Mutated

by Joe McKinney

  “Well, we’re not going out the front door,” she said. “Avery, got any ideas?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Can you get us to the convention center part of the hotel? When they brought me in I remember seeing a loading bay over there. They have trucks. Maybe they have one there we could take. Might be an easy way to get us out of here.”

  A stuttering moan behind them caused Niki to turn toward the stairs. A man was staggering toward them on a broken leg, his bare feet leaving a smear of blood on the wood floors.

  A large crowd was massing behind him, their eyes glinting in the dark.

  “Which way, Avery?” Niki said.

  Avery pointed to the far side of the balcony, opposite the stairs. “Through that hallway over there.”

  “Is there a stairwell that way?”

  “I think so. There are elevators over there. The stairs are probably next to those.”

  “Good.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nate said. “I thought you were looking for the convention center.”

  “Don’t you ever shut up?” Niki said.

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Look, we’ve got zombies behind us, and zombies in front of us, but none above us.” She waited for him to say something, one eyebrow arched. “You understand? Any of this sinking in?” She paused. “Oh, forget it.”

  She turned to Sylvia.

  “This is turning into a hell of a rescue.”

  They got to the stairs and went up to the third floor.

  A few zombies managed to climb the stairs behind them, but they weren’t able to keep up, and soon Niki was leading them through darkened hallways, past rooms that hadn’t been occupied in at least eight years, probably longer.

  They reached the convention center part of the hotel a few minutes later. Though the walls were grimy with years of river rot and humidity, most of the signage was still in place, and it didn’t take long to find the loading dock, which was a large cement bay, like a subterranean parking garage, only crowded with stacks of moldering wooden pallets and fifty-five-gallon drums.

  “Look at that,” Niki said. “See that truck?”

  They were standing at the mouth of a hallway that gave on to the back of the bay. From their position, they could see a big black pickup truck near the overhead doors of one of the docks.

  “That looks like one of the same trucks they were driving when they surprised us in St. Louis,” Sylvia said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Niki. “At least we know they work.”

  Sylvia asked, “So how do we do this?”

  “We’ve got to get that overhead door open. After that, we’ll see what’s what. I think most of the activity’s probably gonna be down by the river, and if that’s the case, then we should be able to get a good head start in that truck. Enough that we might be able to lose whoever they send after us.”

  “If that thing’s got gas, you mean.”

  Niki gave Sylvia a broad smile. “Come on, Sylvia, a little confidence. We got this.”

  Niki trotted across the bay. The others followed along behind her, but at a cautious distance. Nate’s head was on a swivel, looking around for signs of movement and a place to take cover if anything happened. He had never liked playing soldier like this.

  “Take that side,” Niki told Sylvia. She turned to Avery. “You two are gonna have to ride in the back. That okay?”

  But before either of them had a chance to answer, Sylvia let out a curse.

  “What is it?” Niki asked.

  She moved around to the passenger side of the truck, where Sylvia was standing, and her shoulders sagged.

  “Damn it,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” Avery asked.

  “No front wheel on this side. They’ve got it up on a jack.”

  “Oh,” said Avery.

  Nate looked from one woman to the next. “So what do we do?”

  “I guess we’re back to the original plan,” Niki said. She turned to Sylvia. “You said you had a boat?”

  “It was boarded out on the river. But the two people who brought us here are trying to get us a boat.”

  “You brought somebody with you? Who?”

  “Jimmy and Gabi Hinton. Their boat’s the Sugar Jane.”

  “The Hintons? The same ones who dumped all that beef they were transporting for our compound?”

  “Yeah,” said Sylvia.

  Niki shook her head. “Unbelievable. This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “Right now they’re the only hope we’ve got,” Avery said.

  “I know, Avery,” Niki said. She put a hand on her cousin’s shoulder. “I know. We have to get out of here first, though.”

  Niki scanned the wall where the overhead doors were.

  “No smaller doors,” she said. “We’re gonna have to risk cracking open one of these bigger ones. I don’t want to risk opening it up all the way, though. Everybody okay with crawling under?”

  They all nodded.

  “Okay.”

  She went over to the nearest door and had her hand out to turn the handle when the door lurched and slowly started to rise.

  Niki froze.

  One by one all the doors down the line started to rise as well. Sunlight and rain poured in through the openings. Nate could see legs, and then torsos, and finally the shadowed faces of hundreds of zombies, waiting to pour through the doors. Behind them, far behind them, were the Red Man’s soldiers, riding in black pickups like the one they’d just tried to steal. Even through the rain Nate could see the startled looks on the black shirts’ faces.

  “Run!” Niki screamed. She was pointing wildly toward a rusting metal staircase along a side wall. “Up there. Hurry, go!”

  They ran for it, mounting the stairs just ahead of the first of the zombies. Avery was just ahead of Nate. She was taking the stairs one at a time, her legs pumping hard, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. One of the zombies hit him hard from behind and he tumbled forward, falling into Avery, knocking her face-first into the stairs.

  The zombie was on Nate’s back, clawing at him, ripping his shirt, tearing at the skin of his back. The pain was intense, like being scratched with burning wire, and he screamed.

