by Joe McKinney
“What the fuck are you doing?” Anthony said, wheeling around on Jesse and pulling the gun from his hand.
“He was calling to them,” Jesse said.
“So you thought you’d fire a shot?” Anthony shook his head in dismay. “What the fuck, man?”
From the front of the boat, Brent let out another groan.
“Will you please be quiet?” Anthony said. “Jesus.”
But when Anthony looked back at Jesse, he froze. Jesse’s eyes had gone wide, and his gaze was focused on the distance over Anthony’s left shoulder.
Slowly, Anthony turned around.
The flooded street ahead of them was filling with zombies. They were pouring out of the buildings on either side of the street. Anthony watched them, mouth agape, and as he wondered where in the hell they were all coming from, the dead zombie’s boat glided by to port.
Anthony turned to watch the dead man floating past, and as he did, saw even more of the infected coming down a side street.
He and Jesse both turned and scanned their surroundings.
“Oh shit,” Jesse said. “They’re everywhere.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Anthony?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I have my gun back, please?”
“Yeah,” Anthony said, and pushed the AR-15 into Jesse’s hand. “I’d better get mine, too.”
Anthony’s AR was leaning against the pilot’s seat. He scooped it up, ejected the magazine, checked it, and then jammed it back into the receiver.
“What do we do?” Jesse said.
“Get the ammo cans.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Better get all three.”
Anthony watched the zombies getting closer while Jesse removed three large ammo canisters from underneath a waterproof tarp. He put them on the center seat and flipped open the lids. Inside each can were twenty fully loaded magazines of thirty rounds each. In addition to that, both men wore tactical vests with twelve thirty-round magazines mounted to their chest. As Anthony scanned the crowds of zombies closing in on them, silently estimating the number of rounds this was going to take, he figured it was going to be close.
“One shot, one kill,” Anthony said to Jesse. “Make ’em count.”
Jesse only nodded.
“Set up in the stern there. I’ll take the bow. Holler out if you need help.”
Anthony met Jesse’s gaze.
His friend looked ill. His Adam’s apple was working up and down in his throat like a piston.
“You okay?” Anthony asked.
Jesse closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he met Anthony’s gaze and nodded.
“Good. Let’s go to work.”
Eleanor waited with Jim and Madison and the Red Cross volunteers just inside the doorway. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. The distant sound of thunder shook something inside Eleanor’s chest, and the occasional flashes of lightning lit the doorway with a bluish-white light.
More rain, Eleanor thought darkly. Just what we need.
Her nose wrinkled at the stale, lived-in smell of a roomful of unwashed bodies and filthy clothes. Somebody coughed. And then, moving very quietly, Madison squeezed her way between Jim and Eleanor and took Eleanor’s hand in hers.
Eleanor looked down in surprise.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Madison said. “What I said earlier, that was mean.”
Eleanor put an arm around her and pulled her close, aware that Madison was trembling. She felt so small, so scared in that oversized T-shirt.
“Oh, baby,” Eleanor whispered, her chest swelling with emotion. “I love you, Madison. I’m gonna get us through this. I promise.”
But if Madison answered, her voice was lost in the commotion that followed. From outside on the balcony they heard Hank shouting. The next instant there was another loud, rolling crash—not lightning this time, but the heavy clanking sound of metal falling down a staircase—followed by at least ten rifle shots. Eleanor pulled her pistol and held it at the low ready, her eyes on the doorway.
“Sergeant Norton!” Hank shouted.
Eleanor glanced at Jim, and then at Madison. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and ran out the door.
“Mommy!”
“It’ll be all right, Madison. Stay with Daddy.”
She sprinted outside, but came to abrupt stop just outside the doorway.
A drizzling rain fell on her face and her arms.
Below her, the water had gone down considerably, and in the flash of a lightning bolt, she saw that it had exposed a number of cars in the parking lot. They looked like hippos in an African river, only the humps of their backs cresting the surface. A huge crowd of zombies was filtering between the cars, moving as quickly as their ruined bodies would allow.
Glancing down the balcony, she saw that a small group of them had managed to pull down the barricade of furniture that Hank had assembled across the staircase. All but two of the zombies were dead now, their bodies draped over the furniture and the staircase railing like marionettes with their strings cut. But the two of them that were still alive thrashed around in the water, churning it into a oily foam. Hank leaned over the railing and shot both, and the rifle’s report made Eleanor jump.
“Get everybody out of there,” Hank said, “then get down here and help me throw these canoes over the side. Hurry!”
He didn’t wait for a response. She outranked him by a considerable margin, but this was combat, and it was his game. He was trained for battle; she wasn’t. Eleanor’s job was support. Stay out of his way and do as she was told.
As Hank fired out the remaining rounds in his magazine Eleanor ran inside the building and ordered everyone out.
“Down the stairs,” she yelled. “Come on, everybody. Hustle!”
The Red Cross volunteers formed a ragged line and started toward the stairs. Eleanor, who had to yell at the top of her voice to be heard over the moaning of the zombies and the nearly constant bark of Hank’s AR-15, reassured when she could, pushed when she had to, but eventually got them moving down the stairs.
