“Clear for now,” Dax said. “It’s fenced in, butts up against the house on the next street over. There were a few ghouls there yesterday, but I cleared them out.”
I sent him a startled look. “I didn’t hear gunshots,” I said. “When did you do it?”
Dax shrugged. “When I ditched the truck.”
So that’s what he was doing while Tony was lecturing me about our cause. I pressed my face against the glass, studying the hungry masses. The ghouls pawed at whatever their hands came into contact with—whether it was a car or each other—but then quickly moved on, shuffling in ever-expanding circles. Overall, though, this crowd seemed mellow. “They don’t seem all that eager to get inside yet. I thought they’d be banging on the door.”
“Maybe they figure the buffet will be open soon enough?” Tony hobbled closer, his hand resting on his pistol. “What’d Doc Sammy have to say about their hunting habits?”
“Not much,” I said. “He didn’t see them up close beyond watching them reanimate.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I don’t study them!”
“They might not know we’re in here for sure,” Dax said. “A few heard us come in, started loitering around, and more joined them. But they aren’t sure.”
Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “Way to go, Boy Scout. Put that hunting badge to work.”
Great. So we had a pack of suspicious zombies on our asses.
I pulled the boys away from the window, unwilling to risk being spotted when some undead asshole inevitably looked up. It only took one to sound the alarm, and if they all started banging on the door…well, the door wouldn’t be around much longer, and neither would we.
“I picked up a lot of ammo yesterday…” Tony began.
I entertained a brief fantasy involving Tony simply mowing down all the zombies in town, then chased it away. “Not enough for all of them.”
“I’m aware. We’re going to have to wriggle out of this another way.” He eased himself into a dust-covered leather chair, bowing his head to cough into his hands. “At times like this, we need to ask ourselves the proper questions. What would Ezekiel do?”
Ezekiel? What did Ezekiel have to do with anything?
Tony pointed out the door. “Dax, fetch me my manual.”
“Your manual?” Dax looked at me. “He has a manual?”
God help us. “He means get him his zombie book,” I said.
His face visibly fell. “We are so fucked,” he muttered, but dutifully trotted down the stairs to retrieve the book.
Tony drummed his fingers against the armrest. “Why isn’t the dog reacting?”
I looked at Evie. She smiled and wagged her tail, and otherwise seemed wholly unconcerned with the growing pack of flesheaters outside. “Her sense of smell is better than ours, so I’m betting she knows something’s there. But maybe it’s line of sight?”
“She also doesn’t seem to sense them when they’re not actively pursuing us.” Tony scowled at her. “You’re useless. You hear me? Useless.”
I tried to recall previous times Evie had spotted the undead before us, but my neurons refused to cooperate. Conscious thought was actually starting to hurt. “I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Evie rolled onto her back and twisted her head around, peering at Tony hopefully.
“No, I am not going to give you a belly rub!” Tony jumped when Dead Mennonite Walking landed in his lap, but quickly regained his composure. “Dax, your dog is useless.”
Dax didn’t dignify that with a response. “Why are we taking orders from a novel about an Amish zombie fighter?”
“He’s not Amish, he’s a Mennonite.” Tony flipped to the last chapter he’d read. “I think we left Ezekiel and Thrash Johnson in a tight spot. How’d they get out of it?”
Considering he was only a quarter of a way through the book, I was guessing Ezekiel and Thrash had quite a few tight spots ahead of them. Thrash was proving useful in an awkward sort of way; he didn’t seem to believe that people were actually undead, but that didn’t stop him from ripping them to shreds in creative—and schlocky, according to Dax—ways when Ezekiel was in trouble.
Damn, I’d absorbed more of that stupid book than I’d thought.
“Okay, so Ezekiel and Thrash are trapped on top of the farmhouse…”
“It was his worst plan yet,” Dax sad.
“And Ezekiel opened his mouth to yawn, and lo, it was good, for the hand of the Lord had touched his mind again.” Tony flipped to the next page. “Eh, two paragraphs of God stuff, chosen by heaven, defeating the minions of evil…and he decides to fight them with…” He licked a finger and turned the page, and his expression deadened considerably, if you’ll pardon the pun. “Fingers of flame.”
It was quiet for a moment.
“Fingers of flame,” Dax repeated. “That sounds like a sex move. Come here, my darling, and feel my fingers of flame!”
It did sound mildly pornographic, and not at all useful against real-life undead. Tony closed the book, disappointment plain on his face. “Well, that’s a downer.”
I dropped to my knees and crawled over to the window, sticking my head up just far enough to peer a little ways down the street. “Okay, they’re mostly coming from the left. That’s downtown, if I remember the layout right. So all we have to do is draw them off to the right.”
Tony sent me his most ball-shriveling stare. “No, the right is our escape route. Unless you want us to go deeper into zombie downtown?”
I could see where that was a bad idea.
“Let’s figure this out.” He squirmed around in the chair, keeping his leg steady in front of him. The wound didn’t seem to have gotten worse overnight, which meant I might have headed off infection—but Tony wasn’t about to make a quick escape if we needed to. “If the street behind us runs parallel to this one, we can go around, maybe. There must be a cross street somewhere. Our backyard butts up to another one, right? Dax, did you catch the street behind us?”
