“Sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered to the dead woman as he grabbed the corpse beneath her arms and tossed her out, grimacing as he heard brittle bones crack from the impact.
“Get in,” Colin urged. The zombies were approaching the doors. It would only be a matter of seconds before they were able to tear them down.
Kennedy took one last look at the casket before climbing in. Colin hoisted himself on top of her and pulled the bridge shut.
Just as he closed it, the muted sound of the smashing and crashing doors reached them.
Colin and Kennedy held their breaths, scarcely daring to move.
The space was cramped and reeked oddly of preserved flesh. The interior panel uncomfortably squished against Colin’s broad back, but he didn’t care.
Everything was so dark, not even the tiniest bit of light coming through. Colin couldn’t see Kennedy’s eyes, but he imagined that they mirrored the same terrified look in his own.
They could hear the footsteps getting closer.
Would the creatures be smart enough to figure out their hiding place? Would the discarded body of the dead woman so close to where they were shrouded give them away?
Kennedy chastised herself in the darkness. Zombies retained no intelligence from their former lives. As long as one of them didn’t bump against the casket inquisitively, they’d be fine.
Almost as soon as she thought it, she felt a subtle knock against the corner of the casket.
Colin’s body tensed above hers, and through her shirt, she could feel the perspiration coming from the Scotsman melding with her own, pooling between her breasts beside the dog tags around her neck.
“Ssssh,” he whispered against her ear.
Another bump.
And another.
The walkie-talkies on their hips blared loudly, static and garbled voices.
No.
A smacking of a fist against the wood.
Then several fists joining in.
She felt the casket jerk violently to the left.
They were trying to flip it over, frantic to get to the fresh meat inside.
“We gotta get out. They’re about to break this thing apart and tear us to pieces,” Kennedy hissed.
The pounding of insistent hands coupled with desperate moans of hunger were becoming more ferocious with each passing second.
Colin hadn’t been able to secure the latch from the inside when he’d closed it. Their only saving grace was that the monsters had yet to figure out that they simply needed to lift the lid.
Shifting his weight, he struggled to bring his arm up from his side. It was awkwardly pinned between his sword and the pillowed lining of the casket.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. On my count, I’m going to pop out of here and start slicing. As soon as I do, run. I’ll cover you as best I can,” Colin said softly.
Kennedy shook her head. “No, you’ll be shredded that way. There are too many of them out there. We both pop up; we both attack.” Her voice was steady even though her heart was racing.
“Damn it, woman.”
Kennedy sighed in exasperation. “Colin, now is not the time to argue.”
He grunted. “You’re right.”
“Whoa. I’ll have to write that one down. Colin said I was right,” she drawled.
“Red, cool it,” he warned. “On my mark. One… two—”
A barrage of gunfire suddenly erupted around them, and Colin’s head shot up in surprise.
A couple of minutes later, the casket opened.
“Damn,” Johnny B. said wryly when he saw Colin on top of Kennedy. Looking down at the shriveled corpse at his feet, he frowned disdainfully. “That poor old lady was just trying to rest in peace when you two decided to play ‘hide the salami’ in her bed.”
Colin climbed out and helped Kennedy. “For the record, no salamis were being hidden.”
“We were a bit occupied with more important things,” Kennedy remarked as she looked at all of the bodies surrounding the casket.
“Yeah, I picked ‘em off from that balcony.” He pointed above them. “Just think, you could’ve been up there with me, and it would’ve saved you from having to climb into a coffin like a fucking vampire.”
Kennedy smirked at him then started dusting off her fatigues. “I’m gonna smell like that wretched corpse for weeks,” she groaned.
Johnny B. headed back to the entrance of the funeral home. “You think they got any liquor in this place?” he called out.
“I know I’d keep a flask on me if I had to work here, dealing with stiffs all day long,” she replied under her breath.
