by JJ Zep
Chris left the bedroom and walked along the corridor back to the open plan living area. Scolfield wasn’t in the apartment, that much was clear. Neither had they been able to find any of his little I-Pod devices.
“Son of a bitch slipped the net,” Joe said walking from the kitchen. “You find anything, Hooley?” Hooley was rifling through the drawers of the sideboard.
“Not a thing, unless you’re counting dead Z’s and biker scum.”
“Any ideas where he might have gone?”
“Who knows? Hiding out somewhere, maybe he headed south and got the hell off the island, although I somehow doubt that. Scolfield strikes me as the kind of guy who’s addicted to chaos. He’ll want to stick around and enjoy the carnage once those Z’s get here.”
From outside came the rattle of machinegun fire, the thump of grenades, the sound of screams rising to a crescendo. The air seemed almost to crackle with static electricity.
“Looks like they just got here,” Chris said. He headed across the apartment, through the shattered glass door, across the patio. He rushed to the rail, leaned over and looked towards the t-junction. It looked like every Z in New York had been forced onto this narrow strip of land. They surged forward towards the intersection, a carnivorous tide of dead creatures running straight into the human barrier that the Dead Men had created. But their barrier wasn’t going to hold. Faced with the choice between being eaten alive or being shot, most of the people down there were choosing the latter. The crowd was turning, pushing back in panic, the Dead Men trying in vain to hold them in place with clubs and gunfire. A few of the bikers were mounted on the backs of pickups. Now they opened up with twenty-mils, dispensing deadly fire directly into the terror stricken crowd, firing indiscriminately, cutting down Z’s and humans in equal number.
Chris heard a rifle crack beside him and saw one of the gunners buck and then slump over his weapon. Joe picked another target, working the sniper rifle with deadly efficiency as the machineguns fell silent, one after the other. Without the guns to hold them back the crowd forced its way through the line of bikers. A stampede was underway and the Dead Men, at least those who lacked the sense to turn and run themselves, were simply swept away, trampled underfoot. Then came the Z’s, a relentless army on the march, picking off stragglers, ripping corpses apart, gorging themselves on flesh and blood and pulsing organs.
Chris lifted his rifle and took down a couple of Z’s that had a woman cornered. Hooley was firing too, and Joe. But it was pointless. There was no way they were going to hold back the horde, not even with a squadron of Abrams tanks.
“We need to move, compadres,” Joe shouted over the cacophony.
“Which way?”
“Hell, doesn’t look like we got much choice in the matter. Follow the crowd.”
twenty four
Marin Scolfield stood on the second landing of the metal staircase. He viewed the upward path in the green-tinted light from his night vision goggles, then began climbing again. He’d spotted the lighthouse when addressing the crowd earlier, and marked it out as a possible fall back position. He was glad that he had. Not only would it provide a hideout from the Dead Men, but the gallery would provide him with a fantastic view of the massacre to come. The prospect sent a shiver of excitement through him.
He began climbing again, clumping down hard on the steps and sending metallic reverberations through the chamber. His one regret was losing Alex, his Eve, in the melee. Then again, that loss was far from a certainty. Alex was chained to a bed, after all. None of the Z’s would touch her and any of the Dead Men who tried were likely to get themselves chewed up. Perhaps when this was all over, he could find Alex, round up his surviving subjects and begin again. Life was all about new beginnings.
He stopped for breath on the next landing, looked through the slotted window across the expanse of grass. Nobody had made it around the hospital buildings yet, but they would come. He could hear the screams and gunfire, see the lick of flame from the square, a waft of smoke spiraling into the frigid night air. He adjusted the straps on his rucksack and started climbing again.
***
Alex scurried along the hospital corridor, drawn by a force she neither understood nor questioned. She’d fed well, and her meal sat heavy in her gut, its coppery aftertaste ambrosia in her mouth. Her face was blood smeared, the hospital smock she wore, drenched in the stuff. Little of what was happening made sense to her. Yet something still clung to the smidgen of her brain that retained a faint spark of humanity. That something, not fully comprehended, was the lust for revenge.