Dax scrunched up his face in thought. “I think the street on the other side is Smyrna.”
“Then we can cut through to Smyrna, hit the cross street, and make some noise.”
Well, at least someone can come up with plans on the fly. I leaned against the wall. “Make some noise?”
“Fire off some shots. Just get them turned around in that direction. You know how they work. One goes to investigate, others follow. Once they’re headed back downtown, we’ll just outrun ’em.”
On paper, it wasn’t a bad plan. It was simple, easy to remember, and we weren’t dealing with brainiacs here. It’d probably be effective.
Something was bound to go horribly wrong.
“Vibby, you and I will go take a look, and—” He stood up, and any color left in his face abruptly vanished. I caught him before the bad leg went out entirely.
“You’re not up to running, Tony,” I said, shoving him back into the chair.
“I’m fine. Just give me a sec.” He used me to haul himself up, and finally stood on one foot, most of his weight draped across my shoulder. “I’m fucking tired of letting them chase us. Now’s the time to stand up and fucking fight.”
Dax looked at his leg. “But you can hardly even stand.”
For a few seconds, I thought Tony might actually reach over, rip Dax’s heart out, and toss it to the zombies outside, or something similarly gruesome. He had that I’m going to feed your heart to something look on his face.
But then he seemed to deflate, glowering down at his injury. “Okay. You two go distract them, and I’ll keep an eye on them. Bring me a couple of guns.”
I wasn’t sure I cared for that plan at all, but we didn’t seem to have other options. I looked at Dax, and he shrugged slightly in response. “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” he said. “Or we could just sit here and wait for them to eat us.”
“I don’t like that idea.”
Tony
swatted at my backside. “Then get me some guns and get moving.”
“Don’t shoot at them,” I said. “That’ll get their attention.”
He scowled at me. “My leg’s busted, not my head. Now quit lollygagging and start baiting.”
I hated that he could use lollygagging in its proper context.
“Remember,” he called after us, “they aren’t afraid of you! Why should you be afraid of them?”
***
“He’s probably going to leave us,” Dax said once we’d left Tony with most of our weaponry. “He’s going to hobble out the back door and ditch our sorry asses.”
“No, he isn’t.” I rubbed my hand up and down my rifle’s barrel, reminding myself that it was there and I knew how to use it. I had filled my pockets with extra ammo, and I was pretty sure the whole load was weighing me down by at least fifteen pounds. Still, by video game standards, I was woefully under-equipped. I should have at least carried five grenades and a flamethrower.
“How do you know?” The back door opened up to the still grayness of the backyard. The deck squeaked with each step we took.
“I just know,” I said. “And for someone who touts the innate goodness of humanity, you’ve really developed one hell of a pessimistic streak.”
“Everyone I loved got blown up,” he snapped. “Or zombified. Should I start singing ‘Kumbaya’ and make it all go away?”
He had a point. I let the subject drop.
We walked down the street in relative silence.
I kept expecting something to come flying at us, though at that point the undead had established themselves as thoroughly land-bound creatures. Still, anything could have been hiding in or behind the abandoned vehicles that dotted the landscape, some of which were still parked neatly in driveways, as if no one had made any effort to leave.
“It’s too quiet,” Dax whispered. Even his hushed tone seemed overly loud in the bleak landscape. “Way too quiet. There should be some movement, something…”
“Are your Scout senses tingling?” Ugh, I was starting to sound like Tony.
“Where are the people, Vibeke? Hammond’s patrols obviously didn’t get out this far. I saw the lists in processing. Almost no one from Muldoon made it to Elderwood.”
I stopped, glancing at the house nearest us. I didn’t see anything looking back at me from the windows, but that didn’t mean people weren’t in there hiding out. “Maybe they’re waiting to see what happens.”
“Maybe they’re all dead.”
“You’re real pleasant company today.” I started walking again, but Dax held still, head cocked slightly to the side. “What?” I asked.
“Listen.”
I listened.
Ah, hell. The zombies were singing.
The living dead aren’t an overly verbose species. They make very few actual noises, most of which translate roughly as moans, but might well have different meanings—to them, anyway. The long, thin howl that rose over the rooftops and assailed my eardrums probably meant dinner is near, and believe me, a whole chorus of them is one of the most bone-chilling things you’ll ever hear. Human vocal cords just don’t sound right after they’ve had some time to rot, and the moans were patchy in places.
My body wanted to freeze—wanted to drop to the ground and curl up to block out the noise. No one seemed to know if it was purely a psychological response, or if the dead actually had some kind of built-in mechanism to paralyze the living. Hammond’s soldiers had called it singing and the term stuck, but I’d never entrust the dead with Christmas carols.
Dax lifted his hands to his ears, then seemed to think better of it. “Do you think they talk to each other? Do they communicate?” he asked.
If we stood here much longer, my already-thin courage would start to wane. “Can we keep moving? And I don’t know if they talk. They don’t seem to fight with each other, so maybe they do chit-chat.”
