.
Tony made an exasperated noise. “It’s a big bike with a heavy frame. We can squeeze on three. It won’t be comfortable and it won’t be fast, but we can make it.”
That stilled one concern, but opened the door for another. “What about the dog?”
Tony’s deer-in the-headlights look told me everything I needed to know about that. He opened his mouth. “Vibeke—”
“Guys! Gloria’s on! Hurry!”
Dax had turned the volume way up by the time we got upstairs. “She has friends in high places,” he exclaimed as we walked in. “She totally hijacked the signal.”
“…the feds will likely shut me down in less than a minute.” Gloria had changed into combat fatigues and had a gun at her hip, and she peered into the camera with the intensity of a woman on a mission—or one who’d gone batshit crazy. “Do not listen to the bullshit they’re feeding you. The dead are rising, and they are violent. Those who have not died from so-called Meteor Sickness are turning hyper-violent or going insane. If someone attacks you, shoot him in the head. I’ll be switching to the radio signals—you’ll have to surf to find me. They can’t lock them all down. Take care of yourselves. Aim for the head. Remember, the dead are fucking walking—”
The EAS screen came back on. Dax hit the mute button. “Before you came up, she said people were trying to shut her up. They don’t want to cause a panic.”
Squeaky Gloria Fey was dodging government agents in her quest for truth? Maybe I should have gone into television reporting. “So they’re calling it Meteor Sickness?”
“I guess Black Death was already used.” Tony wiped his greasy hands off on a paper towel. “Back to work, gang, before we get turned into pizza rolls.”
“Shit keeps getting worse.” Dax tossed me the remote. “I’ll take the dog out. C’mon, puppy.”
Tony stared at his table full of guns, a mournful expression crossing his face. “We can only take a few of these with us…shit, maybe we should just hole up here. They might go right by us.”
I’d been mourning the loss of the guns, too. “They’ve tracked us before. Found us before. You want to risk it? What if they swarm us? Those windows won’t hold.”
“If we take out the stairs—”
“We don’t have food, Tony.”
“Then we’ll eat the goddamn dog!” He stormed away, presumably to throw himself back into his motorcycle.
I picked up the third carton of food and schlepped it down the stairs. “They have a whole shelter in Elderwood.”
“And if there’s more of those things on the way there?”
“The meteor hit Harkin, not Elderwood.” I dropped the carton in the hallway next to the bike. “And none of them have come from that direction.”
Dax returned with the dog, letting the front door swing shut behind them. “It’s really smoky out there…”
Tony worked on attaching the mysterious, boxy contraption to the back of the bike. “How nice, the neighbors are barbecuing.”
“I mean really smoky, I can’t even see down the street…” He surveyed the bits of motorcycle scattered across the hallway, the cartons of food, the guns Tony had dumped behind the front desk. “We are so fucked. Come on, Evie, I’ll get you a cookie.”
They disappeared up the stairs together. I wandered over to Tony and his bike. “Can this thing really carry all of us?”
He tapped his hand against the engine. “This V-Twin here? Damned solid powerplant. We can get far with it. We won’t be outrunning anything, but it should keep us ahead of those things.”
And here I’d thought the motorcycle would solve all our problems. “Should or will?”
He set down the wrench. “Would you rather we didn’t even try?”
I sighed and slid down the wall to sit on the ground. “So we’ve got our little post-apocalyptic family unit in our post-apocalyptic housing development, and now we’ve got our broken-down, post-apocalyptic method of transportation. We’re so adorably clichéd.”
“Better than being alone, isn’t it?”
“I guess so…I just think it’s weird that we fell right into the stereotype.”
“I like that you’re talking about stereotypes after all this.” He mumbled something mechanical-sounding and tugged on the container he’d bolted to the back. “Look, I saw all those disaster movies, too, and you know why they have shit in common?” He looked up, and I felt compelled to nod. “Because humans fundamentally act the same. We want companionship and hope. The good ones, anyway. The assholes just want to get ahead. The rest of us flock to each other and do stupid things like rehabilitate dead bikes and adopt puppies.”
Thump! Something heavy thudded against the door. Tony dropped his wrench. “Is there a fucking ghoul out there?”
Thump-thump! The glass rattled. This dissolved into a number of short, sharp knocks. “Hey, man, let us in!”
People? We looked at each other. Where the hell was the dog?
“Man, let us in! We know you’re there—they’re coming!” It was a young male voice—a teenager, maybe. Other voices murmured behind him. Living people, not dead.
I looked at Tony. “What do we do?”
The door shuddered as something heavy crashed into it. Tony stalked to the front desk, drawing his pistol as he went. “Knock it off!”
“Then let us the fuck in!”
The safety clicked off. “Get the fuck away!”
The door shuddered again.
