by JJ Zep
Ruby stepped away from the wall into the middle of the corridor. “Justine!” she called out.
Justine swung towards her, moving with catlike speed, the pistol coming up in a fluid movement. Then she stopped, relaxed, broke into a smile.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Geez, kid. For a moment there you had me worried.”
“Dad, you okay?” Ruby said.
“I’ll live. What the hell are you doing down here, Rube? Kelly and the kids okay?”
“They’re good,” Ruby said. No need to bother him with the rest right now.
“What do you say we save the family chitchat for another time?” Justine said. “Right now I’ve got to get your pop upstairs. You take care, Ruby.” She grabbed Chris by the arm.
“Let him go,” Ruby said.
Justine turned slowly, her lithe form reflecting misshapen shadows up the wall, onto the ceiling. She regarded Ruby with a look of mild amusement. “Or what?” she said.
“Or you die.”
This time Justine’s amusement spilled over into laughter. “Beat it kid. Go home and play with your Barbies. I got shit to do.” She turned away, pulling Chris with her.
Ruby unsheathed the Katana, sent it singing through the air, took up her combat stance with the sword held above her head. Justine turned slowly towards her, the amused expression still playing on her lips. “You going to stick me with that thing?”
“Only if I have to. Let my father go.”
Justine seemed to consider for a moment. “No,” she said eventually. “You want him, you’re going to have to make me give him up.”
Ruby looked down the passage towards Justine. She felt anger building and stilled it. A calm head was called for.
“Don’t do it, Rube,” Chris said. “She’s got a gun.”
“Oh, this thing?” Justine said. “I won’t be needing this.” She eased into a crouch, placed the 9-mil gently on the carpet, her eyes never leaving Ruby. “Now how about you lose the pig sticker.”
“This is a Katana, a Samurai sword.”
“Yeah whatever. You gonna put it away?”
Ruby sheathed the sword, unbuckled the clasp, lowered the holster to the carpet close to the wall.
“You know I could just pick up this gun and shoot you right now,” Justine said, and when Ruby didn’t respond, “But I won’t. Much more fun kicking your girly little jive ass.” She moved swiftly, sweeping Chris’s feet out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground.
“You wait right there, dad,” she said and then turned towards Ruby, the smile still on her lips. “Now,” she said. “Let’s see if you’re all they say you are.”
thirty nine
Joe scooped up an M-16 and grabbed Hooley by the arm, pulling him up the stairs. He reached the veranda and paused, spun round, the rifle held one handed. Christ! The Z’s were closer than he’d thought, past the Humvees and almost to the Sikorsky that squatted on the tarmac. In the midst of the action, Joe hadn’t paid much attention to the helicopter. Now he noticed for the first time that there were a couple of pilots in the cockpit and that the rotors had begun slowly to rotate, the engines lighting up to their characteristic high-pitched whine.
The first of the zombies reached the chopper just as the blades began accelerating. Joe fired off a couple of rounds and tugged at Hooley’s arm, pointing him into the building.
“THE CHOPPER!” Hooley shouted.
“We’ll never make it!” Joe said. “Come on! We need to get inside.” Above their heads the twenties on the roof rattled ceaselessly, their deadly fire making hardly a dent in the onrushing zombies.
Joe entered through the shattered frontage, pushed Hooley past him into the corridor and then followed. He wasn’t sure where Chris was being held, but he sincerely hoped it wasn’t down here. There was no way he and Hooley would have time to search all the rooms. He was going to have to take a chance on the mayoral office, which was likely where Bobo Benson had set up shop.
***
Ruby inched forward, her hands raised, her eyes never leaving Justine. If there was one thing she’d learned, both in her training and in conversations with her dad, it was that fights between equally matched opponents are won in the head. Justine had some moves, she could see that, but Justine was overconfident, the smirk never leaving her lips, her hands held low, tempting Ruby to strike out at her. Ruby wasn’t going to do that, she was going to hang back and force Justine to come to her.
“Come on kid,” Justine mocked. “I’ll give you the benefit of first strike. Come on, free hit.”