Colin scrunched his brows together. “You know, it amazes me that you’re this badass little military sergeant who’s killed hundreds of zombies, but the moment you see a corpse in a coffin, you freak out.”
Kennedy gave him a look and pulled the walkie-talkie from her belt. “My dad used to work in a funeral home. One day, my kid brother decided it would be hilarious to lock me in the room with a dead body and shut the lights off.” She grimaced at the memory. “To this day, the stench of formaldehyde still gets to me.”
Colin chuckled. “So that’s your weakness.”
Kennedy started walking to the exit, trying to reach the others over the handheld radio. “We all have them. For some of us, they come in the form of dark-haired spitfires named Haven.”
Before Colin could reply, Brett’s voice shouted through the walkie-talkie. “Kennedy… you read… Over.”
Kennedy recoiled, wondering why it was Brett and not Grady with the radio. She thumbed the button on her walkie-talkie anxiously. “Brett? Where are Grady and Jackson? Over.”
“We… overrun… Jackson bit… gone.”
Johnny B. and Colin rushed to her side.
“What’s going on?” Any trace of humor had vanished from Johnny B.’s countenance.
“I’m trying to find out. There’s too much static.” She toyed with the antenna and walked to a window. “Where are you now? Over.”
“Westwinds… complex… Ninth floor… Surrounded. Rotters everywhere.”
Kennedy’s eyes met Johnny B.’s.
“I don’t know what the hell your plan is, but I have your back. No matter what,” he promised her.
“That makes two of us,” Colin chimed in.
“Hang on, kid. We’re coming for you guys. Over.”
Bile crept up from Kennedy’s belly to her throat. She’d had a hard time understanding Brett over the walkie-talkie, but something he had said made her nauseous.
They backtracked down Lafayette Boulevard in an old truck they’d found in the cemetery grounds, its bed full of shovels and ropes. Johnny B. sat in the bed, rifle spread out across his legs while he tilted back a bottle of whiskey he’d scavenged from the funeral home.
“What was the name of the apartment complex?” Colin asked, squinting at a sign a few blocks ahead.
“Westwinds.”
“That’s it.”
She shifted gears and slowed down, turning into a parking lot of a high-rise apartment complex.
A sizeable number of zombies shuffled about. When they heard the rumble of the truck’s engine, they turned in unison and began a staggered jog in their direction.
Gunfire from the back popped loudly, and Colin swiveled to see Johnny B. kneeling and taking aim at the zombies that were getting too close to the truck as Kennedy circled the lot.
Johhny B. stopped shooting and banged on the glass window. “Kid’s up there!”
She and Colin looked up past the visors and saw a figure jumping and waving from one of the highest floors. Kennedy honked the horn a few times, letting Brett know they’d seen him.
“The building’s surrounded by rotters. We won’t be able to get in!” Johnny B. shouted, leaning in toward the window. “You just passed the parking garage. Circle around one more time, and take it. I don’t see any rotters going down there. They’re keeping to the fucking pool for some reason.”
&
nbsp; “Not this again,” Colin protested, shaking his head. “Why is it whenever I’m with you two, I end up in dark, shitty places?” He gestured to the front doors of the building. “Look,” he pleaded. “Those doors are in great shape; they’re just begging to be used. Why do you always have to make things so bloody difficult?”
“I like a good challenge.” She rounded the corner of the building a little too fast, tires screeching and smoking as she spun past the groping hands of the undead.
Colin held firmly onto the dashboard and door. He happened to look in her direction and saw her lips curve into a slight smile.
Kennedy hastily drove through the entrance of the garage, hoping she had gone quickly enough around the corner to lose the rotters following them.
She slowed the truck, letting it coast as they glided down the ramp, going deeper into the garage, the dim incandescent bulbs from the headlights barely cutting through the pitch-black darkness.
The complex had apparently been doing some heavy construction. There were orange cones and yellow tape emblazoned with the word “Caution!” over and over, blocking off parking spots and turn-offs to lower ramps.
