“Dude. Where you going?”
Lester turned around to confront whichever shit-bird was trying to stop him from making his getaway. He had a whole arsenal of cuss words he could unleash, and the best part was that he truly didn’t give a fuck who heard him. The old Lester was calm, polite, a different kind of drug dealer. Probably because he was high most of the time. The new Lester could give fuck all about anyone else. Once his own stash was gone, he was going to be a straight man. Honest to God, praise Jesus and shit. He might do it out of necessity and not desire, but it still counted for something. Maybe he would start his own version of AA. Come join the only club in town that wants to keep doing drugs but can’t find any.
“Dude.” The voice again.
There were people everywhere, and they crowded him like an audience at a rock concert. Then a face came into view, and Lester had a crazy sense of vertigo. Remembrance. The features were so familiar. He was tall and had his hair tugged back into a long black ponytail. The face melted into its correct configuration: one pair of eyes, one long hooked nose, and a pair of lips split over yellowed teeth. Holy shit, it was one of the guys he’d picked up in Pioneer Square. The heavy-metal singer who called himself Grinder and whose real name—Just please don’t fucking tell anyone!—was Duane.
“How you doin’, bro?” Lester shouted over the crowd.
Lester scowled, because his front-row seat to the deader invasion was about to be overrun by pair of burly men with beer guts the size of the Puget Sound. Lester couldn’t stand up against these two. Or could he? The old Lester would have talked his way around them. The new Lester was going to be all about getting in someone’s face.
“Been better. I’m bored out of my head, but I’ve been real busy, you know? Got lots of ideas for the new album. I’m going to write all about this shit. All of this fucking shit!” Grinder swung his arm in a wide arc to encompass the street, the military, and the stadium that had been turned into a refugee camp. “Katrina got nothing on this. I wish we had a hurricane. But nope! We got mother fuckin’ zombies!”
“Deaders. It’s easier if you say deaders,” Les shouted. Big and burly times two looked them over and decided to move on. They shoved up against the women chanting for deader rights. Copycats.
“Don’t change the facts, man. Those things are still zombies. I don’t care what you call them. They die and come back and want to eat your face. End of story.”
“They aren’t zombies.”
“They are, and they’re the most metal fucking thing I have ever seen in my life!” Grinder shouted over the crowd.
Jesus. This guy was worse off than Les.
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? You can’t leave,” Grinder yelled.
“Why the fuck not? Someone gonna shoot me if I leave? I don’t think so; my eyes are white. See?” Les said.
“Not really, dude. Kinda red if you know what I mean.” Grinder put his forefinger and thumb together and touched his lips.
Why was Les even arguing with this knucklehead? “I’m going to go find some beer. Maybe some rum. You like rum?”
“You crazy, man?” Grinder stared at him. “The city’s gone, dude. You won’t find anything out there except how to become lunch for a bunch of zombies. Running now is the best way to get dead.”
“Or get laid. Maybe get fucked up. It’s dryer than the Mojave in here. I need to party!” Lester yelled. He had the perfect picture in his head. He was back at his house, and he had a jug of rum with beer chasers. Angela was there, and she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. Her perfect boobs filled his vision. He wanted to lean over and plant his head between them, but the image was ripped away by the giant frame of Grinder.
“Don’t leave, dude. You saved our asses. I don’t want you to die out there. I don’t want you to turn into one of those things,” Grinder pleaded.
Lester smiled at the big man and clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’ll keep that in mind. This is it. Sayonara, mother fuckers!” he yelled to no one in particular and then darted around the open gate and onto the street. He ran for all he was worth, like he was one of the sprinting creatures. Lester raised his hands over his head and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Sayonara, sayonara!” He was soon past the flopping deaders and across the street.
He didn’t look back, because he knew they would be after him. They hadn’t let anyone out since the whole craziness started. They had confiscated his Escalade—well, his neighbor’s Escalade—and he hadn’t seen that badass set of wheels since. Who the hell were those guys to take his wheels anyway? He’d just have to find a new car.
He ran flat out, and when he reached the deader that was taunting him earlier, the one with her ass hanging out, he couldn’t help but haul off and kick her on the exposed portion of her butt. He was smooth, too, like Jackie Chan. She flew into a brick wall and fell in a heap.
Lester dashed around a corner with an exultant whoop. He stopped and sucked in a few deep breaths. His mind still raced with myriad colors. Dizziness seeped into his brain again, so he chose a piece of wall to lean against in lieu of falling on his face.
He looked over his shoulder to see how many Army men were after him. Army men! When he was eight, he ordered a bag of Army men from an ad in the back of a comic book. He waited and waited for what seemed forever, even though it was only six to eight weeks. But when they arrived, they were the greatest toys EVER!
For a week.
Then he melted them with a magnifying glass.
He expected to see a dozen soldiers after him, and they wouldn’t be the plastic kind. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t use the prods on him. The last thing he wanted was an ass full of electricity.
His view was blocked by the side of the building, so he spun and put his back against the wall, arms splayed, fingers wide. The sounds of zaps and screaming onlookers, the sounds of deaders grunting and panting like fucked-up dogs, reached his ears. But he was shocked, a few moments later, when he peeked around the corner and found that only one person had followed him, and it wasn’t a guy with a gun or electric zapper.