  When he opened his eyes again he could see Avery beneath him. Mangled hands were trying to reach around him to grab her, but he raised himself up to a push-up position and shielded her with his body.

  “Run!” he screamed.

  The staircase was shaking badly and more bodies were piling on top of him. He could feel his arms getting weak. He couldn’t hold it.

  Avery was trying to crawl out from under him, but between the shaking of the stairs and Nate on top of her, she could barely move.

  “Niki, help her!”

  Nate saw a flash of black in front of him, then two hands locking onto Avery and pulling her clear.

  He collapsed beneath the weight of the zombies on his back. One of them clamped onto his arm and bit down. He screamed and yanked it back, pulling the zombie’s bloody face toward him. One look in the thing’s eyes and he knew this was a Stage II or Stage III zombie, smarter, faster, more aggressive.

  The zombie snarled at him. Its mouth was open, snapping at him like a pit bull, teeth freshly stained with Nate’s own blood.

  That was enough to get Nate moving. He rolled sideways, shifting the zombie still clawing his back to one side. When he turned over Nate’s boots were almost touching the railing. He planted both feet firmly on the metal rail and pushed with everything he had.

  The zombies fell down the stairs, even as more scrambled over top of them.

  Nate pulled himself to his feet, only to feel the stairs start to sway beneath him. He turned and caught sight of Niki and Avery and Sylvia just a few steps above him. Avery’s mouth was open in an O shape, her hands outstretched like she was trying to keep her balance. He had just enough time to register the strangeness of her expression when a painful groan of twisting metal d
rowned out the moaning crowd and the staircase folded beneath them, knocking them all off their feet.

  When Nate looked around, he and Niki were on a short platform at the bottom of the dangling remnant of the staircase. Avery and Sylvia were on top of the other half of the platform about fifteen feet away. The space between them was crowded with zombies.

  Within seconds the zombies surrounded the platform. They stuck their bloody hands up through the railing and tried to squeeze their fingers up through the little square holes in the metal grid that formed the platform, but Avery and Sylvia were just out of reach. One of the zombies tried to climb over the edge, pulling itself up the railing, but Sylvia kicked it in the chin and sent it tumbling over backward into the swarming crowd that had gathered there.

  “Niki!” Avery shouted. “Niki!”

  Nate felt strangely suspended in time. There was so much activity swirling around him. Bodies were surging forward, ripped and ghastly faces, snarling at him, hands reaching for him, and Avery over there, her face contorted with fear, reaching for Niki.

  A hand grabbed the toe of his boot and Nate kicked it away, a crazy thought racing through his head as he backed away: This is what a rock star must feel like, all those screaming fans reaching over the lip of the stage, hoping for just a touch.

  Beside him, Niki was tugging on part of the railing, every muscle in her arms and neck straining. The next instant the bar came loose and Niki pushed past him, the bar raised over her head like a club.

  “Hang on, Avery!” she shouted.

  She swung the bar down on top of the nearest zombie’s head, smashing it in on one side. Zombies reached for her, groping at the cuffs of her BDU pants. She let them have it, attacking with a ferocity Nate had never seen before. Again and again she swung her metal bar at the crowd, and soon blood and bits of scalp and bone and little kernels of teeth were flying in the air around her.

  “Don’t you touch her!” she screamed.

  Her metal bar was streaked with gore now and every time she swung it clumps of wet tissue went flying. But still the crowd around them grew larger. For every one that she knocked down, more surged forward to take its place. Their hands were slapping at her knees, her thighs, and to Nate it looked like they might pull her down at any second. And they probably would have, too, if at that moment one of the black pickup trucks hadn’t roared into the bay and plowed its way through the crowd, stopping in line with the platform where Sylvia and Avery were stranded.

  Guards jumped over the side, their weapons pointed at the women.

  “No!” Niki shouted. “You leave her alone!”

  An amplified voice boomed from the truck. “Drop the bar! Put your hands where we can see them.”

  Nate caught a glimpse of the driver through the blood streaks covering the windshield. He held a PA microphone in one hand. His eyes were fixed on Niki.

  “Niki Booth,” he said. “Put it down. You’re coming with us.”

  Beyond the truck, Nate could see Avery struggling with a man who held her arms twisted up behind her back.

  “Niki, run!” Avery shouted. “Go, you have to!”

  The man twisted Avery violently away from Niki and Nate, bending her over the railing so that her face was just inches out of reach of the zombies clambering to get on the platform.

  “Go!” Avery screamed again. “Go!”

  Nate saw the fight suddenly drain out of Niki. He was looking at her back, but he could tell the fight was gone. The metal bar she held dipped to the platform.

  “I will find you,” Niki said. “You hear me, Avery? I will find you.”

  “Niki Booth, drop your weapon. Now!”

  She turned away from the zombies and the men holding Avery and Sylvia prisoner, and when she caught Nate’s eye, he could see her heart breaking.

  “Come on,” she muttered as she passed him. “We need to go.”

  “Stop!” said the amplified voice.

  Niki jammed her middle finger into the air, not bothering to turn around.

