by Joe McKinney
One guy, machine gun. We need to make that shack.
Gabi nodded back in understanding.
Together they crawled through the weeds and over to the part of the shack that lipped over the river. Jimmy helped Gabi onto the deck and the two of them hid inside an alcove facing the water. The inside of the shack was dingy and had the lingering smell of fish offal, as though it had so long been used to clean fish that the smell had settled into the wood like rot.
They waited there, listening.
Gabi was standing at one corner, her hands up and the fingers curled over like claws. If that black shirt Jimmy had seen happened around that corner, he’d no doubt get his neck wrung like an old rooster in a farmyard. An apron indeed, he thought.
He heard footsteps on the planks of the dock and tensed. The guard—he was no more than a kid, Jimmy could see that now—stepped to the edge of the dock, his rifle slung casually over one shoulder, and unzipped his pants.
A moment later he was jetting a steady stream of urine into the water.
Jimmy put a hand on Gabi’s shoulder, urging her back.
She eased back into the alcove, but he could still feel the tension in her. She was ready to kill the guard.
The next instant the young man shook, zipped up his fly, and went back to his patrol. Jimmy could hear his footsteps on the dock, and then in the mud as he slogged his way back up the bank.
He let out a long breath.
“You should have let me kill him,” Gabi whispered. “I could have broken his neck before he had a chance to make a sound.”
“And then what? His buddies would come down and check on him.”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
“You said that before.”
He nodded. “This is their landing spot. My guess is this is where they’re going to come ashore.”
That stopped her. She studied the concrete drive, the slow-moving river, and he knew from the look on her face that she was coming to the same conclusion he had just a moment earlier.
“What are we gonna do?” she asked.
“Is it clear?”
She turned so that she was facing the shack, then slowly peered around the corner, up toward the hotel. Jimmy studied her lips, trying to read the words she was muttering. It looked like she was counting.
“Not yet,” she said. “I see two patrols. Eight men total. They’re coming from opposite sides of the hotel. Both have a clear view of the bank.”
“Okay, then. We wait it out here.”
She looked sharply at him.
“You said we couldn’t stay here.”
“We’re probably safe as long as there’s fog on the water. The Red Man will be out there searching as long as he can.”
“You’re sure of that?”
He wrinkled his brow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I was thinking about what Sylvia said.”
“What about it?”
“Do you think it’s true? Can he really control zombies like they say?”
“I don’t see why not. If he really is what they say he is, controlling zombies should be a piece of cake.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she got a faraway look in her eyes, like she was going deep into her own head.
“What’s going on with you?” he said. “What are you thinking?”
She smiled. “You know me pretty well, don’t you?”
“I hope so,” he said. “After all we’ve been through, if I don’t know you like I know my own soul then I haven’t been lovin’ you like you deserve.”
She blushed. He couldn’t believe it. The battle-axe blushed. There was a girl in there, delicate and true and needing something just as honest from him.
“You’re wondering about our future,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded.
“Beyond gettin’ out of this?”
She nodded again. “I was thinking about that moron, Nate Royal.”
“The redemption of mankind in the hands of a complete and utter dumbass.”
She stifled the laugh in her throat.
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, about God working in mysterious ways.”
Her smile faded. “God hasn’t lived here in a while.”
“No,” he said. “I suppose you’re right about that.”
“So what does that leave us with? We’ve got no God. The world is a blighted ruin inhabited by abominations. Our future is a huge question mark. And the only answer in sight is a man who probably doesn’t deserve the air he breathes. Where does that leave us? What does it mean that we’ve hooked our anchor to him?”
Jimmy looked out across the water. The fog was patchy, like the way smoke used to cling to the ceilings of bars back in the day. In the distance he could hear birds squawking, fighting with one another, no doubt over carrion. This world had become that, after all, a carrion country. A land feeding upon itself, much as a cancer spread through the body. It was the kind of land a good man wept for. Jimmy had seen as much, time and time again. Men and women breaking down, unable to advance another step, even when that step was as meaningless as the one before it. They were in a land of sand and fog. They were pillars of stone on a windswept plain. But it remained to be seen how much erosion they could withstand.
“We are survivors,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot, but as long as we’re alive, the ones we loved will go on living. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters.”
She looked at him then, and he had no doubt that she loved him. It was written in her eyes. It was on her lips.
“Where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“That doesn’t worry you?”
“It makes me wonder about our place in this world. I don’t know if that’s the same thing. I look at the world and I see desolation. I see a world that has turned into something I didn’t expect and that I don’t especially like. But that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. Maybe this Nate Royal character really is the answer. Maybe he’s the kind of man who’s gonna carry humanity forward into the world that’s yet to be. He seems like a poor choice, if you ask me. Of course, I don’t see anybody else standing in line to do that.”
She paused, then asked: “Do you care?”
“About the world? About what happens from here?”
She nodded.