The corridor opened up into a lobby. Beyond it, she could see shapes darting, hither and fro, the scene backlit by flame. There were screams and bangs that hurt her ears, rapid movements that drew her like the predator she now was. She crossed the lobby and exited into a buffeting mass of writhing forms. An electrical pulse passed between her and them and she understood at some primitive level that these were brethren. Another creature slammed into her and turned, screaming in her face. Alex lashed out with fingers splayed, catching the creature in the throat, feeling its warm sticky blood spurt between her fingers. She allowed the thing to slump to the floor then pounced on it and lapped at the gore that pumped from the wound. Even in her sated condition it was delicious.
She fed a while, taking only fluid and not flesh, then rose reluctantly from her kill. The throng was heading north, and Alex felt a strong pull in that direction. She muscled her way through the crowd, lashing out at those who impeded her path. A picture formed in her mind, the face of a despised adversary. Its name was Marin.
twenty five
The crowd was on a relentless northern trajectory, a path that would force them into the narrowest part of the island. What then? In all likelihood the sheer weight of numbers was going to force many of them into the frigid and rapidly flowing waters of the East River, leaving the Z’s to pick off survivors. Chris kept going, head down into the wind, working his way towards the front of the throng. Beside, and slightly behind him, Joe was blowing hard. A little further back, Hooley was beginning to lag. Chris slowed and allowed them to catch up. He peered into the darkness where the lighthouse loomed like some medieval tower. Might that be an escape route? He decided not. If the crowd tried to force its way in, the lighthouse would likely become a death trap.
“Jesus,” Joe panted as he reached Chris. “Jesus, I haven’t run this hard since…Where’s Hooley?”
Chris turned and scanned the sea off faces surging towards him. Hooley had been close behind them just a moment ago.
“Aah man,” Joe said. “Don’t tell me that cracker’s gone and gotten himself lost.” He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hooley!”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep your shirt on,” Hooley said, forcing his way through the crowd. “Feller my age needs a…” He paused mid-sentence, staring back into the mass of people.
“Come on,” Joe growled. “We don’t have time for this shit.”
“Wait up,” Hooley cut him off. His face had taken on a strange expression, almost a snarl. Chris followed his gaze and saw what Hooley was looking at – a big man with long hair, worn in plaits at the side of his head, pushing and shoving his way through the crowd.
“Hooley for God’s sake, we don’t have time for this.”
But Hooley wasn’t listening.
“Eriksson!” he barked, his voice carrying even over the din. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, you people eatin’, Scandinavian sum bitch!”
“Hooley!” Joe shouted, tugging at Hooley’s arm.
Hooley shrugged him off. The man who was the subject of Hooley’s ire had stopped. He looked across the few yards of space that had opened up around them. A frown creased his broad brow.
“Heard a rumor you was still taking air,” he said. “This ain’t the time Hoolihan. In case you ain’t noticed, there’s a bunch of Z’s coming up the road.”
“Well, I say it is time,” Hooley spat. “Time for me to finish what you started back in Wh
elan.”
“Not now,” Eriksson boomed. He tried to walk around Hooley, but Hooley stepped into his path.
“Now,” he said.
Chris looked beyond Hooley, to the crowd that was now thinning as the stragglers surged past. Already he could make out the first of the pursuing Z’s. If they stayed here much longer they were going to be in trouble.
Hooley tossed his rifle aside. He withdrew the pistol from his belt and handed it to Joe. Then he put his fists up like an old-style pugilist and shuffled towards Eriksson.
The last of the stragglers had passed them. The Z’s were just twenty yards away, shuffling forward with intent.