“Dude!” The guy panted as he reached Lester’s location.
“I did it!” he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Fuckin’-A you did. Goddamn idiot!”
“You followed me?” Lester looked up at him. “You’re real, right?”
He reached out to touch Grinder’s face, but Grinder smacked his hand away.
“What the hell are you on?”
“All kinds of stuff. Whatcha need? I got a bag of pills, so take your pick.” What was he thinking? That was all the shit he had, and once they were gone, there wasn’t another supplier to be found. He couldn’t just call Norm in Tacoma to drive a load up.
“What I need is to know what you have planned. You saved my ass, so it’s my turn to save yours. Now what’s the plan? I really need a straight answer here, man.”
“The answer is RUN!” Lester grabbed his lanky friend’s hand, and they ran like they were being chased by wildfire. From around the corner came another motley assortment of the dead, and they weren’t interested in smoking weed or popping pills with Lester the wonder-dealer. That was for goddamn sure!
Marshall
There was hell, and then there was this place.
Marshall contemplated his last nerve. If he moved, even an inch, it was going to snap.
Six kids and an angry wife. No water, about to run out of food. His neighbor from 602 was a total mooch. Found his stash of Scotch and took one of the bottles. That left one, and it was only half full. Idiot. The asshole had the nerve to scream his head off as he walked into walls outside Marshall’s apartment.
Then the kids started screaming, at least the little ones, because the noise was so loud. The one wacko in 609, his last name was Moon, and that was what everyone called him. Moon and his girl, Lucinda, pretty much sat around and freebased until they ran out. Moon was gaunt, but Lucinda was the spitting image of waste. She
was at least six foot four and towered over her boyfriend, who clocked in about a foot shorter.
She was supermodel thin, black as night and had no teeth. Moon had mentioned a special deal on a “gummie,” but Marshall wanted no part of that. His wife might not be ready for prime time, as she liked to put it, but she knew how to put a little sexy into her walk when she wanted to.
Moon and his girl went insane around the third day and decided it wasn’t that bad out on the streets. That was what happened when you ran out of drugs. You just lost it. Marshall had known the type for as long as he could remember.
Her screams went on the longest. Teeth or not, she had a hell of a set of lungs.
Marshall attended AA at least once a week and had seen all kinds come and go. But mostly go. He went more to observe than anything else. There was a time when all he wanted in the world was another drink or another hit. Now he knew when to quit. He knew when he’d had enough. He knew that when he reached a certain level of buzzocity—a term Amy came up with, bless his wife’s twisted tongue for more than one reason—he had to stop, drop and roll. Stop drinking, drop the bottle somewhere else and roll his ass into bed. Anything more and the old Marshall would come back, and no one fucking wanted that.
The next day, a half-dozen tenants banded together, assembled what weapons they could, and moved out. They asked Marshall to join them, but he closed his door in their faces. No, thanks; I’m happy being alive. They were immediately chased down, brutally murdered and eaten by the phenomenon known as the deaders.
At one time, Marshall was all for scaring the crap out of his kids. He liked to tell them stories at night as they huddled together with relatively clean faces and mostly shit-free diapers. He would spin a tale about animals chasing each other but managing to keep out of Mom’s way. See, Mom, I’m entertaining them and teaching them a thing or two. Just as things were all puppy dogs and rainbows, he would scream something along the lines of “THEY ALL RAN OFF THE CLIFF! WAAAAAH!”
This had the effect of delighting the older ones and scaring the youngsters, but in the end, everyone laughed—Dad the hardest.
But his stories were nothing compared to the real horror outside.
It was a living nightmare. He kept coming back to that word. Nightmare.
Marshall used to seek out the most extreme horror movies he could find. Lived for them. The more blood and gore, the better. The more dead main characters, the more he laughed at their demises.
Now he wanted to take every one of those movies, put them in a huge pile, douse them with gasoline and dance around the flames. If he never saw another drop of blood, real or on the screen, it would be enough.
Mike
A woman I recognized from the ferry terminal a few days ago wandered near me. We made small talk, but she moved on. We just ran out of words, and she got a hollow look in her eyes.
I think her name was Alice or Agnes, and much like her, I didn’t know how to cope. I was good at keeping things bottled up; it was one of my best defenses, but Erin had changed that somehow. In a day, she had somehow gotten inside my zone of comfort, gotten me to open up. Now I didn’t care if I ever shared my life with anyone for as long as I lived—and that might not be much longer.
Every night, I lay awake and wondered if she walked among them now. I had thought of going after her and putting her down, but even if she fell into the sights of my stolen gun, would I have been able to kill her?
I paced and ignored others who tried to talk to me. For some reason, I had picked up a reputation as a leader. But the last thing I needed to be doing was leading any of the other survivors. There were plenty of alphas out there who were wired for this sort of thing. The take-charge, no-shit-taking men and women who rose to the occasion. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and let the world spin out of control around me.
