A Little More Dead (24 page)

Paul couldn’t tell if they were freckles
or blood spots. He turned back to the patio doors trembling beneath each
bruising wallop from the corpses outside. “Jesus Christ, we’re surrounded!”

“Steady now!” Brock yelled, keeping his
gun trained on the glass doors. “Hold that basement, Dan!”

Dan unloaded vociferous blasts down the
stairwell, building a pile of firefighters at the bottom. The twin sisters
cleared the bodies and kept climbing with what looked like grins cutting into
their pasty cheeks. Dan pumped the shotgun and fired a dry click at their faces.
“I’m out!” he hollered over Wendy’s gunshots, throwing the Browning down the
stairs at a decomposing hippy in a tie-dyed t-shirt pushing past the sisters. Brock
stepped around Cora and blasted the man back to hippy-hell, sending his blond
dreadlocks spiraling through the air as he joined the others at the bottom of
the staircase. The lifeless mound of rotten flesh grew, barely slowing the
festering slugs coming out of the woodwork somewhere below. Cora screamed when the
French doors shattered into the kitchen, spraying her bare feet with glass. The
teenager wrestled with the top board running across the doors and Paul put a
bullet through his nose, dropping the kid flat on his back and shaking the top
board loose in the process. The elderly woman tripped over the lower board and
fell into the kitchen. Brock blew her head off before putting a hole through
the chest of the naked man removing the last board. A dark skinned man with red
eyes stumbled out of the fog and into the kitchen like he lived there, reaching
for Paul with a hunger to his moan. Paul shot him in the shoulder, knocking him
back a step, and then put a round through his face. The man dropped to his
knees, revealing four more dead people standing behind him on the deck.

“
Fuckin
-A,”
Paul cried, emptying his clip into the ragtag group.

Wendy emptied her clip into the fiends
ascending the stairs. “There’s too many of them!”

Dan unloaded his sidearm while Wendy and
Brock reloaded.

Cora stood in the middle of the room
pulling at her hair, terror twisting her pretty face into something
unrecognizable. “Let’s get to the cars!”

“Paul,” Brock bellowed, snapping the
chamber shut on his .357. “We can’t hold
em
off much
longer!
Head out the back!”

“They’re all over the deck!” Paul yelled
over the gunfire, fishing a new clip from the pouch in his drop-leg holster.

“We’ve
gotta
try!” Brock shot the naked guy again and grabbed Cora’s hand. “Come on, Dan,”
he yelled, towing Cora to the French doors.

“You guys go! I’ll hold
em
off for a minute!” Dan popped two more zombies in the
head and sent them tumbling down the staircase. He ejected the clip and slapped
in another.

“We all leave now!” Paul stepped through
the broken French doors, his gun going first.

Brock, Cora and Wendy followed him into
the fogbank,
where there was no telling who was human and who
was not
.

Chapter
Thirty-Eight

Glass crunched beneath Paul’s shoes. He
readied himself for someone to come lunging out of the fog at any second. Handgun
blasts rang out from inside the house, the smell of gunpowder and decay hanging
in the air. Cora cursed as she stepped on a piece of broken glass in her bare
feet. Paul jerked his gun to a shadow but the fog rolled past and no one was
there.

“I hope you’ve got
yer
keys
cuz
I
ain’t
got mine,”
Brock whispered, barely visible through the haze.

“I got
em
.”

Cora gripped the back of her husband’s gun
belt, inching forward and seeing things that weren’t there. “Maybe you killed
them all.”

“I hope so,” Wendy replied, swinging her
gun around.

Carefully stepping over a dead woman, Paul
saw her seize his ankle and bite into his calf but it was only his imagination
slowing him down. He released a pent-up breath when he found the stairs to the
backyard. Brock ran into him from behind, nearly pushing him down the steps.
The shooting stopped inside the house and Paul took advantage of the calm to
listen for movement. “I can’t see shit,” he said, feeling Brock’s warm breath
on the back of his neck.

“Bad time for a fog out,” Brock murmured
with Cora glued to his backside. “Let’s just stay calm and get to the car.”

“Good idea,” Wendy said, her head on a greased
up swivel.