Ruby said nothing, stood her ground.
“No?” Justine said. “Okay then, allow me.” She waded in flat-footed, trying to tempt Ruby into a strike. But Ruby wasn’t buying the bluff. Hold, she told herself, as Justine suddenly switched, got up onto her toes, unleashed two kicks at Ruby’s kidneys. Ruby deflected the first with her left arm then shot out her right and caught Justine by the ankle. She tried to pull Justine off balance but Justine was wise to the move. She rolled, pulling her leg free from Ruby’s grasp, hitting the ground and sweeping out a leg. Ruby felt her ankle clattered from under her. She went down clumsily, landing on her butt. Justine threw herself at Ruby, but Ruby got her feet up, catching Justine in the gut and flipping her. Then Ruby was on her feet, turning, ready for the next onslaught.
“Not bad,” Justine said, “Not bad at all.” Now she waded in, a full frontal attack, not trying for subterfuge, unleashing a flurry of blows with fists and feet. Ruby parried most of them, took a flat hand to the side of the head, a boot to the hip. That buckled her, but not as badly as she made out. She went down on one knee, inviting another attack. But Justine was no fool. She skipped away, stood her ground.
“Your turn,” she said.
Ruby had fought some tough opponents in her time, both Z and human. Justine wasn’t the biggest or the strongest, but she was certainly the smartest. The only way Ruby was going to beat her was to outthink her. But how was she going to do that exactly? She remembered her father once telling her to do the opposite of what your opponent expects. What did Justine expect her to do? Justine expected her to be clever, tactical. What was the opposite of that?
“We really should move this along,” Justine said as a loud crash came from downstairs. “Sounds like we’ve got Z’s in the house.”
The opposite of a tactical fight was what boxing commentators referred to as a ‘slug-fest.’ Standing toe-to-toe with your opponent, taking her blows, giving as good as you got. ‘But don’t ever try it with someone whose game relies on power,’ her father had told her, ‘or they’ll chew you up and spit you out.’ Justine’s game didn’t rely on power. Justine was all co-ordination and choreography. Ruby was going to have to counter that.
She put her head down and waded in, taking a couple of blows, delivering some of her own. Justine backed off and kept punching, landing a crunching right that sent stars cascading across Ruby’s vision. In return, Ruby delivered a punch to Justine’s solar plexus and, as Justine buckled, caught her with a chopping blow to the throat. Justine backed off, staggered, her hand flying to the injury. Ruby kept up the pressure, driving her back until Justine was pushed up against the wall at the end of the corridor. Then she used a technique she’d seen her father employ on one of his old boxing tapes. She pushed the top of her head under Justine’s chin and got to work downstairs, as they put it in boxing parlance, raining blows into Justine’s midriff. It wasn’t elegant, but it was effective. Ruby worked the kidneys and gut, her blows rapid and targeted. She felt Justine go limp and stepped back, got both hands on the front of Justine’s combat suit and fell backwards, getting her feet into Justine’s belly and flipping her again. Justine hit the floor hard, staggered to her feet, her back now to the stairwell. The smile was still there, but she was hurting, Ruby could see that.
“Let’s finish this,” Justine gasped.
“No,” Ruby said. “We don’t have time. You said there’s a way out of here, a way
to the roof?”
“Let’s finish this,” Justine said, she took a tentative step forward as a couple of figures lurched from the stairwell.
“Justine!” Ruby shouted as the first of the Z’s stumbled into the corridor. Hurt though she was, Justine reacted quickly, ducking under the swipe from the thing’s claws, kicking out and catching the creature in the knee and buckling it to the floor. The other Z was quicker, snagging Justine by the collar, pulling her off balance, dragging her down. Ruby sprinted forward, crouched and swept up her sword, shook it free of its sheath. The creature had Justine pinned and was angling in for a bite, the other dragging itself along the carpet to join in the feast. Ruby swung the sword in an inelegant arc, catching the Z above the ear and slicing off the top of its rotten skull. She vaulted the corpse, landed on the other Z’s spine and in one movement, drove the sword through the back of the things head. She withdrew the sword, flipped the zombie with her foot and pulled Justine to her feet.
