by Sam Sisavath
She glanced back at the hallway and at the door on the other side of the dark passageway. What were the chances Mason didn’t already have someone waiting in the back alley just in case? The man was an opportunist scumbag and a dozen other unlikeable things, but the one word she would never use to describe him was stupid. But just in case Mason did decide to come through there, she and Danny had helped Fritz blockade it with a heavy metal filing cabinet from the manager’s office. It had bought them some goodwill, and, hopefully, further convinced Mercer’s men that they were on their side.
The silent lull inside the lobby and outside in the rest of Gallant was unbearable. In the aftermath of Mason’s mocking radio call, he had gone uncharacteristically quiet. When she looked over at Danny, he was staring at the pile of weapons resting in the corner across from them. Fritz, near the left side of the opening, stood in their way, but he was so focused on what was potentially outside that she wasn’t even sure if he remembered they were still in the room with him and Benford.
When Danny looked over at her, she shook her head and mouthed, “Too risky.”
He nodded, agreeing.
“Any other bright ideas?” she mouthed.
He shook his head, then shrugged before turning back to Benford and Fritz, and said out loud, “Um, guys?”
“What?” Benford said without bothering to look back at them.
“Don’t wanna be a downer here, but you are aware that the reason they’re not attacking is because they don’t have to, right?”
Fritz looked over his shoulder at them. “What’s that mean?”
“You know something we don’t?” Benford added, also looking back now.
“All those fresh ghoul nests in town that you saw while you were picking your way here,” Gaby said. “Remember?”
“Aw, fuck,” Fritz said. He shot Benford a quick, worried look. “They’re right. We’re sitting ducks in here. Those fuckers don’t have to come in to get us; if we’re still here when it gets dark, they’ll be the least of our problems.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Benford said.
“The uniforms,” Danny said.
“What uniforms?” Fritz said.
“The ones in the office.”
“The dead guys?”
“That’s them.”
“What about them?” Benford said.
“The first thing you learn in the towns is that the ghouls respect the uniform. Hey, men in uniform, who doesn’t like them, amirite?” When neither Fritz nor Benford said anything, Danny continued: “Point is, they recognize the uniforms and steer clear. I don’t know how or why; they just do.”
“He’s right,” Gaby said, picking up where Danny left off. If they were going to play the collaborator-turned-defectors, she might as well embrace the role, too. “They told us to always keep the uniforms on at night, especially when we’re outside the town limits. It’s always worked.”
“Always?” Fritz said doubtfully.
“Always,” Gaby nodded, and thought, Probably.
Benford and Fritz exchanged a look, but from their mannerisms she could tell that neither men were convinced.
Danny must have seen it too, because he said, “Don’t think of it as wearing a dead man’s clothing. Think of it as putting on a dead man’s stink to keep back the wolves.”
“I got a better idea,” Benford said. “The Jeep.”
“The Jeep?” Fritz said.
“We get in that Jeep, and we take our chances on the road. Blast our way out of here.”
Gaby exchanged her own look with Danny and saw that he was thinking the exact same thing: “Are these guys serious?”
When she glanced back, Mercer’s men were grinning at each other as if they had just won the lottery. She didn’t know why she expected men who were going around Texas killing everything that moved to be open to logic, so it made some kind of warped sense that they would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory.
And our luck just keeps getting better…
“Fuck yeah,” Fritz was saying. “We’ll drive it right down their throats.”
“Can’t be too many of them out there,” Benford said. He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself and Fritz. “Maybe a half dozen, if that.”
“You sure? They did take Kip and Justin…”
“They could have sneaked up on them. We assumed they’d left the city, but what if they didn’t? What if they were just hiding out somewhere else in town when we hit the bank?”
“That’s possible, I guess.”
“We just need to find the key.”
“The key?” Fritz said, as if he didn’t understand the concept.
“For the Jeep,” Benford said, and peeked out at the vehicle in question still parked on the sidewalk outside, so close and yet so, so far away. “It wasn’t in the ignition when I was out there earlier.”
Danny turned to her, and Gaby saw the spark of something in his eyes—not mischievous, exactly, but there was something there.
Before she could ask him, Danny said to Benford and Fritz, “Whoever was driving it probably pocketed the key when he parked.” When the two men looked over, Danny jerked a thumb over his shoulder and at the back hallway. “It might still be there.”
“Worth a shot,” Benford said to Fritz.
Fritz frowned. “You mean, go through the bodies?”
“Don’t be so squeamish. They’re already dead.”
“That’s not helping.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Danny said.
Fritz got up and jogged, slightly hunched, across the bank.
Danny started to get up, but Fritz pointed the muzzle of his AR at him and said, “You stay here.” Then, at her, “You come with me.”
“I thought we were besties now,” Danny said.
“Not quite.” Then, when he saw that Danny hadn’t sat back down, “Sit down.”
Danny did, while Gaby got up and followed Fritz into the back hallway.
