by Tim Waggoner
So when there was a soft knock at her door, her initial reflex was to reach for her weapon, but she forced herself to relax. Not only was it unlikely that a zombie could get inside the school—let alone past the guards on the stairs—but also zombies didn’t knock.
She drew her hand away from the 9mm. But not too far.
“Who is it?” she said.
Several seconds passed, and she was about to take hold of her gun when she heard Marie say, “It’s me.”
“Wait a minute.”
The lamp was near her mattress. She switched it on, got up and walked to the door. She didn’t have the key—the survivors had only found a handful of room and office keys when they’d moved into the school—but she’d secured her room by screwing thick U hooks to the wall and door. Two short lengths of chain were attached to the hooks, and these were held together by a combination lock. She unfastened the lock, let it hang open from one of the chains and then opened the door.
Marie stood in the hall, holding a flashlight in her right hand, a hardback book in her left. As soon as the door was open, she turned her light off. The two women looked at each other for a moment, and then Kate stepped aside. After a brief hesitation, Marie entered. Once she was inside, Kate rechained the door.
Such precautions had become automatic for her in the months since Blacktide, and she rarely thought about them. But now she remembered how it had been Joe who’d established so many of the procedures and rules that kept them all safe, this simple locking system being only one of his numerous contributions. He’d been a bit of a geek—okay, more than a bit—but there was no denying how important he’d been to their community. If not for him, Kate figured there was a good chance most, if not all, of them would’ve died long ago.
When the door was secured once more, Marie began speaking, her words tumbling out in a rush.
“It’s not your fault that Joe died. It’s mine. If he hadn’t had a crush on me—”
“I’m the one who chose to go looking for her brother tonight. I should’ve gone alone. That way, no one else would’ve had to risk their life.”
“He had Nicholas with him. And it was dark.”
While zombies’ senses of hearing and smell were sharper, their vision—especially at night—was no better than it had been when they were human. While there was no safe time to go out, nighttime was in general better than daytime. Although zombies went into torpor after feeding, as far anyone knew they didn’t need to sleep. They were, however, less active at night. Even so, Rangers tended to do their work during the day, as the light made it easier to search for supplies.
“The moon was almost full,” Kate said. “Nicholas did his best, but in the end he hadn’t been able to protect Joe from his own fear.”
I told him that you’d be okay, that you’re both experienced at evading zombies. He still insisted on searching for you two—well, for Marie—and he was going to go on his own if I didn’t accompany him. We had no idea where to look, of course, so I figured we’d go out for a little while, poke around, and eventually Joe would get so nervous that he’d want to return to the school. But he stuck it out longer than I expected. I guess he was made of tougher stuff than we all thought. We saw our fair share of zombies, but always from a distance. They didn’t catch wind of us, and I just kept hoping our luck would hold.
After about an hour or so of this, we were passing by the Java Jive coffee shop when a couple zombies came walking around the side of the building. They weren’t really all that close. Maybe ten yards or so. But it was the closest we’d been to any so far, and I guess Joe couldn’t take it anymore. He bolted, but instead of running across open ground, he ran toward the coffee shop. I yelled at him to stop, but he didn’t listen, and he ran inside. Unfortunately, the shop wasn’t empty. I ran inside after him, but I was too late. He didn’t even have time to scream. I killed the zombies, as well as the two we first saw who’d followed me inside to see what all the commotion was about. Joe’s body was still more or less intact, so I put a bullet in his brain, just in case.
Those who’d been lucky enough to avoid being transformed when Blacktide first hit didn’t always possess immunity to infection by zombie bite, so Nicholas’s precaution was a sound one. When he’d done what had to be done, he’d left Joe’s body where it lay. It would’ve been too difficult for him to bring the corpse back by himself—not to mention all the zombies it would’ve attracted in the process. It wouldn’t take long for other zombies to find Joe’s body, and, come morning, his skeleton would be picked clean. Rangers would eventually attempt to retrieve his remains for burial, but she doubted they’d find enough of Joe to bury. It would be like he had been erased from existence. These days, even death was no longer what it used to be.
“Some people have gathered in the cafeteria,” Marie said. “Do you want to—”
Kate shook her head. She didn’t think she could stand to sit around and listen to people talk about Joe—especially considering that she felt at least partially responsible for his death. She wasn’t surprised that people were up, though. None of the survivors slept soundly, and word of death traveled fast. You’d think that after suffering so much loss, people would be numb to death, but for the survivors of Lockwood it was the opposite. Every life lost was a tragedy, one more ray of light snuffed out by the hellish world they were trapped in.
“I tried not to lead him on,” Marie said. “He was a nice guy and all, but he wasn’t…you know. My type.”
“Because you’re gay,” Kate said.
“No.”
Kate felt suddenly awkward. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed…”
Marie placed her book on the floor, then walked over, put her arms around Kate’s neck and kissed her. The kiss was tentative at first, but it didn’t remain that way. Kate wrapped her arms around Marie and pulled her close. They continued holding each other when Marie broke the kiss. She then looked into Kate’s eyes and smiled.
“I’m bi.”