  Nate lumbered up the stairs after her.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jimmy and Gabi hadn’t been able to move from under the little wooden bridge where they hid when the Red Man’s zombies came ashore. They were both flat on their backs in a channel of muddy brown water that was rising steadily with the rain. The bridge’s wooden slats were inches above their faces. The rain was falling steadily now, water dripping through the gaps in the planks, churning the runoff water in which they lay into a foam. The steady motion of the rain almost allowed him the illusion of a quiet calm. Except of course the Red Man was still out there, on the lawn. Jimmy had hoped the rain would cause him to move his zombies into the hotel, but instead they seemed to be lining up for review in the lawn not fifty feet away. They weren’t going anywhere, and neither were Jimmy and Gabi.

  Gabi said, “Jimmy, tell me again about Mexico. I want to hear you tell it, about the fish so stupid they jump into the boat and the lime trees and the way the ocean smells at night. Tell me about that again.”

  But he wasn’t listening. He’d noticed something going on out on the water and he was trying to see through the tall ditch weeds that grew up around it.

  “Jimmy?”

  He gave her hand a gentle pat, a warning that instantly silenced her. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and she nodded back. She was frowning, but made no attempt to question him about what was going on.

  It was amazing to him how fast the dreamer could leave her. In an instant she could revert to the hard, practical woman who had pulled him back from the edge of death so many times. The transformation was so complete, and so instantaneous, it made him wonder if the dreamer wasn’t some kind of act put on only for his benefit. Indeed, she never acted that way except when they were alone. Perhaps the dreamer was just a calculated manifestation of the hard, practical woman who did so much for the man she loved. Did she sense that he needed that illusion of being her security, her provider, much as their daughter had needed a night-light for so many years? Was the fantasy as much for his benefit as hers?

  It was certainly possible. For as tough as she was, for as hard as she could be, she was also a woman. And a woman, especially a woman like Gabi, was always so much more complex than men gave her credit for being. He suspected that complexity was the origin of her beauty, the way that even now, overweight and graying, she could shine in his eyes.

  He let out a long breath. It had been a month and a few days since he’d run out of his blood pressure pills, and he could feel the closeness in his chest, his pulse uncomfortably fast. Jimmy focused on his breathing, trying to ease down the pounding in his temples.

  He turned back to the river.

  “Can you see anything?” she whispered.

  “A little. There are some boats pulling away from the pier.”

  “How many?”

  “Looks like nearly all of them.”

  Jimmy was looking through a narrow part in the weeds, and as more boats came into view, he could see men in black uniforms, most of them looking vacant and bored, weapons slung casually over their shoulders, waterproof ponchos pulled down over their faces, watching the zombies on the hotel’s lawn.

  “What are they doing?” Gabi asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re just sitting there, right offshore. It’s like they’re waiting on something.”

  Jimmy thought back to the early days, right after the outbreak. The cops in Gulfport had looked like that when the military was setting up the quarantine wall. At the time, before everybody really understood what the quarantine wall was going to mean to all those refugee families who couldn’t get through fast enough, he had pitied those cops. Eighteen hours of manning a barricade, telling every desperate family that came through the same damn thing would change a man.

  But when he looked closer he realized these men were something different. They weren’t like the cops he remembered. These men were disgusted by the army of zombies up on the lawn
, but they had also grown numb to it. They weren’t unlike the occasional fakers he’d seen walking among the zombies. Yes, he thought, that was it. That was it exactly. They were another kind of faker. They had lost not only the desire but the ability, to care about what they saw. Disgust passed for compassion. Malaise for empathy. Rather than hating them, Jimmy was disgusted by them. Men like that didn’t deserve their lives. Not when so many good people were dead.

  He shook the sudden memory of his daughter and granddaughter away and refocused on the problem at hand.

  Through the rain and the gray haze sitting over the water it was difficult to be sure, but he counted at least twenty boats out there, most of them medium-size fishing boats like the kind that had cornered them out on the river just after daybreak. When they were hiding with the others under the main pier, he’d counted a number of smaller boats, too, ski boats and Boston Whalers. He didn’t see them now.

  “Did they take the Sugar Jane?” Gabi asked.

  “No, that’s still at the pier.”

  Something about Gabi’s silence made him stop his line of thought. He turned his attention back to her. She was staring at him, her eyes shining in the shadows under the bridge.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I want to take our boat back,” she said.

  “What?”

  The idea seemed crazy to him. The black shirts, for all their apathy and apparent boredom, were still armed. And as much as it rankled him that they had boarded his boat, he was also a realist. They were the lowest scum he’d ever encountered, but they weren’t blind. Unless he and Gabi were willing to go back underwater, the only way they could get back aboard the Sugar Jane was to cross sixty yards of wide-open riverbank. They’d be lucky to make it ten feet before the shooting started.

  But then it occurred to him that she meant to take the river. God bless her, she wanted to go underwater.

  “We’ll have to swim for it,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be stuck down here in this ditch anymore. Staying here, we’re just asking to get munched.”

  “Or shot,” he said.

  “Yeah, that too.”