“You okay?” Ruby said.
“Yes, I think I –”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Can you get us to the roof?”
Justine thought for less than a second. “Yes,” she said.
“Good. Then get those cuffs and chains off my dad and let’s go.”
forty
The walls were bleeding, thick rivulets of gore oozing from the wallpaper, seeping from the floor, pooling around his feet, trickling between his toes. Bobo scented the air, taking in the delicious coppery aroma of it. Thick slobber drooled from his mouth. He stretched out a hand and ran his fingers along the slick surface, then inspected them with the curiosity of a child. The blood felt sticky between his fingers and he flicked out his tongue and sampled it. An involuntary shiver ran through his body. God, that was delicious! That was…ambrosia! He wanted more, had to have…
“Benson! Benson you son of a bitch, are you listening to me? We’ve got to evacuate. We’ve got to get to the roof! Now! Are you hearing me soldier?”
For a moment, the voice was no more than a series of grunts, intruding on the vision of ecstasy before him. Then, the sound of his name cut through the clamor, and Bobo realized that he was standing at a shattered window in the mayor’s office, a M-16 bucking in his hands as he fired at the onrushing zombies.
“Benson!” Avery Grant screamed again. “The bird is in the air. We need to move!”
Bobo ignored him, emptied the clip then tossed the M-16 aside and reached for his sidearm.
“Benson!”
Something in Bobo’s brain engaged, piecing the situation together like a jigsaw being assembled in fast motion video. The vision of blood, that had until a moment ago seemed so real, was gone. They were under attack. The Z’s were closing in. They had to get out of here.
He broke into a dry cough, hawked up a mouthful of blood-flavored saliva and spewed it to the carpet.
“Benson!”
“Yes sir,” Bobo said uncertainly. He recognized this man now. He was Avery Grant. He was the man who was going to make Bobo a general.
“Get your shit together man,” Grant said. “We’ve got to move.”
“Yes sir,” Bobo said again, already crossing the room. What the hell had happened to him? He seemed to have blanked out. A whole chunk of time seemed to be missing from his memory. Then he remembered. It was the BH-17, wasn’t it? Dr. Payne had left without giving him his shot, had cleared out the entire stock. That fucking bitch had skipped town leaving him high and dry. And he was… what …. four hours overdue? Shouldn’t he have turned by now? Maybe. Or maybe he’d acquired an immunity with all the shit she’d been pumping into him these past months. Stranger things had happened.
He reached the doorway, slid the door open a crack. It was smoky in the corridor, thick with the smell of cordite. Bobo angled his gaze to the right and looked down the passage, all the way to the shattered French doors at the end. There was movement out there, a figure emerging from the gloom. He raised his handgun, tightened his finger on the trigger.
“Don’t shoot!” a woman’s voice shouted.
Bobo squinted his eyes, shaded them against the glare. “Dr. Payne?”
“Yeah, it’s Dr. Payne. Just don’t shoot okay. I’m coming in.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Bobo demanded. “And what have you done with my stock of BH-17, you goddamn bitch! I’m four hours overdue. I need my –”
“Cut this crap!” Avery Grant cut in. “We’ve got to move. Colonel, you take the lead, Captain watch my back, I get bitten in the hinny by some Z and I’ll have you both court marshaled. Now move!”
Bobo turned to go, backing away as a Z emerged from the smoke and regarded him with that curious bird-like tilt they sometimes assumed.
***
Joe hated to admit it, but he was lost. Somewhere in the smoke-shrouded twists and turns of the building he’d missed the mayor’s office, missed the stairway, missed the whole goddamned caboodle. Now, doubling back, he hoped that Ruby had found Chris and that they’d made their way to the roof. He hoped too that there was still time to get out of here before they were overrun.
“THERE!” Hooley shouted, pointing out the polished oak banister at the exact moment that Joe saw it himself.
“For Christ’s sake, Hooley. Will you quit shouting?” Joe hissed. “You’ll call every Z in the building right onto us.”