Kate smiled back. “That’ll work.”
They kissed again.
Nicholas sat cross-legged in the hall outside Kate’s room, listening as she and Marie fucked. Even with the door closed, he could smell the musk of their individual vaginas—Kate’s strong and earthy, Marie’s sweet and slightly acidic—and he felt himself growing hard. It wasn’t the thought of screwing them that made him horny, but rather the thought of what he could do to their gashes once he got them alone in his shed.
The hallway was dark and, aside from the moans coming from Kate’s room, it was quiet. People were either asleep or down in the cafeteria, grieving the loss of poor Joe. So many of the survivors viewed him almost as a savior and were feeling lost right now. How were they going to survive without Joe, Lord of the Zombies, to guide them?
Their sorrow and despair were like fine wine to Nicholas, and he’d sat with them for a time, drinking it in, before taking his leave, claiming that he wanted “some time alone”. Everyone assumed that he was upset over his failure to save Joe’s life, but in truth, he wanted to be near Kate, to feel her sorrow. But finding her munching rug with Marie was a welcome surprise.
Tonight’s events—or rather, their aftermath—had helped him realize why he’d been feeling so empty lately. Experimenting with zombies had been diverting at first, but ultimately unsatisfying. The creatures didn’t feel anything, but their lack of physical response was only part of it. They possessed no emotional response, either, and that’s what he truly missed. What was the point of causing other beings pain if they couldn’t experience it deeply, and on multiple levels? Where was the artistry? It was like being a gourmet chef for diners who possessed no sense of taste.
Since Blacktide, he’d refrained from killing humans, simply because there weren’t many left in Lockwood. Not only would that make it more difficult to conceal his activities from others, but also he didn’t want to use up his limited supply of victims too quickly. It was quite possible that the town’s survivors would be t
he only people he’d get to kill for the rest of his life. Once they were gone, it would just be him and the zombies. He didn’t want to contemplate how boring such an existence would be.
But he couldn’t go on like he had been, either. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, killers gotta kill. It was his raison d’etre, and it was high time he got back to it.
Starting with Kate and Marie.
He closed his eyes, inhaled their scents and began making plans.
Chapter Ten
The hospital interior was formed from a strange spongy material, the walls white, the ceiling and floors gray. David didn’t like how the substance gave beneath his feet as he walked. It made him feel off-balance and wary, as if any moment he might encounter an extrasoft spot, sink into the floor and be swallowed up forever. Tendril-like cables thick as pythons ran along the walls, pulses of light traveling rapidly back and forth along their length as if they were exposed power lines.
The four of them—David, Lizzie, the nurse and Simon—entered the admitting area of the ER. At least, that’s what David assumed it was, as there were no signs to confirm or deny it. What minimal furniture there was—a desk for the admissions nurse and chairs for the patients—had been formed from the same substance as the floor, almost as if they had been grown instead of constructed. The ER was full of people in need of medical assistance, some of them so severely injured that David was surprised they were still alive. Many had lost body parts—noses, ears, fingers, toes, hands, feet, sometimes entire arms and legs—bleeding from ragged wounds where their pieces had once been attached. A few of them held their amputated parts in their laps, as if hoping a doctor would be able to make them whole again. The blood they dripped onto the floor was absorbed, and while the sight of crimson liquid vanishing into gray sponge made David queasy, he had to admit it was an efficient way to keep the place clean.
Some patients looked as if they belonged in the morgue rather than in the emergency room. Skin was torn, revealing red muscle and ivory bone. Abdomens had been ripped open, leaving organs—those that remained, at any rate—to protrude from yawning cavities. Some had sustained gunshot wounds that had taken out large chunks of flesh, while others appeared to have been attacked with edged weapons, some hacked up so badly it would’ve made Lizzie Borden envious.
As it had outside, David’s vision blurred, refocused, and when it cleared, he saw a normal hospital ER with normal walls, ceiling, floor and chairs. Yellow-skinned creatures in filthy clothes sat or milled about listlessly, their bodies mirroring the injuries he’d seen on their other selves only a few seconds before. However, most of their wounds looked old and healed over, more or less. Mostly less.
His vision blurred as the world reconfigured itself once more, and he found himself inhabiting the nightmare ER again.
“Don’t stare,” Simon said. “It’s not polite. Besides, you don’t look that great yourself at the moment.”
David reached up and touched the spot on his neck where Lizzie had been nuzzling, and his hand came away tacky with blood. He should’ve felt panicked, should’ve clapped his hand tight to the wound to try and staunch the flow of blood. But he couldn’t bring himself to be concerned. Yeah, he was bleeding, but not that much, and it only hurt a little.
Lizzie’s condition was far more serious. Hell, her whole fucking chest had been torn open by that demon bitch’s shotgun blast! She wasn’t acting as if she was in bad shape, but that was only because she had to be in shock. He had no idea if there was any help to be found for her in this twisted place—assuming it was even real—but he had to try. He’d already lost Steve. He couldn’t stand to lose her too.