On the west side of the massive enclosure, a military base had been taking shape. The National Guard and the Army set up check-out stations and did their best to ration supplies, but it was a crapshoot at best. This may have been one of the most polite cities in the nation, but drop the people into an apocalyptic event, and they could turn into an angry mob, just like anywhere else.
The one thing no one was giving out was answers. Yesterday morning, they ran a looping message through the stadium’s PA system that there was a plan in place to get everyone out. That we should remain calm and wait.
And wait we did.
But there was new activity, and I wondered if they were finally going to do something. There were thousands of frightened people here, folks who just wanted to go home, but they weren’t letting anyone out except on rescue missions, and even those were few and far between.
A huge green truck rolled out of the closed-off area. It was like an RV camper, but it had much harder planes and angles. A group of half a dozen men in heavy suits, almost like walking automatons, followed close behind. The suits themselves reminded me of the heavy things that bomb disposal units wore. They had a full glass or plastic cover that allowed at least a hundred-and-eighty degree view all around. Heavy sleeves and gloves met a thick chest piece. The rest flowed into pants and then sealed against boots.
The suits offered ample protection, but they must have been hot as hell.
Another group filed out around the truck—men in camo green with machine guns over their shoulders or held at waist level. They formed up and held back the crowd of onlookers that was quickly developing.
I couldn’t help it. I walked toward the new arrivals to see what all the fuss was about.
A third group trotted ahead. They were dressed like the others, with limbs and torsos protected by those crazy suits. They also wore full plastic helmets. I nearly stumbled as I took in this new group. It was clear to me what they were going to do. The first six or seven men and women had something else on their persons: long loops of plastic like the cops used in place of handcuffs.
I shouldered my way through the crowd of onlookers and thought I caught sight of Lester, the man in the Escalade who saved us. He helped us get away from a massive attack of the dead when we were stuck in Pioneer Square. He came screaming around a corner and plowed into the group that was about to take us down.
That was when I lost Erin. We had piled into the car, but it was too late. She was ripped from my grasp and joined the howling mob of the dead.
Days ago, but it seemed like minutes.
“Lester!” I called, but he didn’t acknowledge me. It was doubtful he heard me over the noise. He approached a pair of girls and wrapped his arms around them like they were old friends. It didn’t take long for them to shrug away from the scraggly-haired man and practically run into the crowd.
I tried to push through the mob to get to him. If I could give him the warning from Nelson, I was sure he would want to get on the first train with us.
The military operation was quick and efficient. They wrestled the captives back to the gate. Lines seemed to be divided in this city. Some wanted to see deaders shot down like rabid dogs, while others wanted them captured and locked up.
I guessed that the ones they were bringing in were about to experience the latter.
“Lester,” I yelled again. I’d had my eyes on him a minute ago, but now he was gone. My calls were absorbed by the crowd.
Then I start shouting for them to get the hell back behind the gate, because a massive flood of deaders had taken to the street, and they looked hell bent on getting into the enclosure.
People scrambled back and made a mess of anything resembling organization. The Army and Guardsmen tried to get to the front of the mass, but it was a struggle to break through. They ended up throwing elbows and the butts of guns to get through. Who the hell let all of these people get into this kind of a mess anyway? They should have pushed everyone back first.
“What a fucking cluster,” a soldier near me yelled to his friend. They both had automatics.
“Get the fuck out of the way!” his friend yelled at me. The guy was huge, and
I did not want to get run down by him. I ducked to the side and was almost knocked down by three other soldiers.
I sidestepped again and went down. Then it was a rush to get back on my feet. The crowd was so panicked, I was afraid I would soon be trampled.
I grabbed hold of a large guy who nearly knocked me down, and I let his momentum drag me off the ground. He tried to shake me off, but I clung to him, fingers buried in the thick fabric of his long, sweat-stained shirtsleeves.
Back on my feet, I barely avoided being knocked to my knees again. I reached out and felt for the big guy’s shoulder, then used it as a guide to get out of the crowd. When we broke free, I nearly collapsed against a Humvee with no driver. A guy manned the giant machine gun. He looked just as scared as those running from the mob, despite his position behind a large-caliber weapon.
I didn’t want to stay, but someone needed to witness and report the events. I had seen too many of the creatures take down people I knew and loved.
I turned to confront the scene and was comforted by the fact that they were getting the gate closed. But it was a little too late. The deaders had reached the mass of people, and there was no way the gate would be closed in time to stop the onslaught.
Gunfire rippled, and bodies dropped. Blood and body parts flew. I watched the horror that was happening less than a hundred feet from me and wanted to weep for the waste.
I drew the phone out and tried Kate one more time. It rang and rang, and just as I was about to give up, she answered. Her voice was strained, and the signal was bad. I told her what I knew in a few brief sentences, and then she was gone.
Kate
Kate wondered why she was even here. These guys were badass enough without her tagging along. She liked to think that she could take care of herself, no matter the situation. The fact was, though, that together and armed, these guys could take her to pieces before she had a chance to pull her blade. The same would not be true one on one. She might have the edge on Anders, even though he was squirrely. Mark was a solid slab and she doubted that much, besides a direct shot to the ball sack, would faze him.
Among the Dead Book 2 (Among the Living) Page 11