by Jack Hamlyn
“There’s something funny about this damn place,” Robin said and from the tone of her voice I could tell she wasn’t fooling around.
“You got that right,” Diane said quietly.
Tuck paused and looked back at us. “Zip it!”
“Well, I’m not zipping it,” Robin told him. “You people aren’t paying attention.”
Tuck looked angry. “You trying to get us killed?”
“No, I’m trying to keep us from getting killed,” Robin told him and before he could open his mouth, she pointed up at a telephone pole. “Every damn one of those poles has a little box on it. Look!”
She was right.
Up near the top of every telephone pole there was a little metal box. I had seen them, but I figured they were some kind of telecommunications gadget. Tuck led us out again to another pole and another metal box. Two more poles a block apart, same thing. He clicked on the tactical flashlight on his M4 and beamed it on the suspicious box. There was nothing about it that would really catch the eye…except in the center of it there was a shiny round black glass orb.
“Looks like an eye,” Ginny said.
“Yeah, a fisheye,” I said. “That’s a security camera.”
“Well, it can’t be working anymore,” Carrie pointed out.
True, but I didn’t like it. Security cameras were common in urban areas, but not in small towns. I didn’t know how big this city was—what I could see of it, I guessed maybe 20,000 people before Zombpox—but I doubted there would be enough crime to warrant the installation of a video security system. It just didn’t make sense. It was but another thing about that place that raised my hackles.
“Why cameras? Why here?” Sabelia asked.
“Big Brother’s watching,” Diane said. “Maybe it had something to do with the NSA or something.”
Tuck and I looked at each other and although neither of us said anything, we both damn well knew this was nothing so obvious. Carrie was probably right—it wasn’t working anymore. Why would it be? There was nothing to watch over now.
Yeah, but there had been. Once upon a time there was something special about this place. Something very special.
What that was, I couldn’t guess.
“It’s all history,” Tuck said in his most reassuring voice. “Let’s not worry about it. You people can argue your conspiracy theories when we get a roof over our heads.”
He was right on that.
He got no argument because I think we were all feeling a little paranoid by then and we all needed to get somewhere safe.
CHARNEL HOUSE
Shelter was our priority and exactly what Tuck was looking for. But I knew he didn’t want just any place, but something defensible with an exit in case we had to run. I was starting to question the logic of coming into the town at all. Maybe we would have been better off hiding in the woods and coming by daylight. Then again, if the remainders of the force that had attacked us on the road attacked us out in the open, we wouldn’t last ten minutes. No, Tuck was doing the right thing.
He led us through an alley and then called us together.
He saw something he liked.
“That house over there,” he said, indicating a tall two-story brick structure across the street. “That looks pretty good.”
“What’s so special about it?” Robin asked.
“It’s defensible.”
And it was. There were vacant lots to either side of it. If somebody wanted to make an assault on it, they would have to cover a lot of open ground to do it. And it was brick. It could take a lot of punishment. Maybe Tuck was overdoing it, but when it came to our safety his heart was always in the right place.
“Looks like it’ll do in a pinch,” Jimmy said.
“So let’s get moving,” Sabelia said.
Born and bred in the urban jungle, she knew very well just how dangerous city streets could be, particularly these days. She was nervous. Hell, she was wired. When I tried to touch her to reassure her, she pulled away. Her back was up about coming into this town in the first place. A sentiment, I think, that was echoed by Diane and Ginny, possibly even Carrie. The others just wanted a safe place to hole up until daylight.
“A few of us better check it out first,” I said. “No sense in endangering everyone.”
“Good thinking,” Jimmy said.
“Brilliant,” Robin said with all due sarcasm. “You can always count on Steve to come up with the smart ideas.”
“Zip it,” Tuck said.
She shook her head. “Can’t. I didn’t come with a zip attachment. I blame it on my mother.”
As Tuck and Robin tried to out-smartass and out-intimidate each other, I was keeping an eye on Scott and Seppy. Like I said, I didn’t know much about them. I’d only known them a few hours, but they weren’t exactly friendly. They stayed together and barely said anything. There was something funny about that. They were from the Silo crew and I had gotten a vague indication once or twice that Sabelia did not trust them and that was good enough for me.
“How about I take Scott and Seppy with me?” I suggested. “We’ll signal you guys with a flashlight when it’s safe to come.”
“No,” Sabelia said instantly.
Tuck considered it, but I knew he hated to be left out of the action.
“Thing is,” Scott said. “After what happened on the road, I’m not sure I’m up to it. My nerves are rattled.”
Seppy nodded. “Me, too. Sorry, guys.”
“Don’t matter,” Tuck said. “You two are staying here.” He looked over at me. “You and me are going to check it out. The rest of you wait here.”
My little test failed. I really had no reason to doubt them, yet I did. I was reminded of Phil Boncek, a guy who had hooked up with us in the past. He had been with ARM, but he fought valiantly with us. Tuck told me he had died outside Perryville, overwhelmed by zombies. I knew that much because later I had shot him down. Point being, we hadn’t completely trusted him either and he turned out all right. Maybe Scotty and Seppy were okay, too.