“There!” Colin pointed.
The headlights showcased a door with the word “STAIRS” across it in red paint next to an elevator bank just in front of them. She pulled the truck over, and they jumped out.
Johnny B. looked back anxiously, and Colin noticed fear sewn into the other man’s features that he’d never seen before.
Colin joined Kennedy at the door leading to the stairs. He was about to pull on the handle when she stopped him, gripping his wrist warily.
“Wait,” she said. She leaned into the door, pressing her ear to it. “Do you hear that?”
Colin copied her and then stepped back in alarm when the door seemed to almost vibrate when he touched it.
Low, deep moans reverberated on the other side. The door was too thick for the undead to sense them, but he could hear their shuffling footsteps and the guttural noises they made when they were dormant, as if mired in some catatonic trance. All it would take is for one of them to shout or fire a gun, and the zombies on the other side of the door would subsequently be thrown into a frenzy.
Johnny B. produced a crowbar from the bed of the truck and went to the elevator. He jammed one end between the two closed metal doors and began wedging them apart.
Kennedy poked her head around the corner and shone her flashlight on the ramp they’d just come down. She inhaled sharply.
Colin followed her gaze and wished he hadn’t.
Illuminated in the beam of light, he saw several figures maybe a hundred yards away from them. Their arms swayed in time with their unsteady gait, and their heads leaned to the side as if they couldn’t keep them upright on their necks.
Colin had a feeling they were trying to sense them in the darkness, perhaps relying on smell, and the thought of them sniffing the air like animals sent a shiver down his spine. Even though he’d been battling the same enemy for many months now, he would never get used to the fact that a virus had turned a loved one, friend, neighbor, or coworker into a bloodthirsty animal left with only the basest of instincts.
“We gotta hurry,” he told Johnny B.
Johnny B. gave him an aggravated eyeroll, a thick layer of perspiration on his face. “I’m working on it, leprechaun.”
Colin craned his neck around the wall again. Somehow, the zombies had managed to cover significant ground in just a matter of seconds.
The sound of straining metal caused him to turn back to his friends.
Johnny B. had pried open the elevator doors, and a dark, empty elevator shaft greeted them.
Wordlessly, Kennedy jumped up on the rear tire of the truck and reached into the bed. She yanked out all of the rope inside and quickly looped it over her shoulder and under her arm.
Colin stared at her questioningly. “We have a small problem about to come ‘round the corner. Maybe we can play tug-of-war later?”
She walked into the open shaft and looked up, shining her flashlight into the empty space.
“We’ll worry about them when we come back. Let’s get climbing.”
Sweat from Brett’s forehead rolled down his face and dripped onto the walkie-talkie clutched tightly against his chest.
How did this happen? They’d made the gravest of mistakes thinking the doors would keep them safe, that zombies couldn’t open them. But it hadn’t taken much. With enough undead pressing up against the doors, and more importantly, the push bars, they’d swing wide open and allow the zombies to flood the stairwell.
Brett had looked to the balcony to his left, wondering if he could maybe scale the building, either dropping from balcony to balcony or improvising some kind of rope from the bedsheets like he did with Haven when she rescued him from his college dormitory.
After opening the sliding glass door and stepping out, he’d leaned over the edge and pressed his abdomen against the metal railing. Even if he dangled from this balcony, he would still be several feet from the railing of the next balcony beneath him, likely breaking his legs on the first fall and only being one floor closer to the bottom.
Zombies were still meandering around the first floor of the complex, eventually making their way toward the door Jackson had broken next to the pool. They were drawn by the moans that broadcasted discovered prey, bone-chilling noises that echoed from one to another like some sort of demented chain reaction.
The sound of a sputtering engine coming from Lafayette Boulevard had caused Brett to jolt his head up in surprise. He’d watched as a dingy old truck passed a Taco Bell and an Office Max before it turned into the parking lot of the apartment complex.