Tony clenched his teeth and pulled the door open. I caught a glimpse of ratty green clothing as a member of the Ventra gang and a couple of his friends all but faceplanted inside, clearly in the middle of trying to shoulder the door open.
They straightened themselves out, and we all stared at each other for a second. I thought the shorter one might have been in his early twenties, but his coating of ash and blood made it hard to tell. Tony kept the gun trained on them. “What the hell do you want?
The sight of the gun brought the Ventras back to the moment. “City’s on fire,” the shorter one said. I decided he was Number One. “Thought we could trap them, burn them out, but it spread…can’t find any working cars that ain’t…occupied…”
“None of the cars work,” I said. “The ash clogs everything.”
The taller Ventra slapped the short one’s arm. “I fucking told you it wasn’t just us!”
Number One looked at me, then at Tony with the gun. “Radio says to go to Elderwood. Why the hell are you still here?”
I let Tony answer that one. “Our power stayed on. We have no idea what’s out there.” He swung the pistol toward Number One. “Now why don’t you go find something else to do?”
“Boys,” Number One said. “You know how we handle people tellin’ us what to do?”
The three Ventras whipped out their guns—shit, was that synchronized? “You got a lot of stuff sittin’ over by that hallway,” Number One said. “Lotta extra food for just the two of you.”
Dax, where are you? “Actually, that’s emergency rations,” I said. “That won’t keep anyone alive much longer than a week…”
Click.
And now I have a gun pointed at my head. Fan-fucking-tastic. I forced myself to stare at him. Don’t look scared. Don’t look scared.
The third one leaned to the side, staring down the corridor. “Thought I smelled oil,” he said, pushing past our group and marching over to the Road King and Tony’s welding kit. “Shit, you got a bike…what’s that shit around the engine?
Tony blinked innocently. “I don’t know. I got it from a dead guy.”
“Stole it, most like,” the third Ventra said. “You kill him?”
“Like you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
“Put the gun down, brother.” Number Two strolled over and casually pressed his gun to the back of Tony’s head. “Put it down or you turn out just like those poor dead fucks outside.”
I relaxed the tiniest bit without the gun pointed at me.
Guns…Tony left some rifles at the front desk. I chanced a glance in that direction, but the nearest gun bore little resemblance to my lever-action Winchester. Shit. I don’t know how to use that.
But did they know I couldn’t use it?
Number One gestured to us. “Bosey, keep them covered.”
I edged toward the counter, trying to keep my hands from shaking. If anything, it looked like I was backing away out of sheer fear. One more step. Here we go.
“Put the gun down,” Bosey pulled a second freaking gun and pointed it at me. I stopped moving. “Or your girlfriend gets it.”
The safety clicked back on, and the pistol clattered to the floor. Tony lifted his hands.
My fingertips touched the stock, and I drew it quietly toward me. I had no idea where the safety was on this thing, but I could probably fake it long enough to let Tony get his own weapon.
Number One and Number Three kicked the welding kit aside and knocked on various parts of the bike. “This shield to keep out the ash?”
“Dude didn’t tell me.” Tony didn’t even look in my direction, instead focusing on his gun on the floor. “We don’t even know if it starts.”
“Where’s the key?”
Tony didn’t answer.
Bosey tucked the second gun back into his belt. “Where’s the key?”
“Beats me.”
In one swift motion, he twisted Tony’s arm behind him. “Where’s the fucking key?”
Tony winced. “Under the blowtorch.”
Number Three crouched in front of the bike and started fooling with the front end. Tony glanced my way, one eyebrow going up. “Pipes aren’t on good, either.”
I fumbled around until I had a decent grip on the gun. You’re mine, you semi-automatic bitch.
The other two Ventras were still focusing on bike. “Yeah, real patchwork job. Doesn’t matter, though. If it runs…”
A gusty cough and wheeze later, the V-Twin roared to life, momentarily drowning out any conversation in the room. It quickly died down to a low, relatively tolerable rumble, much quieter than I’d heard from other Harleys. Shit. Either the shield acted as a supermuffler, or there was something wrong with the motor.
“It runs,” Tony murmured, looking at me. “Vibby—”
I yanked the rifle up and swung it around, slamming the stock into my shoulder. I pointed the business end at Bosey. “Let him go!”
Bosey gaped at me—I probably wasn’t holding the gun correctly—and Tony rammed his elbow back into the man’s gut. The Ventra doubled over, and Tony’s fist plowed into his face.
Bosey stumbled backward, lifting the gun. I figured he meant to whack Tony with it.
Nope. He pointed it at me.
I jerked back instinctively, my hands clenching.
The rifle leaped in my hands, peppering Bosey with three or four shots before I let go of the trigger. The impacts sent him flying back through the glassed-in front door, shards of the stuff splintering out onto the street and into the main room. I stared in horror at the gun in my hands—the gun Tony had left sitting around on full auto—
“What the fuck?” The other two Ventras wheeled around. “Bosey?”