“I think we should all go,” Carrie said.
But Tuck shook his head. “No, that’s too dangerous. Just me and Steve.”
I could see that some of them bristled at the idea, but nobody—Robin included—argued with him. When it came down to the possibility of close-in fighting, Tuck got into the zone, into a primitive drive of aggression, and the last thing you wanted to do was argue with him when he got like that.
Make no mistake, Robin would have argued with him like she did about everything else if her leg wasn’t still sore from being creased by a bullet. Diane might have, too. Same for Ginny. But they were both hurting from shrapnel wounds. Jimmy was in no shape for the close-quarter stuff either and his age was definitely a factor. I knew Sabelia had serious street smarts and gang-fighting experience from her checkered past in the Bronx. She was tough and would have proved lethal close-in, but only Tuck and I had any real assault training.
So off we went.
Tuck took an M4 and extra mags. I took my Mossberg 500 and extra shells. We both took two frag grenades each.
We left the others in the mouth of the alley and jogged across the street in the moonlight. There was nothing that concerned me in the neighborhood, save more of those fisheye lenses.
At the bottom of the steps leading up to the house, we paused.
“No hero shit,” Tuck said. “Let’s do this quietly room by room.”
We slid our NV goggles on, adjusted the fields, and went up the steps. The door wasn’t locked, so we went right in. In the green fields of our NVGs, nothing moved. Down low, weapons held high, we surveyed the room. It was sort of a large foyer or lobby with an antique-looking table, some high-backed chairs, and paintings on the wall. Pretty normal. There were two sets of stairs leading above, one off to the far left and another to the far right.
There was a corridor opening near the left staircase and Tuck moved towards it. “I’ll check down here, you take those rooms o
ver there.”
“Okay.”
He disappeared down the corridor and I turned towards the archway on the right. I moved slowly and carefully, keeping a tight eye on the archway and both staircases. At the archway, I sucked in a few deep breaths to calm myself and chase away the jitters, then went in low, ready to start capping if need be. I was in a lounge or living room of sorts that might have been called a sitting room in the old days. One quick side to side scan showed me that it was empty. A rocking chair. A sectional sofa. A couple comfy-looking chairs by the fireplace. A big HDTV on the wall. Nothing else. Nothing that even made me slightly suspicious. There was a closet, but nothing in it but coat hangers.
I went through another archway into a dining room and a connecting kitchen. There was no food in the cupboards, but other than that it was untouched like the other rooms. I got back to the foyer in time to hear Tuck call out to me.
“Pigfuck,” he said.
It was the password he came up with so we didn’t shoot each other.
“Nothing back there,” he said. “A bathroom, an office, a kind of game room with a pool table, a doorway leading outside that’s locked.”
I told him what I found. “Food has been scavenged from the cupboards. Not so much as a can of beans left. That’s about it.”
“Funny,” he said.
Yeah, it was funny, all right. Usually empty places get trashed by scavengers. They’re always looking for food or weapons, drugs and booze. Anything that’ll give them an edge or take their pain away. Sometimes they just wreck places simply because they can. There’s no law left to stop those animals.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Tuck said.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Any other time, we might have laughed and traded a few insults. But not there. There was a clear sense of threat, a sense of impending danger that I think we both felt but could not quite put our fingers on. But it was definitely there, thick as fog in the air.
“Let’s do this,” I said. “I don’t want the others waiting out there too long.”
Our plan was simple.
Tuck would take the left staircase and I would take the right. We’d meet above somewhere after we cleaned out our sections…if there was anything to clean out.
But I had a real good feeling there would be.
FEAR OF THE DARK
Again, I moved very slowly, taking it step by step. I knew how this had to work. Though I was with a mechanized infantry unit in the war, I’d done some house to house fighting of course, in places like Mosul and Fallujah, but my real experience had been since the Necrophage outbreak. As I climbed, I kept my eye on the landing above. All of my senses were highly attuned. I listened. I watched. I felt my way through the darkness with that vague but electric survival instinct we all carry inside us.
I got to the landing and waited there.
I saw nothing in the green field of my NVGs, but still that feeling of danger persisted. In fact, it was heightened. My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry. I could feel the adrenaline coursing in my veins.
I know you’re here, I thought. Show yourself, goddammit. Show yourself already.
The field of my Night Vision Goggles made everything look freakish and surreal like something out of a found-footage horror movie.
My breathing sounded like rasping bellows.
My footfalls were the rattle of snare drums.
It was all subjective, of course, but everything in me was amped up.
It all reminded me too much of an operation in Al Doura during the war. Amongst the wreckage and rubble of buildings decimated by an airstrike from F-16 Fighting Falcons, we were mopping up insurgents, chasing them from one blasted structure to the next as their snipers fired down on us from rooftops.