He started walking again, but continued with his new line of thought. “We assume animals are stupid, but it’s really more us not understanding them than actual stupidity. What if the dead are the same way?”
“I don’t think animals are stupid.” Nevertheless, I sure as hell hoped the dead were. Bad enough that they were rotting, flesh-eating fiends that wanted to devour me. I wasn’t sure I could handle rotting, flesh-eating fiends that were also intelligent. “And are you bringing this up because you’re feeling all merciful again? You know, I’ve been up close and personal with at least four of these guys, and they all tried to eat me. I don’t think they can be reasoned with.”
Dax sighed, shaking his head. “That’s not what I meant. What if they can plan?”
If Tony were with us, he would have reached over and slapped Dax upside the head. I was pretty sure I couldn’t pull that move off with any grace, so I just sent him an incredulous look and said, “If they could plan, we’d probably all be dead already.”
“I didn’t say they were good planners.”
We stopped at the last house on the block. I headed for the corner, where the stucco siding would at least offer us some protection. Then I peeked around.
Clumps of dead people staggered along the parallel street, accompanied by a handful of fast-moving variants. They were strewn out like some sort of macabre circus train, all torn shirts and shuffling limbs. Some of them sported blackened burns, as though they’d encountered the business end of a flamethrower. Others seemed relatively untouched.
“Where are they coming from?” Dax whispered. “What’s down there?”
“It’s the historical district, and there’s other stuff…I think…” I didn’t remember much of Old Town Muldoon’s layout, but I’d taken a few spins through it during EMT shifts, and again when I toyed with the idea of moving closer to work in Astra. I remembered some very pretty churches, a restored nineteenth-century inn, and the high school…
Oh, no. “Muldoon High was designated as a mass care facility,” I said.
Dax looked blank. “What’s that mean?”
“It means that’s where people went during an evacuation or an emergency,” I said. “Oh, damn. I bet that’s where all those people went when this happened.”
“It was in that direction?” He pointed downtown.
“Yup.” Most of the specifics had escaped me at that point, but I knew Muldoon High featured a giant gymnasium and some pretty impressive outdoor space, making it a natural option for a refugee camp. “I guess it didn’t work.”
Dax stared out at the horde shuffling past us. “And I’m guessing it didn’t work is your polite way of saying they got overrun.”
I gestured to the revenants. “Well, that’s what it looks like.”
“So what do we do?”
Now I’m in charge? I shrugged and tried to look nonchalant, desperately hoping that all my false courage would suddenly become real, allowing me to charge off into battle like some crazed maniac with an AK-47 that I actually knew how to use. Instead, I held my elderly rifle a little closer and wondered if there was a patron saint for those who fought the undead.
If not, we needed to think one up fast, and it was not going to be Ezekiel the Mennonite.
“We do what we came here to do,” I said. Good, at least I sounded semi-authoritative. I readied myself to take my first suicidal step out from behind the house.
Then the gunshot sounded.
I dove back behind the wall, assuming Tony had lost his mind and was going to drag all the undead bastards down on top of him. “Is he crazy?”
“Very likely,” Dax said. “But those aren’t our guns.”
I twisted around to stare at him. “How can you tell?”
“Guns have different sounds, you know.”
They do? Rather than expose how little I really knew, I opted to maintain the strong, silent façade a little longer. “So that’s not him?”
More shots went off. Dax nodded thoughtfully. “Shotgun of some sort. Maybe an assault rifle. Not ours.”
Huh. Dax could i
dentify guns based on their sounds? “What other freakish talents have you been hiding from us?”
“I can juggle.”
Well, that would certainly come in handy, provided we got a lid on the whole zombie apocalypse thing. “So someone’s shooting and it’s not Tony…”
“Several someones. Or one guy with a bunch of arms.” He lifted his hands when I sent him a withering look. “Hey, we’re dealing with evil stardust. It could happen. Now what?”
Hell if I knew. I hadn’t worked random shooters into the equation.
More gunfire crackled from up the street. Stop doing that, I wanted to screech, you’ll draw more of them!
Dax grunted. “Now that sounded like one of Tony’s guns.”
False bravado and a morbid sense of curiosity quickly overrode whatever common sense I had left. I inched forward, still pressed up against the wall, to see what was happening.
The dead lurched on, drawn by the noise. Sound, I thought, waiting for them to turn around and spot me. It’s definitely sound, they’d smell us if it was scent, and the guns make too much noise for them to disregard.
Damn, I hated being right about things.
I turned right when I reached the corner of the house. From there, it was either stand and gawk or move parallel to the column. We crept through the front yards of silent houses, always watching the nearby ghouls for any sign of interest.
They ignored us completely.
I somehow ended up leading the way, quickening my pace when the shots grew closer together. I still couldn’t figure out what sort of gun they came from, but they probably meant Tony was fighting back.
But fighting who?
Dax stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, then pointed at an ash-covered pickup. It was the same one he’d driven us back in yesterday, though 24 hours and better lighting did it no favors. It looked battered and dented, not powerful and imposing.
“Here,” he said, “this’ll give us some cover.”
We ducked behind the truck, and I tried to push my thoughts into something resembling an organized cluster. “Tony said to move this thing around the block.”
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