“I’m scared,” he said. “I want this Nate Royal guy to succeed. So, yeah, I guess I do care. If he’s the cure, then I definitely want him to succeed. I prefer a world of possibilities, even bad ones, to a world of madness.”
Gabi reached forward and took his hand in hers.
“I’m glad,” she said.
The sound of a motor pulled his attention away.
He looked back toward the river, where the fog was still patchy, but not nearly as thick as it had been just a few minutes before.
The prow of a boat emerged from the fog. On the deck were a dozen zombies, all of them standing still and mute, like ghastly parodies of terra-cotta soldiers.
The next instant, three more boats came into view.
“Shit,” Jimmy muttered. “The Red Man’s come back.”
“What do we do?”
Jimmy looked around. They couldn’t run to the hotel, too many black shirts. They couldn’t go into the water. He had counted at least forty boats while they were fighting out on the river, and they’d have no chance of staying hidden in the water with that kind of fleet coming ashore.
“Jimmy, they’re getting close.”
She was right. Even as he stood there considering their next move, the Red Man’s fleet was nearing the boat ramp.
Then he spotted a wooden bridge leading from the water up to the top of the bank. There was, maybe, two feet of clearance underneath. He pointed her toward it.
“What about snakes?” she said.
“What?”
“I’m not going under there. There might be sna
kes.”
He remembered a time up around Herculaneum. A water moccasin had slithered aboard and she had cornered it between a lawn chair and the Sugar Jane’s gunwale. He remembered her screaming at the top of her lungs, all the while blasting holes in the deck with a twelve-gauge as she tried to kill the snake.
He didn’t argue. He got down on his back and wriggled his way underneath the wooden bridge.
When he was completely under he gestured for her to follow.
She wedged herself under the bridge and got close to him.
“You have enough room?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he said, like they were divvying up bedsheets.
They waited. They heard men yelling orders and boats dragging bottom as they came ashore.
Then everything went silent.
Jimmy got scared for a second. Something was wrong. The only thing visible from where he and Gabi lay were a few bands of overcast summer sky through the slits between the boards, but he couldn’t shake the image of a handful of troops rounding the edges of the bridge with their weapons raised, a look of smug satisfaction on their faces.
But then the first zombies came ashore. He could tell who they were by the slow, shuffling slide their feet made as they climbed the bridge.
And they kept coming. Dozens. Hundreds. Their combined weight shook the bridge and rained bits of dirt down on their faces.
It went on and on.
He felt Gabi grab his hand and squeeze.
He looked at her, saw the fear and worry there.
“We’re okay,” he whispered.
A thin band of light illuminated her face. A shifting patchwork of shadows from the zombies passing overhead moved across her features, but they couldn’t disguise the worry he saw there.
Jimmy was uncertain how long it took the zombies to offload, but he guessed it was the better part of an hour. His back was aching and his mouth hurt from clenching his teeth for so long.
But at last it ended.
The final zombie passed overhead, and then the sky was clear again.
Gabi let out a sigh that sounded like a mountain of fear collapsing in on itself. Even Jimmy allowed himself a moment of thanks.
But all that went away when he heard footsteps on the bridge. It was a man this time. Jimmy could tell from the deliberate step, the control. The man was coming down from the hotel side of the compound, and he stopped directly above Jimmy, so that they had a clear view of the bare chested Red Man coming up from the river.
“I got your transmission, sir, but we haven’t found any signs they’ve been here.”
“They’re here.”
There was a pause. The guard sounded like a man unwilling to point out the obvious to his superior.
Finally, he said, “I ordered my men to search the hotel.”
“Have they searched the holding cell?”
“I have guards standing by in front of her cell, sir.”
“Have you talked with them?”
“Me? No. But they’re two of my best men.”
“Call them. Right now.”
The guard paused, then pulled a radio from his belt and keyed up. “Parker,” he said. “You monitoring?”
A pause.
“Parker?”
Nothing but silence.
“McCullers, you listening?”
Again, nothing.
“Shit,” the man said. He keyed up his radio again. “Stevenson, Lardner, Wharton, you guys head inside and check on Parker and McCullers. I want a report as soon as possible.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the Red Man said. “They’ve already made their way ashore and found their way to Niki Booth.”
“Sir, with all due respect . . .”
“What?” the Red Man asked.
Jimmy had missed something, some exchange between the two, but he recognized the threatening tone in the Red Man’s voice. The tone of menace and implied contempt in the Red Man’s voice was unmistakable.
“Sir,” the guard said, “I’m sure we’ll get them to answer up.”
“Me too,” the Red Man said.
He had been drawing near the guard as he spoke, and he suddenly lashed out and bit the man’s ear. There was a momentary struggle, two bodies shifting on the bridge’s wooden planks, and then the Red Man came away with a piece of the guard’s ear in his teeth.
Blood dripped onto the bridge and through the gaps in the boards, landing on Jimmy’s chest.