One at a time, they filed down the staircase
and felt their way into the long driveway where the fog wasn’t quite as thick. Shelly1’s
taillights appeared between the Suburban and Cora’s red Mercedes. A
claustrophobic silence enveloped them as they crept closer to the
Chevelle
. Paul looked over his shoulder for Dan, but
couldn’t see more than ten or fifteen feet behind him. Dan should be here by
now. The shooting had stopped and Paul wanted to call out to him but he turned
back around instead, the fog abating just enough to expose three spooks
standing on the other side of the cars. Paul and Brock stood
shoulder-to-shoulder and unleashed a flurry of bullets, making it unclear
who
shot who while Cora plugged her ears.

“We’re clear!” Paul said, glancing
behind him. “Dan! Let’s go!”

Something screamed and three handgun reports
rang out from inside the house.

“I’m right behind you!” Dan yelled back,
firing off another three round burst. “Get the goddamn car started!”

“Now, Dan!” Paul dodged two corpses that
popped out from the other side of Brock’s white Suburban. One grabbed Wendy by
the hair, yanking her head back. She screamed as the thing pressed its teeth against
her forearm. Paul shot the stiff at close range, spraying Wendy with blood, and
then he shot its friend, spending only two rounds in the process. Bullet
economy was essential these days.

“Are you bit?” he yelled.

Wendy looked up from her arm, eyes wide
and untamed. “No.”

“They’re everywhere!” Cora howled, one
hand holding onto Brock, the other pulling at her hair.

Paul stopped at Shelly1 and Cora wasn’t
kidding. The undead were everywhere.
Limping.
Moaning.
Reaching.

It was time to go.

A fat man in
Carhartt
bibs charged from the shadows, running at Paul with determined steps. Paul took
a steadying breath as the thing sprinted closer. He knew he’d only get one
clear shot before the man smashed him against the car and bit down. Paul
squeezed the trigger and the man’s head snapped back. He fell to the concrete and
Paul took out two more fiends behind him with Brock and Wendy shooting their
guns in the background. Thanks to the whirling vapor, it was hard to see the
living dead until the last few seconds and the idea that they were using the
fog for cover slipped through Paul’s mind. He dropped two more ghouls.
Then three.
Crumpled bodies littered the driveway along with
dozens of spent shell casings shimmering in the moonlight. It smelled like
rotten eggs and burnt gunpowder.

Footsteps raced up the driveway behind
Paul and relief shot through him. He turned to Dan, face slumping when he saw the
heavyset woman with short gray hair charging at breakneck speed. Paul shot her
in the face, stepping to the side as she bounced off the car and crumbled to
the ground. He fired at a skinny man shuffling from the barn but the gun
clicked dry. “Shit,” he cried, hopping inside the
Chevelle
and firing it up.

Wendy whittled away at an unyielding
pack of stiffs creeping out from behind the trees in the front yard while Brock
reloaded.

“Get in the car!” Paul cried, slapping
in his last clip.

Brock swung the chamber shut and yelled at
Cora to get in the backseat but she stood frozen with fear, watching the things
close in around them. Brock took out a young boy and then a man in cowboy
boots. “Get in the fucking car, Cora!” he screamed, firing the behemoth weapon
like it was a toy gun in his big hand.

Cora held tight to his belt. He tried shaking
her off while taking aim at the horde stumbling closer. Wendy grabbed Cora and
shoved her into the smooth backseat, sliding in behind her and slamming the
door shut and locking it.

“Brock!”
Paul said,
checking the rearview mirror for Dan.

Brock’s gun ran out of bullets. He
turned to see Cora safely inside the car and tossed her a warm smile just
before three men violently jerked him to the driveway. Cora screamed and tried
to get out of the car but Wendy held her back and locked the other door as Paul
sprang from the car and raced around the front. Brock clubbed the bastards in
the head with the butt of his gun. Paul took careful aim, not sure which stiff
to shoot first, afraid of hitting Brock in the process. Heartbeat hammering,
Paul squeezed the trigger. A man in Army fatigues snapped backwards and stopped
moving, causing one of his buddies to stumble off into the fog with Brock’s left
arm. Brock howled in pain, his gun clicking dryly as he kept pulling the
trigger. Paul whirled around just in time to shoot some lady in the forehead
before turning back to the man tearing into Brock’s neck. Cora’s screams made
him lightheaded. He stepped closer, sweat stinging his eyes, and shot the man
in the side of the head. Kicking the lifeless bag of bones off of Brock, Paul
shrank at the sight of the cowboy’s upturned eyes and the blood spurting from
the bite marks in his neck and shoulder.