Jim and Madison remained at the top of the staircase, waiting on her.
“Go,” she said to Jim. “I’ve got to help him get the boats in the water.”
Then Jim put an arm around her waist and kissed her. Eleanor was so shocked she could barely respond. He broke contact and, with Madison’s hand in his, sprinted down the stairs.
“I love you,” she muttered, watching him go down to the water level.
Eleanor had just enough time to scan the crowd of zombies that was closing in around them when the first canoe went over the side, hitting the water with a dull thwack.
“Sergeant Norton, I sure could use a hand, ma’am.”
“Coming,” she said, and helped him toss the rest of the boats over the side.
The others were already climbing into the canoes when Eleanor and Hank jumped into the water.
Jim paddled the boat over to her and helped pull her in.
Then he turned the boat around and pointed them to the north.
All the others were doing the same except for Hank. He was all by himself and paddling hard, his canoe pointed straight for the thickest part of the approaching zombie crowd.
“What are you doing?” Eleanor asked.
“Getting your backpacks, ma’am. And maybe thinning out this herd a bit. You get up front and help get these people going. I’ll be right there with you.”
Before Eleanor could protest Hank dropped his paddle into the canoe and came up with his rifle. He started firing at a frightening speed. Eleanor, who was a pretty good shot with an AR-15, though certainly not a pro, wondered how he even had time to aim. But aiming he most certainly was, for he was dropping zombies one after the other, every shot landing on target. It was a sickening, but almost beautiful display of fighting prowess, and Eleanor watched it in rapt fascination before that voice in her head ordered her to get moving.
“Let’s go,” she sai
d to Jim, and the two of them started paddling.
Lightning flashed overhead, and in that moment Eleanor could see the other canoes moving out ahead of her in a crooked line between battered buildings and ruined cars, a bluish-white glow on the water, almost like moonlight.
And then the drizzle turned to rain.
They saw the wreckage of the Coast Guard helicopter first. In the darkness it resembled the busted exoskeleton of some enormous insect, a praying mantis maybe, that had slid down the face of the building and was now trying to crawl back up. Anthony stared at it, unaware he was holding his breath. While he’d seen this before, during the crash and after, things had happened so fast he never had a chance to absorb the sight of it. But now, all that twisted wreckage, the half-eaten body of one of the pilots hanging out the starboard-side window, the enormity of it caught up with him. When helicopters started dropping from the sky, the shit was really bad.
His fingers were shaking, but not badly. Jesse wouldn’t see it. Brent certainly wouldn’t see it, not in his present condition. But they were shaking, and that had him worried.
He was not in this to save Private Ryan.
He was in this for the money.
Anthony curled his fingers into a fist and focused on their surroundings, scanning constantly, the way he’d been taught in tactics training. Beyond the helicopter was the Church’s Chicken and the parking garage and farther on still the Texas Chemical Bank, which had been so kind to them as of late. Nothing seemed to be moving, and that was good. That was very good.
Gradually, the anxiety he had felt upon seeing the wrecked helicopter faded, and he was able to focus on the money. Thinking about it changed his mood considerably, and he was surprised to feel his mouth starting to water. Seven million dollars were only a few feet away now. Gonna leave this town, he thought, and in his head the words were almost a song. Gonna leave this town with a sack full of loot. A new truck, a new house, a new life. And all I have to do is take it.
“Come to papa,” he muttered.
The car—it was an old Volkswagen; he could see that now—was up to the top of its doors in water. Anthony hit it with a spotlight. He could see the two duffel bags through the rear windshield. He wasn’t sure if the water was subsiding for good, or if this was just low tide, but whatever the reason they’d been lucky to find the money still here. Had someone come along, they could have reached inside pretty as you please and come up with more money than any honest man would know what to do with.
Lucky for all of them that hadn’t happened.
Anthony let his gaze slide over to where Brent was sitting. He was rocking back and forth again with a steady metronome-like motion, muttering constantly. Anthony couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he knew he didn’t like it. That was gonna be a problem right there. And it would have to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
Let Dad take care of it, he told himself. Just get the money.
He turned around to Jesse as he took off his tactical vest. “Here,” he said, “take the wheel for a sec. I’m gonna go get us started on our retirement plan.”
Jesse beamed a huge smile.
“Now you’re talking,” he said.
The boat was turning in a slow pirouette as it came out of the rain. At the sight of it, everyone went quiet. The low murmurs that had marked most of their journey through the flooded landscape disappeared and all eyes turned forward. One by one, they drew their paddles up into their laps, almost as if they were working off the same mental circuit, and stared as the gruesome spectacle drifted past.
Eleanor thought it was cutting across their line when she first saw the boat. The gray, foglike rain distorted her senses that way, made depth perception almost impossible. But she saw the truth a moment later. The boat was a derelict, floating aimlessly on the current.
And inside the boat was a man, seated against the pilot’s windscreen, his face tilted up toward the sky, his dead, unblinking eyes filling with rain. There was a bullet in his forehead, and when he came up even with her, Eleanor closed her eyes and turned away.
“You ready?” Jim asked her.