He did his best to ignore the hot wetness that spread across his shirt.
And also the pathetic screams of the wounded guard as he writhed in pain, his face soaked in blood.
The Red Man wiped the blood from his lips and licked his fingers clean. “I want Niki Booth,” he said. “And as many of the others as you can find. They’re here somewhere. Find them.”
From somewhere close by, Jimmy heard a man say, “Yes, sir. We’ll find them.”
But his eyes were glued to the black shirt facedown on the bridge. Jimmy shifted his gaze until he too was looking right at the injured man, right in his eyes, and he could see everything that ever mattered about the man ebbing away into nothingness.
CHAPTER 21
Three zombies stumbled out of the darkened doorway. The first two were women who had been reduced to walking wrecks—bloody, open sores on their faces and arms, dried blood caked in their hair, hands trembling as they clutched the empty air in front of them. It was their hands that Nate noticed. The fingernails were too long, three inches at least. They were cracked and filthy, the knuckles swollen. He had seen a group of people in New Mexico years earlier, dying of starvation in the desert. Their hands had looked like that, trembling and fragile and horrible.
But without the long fingernails.
Behind the women was a young black man pulling himself along on half a leg. He hobbled badly. It slowed him down, but he looked far stronger than the two women, like maybe he had fed recently.
He would be trouble if Nate let him get too close.
One of the women reached for him, slashing her nails across his face with surprising force for someone so rickety looking. Nate flinched from the pain. He touched his face and his hand came away bloody.
“Bitch,” he said.
He made a fist and was about to lay her out with a haymaker when a hand grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him out of the way.
“What the hell are you doing?” Niki said. “We don’t have time for this.”
She had put herself between him and the approaching zombies, and stood coiled, perfectly balanced, like a professional fighter. The same woman who had scratched Nate’s face tried it on Niki, but this time she didn’t connect. Instead, Niki grabbed the woman’s wrist with her left hand, pulled the zombie’s arm straight, and with the heel of her right hand struck hard on the back of the zombie’s elbow.
The arm broke with a sickening crunch, but the zombie didn’t cry out. She didn’t even grunt. Her expression didn’t even change. The lips were still pulled back, exposing cracked and broken teeth. The eyes never blinked. Niki spun her around and planted her boot into the back of the woman’s leg, driving her to her knees. Then she kicked her into the other two zombies, knocking them all to the floor.
Niki turned on Nate. “Get moving! I’ve got this.”
Nate backed away, amazed at how Niki moved. She had the grace of a featherweight boxer.
The young black man had gone down with the two women, but he didn’t stay down. He threw them to the side, rose up on his one good leg, and reached for Niki. He looked strong enough that he might have been able to snap her neck if he’d been able to get close enough, but Niki was faster. She grabbed his wrist, much as she’d done with the other zombie, but rather than pull his arm straight, she twisted the wrist over backward, doubling the man’s arm up on top of his shoulder. At the same time she spun him around so that he was facing away from her. She didn’t give him a chance to readjust. She grabbed his chin in one hand and his hair
in the other and gave his head a brutal twist. There was an audible crack, and then his body sagged to the floor.
Nate’s mind was still trying to catch up with what she’d done when she started shoving him down the hallway.
“Come on,” she said. “Move it.”
Niki and Sylvia took the lead. Nate and Avery fell back a few steps, following them down one darkened hallway after another. He could hear the zombies behind them, moaning in the dark.
“I thought we would have lost them by now,” Avery said in a low whisper.
Nate nodded. “Ben’s back there.”
It was finally catching up with him, the fact that they’d left Ben back there to die. Nate felt sick to his stomach.
“Oh, Nate, I’m so sorry.”
She took his hand in hers and gave it a light squeeze. Nate looked down at her hand in surprise. He didn’t know what to say so he just gritted his teeth and nodded again. He had never been any good at things like this. He had no skill at describing how badly he was hurting inside. Nate wished he could tell her that having her here, next to him, even in this place, somehow made the pain a little easier to bear, but he didn’t have the words for that either.
They rounded another corner and the hallway opened up onto a landing. Beyond the landing was a railing that looked down over the hotel’s main lobby.
Outside, lightning flashed, brightening the windows. Already they could see drops of water speckling the glass.
But they could hear something else moving down below. They went over to the railing to investigate. Light was filtering in through the front door and long shadows stretched across the parquet floor and the marble fountain in the middle of the room. And then zombies poured in through the front door.
They kept coming and coming, tracking vast quantities of mud across the floor.
“There are hundreds of them,” Nate said.
Niki tried to shush him by grabbing his arm, but the damage was already done. A few of the zombies had heard him, and one by one the zombies all looked up.
The next instant, the moans started.
“Nice move, jackass,” Niki said.
Niki stared over the railing toward the landing on the opposite side of the lobby. There was a staircase there, and a few of the zombies were already mounting it.