“Aah, for Christ’s sake,” Joe said. He raised Hooley’s pistol and fired a single shot, perforating Eriksson’s forehead just above the eyebrow. A momentary look of confusion passed over Eriksson’s face. Then his knees buckled and he pitched forward into the grass. Hooley swung towards Joe with a perplexed look that would have been funny under different circumstances.
“Now can we go?” Joe said.
twenty six
“I ain’t never forgivin’ you for that, Joe.”
“Yeah, yeah. Save it for later,” Joe said. “We’ve got bigger problems on our plate.”
“Me and that varmint had us some business needed resolving,” Hooley persisted. “You shouldn’t have done what you done.”
“Thank me later. Right now we’ve got a Z army closing in on our asses. How about you apply your mind to resolving that?”
Chris looked across the field. They’d fallen back to the shingle path that ran in front of the lighthouse. Behind them, some 15, 000 people had somehow managed to force themselves onto the narrow peninsula at the very tip of the island. Some stood up to their shins in the frigid water, others had already thrown themselves into the current, whether in an attempt to escape or to take their own lives rather than succumb to the Z’s. The creatures still edged forward although for some reason their advance had slowed to almost a crawl. It was as though they were taunting their prey. They were ten yards away when they stopped entirely. It was suddenly, deathly still.
“And another thing,” Hooley said. “All them times you called me cracker and peckerwood and said unkind things about my truck. That hurt, Joe.”
“That was said with affection,” Joe said.
“If I need affection, I’ll call my wife.”
A breeze rustled across the island blowing east to west. It fluttered the rags on the Z’s making them crack in the wind like canvas on a sailboat. The stench of the creatures hung heavy in the air, their electrical buzz sputtered and fizzed, blank eyes perforated the dark.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” Joe said, carrying on his conversation with Hooley.
“I ain’t hurt.”
“You just said you were hurt.”
“I ain’t hurt.”
Chris shook his head. Trust Joe and Hooley to be squabbling at a time like this. Those two reminded him of a married couple sometimes. It was then that he noticed something peculiar about the Z’s. Here they were, just ten yards away from abundant prey and yet their eyes were directed skyward, or more specifically, towards the gallery at the top of the lighthouse. It suddenly made sense to him, why the Z’s had stopped, why they weren’t attacking.
“Dad!”
Chris swung quickly around to see Ruby forcing her way through the crowd. He had hoped that Ruby had made it off the island (a vain hope, he now realized, there was no way his daughter would ever run away from a fight).
“Rube!”
He embraced her only briefly before Ruby pushed away from him. She looked at him with that serious expression that so reminded him of her mother. “I know where Scolfield is,” she said.
“The lighthouse,” they said in unison.
twenty seven
Scolfield rolled the I-Pod over in his hand and pondered his next move. He had them pinned in, pressed into the northern tip of the island with nowhere to go but the river. The temptation to push the play button and unleash the Z’s was nigh on overwhelming. Scenes of wanton bloodletting had always had an almost sexual effect on him and this, this would be the mother of all gore-fests. But another part of him, a practical part, told him that such an action would be stupid. A disaster had befallen him and he’d come out okay, losing only 25 percent of his stock. He’d be a fool not to take advantage of this fortunate turn of events.
He hovered his thumb over the control wheel a moment longer, then withdrew it. There’d be plenty of time for play later, lots of opportunities for conquest. Right now he was going to regain control over his stock. After their ordeal they’d be as placid as lambs.
He slid the I-Pod into his pocket and then stepped out onto the steel walkway surrounding the gallery. A blast of frigid air greeted him and he felt a momentary sweep of vertigo as he placed a hand on the balustrade. He looked across the field at the incredible vista before him. Directly in front of the lighthouse, clustered tightly around the structure as though for protection, were the human survivors of the massacre. Scolfield put their number at around 15, 000, maybe less. Then there was an open patch of grass, ten yards in width, then the Z’s, thousands of the creatures stretching all the way back to the hospital and beyond. The urge to unleash them resurfaced with even greater intensity than before. He stilled it, filled his lungs with air and spoke.