Earlier, Hank had managed to retrieve their backpacks, and Eleanor had slipped into a yellow raincoat and an Astros baseball cap. The rain sizzled on her hood and drained in curtains from the cap’s bill. Peering through the rain she saw Madison and Jim huddled beneath a blue plastic tarp, looking back at her.
“Eleanor? You ready?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They were the eighth canoe back from the front, placing them roughly in the middle of the pack. Hank was out in front with his AR-15, taking the point position. Nobody had argued. Two of the Red Cross volunteers near the back had shotguns. Hank said the scatterguns would work best covering their rear, especially as one of the Red Cross volunteers was a retired Marine who had fought in Afghanistan during the war. The volunteer’s name was Frank. He was in his sixties, she guessed, white-haired, but his belly was still flat as a board, and he spoke with an accent that sounded as if he was from Maine or Massachusetts or one of those states up east. Having spent her entire life in Texas, Eleanor really didn’t know and didn’t care about the difference in New England accents. They were all just Yankees as far as she was concerned, and they all sounded like Kennedys to her. Still, she’d seen Frank kill three of those zombies with his shotgun shortly after they fled the Meadowlakes Business Park, and Yankee or not, the man knew how to carry himself in a fight. She felt good with him back there, watching their tail.
She was watching the empty windows on the building to their right when Hank whistled. It was a quick, short sound, like one hunter might use to call to another in thick brush. Eleanor turned forward, and at the same time heard the old ladies in the canoes between her and Hank start to gasp.
There were dead bodies in the water. Lots and lots of them.
They looked like driftwood floating in the current. One corpse bumped against the front of their canoe and rolled over onto his back.
Madison uttered a high, piercing scream.
“Madison,” Jim said, and pulled her close, hiding her face in his chest.
Eleanor nodded her thanks to him, and then looked down at the dead man. He was Hispanic, probably in his late thirties, a little overweight, with scabbed-over scars all over his arms and neck, as if he had thrashed his way out of a tangle of barbed wire.
But there was no question what had killed him.
A large-caliber round had entered his head just above the line of his eyebrows. The exit wound had blown the top of his head open. Three large sections of his skull clung to his scalp like continents trying to break apart. It gave his head an impossibly stretched and distorted look, like something glimpsed in a funhouse mirror, and Eleanor had just enough time to process that all the gooey inner matter had seeped out of the skull cavity before she turned away, her stomach in her throat.
But there was nowhere to look that didn’t show her more of the same. The bodies were everywhere. There were literally hundreds of them.
Hank had turned around and was now paddling up beside them.
“You ever watch them shows on the History Channel about the Civil War?” Hank asked Jim.
Jim, who looked as ill as Eleanor felt and still held Madison against his chest, shook his head.
“I like watching them shows,” Hank went on, apparently oblivious to Jim’s discomfort. “I saw this one about the Battle of Chickamauga. . . . They said ten thousand soldiers died there in one day . . . most of ’em while fighting hand to hand in the Chickamauga River. The water was supposed to have turned red by the end of the day’s fighting. Kind of looks like what we got here, don’t it?”
He laughed to himself, but there was no insanity behind it. It wasn’t that kind of laugh. It was, rather, the sound a man makes when he thinks he’s seen enough, been asked to do too much, and then is forced to do a little more. He laughed like a man who had been worn down to the nub, but who refused to quit.
/> “Sergeant Norton,” he said, turning to Eleanor, “whatchu wanna do, ma’ am?”
Eleanor opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it again. There was something moving up ahead, at the far end of the street near the Church’s Chicken sign.
“Hold on a sec,” she said, and reached into her backpack and took out her binoculars.
“What is it?” Hank asked.
The first thing she saw was the wrecked Coast Guard helicopter, and it made her gasp. It had evidently crashed into the side of the building and tumbled down it. She could see first one, then two more dead bodies inside the helicopter, all of them still wearing their flight gear.
Then she focused the binoculars on a small dark-colored bass boat that was about fifty feet in front of the helicopter. A handsome younger man she didn’t recognize was behind the wheel. Another man, who looked disturbingly like a younger version of her boss, Captain Mark Shaw, was sitting in the front of the boat, rocking back and forth as if he was shell-shocked, an emotion that, at the moment, she felt she understood quite well. A third man was in the water, trying to force open the door of a flooded car.
As she watched, the man finally got the door open and reached inside. He came up with a large black duffel bag and handed it to the good-looking man behind the wheel, who took it and tossed it absently into the back of the boat.
The man in the water was wearing a mask, but even with that covering his eyes and nose, Eleanor could tell right away who it was.
“What is it?” Hank said again.
“That’s Anthony Shaw,” she said, handing him the binoculars. “And I’m pretty sure that guy in the front of the boat is his brother.”
“Are you sure?”
He put the binoculars up to his eyes and brought them into focus.
Yeah, I’m sure, she thought.
Anthony Shaw she knew well . . . or, rather, she knew quite a bit about him. She’d seen his pictures up on her captain’s desk. Anthony Shaw had evidently been some kind of stud on the baseball field, and had translated those glory days into success with the ladies as an officer on the department.