Tony scooped up his pistol and shot twice out the door. “Get away from my goddamn bike!”
“Bosey!” Three squeaked. “That bitch killed Bosey!”
I pointed the rifle at him. “And you’re next if you don’t get the fuck out!”
Apparently, guns do make you moderately braver.
Dax chose that moment to come barreling down the stairwell, lever-action stretched out in front of him. “Get out,” he barked, discharging one round in the Ventras’ general direction. “Get out!”
“Easy, man, we can talk,” One said, hands up in the air.
Tony edged closer to them, pistol held in his outstretched hands. “The time for talk stopped when you pointed guns at us. Now is the time to leave.”
“The bitch just killed Bosey!” Three screeched again. Another, smaller handgun was suddenly in his hand and aimed at my head.
Dax’s hand jerked the lever, and the spent casing flew past his head. “Get the fuck out!”
“Fuck, man, we weren’t going to kill you. We just wanted food. You killed…” Three swung the pistol around, unable to decide who to shoot at.
“The whole city’s burning down,” Number One said hoarsely. “The whole city’s burning down and those dead things are comin’ for us—what’re we supposed to do, just die?”
The trigger felt slick against my sweaty fingers. Hell, I could squeeze it and pepper both of them and call it a day…but I might end up hitting the bike, too. Or Dax.
“Get out,” Tony said. “Just get out.”
“No, man, no.” Three shook his head. “No, we’re taking that bike and we’re taking whatever you got and there’s not a damned thing you can—”
“Get out!”
Dax seemed frozen in place. I was pretty sure he’d reached the end of his performance. I tried to at least line up Number Three in my sights; he seemed the flightier of the two, and might end up shooting someone.
One’s safety slid off with a soft click. “You send us out there, you got our blood all over your hands. You wanna live with that?”
“Shit, man, that bitch has a goddamn Nazi gun pointed at me, I seen those things on video games…” Number Three aimed at me again. Hold still. Just hold still so I can aim at you. One squeeze. One squeeze and he’d be a pincushion.
“Put down the gun.” Tony’s voice shook.
Number One heard the quiver. “You put yours down!”
“Put it down!” Tony went up too high on the last note. Shit, he was cracking. “Get out. I don’t care if you die. I care about me, them, not you, you son of a bitch, and I say leave!”
Number One pulled out another gun. Shit, how much heat are these guys packing? I swung the rifle around and almost clobbered myself in the head again.
Pop-pop-pop! Tony’s shots nailed the men in the chests and shoulders, and they fell to the ground. One landed on the blowtorch.
The Road King kept on humming.
Tony lowered the gun. “Christ on a pogostick.”
Dax immediately dropped the rifle, sagging back against the wall. “Where the hell did they come from?”
Something moved outside. I turned around just in time to see Bosey stagger back
to his feet, blood streaming down the front of his shirt and from his mouth. He shambled toward the door, eyes already glazing over. His mouth gaped open, and he extended a finger.
He walked right into my sights. I pulled the trigger, and he went down a second time.
I lowered the rifle. I killed someone…granted, he sort of came back, but I killed someone…
“Nice shooting,” Dax murmured, almost as gray as the dead things outside. “I locked the dog in an office when I heard the yelling…are you okay?”
I clung to the rifle. No, I was not okay. I was holding onto an apparent Nazi assault rifle and I had just killed someone. “I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want us to die.”
“You did the right thing.” Tony looked at the door, then at Dax. “Godammit, Dax, I told you the bad people come out when the world ends.”
“What, you want a fucking medal?”
Had to do it, I told myself. It was him or me. Them or us. But I killed a man.
I killed a man at the end of the world.
TEN
“Get the bodies out of the way.”
When Dax didn’t instantly move, Tony grabbed him by the collar and shoved him into the hall. “Get them the fuck out of the way!”
Dax approached the first body cautiously, staring down at what was probably a face with staring eyes and a whole lot of blood.
Tony appeared in front of me, snatching the rifle from my hands. “This is a special occasion gun,” he informed me. “It’s got a strap. Carry it over your shoulder. Auto’s got a mean kick, so don’t use it unless you have to.”
“Right,” I said.
He pushed another big gun into my hands—an older shotgun of some sort, I thought. “Use this one first.”
“Right.” I slung the rifle over my shoulder and held onto the shotgun, dismayed by how heavy both of them were.
Dax took the sleeve and upper arm of one of the dead guys, swallowed hard, and started dragging the body out.
I followed him.
Just a few blocks down the street, smoke rippled and moved, and that sound…I thought something moved in the smoke, but couldn’t tell for sure. “They said they set the city on fire.”
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