“Friends,” he said, and as every eye turned skyward. “Do not be afraid. There is a way out of this.”
***
Chris had just started working his way through the crowd when Scolfield’s voice boomed from above, eliciting a collective gasp from those gathered at the foot of the lighthouse. He ignored the sudden prattle of panicked conversation and kept going, Ruby behind him, Joe and then Hooley behind her. He reached the stone structure, placed a hand on its rough facade and started working his way towards the entrance, which was set into an arched gable. He could see immediately that the door had been forced.
He placed a hand on the door handle, waited a moment for the others to catch up. Scolfield’s voice continued booming from above, first chastising his “friends” for not being more appreciative of his patronage, now offering them his protection in exchange for their “full co-operation and absolute loyalty.”
Chris gave the handle a twist, applied his shoulder and the door grated open. He indicated for Ruby and the others to pass him, then slid through himself and pulled the door closed. It was very dark in the shaft, the only illumination coming from two slotted windows set high into the southern wall. He placed his foot on the first rung of the staircase and began to climb.
twenty eight
Justine Goodwillie was an optimist by nature. Yet the last few days had sorely tested her propensity for seeing the glass half full. First there’d been the clusterfuck in Manhattan, Bobo’s incompetence destroying the months of preparation she’d put into the operation. Then there was the unfortunate turn of events on the helicopter where Joe Thursday’s ragtag army had somehow got the better of her. Things had seemed to be looking up when Joe had been stupid enough to let her tag along (had he really thought she was in this for anyone but herself). But even that had turned sour, the Z’s turned loose, forced into running, cornered here on this narrow strip of land, for a while there she’d really believed she was going to die on this godforsaken island. But then, just when things looked at their darkest, god throws her a ray of sunshine. And as so often happens, at least in her experience, good things come in pairs.
First there was this nut job, Scolfield, appearing out of nowhere to address the multitudes from the top of the tower - Scolfield and his amazing Z-controlling I-Pods, the means for her to regain control of the situation. Then, just as she was trying to figure out how she was going to get to him, another stroke of good fortune. She had assumed that Chris and Joe and Ruby had been killed in the melee, but here they were, and apparently with the same intention as her. She watched as they worked their way through the crowd, saw them disappear into the
lighthouse. For a moment, she considered following. But there was no need for that, she realized. All she had to do was wait. Let them duke it out with Scolfield for the I-Pods. Then when they exited the tower she’d be waiting to take their prize away from them.
She gave a contented sigh, remembering a quaint expression she’d heard somewhere, “Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.”
Today, the bear was lunch.
***
Justine wasn’t the only one watching Scolfield’s sudden re-emergence with interest. In the midst of the massed Z’s, Alex elevated her gaze towards the tiny figure bellowing down from on high. She regarded the man with the cold interest of a spider surveying a fly. But there was something else too, a sensation that she couldn’t quite comprehend, an emptiness in her chest cavity, a pulsing in her brain. This creature (Marin, it was called Marin) had wronged her in some terrible way. She lusted after his death. Not for the purpose of sating her perpetual hunger, but as a means unto itself. She sensed that killing him would sate a hunger that ran much deeper than that which she felt in her stomach. She stepped forward, blundering into the figure before her. Then she began wending her way through the massed ranks of her brethren, her eyes never once leaving the object of her desire.
twenty nine
Chris paused on the landing, angled around the steel balustrade and could see into the hexagonal gallery. It was much lighter up here with illumination coming in through the large glass panes at the top of the lighthouse. He took a few steps along the final flight of stairs and surveyed the gallery at floor level. Scolfield was still on the walkway outside, still addressing the crowd. Chris couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he decided it would be best to get into the gallery while Scolfield was distracted. He turned and gave Ruby a wait signal, waited for her to acknowledge with a nod and then scampered up the last few steps and entered the gallery on his knees.