He moved past the nurse and walked directly to the admissions desk. A middle-aged woman with hair dyed a too-bright shade of maroon stood arguing with the staff member working there, a stunning brunette who could’ve been a model, if the left side of her face hadn’t been a mass of scar tissue and she hadn’t been missing most of her lower lip.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for your husband.” The brunette’s words came out a bit fuzzy due to her mouth injury, but they were understandable enough.
“I just want a doctor to examine him,” Maroon Hair said. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?” She turned to David. “Is it?”
David didn’t know what to say, mostly because he was too busy staring at the head she was holding. It had belonged to a balding, jowly man with a large nose, small ears and wide, unblinking eyes. The right side of his head was caved in, as if someone had struck it a couple solid blows with a baseball bat, and bites had been taken out of his flesh, mostly from the cheeks, although most of the left ear was missing. David assumed the man’s wife had gotten a bit peckish on the way to the hospital and had paused for a quick nosh.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, “but my daughter—”
“Fuck your daughter!” the woman snarled. “Can’t you see I have a medical emergency on my hands?” She gave her husband’s head a shake for emphasis.
Literally, he thought. Aloud he said, “I understand how you feel, but—”
“How I feel? How I feel? Just because your slut of a wife squeezed a brat out of her cunt, you think that gives you insight into my emotions? This is my husband we’re talking about! My life partner! The other half of my goddamned SOUL!”
The woman’s face had gone from a ruddy red to a deep purple as she shouted, spittle spraying from her lips as she shrieked the word soul.
David didn’t have time for this bullshit.
He snatched the head out of the woman’s arms, rammed his fist into its mouth and, wielding it like a club, slammed it against the crazy bitch’s temple. There was a double crack as two skulls fractured, and then she dropped to her knees. David hit her several more times until she slumped over onto her side, and when he was finished, he couldn’t tell which part of the bloody mess had belonged to her head or to her husband’s. He shook his hand vigorously to remove what little remained of her husband from his flesh, and then he turned to the admissions clerk.
“I believe we’re next.”
She smiled as best she could with only a partial set of lips. “I believe you are. Just give me a moment to call an orderly and have him take that—” she pointed to the woman’s corpse, “—to the cafeteria. It would be a shame to let good meat go to waste, wouldn’t it?”
David said nothing, but his stomach gurgled in agreement.
“It appears worse than it really is.”
David gave the doctor a skeptical look.
After he’d checked Lizzie in, she’d been taken to an examination room, where the nurse helped her onto a bed. The nurse then departed, leaving David and Simon to wait with Lizzie. David sat next to Lizzie and held her hand, while Simon leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, mercifully silent for once. Everything in the room was formed from the weird spongy material, just like in the reception area.
After a bit, a doctor arrived. He was a tall, pear-shaped man with wavy, white hair that fell almost to his shoulders. His lips were slightly pursed all the time, as if they’d been frozen in a permanent expression of distaste. His lab coat was pristine, as if it had just come out of the laundry, and his large belly protruded as if he were an ocean liner and his gut was his prow. Despite his size, he moved with an almost feminine grace, and he spoke with a reserved pleasantness, as if he understood the importance of a good bedside manner but didn’t want to go overboard with it.
He’d introduced himself as Doctor Buttram—David could imagine the jokes the other kids had made about his name in grade school—and went right to work examining Lizzie.
“It looks pretty damn bad to me,” David said.
Dr. Buttram leaned close to Lizzie’s chest wound and poked it with his index finger in several places. Instead of wincing or crying out in pain, however, Lizzie giggled. “That tickles.”
Buttram straightened and turned to David. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that things aren’t the same as t
hey used to be. To put it mildly.” He smiled. “People have changed, and by necessity the way we treat them has had to change as well. Please believe me when I say that as serious as your daughter’s injuries appear, she’s going to be fine. But to ensure that, we need to get to work on her right away.”
He didn’t call for a nurse, but the heavyset one who’d wheeled Lizzie into the ER appeared. She didn’t ask Buttram what he wanted her to do. She went straight to the head of the bed and released the brake keeping the wheels from rolling.
David gave the doctor an unsure look, and in return Buttram gave him a fair approximation of a reassuring smile.
“It’ll all be over before you know it, Mr. Croft. Why don’t you go out into the waiting area? I’ll let you know when we’re finished.”
“Can’t I come with her?” David asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Buttram said. “Against hospital policy.”
David nodded. He turned to Lizzie. “I’ll be right outside. The doctor is going to fix you up, and when he’s done you’re going to be good as new. Okay?”
Lizzie gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m not scared, Daddy.”
“Good girl.” He stood and leaned down to give her a kiss on the forehead. He tried to ignore the way she tasted. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
The nurse gave David a departing smile as she pushed the bed out of the examination room. Dr. Buttram left with her, and David listened to the moist, soft sound of their footsteps on the spongy floor.
Simon hadn’t spoken the entire time they’d been in the examination room, but now he put a hand on David’s shoulder. “C’mon. We should go to the waiting area.”
David didn’t move. “I wish Sarah was here. Lizzie should have both her mother and father at a time like this.” A thought occurred to him, and he turned to face Simon. “You were able to tell me where the kids were. That means you can tell me where Sarah is.”