“WHAT?” Hooley shouted.
It was pointless. Hooley had been temporarily deafened by the mortar blast and couldn’t hear a word Joe said. Joe lifted a finger to his lips and gave Hooley a look. Hooley shook his head earnestly.
They headed for the stairs, moving quickly, but they’d taken only a few steps when a trio of figures emerged from the smoke. Joe backed himself against a wall and pushed Hooley behind him.
“This way,” a baritone voice boomed. Joe knew that voice, and as the figures got closer he recognized them. The big, black guy was Bobo Benson, the tall, scrawny drink of water trailing in his wake was one of Joe’s old sparring partner’s – Avery Grant, one time associate of the late, and not so great, Roland Pendragon. But it was the woman that interested him the most. As she passed, Joe had a brief view of the double gold bar on her collar, the medical insignia above her breast pocket. She was the doctor he’d come here to find.
forty one
The door to the roof was latched, but Ruby’s boot heel soon forced it open. Chris followed his daughter onto the roof, the frigid night air kicking up a flurry of snowflakes around him, carried on a stiff breeze. The air was crisp, the night clear, a sliver of moon resting among the milliard stars in the heavens. He had the sense of stepping into an arena, with the low-rise City Hall building surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers that loomed out of the dark like malevolent giants. To the fore stood a couple of gun placements, both of them abandoned. From beyond came the shrill tone of the helicopter, building up velocity.
Justine slid past him, hobbling from the beating she’d taken. Chris followed with Ruby in tow. From the edge of the rooftop, he cast an eye across the park. The Z’s covered every inch of ground out there, between the trees, stretching back to the road and beyond, entirely surrounding the building. Not surrounding, he corrected himself, engulfing. The forerunners were already inside, the crescendo of smashing glass and splintering wood announcing their arrival. If that helicopter didn’t get itself airborne in the next minute, they were all going to die here.
He angled his gaze into the parking lot where the chopper still stood on the tarmac, tightly hemmed in on all sides by zombies. They slapped at the flanks of the machine, at the windshield, using the flats of their hands, trying to force a way in. Now the chopper began slowly to rise, buffeting them aside, kicking up a miniature snowstorm. Still some of the Z’s clung to the undercarriage, to the wheels, as the helicopter hoisted them into the air.
Slowly, torturously, the machine rose, hovered around the second floor, then rose again. Chris was buffeted by the blast of the roto
rs. He could make out the pilots in the cockpit. Why the hell weren’t they touching down? What were they waiting for? The chopper climbed again, as the zombies - four of them - clung on. For one desperate moment Chris was certain that the pilots were going to take off and leave them here. But then the chopper edged forward and began its descent.
The door to his left suddenly crashed open, and Chris spun round in time to see two men slip through, a woman following. One of the men was Colonel Benson, the other he couldn’t quite place although the man looked familiar. The woman was the doctor who’d been in the mayor’s office earlier.
***
Joe crouched on the landing and listened to Benson and his crew ascending the stairs. From below came the sound of the Z’s smashing their way through the building, of breaking glass and splintering oak, and heavy furniture pushed aside like matchwood. The door at the top of the stairs flew open admitting a shaft of white light and the thunderous roar of the helicopter’s engine. For a brief moment Benson and his companions were silhouetted against the light and then they were gone.
“Come on!” Joe said, pulling Hooley forward. “We miss that chopper and we’re Z burger.”
He climbed quickly, not sure what to expect up there, knowing only that the chopper was their last hope. He prayed that Chris and Ruby had made it to the roof too. If they hadn’t… He didn’t even want to contemplate that possibility.
forty two
The chopper swung around, hovered a second, then dropped rapidly to the surface, crushing two of the Z’s under its wheels. The other two were flung to the ground as Benson and his male companion crossed quickly to the helicopter, Benson pulling off a couple of rounds from his sidearm and dropping the two remaining Z’s. The behavior of the doctor was strange though. Rather than heading for the helicopter, she backed off and walked casually away from it, her attention on the buildings to the west of the park, along Broadway. She paid no attention to the Z’s at all.