As she went, she sneaked a look back and saw Danny watching her. He nodded, as if to say, “You can do it,” and she thought, No I can’t, Danny, no I can’t, but she returned his nod anyway, because there were no other options she could see.
Gaby turned around and glimpsed Fritz just before he disappeared through the first door in the back. She followed him and sucked in a breath and steeled herself for what was waiting for her in there. For some reason, dragging them into the room earlier—she could still see the dry bloody trails they’d left behind, leading all the way from the lobby—hadn’t affected her at all, but the prospect of seeing them again…
Stop it. You have work to do.
Focus!
Like the manager’s office in the back (where Nate was sleeping, blissfully oblivious to everything happening around him), there were no windows in the room, but there was still just enough light to see with once her eyes adjusted to the new environment. Semidarkness or not, there was no way she wouldn’t know about the bodies at the back, because she and Danny had put them there.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Fritz said as he grabbed one of the dead men and pulled him off the pile to rifle through his pockets.
“What ideas?” she said as she got ahold of a heavy man with a mustache. The thud! he made as he landed on the floor made her wince. She’d had a lot of experience with bodies these days, but she still had to fight back against her gag reflex.
“That’s a good girl,” Fritz said.
She didn’t bother responding and instead shoved her hands into the dead man’s pockets and rummaged around them. She found a pack of gum and spare 5.56 shells. The man also had random supplies in the pouches around his waist, but the ones designed to carry ammo were already empty, their contents currently sitting in one of the lobby corners right now along with all the weapons. She tossed the useless items and lifted the man up from the floor just enough to go through his back pockets.
“Gaby,” Fritz said.
“What?”
“That s
hort for something? Gabrielle?”
“Does it matter?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Don’t feel like you have to put yourself out.”
He chuckled. “Come on; we’re on the same side now. Or what, you’re taken or something? You and the California surfer?”
“We’re just friends.”
“Ah,” he said, and she thought, Jesus, is he flirting with me?
The thought further nauseated her, especially given where they were and what they were doing at the moment. She was still trying to decide how to feel about Fritz’s comments when her hand touched cold steel in the dead man’s back pocket. She quickly wrapped her fingers around it and pulled her hand out.
“Nothing,” Fritz said. He was working so close to her that she could smell his sweat as he reached over and pulled another body toward him, handling the dead man as if he were a (heavy) bag of flour. “You get lucky?”
“No key yet,” she said, turning her body slightly so more of her back was to Fritz.
She opened her hand and looked down at the folded pocketknife. The handle was about four inches long, which meant the hidden blade would be around three inches or so.
There is a God.
She had been prepared to do this the hard way, by getting her hands on one of Fritz’s weapons—either his sidearm or the knife in a sheath strapped to his left hip. It wouldn’t have been easy; Fritz was bigger and stronger, and despite the element of surprise, she would have had to get really, really lucky. There would have been a lot of noise, maybe even a gunshot, and Danny would be at risk.
But what else was new? They were all at risk if they did nothing.
“Maybe it’s not here,” Fritz was saying. “Wouldn’t that be a kick in the balls? Might have to shoot our way out of here on foot. I guess that’ll be fun, too.”
Fun? That’s one way to put it.
“Other guys got into this because they believed in the cause,” Fritz continued, oblivious to what she was doing next to him, “but me and Benford? We just like the excitement. Be all you can be, right?”
She pocketed the knife and turned around. “Anything?”
“Zilch.” He wrinkled his nose. “And to top it off, they’re starting to reek, too.”
“We all reek.”
He grinned at her. “Some reek less than others.”
Jesus, he really is flirting with me.
She managed to force out a smile back at him before turning to the next body. It was heavy, but not too much that she couldn’t have dragged it closer with a little straining, and it certainly wasn’t heavy enough that she had to make noises as she edged it near her, trying to get it off the two bodies underneath it.
“Jesus, he’s a big one,” she said between grunts.
“Time to hit the gym,” Fritz said.
“Maybe after this.”
“Make an appointment. I’m always available for consultation.”
“Deal,” she said, and grunted again as she pulled at the body.
Fritz got up from the dead man he was searching and moved over and grabbed her man by the arm. Gaby had just enough time to glimpse the collaborator’s face—it was the same one that Danny had shot back in the lobby earlier. It might have been the lack of light, but she swore the man looked completely at peace.
“He’s not that heavy,” Fritz was saying.
“Heavy enough for me,” she said.
“I got it,” Fritz said, and pulled hard enough that he dumped the body on the floor with a loud thud.
While he was pulling, Gaby had taken a step back to give him room to work. At the same time, she slipped her hand into her pocket and took out the folded knife, then thumbed the stud sticking out of the side that allowed users to simply push the knife open with one hand—or more precisely, one thumb.
There was a slight click as the blade came out—about three inches worth, with a serrated section—but if Fritz heard it, he didn’t react. He stood in front and slightly to the left of her, almost exactly opposite the door behind them, which allowed a stream of pale light to splash across his back. She had no trouble whatsoever finding his neck, portions of it still layered with the face paint he hadn’t taken off since she first saw him. Whatever it was he and Benford had covered themselves in, it had stayed in place remarkably well.