Moving like a hive, the zombies that were trying to get into the building promptly changed course to follow the truck. Brett had observed as the driver expertly swerved around and dodged the bodies.
He hadn’t recognized the newcomers initially, but as soon as gunfire cracked from the bed of the truck, followed by head shots and collapsing bodies, Brett instantly knew the giant mass of a man wielding a rifle was none other than Johnny B.
Overjoyed, Brett had begun waving and screaming from the balcony like a maniac, hoping they’d see him.
The driver had honked a horn, presumably letting him know that they had, and Brett whooped victoriously, only regretting the noise he’d made when the pounding and snarling on the other side of the bedroom door eagerly intensified.
He’d frowned when he saw the truck disappear around the building and not show up again after several minutes.
His heart had started to thud powerfully inside of him, and he feared the worst, that they’d been overrun, and that he would spend his last moments entombed in an apartment complex, his only companion the dead boy under the bed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
There was no ladder inside of the shaft, just a series of rails and thick cables running along the surface of concrete. Brackets were placed every ten feet or so on the rails. Colin guessed they were going to use those to hold onto, but even at his height, his fingertips barely grazed the first bracket.
“So how are we doing this exactly?”
Kennedy pulled on her gloves and secured the rope around her shoulder so it wouldn’t slide off.
“I’m gonna climb up a little ways and throw the rope down for y’all. Think you can hold them off until then?”
“Ummm… I don’t understand.”
Johnny B. patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t shit your pants. She’ll get us up there.”
Kennedy began hoisting herself up, gripping the rails and using her boots to push her a couple of feet higher each time.
Colin watched her, skeptical and impressed at the same time, and wholly wondering how she didn’t slide right back down.
He felt Johnny B. whack him in the arm.
“It’s about to get hot in here. Get ready.”
Colin reached down for his sword, running with Johnny B. to keep the approaching
group of zombies away from the elevator.
Johnny B. motioned for him to take the ones coming around the truck’s right side while he went left. Colin hated how dark it was in the parking garage, but he was immeasurably grateful for the truck’s headlights. Even in broad daylight, the zombies were already something conjured up from his worst nightmare. The last thing he wanted to do was fight them in total darkness or try to fumble with a flashlight when he needed both hands to put them down.
The first zombie was a tall, thin man in his mid-thirties wearing a deeply stained white laboratory coat. The creature was missing chunks of flesh all over its body, wounds that had turned dark and necrotized. Colin momentarily wondered if the man had been trying to save infected patients until the very end. Or perhaps he was one of the doctors working day and night, urgently, sleeplessly trying to find a cure.
The zombie didn’t attack him as most undead tended to do once they were within arm’s reach of their prey. Instead it seemed to circle Colin, studying him, waiting for him to get just a little too close.
Colin didn’t have time to do some kind of twisted hunting dance with the zombie with others mere feet away so he rushed forward and pushed the creature’s head back, sending the hefty blade up through the soft flesh of the zombie’s chin until it reached its brain. The man fell to the ground, a final hiss escaping its lips.
Johnny B., true to form, was steadily firing into the growing crowd around them. To his credit, the Marine had an uncanny ability to stay calm under pressure and, for the most part, make every shot count.
The next zombie in Colin’s line of vision was a woman in a bloody pink robe, its hair a disheveled heap of curlers barely secured in matted, dirty hair. The neon-colored foam curlers bounced around violently as the zombie lunged at him, its hands like claws each time it lashed out.
Another one was just behind the woman, a teenage boy wearing a Slipknot t-shirt with a black choker around its neck. It snarled at him and raised both hands, chipped painted black fingernails only a couple of feet from Colin’s face. It bared its teeth at him like a rabid dog, and Colin could see pulpy bits of flesh stuck between its teeth and bloody gums.
The Good, The Dead & The Lawless (Book 2): The Hell That Follows Page 31