I had winged a Johnny Jihad—as we called them—insurgent and he hobbled through the doorway of a gutted building. I went after him and found him upstairs. He was dead, bled out. I must have clipped an artery when I shot him. Judging from the blood trail he left behind, I wasn’t surprised. I lowered my rifle and at that exact moment, a filthy boy of eleven or twelve stepped out of a doorway. He was carrying an AK-47.
He was as surprised as I was.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
I remember thinking, Don’t…please, dear God, don’t do it…
But he did, of course. He made to bring up his AK, a look of absolute hate on his young face. I reacted instinctively and put three rounds into him, ripping out most of his throat. He hit the floor, squirming and trying to cry out but all that came from his mouth was a liquid gurgling as blood bubbled between his lips and spurted from his neck.
Twenty seconds later he was dead.
I was practically in shock. Two of my squad had to lead me out of there. I was physically ill over killing a kid for two days. There really was no choice because his mind was so twisted up from the poison the extremists had pumped into it, but that didn’t make me feel much better. And now, standing in the house, I could feel it again—a mixture of fear and grief, guilt and self-loathing.
Knock it off, I told myself. Focus, focus.
I snapped out of it quickly enough because that boy reminded me too much of my own son and dammit, I was going to see Pauly again. I was determined.
I sensed movement as I stepped down the corridor. I didn’t hear anything and I didn’t see anything, but the alarm bells of a deeper sense rang off.
I brought my Mossberg around and a zombie pushed out of the darkness at me. What I saw looked like a homeless person. It was a man in dirty work pants and a Carhartt jacket stained with gore that was just as black as engine oil. He had long scraggly hair and a bushy beard stiff and crusty with dried blood. His face was pale and graying, set with open sores the size of nickels. He had no eyes, just two ragged holes that looked like they’d been cored with a knife.
Though he couldn’t see me, he knew right where I was. His face split open in a grin of discolored teeth that jutted from gums speckled black. He tried to say something and it sounded like a man retching with dry heaves.
I experienced all this in a few seconds.
He reached out for me with fingers blackened by grave earth. By then, I had the Mossberg up and I squeezed the trigger. From the nose on up, his head vaporized in a spray of tissue and bone. His brains splattered against the wall like a handful of thrown mud.
He collapsed immediately, his hands flailing. As his ass hit the floor, his jaws clamped shut with great chomping force, several teeth snapping free and clattering over the floor like thrown dice. He trembled for a second or two, an inky fluid spilling from him and then he was dead again.
It was at that moment that I heard gunfire.
The staccato burst of an M4 on full auto.
Tuck was shooting over there and by the sound of it, he was fighting for his life.
MORTUARY
I ran down the corridor, ever mindful of several open doors, and came to a dead end. I had thought the hallway would connect the left and right wings of the upstairs, but I was wrong. The house was a duplex, a two family dwelling. I should have figured that from the two sets of stairs, but sometimes big old houses like that one had dual staircases. But that wasn’t the case. The left stairs led to the rooms of one family, the right to another, and they both shared a common downstairs, I guess, kitchen and dining room etc.
Growing up in Yonkers, I remembered that lots of Italian families lived in duplexes like that so they could be apart but still connected for meals and social activities.
Dammit.
Tuck needed my help and I couldn’t get to him; at least not quickly.
In vain, I tried the other two doors that shared a common wall with the left side of the house. No dice. The first was a bathroom and the second…the second was a bedroom that smelled like a morgue.
And there was a very good reason for that.
As I entered the room, a zombie which had been lay
ing on the bed like the corpse it was sat up and looked at me. It was a naked woman with sloughing white flesh that was stained with whorls of fungus that looked like knots in pine. One breast was a shriveled, drooping cone, the other was immense and swollen like an overfilled water bladder. Strands of ivory-white hair were glued to her face with blood and a snotty sort of nasal discharge. She opened her mouth and black jelly gurgled out.
She was one of the most singularly horrifying creatures I had ever seen.
She sat there, grinning at me, crinkling up her face, the skullish triangular cavity of her nose making a rubbery sound like popping cartilage. Then she swung her legs off the bed, standing up to face me and I took a stumbling step backwards.
She moved towards me with an uneven gait.
One of her hips was disjointed and she limped awkwardly, her foot facing inwards. That’s when she did the most revolting thing—she grasped her bloated breast, squeezing it, and a stream of dark juice squirted at me, just missing my face as I jumped aside.
I shot her point blank.
Why I hesitated that long, I don’t know.
Her head flew off her shoulders in an explosion of blood and meat. She flopped back on the bed, her arms shuddering at her sides. Then she sat up again. She should have been done, but she wasn’t. Headless and leaking black blood from the stump of her neck, she stood up, shambling towards me like a white, fleshy puppet. Her hands reached out for me with sticklike fingers and ragged nails. She made it maybe three feet, shook violently, and hit the floor, breaking apart on impact into a disgusting watery slough of blood, tissue, and protruding bones that washed up against my boots. I saw that the only thing that seemed to hold her together from the inside was sinew, ligament, and threads of some sort of pale phosphorescent fungus.
I turned away, fighting to keep my stomach down.