Fritz crouched and reached for the dead man’s pockets, saying, “You’re taking the last two. No fair I have to do all of them. Equal opportunity and all that, right?”
He was chuckling, his back to her, when she jammed the knife into the side of his throat, aiming for the middle while at the same time wrapping her left arm around his head and seeking out his mouth with her palm. He let out a startled grunt and jerked back even as she pushed the knife in further, and his body slammed into her chest and knocked her off balance as they spilled to the floor. As she fell back, all Gaby could think about was locating Fritz’s mouth to silence him so he couldn’t let out a scream that would alert Benford outside.
A loud thump! as she slammed into the floor with Fritz’s thrashing body on top of her. There was pain, but she was too busy pulling the knife out of Fritz’s neck to properly feel it. An arc of blood spurted across the room, the fresh wetness mingling with the multiple trails of dry blood that smeared the floor from when they had dragged the bodies inside earlier. Fritz’s body continued to spaz on top of her as she gave up trying to find his mouth (Jesus, where the hell is his mouth?) and instead concentrated on locking her free arm around his throat to keep him from moving around too much as she plunged the knife once, twice, three times into his chest.
He continued flailing against her, his much bigger and heavier body making it hard for her to suck in air, even as she heard him letting out a gurgling sound. Warm blood splashed both of her arms, but mostly her left hand as it tightened around his throat in a vise grip. She held him in place even as he struggled, his legs kicking out between hers. The man seemed to never run out of strength, not even when she embedded the knife a fourth time into his chest.
Then finally, mercifully, his entire body went still.
She gasped for a lungful of much-needed air and pushed his body off her, then rolled over onto her side and stared at the darkening wall for the next two, five—ten seconds. Both of her fists and most of her long sleeves were covered in blood, along with her chest and chin. Her clothing clung, damp with Fritz’s life force, the fresh stink of death threatening to make her vomit back out the MRE she’d eaten earlier.
Get a hold of yourself!
Danny, remember? He’s still in the lobby with Benford!
She pushed up onto her knees and looked back at Fritz just to be sure he was dead. He wasn’t moving at all, though his eyes were wide open and staring up at the ceiling. She remembered how he was flirting with her just before she murdered him and could no longer hold back; she bent over to throw up.
But it was a dry heave, and the chicken pesto pasta didn’t come up. There was spittle, though, and she swiped at it with the back of her blood-covered palm.
Jesus, what part of her wasn’t covered in blood?
The sudden realization of voices, coming from the lobby, made her straighten up. She tightened her grip around the knife instinctively.
It was Danny, saying something about a “horse and a bar,” though she couldn’t make out every word. Maybe it was the ringing in her ears or the sound of her heart hammering against her chest as it tried to catch up to her labored breathing.
Danny was still talking when she shook off the nausea, then tossed the knife and hurried back over to Fritz’s body. She pushed it up, ignoring the warmth of his blood against her skin, and tugged the rifle off him, then did the same to the gun in his holster. A black Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, smaller than she would have expected given a man as big as Fritz.
She bypassed the long knife strapped to his left hip and collected all the spare magazines he had on him, including an extra for the pistol, and staggered back up to her f
eet, feeling much better with the ammo’s extra weight on her. She made sure the AR-15’s safety was off as she approached the door, listening for clues that Benford might have heard the scuffle with Fritz, but all she could hear was Danny still talking.
Was it just her, or did he seemed to be talking louder than usual? It was almost like he was trying to keep Benford’s attention so he wouldn’t hear—
Her. Danny was distracting Benford because if anyone could hear what was happening in here with the open door, it would be Danny, who was much closer than Benford.
She smiled to herself.
I love you, Danny. I really, really do.
She wiped her bloody hands on her pant legs so she would have a better grip on her weapons, then leaned out the door and glanced left toward the lobby.
“Oh, come on, that was funny,” Danny was saying.
Benford might have grunted, but he didn’t take his eyes off the street outside.
“I got another one,” Danny said. “It involves girls in bikinis. You like girls in bikinis, don’t you, Benford?”
“What I would like is for you to sit there and be quiet,” Benford said.
“Oh, you’re no fun,” Danny said, just as he looked back and saw her, and grinned.
She returned it before slipping the Smith & Wesson out of her front waistband. Danny nodded and began to slowly raise himself up from the floor. Gaby went into a slight crouch, took a breath, and then slid the pistol across the lobby to him.
She had put a lot of muster on it, thinking she needed to in order to clear the space between her and Danny, but it was probably too much and the gun made a skeeeeeee noise as it traveled to its destination—
And Benford heard it!
Mercer’s man turned around and started to get up, but by then Danny had already snatched the gun off the floor and, still on one knee, twisted and shot Benford twice in the chest. Benford seemed to stumble, as if he had just lost his balance, before sitting back down on the floor with the M4 landing perfectly in his lap.