“
Brooooock
!”
Cora wailed from inside the car,
fighting Wendy to get out.

More of the smelly bastards floated from
the shifting fog. Paul swore under his breath and slid across the car’s hood. Climbing
behind the wheel, he yanked the door shut just before a shredded postal worker
grabbed his arm. He locked the door and twisted around in the seat. “Where’s
Dan?” he yelled over Cora’s relentless shrieks.

“I don’t know,” Wendy yelled, struggling
to keep Cora inside the vehicle.

Fists pounded against the windows,
threatening to break the tempered glass. Paul searched the back of the driveway
through wide eyes, praying his best friend since high school would shoot from
the fog like a bat out of hell at any second. The front of the car dipped,
drawing Paul’s harrowed attention. His features twisted into an incredulous
ball when he found himself face to face with an obese woman in flannel pajamas
perched on Shelly’s hood like a silverback gorilla. The middle-aged woman
looked fresh, like she’d just turned. She screamed so loud Paul had to cover
his ears.

“There he is!” Wendy cried.

He turned to see Dan finally coming down
the driveway, heart nearly jumping out of his chest with joy. “Come on, Dan!
Hurry!”

But Dan was in no hurry.

Paul’s jaw fell open.

Wendy stared out the back window, bear
hugging Cora. “What’s he doing?”

Paul shifted into reverse and lit Dan up
with white lights. Paul’s heart stopped on a dime. His veins turned to ice. The
gorilla on the hood drove a meaty fist into the front windshield,
spider-webbing the glass but Paul didn’t notice. He was too busy watching Dan hobble
closer.

“No,” Paul said dully.

Wendy screamed.

Dan ran into the rear bumper and reached
for them, quietly begging them to wait up,
his
face a
bloody mess. The past flickered through Paul’s mind: Iowa Cubs games with Dan at
Principal Park, sunny rounds of golf, camping trips, games of Madden on the
couch.

“Dan!” Wendy shrieked, letting go of
Cora, who quickly unlocked her backdoor and opened it.

Paul shifted into drive just as the woman
on the hood smashed her fist through the windshield. He threw an arm up to
block the bloody hand from pulling him through the jagged hole while Wendy
snagged the back of Cora’s robe with her fingertips and pulled her back inside
the car. Pajamas clawed at Paul’s face, her yellow nails missing his nose by less
than an inch. He turned his head to the side and moved the seat all the way
back, giving him just enough room to take one last look at his best friend he
wished he hadn’t taken. Dan stared at him through his only eye, jaw hanging by
a sinewy thread. “Fuck!” Paul screamed, turning around and putting a bullet
through Pajamas’ hand and punching the accelerator. The woman rolled off the
hood as he flew down the driveway. Peering through the hole in the windshield,
he avoided the shambling screamers as much as possible, fearful of stalling the
car. If they lost it here, they’d never outrun the fat ones. He glanced in the rearview
mirror to see Pajamas join Dan and Brock in their newfound quest for flesh and
blood. In a pulse of thought, Paul wondered if some basic instinct would cause
Dan and Brock to stick together. Or would they wander off on their separate
paths to go it alone?

“Look out!” Wendy screamed.

Paul jerked the wheel to the left and
Shelly1 obeyed, barely clipping a UPS driver in torn brown clothing. “Goddamn!
How many UPS drivers are out there?”

“Paul!” Cora bawled in the backseat.
“Please stop the car!”

It sounded like she was yelling underwater
as he white-knuckled the wheel and braced for impact when a tall man with long
hair darted from the fog. Paul didn’t swerve and hit him head-on instead,
sending the man crashing through the cattle fence. The tires squealed as Paul
swerved around a group of rotting corpses at the end of the driveway.

Cora punched him in the back of the head,
her diamond ring splitting his scalp. “We have to go back!”

Paul slid the car sideways into the road
out front, sending Cora crashing against Wendy and gravel pelting the zombies
crawling out of the ditch. Speeding off into the night, Paul looked back to see
the undead funneling through the hole in the fence. He turned back to the road,
forcing himself to breathe, and buried the gas pedal to drown out Cora’s incessant
cries.