District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (6 page)

Head panning side-to-side, Daymon padded around the southwest
corner of the multi-story home and struck off north in its shadow. All along
the walk the bushes growing up beside the house brushed his right side as he
made his way to the red paver drive he knew looped around back between the
house and massive garage.

Thirty paces from the front of the house, he found himself
facing a structure nearly half the size of the one at his back. Finished in the
same stone and exposed timber style as the main residence, the garage rose up
two stories and partially eclipsed the Bear Range to the east.

The roll-up doors all passed inspection, as did the dead-bolted
door on the garage’s far northeast corner.

So far so good
, he thought, turning his attention to
the main home’s covered back porch and half-dozen stairs leading up to it.

The thick welcome mat on the decking in front of the sturdy
wood door was just as he had left it: lined up perfectly with the marks he’d
scribed with his knife on the deck next to each of its outside corners.

After banging on the door with a closed fist, Daymon waited
the requisite half-minute listening for the telltale sounds of the dead: low-in-timbre
moaning of the recently turned. Dry hisses of the first turned. Numb knees and
shins inadvertently moving furniture around inside. Or, lastly, as Daymon
ticked off the seconds in his head, cold dead flesh slamming headlong into the
closed door he was about to enter.

Thankfully, none of the above happened. A minute removed
from his last words with Oliver, Daymon was working the key in the lock and
holding his breath. There was a soft click. Simultaneously, he pushed the door
inward and took a wide step to his left, carbine trained on the ever-widening
slice in which the home’s well-lit mudroom was presented.

He saw the washer and dryer first. Expensive items on
pedestals with seemingly a thousand settings and something called “steam
finishing.” There were a number of high-dollar jackets on pegs. Below the
jackets were four different sets of new-looking boots still lined up smallest
to largest just as he had arranged them.

Daymon closed the door at his back and ventured into the
kitchen, stunted dreads bobbing with each footfall.

With its stainless steel Viking appliances, black granite
counters, and bright white woodwork, the modern kitchen could have graced the
pages of Architectural Digest. Maybe it had, Daymon mused as he made his way
past the jumbo island to the formal dining room where a live-edge plank table in
dark wood was arranged horizontally between the kitchen and wide-open family
room.

After a quick glance to the grand staircase left of the
front entry, Daymon padded across the room to the massive plate glass window
looking out over the porch, red brick parking round and black pickup with
Oliver still in the passenger seat, head on a swivel, the same as when Daymon had
left him there.

***

After making a quick trip upstairs, Daymon returned the way
he’d come and was outside the back door with a bulging gym bag in hand, carbine
slung over his shoulder, and locking the door with his key.

Still on the porch, he stood still for a moment and looked
over both shoulders. Nothing moved. The garage sat quiet, its windows darkened.
The picket of trees encircling the rear of the property sighed and shimmied as
a light east wind coursed through their upper boughs.

Satisfied he was still alone, he turned back to face his
casa,
squared the mat’s corners back up as he’d found them, and took the stairs
down two at a time.

***

The quick in and out of Daymon’s future home coupled with
the sprint back to the truck had burned all of two minutes. Thirty additional
seconds went by as he slid behind the wheel, turned the engine over, and nosed
the truck south down the winding drive.

In total three minutes were history and Oliver’s questions were
filling the cab when the gate came into view.

After bringing the truck to a grinding halt a dozen feet
from the gate, like a policeman directing traffic, Daymon silenced the yammering
by holding his heavily calloused palm in front of Oliver’s pasty face.

“Give it a rest until I get us through the gate safely, will
ya?”

Still feeling the last vestiges of the cold chill brought on
by the keen of the staked-down Z’s fingernails raking the driver’s side door as
they had wheeled past, Daymon shouldered open his door.

From his seat, Oliver shot a sour look at Daymon’s back as
he stepped from the truck. Stewing internally from the perceived insult, he
watched the dreadlocked man crawl up onto the fence’s middle rung and give the
road ten seconds of scrutiny in either direction before throwing the latch and
swinging the gate open.

“Clear?” Oliver asked once Daymon was back behind the wheel
and had closed the door.

“For now,” Daymon answered. “But there’s a rotter a few
hundred feet down the road. Must have seen or heard us coming in. And the
squeaky gate just got its undivided attention.” He rattled the transmission
into Drive and wheeled them out onto the road and stopped the Chevy straddling
the centerline, its chromed grill aimed at the ambling ghoul. “You want to earn
your man card?”

Oliver remained tightlipped.

“C’mon … water your balls. Get out there and kill it face to
face.”

Still Oliver sat in silence, staring at the approaching
corpse.

“This ain’t no different than bombing down a double black for
the first time, OG. Sure you’ve got the butterflies. We all still get them now
and again. But once you get the tips over the precipice and commit … survival
instinct takes over and edges the fear out. Same as doing a rotter up close and
personal. You stab it in the brain. It falls. It’s all over. Plus, you’ll find
there’s a certain sense of satisfaction you get from giving it sweet release.”
He tucked his longest dreads behind his ears and fixed a no-nonsense stare on
Oliver.

“Sure it’s different, Daymon. Way different. You fuck up on
the ski hill and ski patrol’ll strap you in the basket and take you to the med
hut. Best case scenario you’ve only sprained something and they give you a pain
killer or two. Next thing you know you’re in the bar chasing them down with a
shot of Rumple Minze.”

“Jägermeister …” Daymon interrupted. “Hell yes. Those were
the days.”

Oliver made a face then went on, “Worst case scenario: a
concussion and broken bones gets you aboard a life flight heading to Ogden or
Salt Lake. If I freeze up out there and get bit my mom will kill me. Then, after
she kills me, she
will
kill you. Probably with your own blade.”

Clucking his tongue, Daymon took his foot off the brake and
let the truck roll forward until the creature was broadside with Oliver’s door.

Instantly, the thing rushed the door, mashing its face
against the window. The clicking noise of its teeth impacting the glass reverberated
in the cab, setting Oliver’s arm hair standing to attention. Its face was
marred by circular bite marks oozing a viscous yellow liquid. One eye was
missing, and the optic nerve—or at least what looked like one to Oliver—snaked
from the puckered opening and rested limply on one sunken cheek.

Casting his gaze downward, he saw that the female creature’s
flaccid breasts bore punctures and scratches, likely from encountering brambles
and branches while traipsing the countryside in search of prey.

“No water is getting near these balls,” Oliver stated,
inching away from the window, the seatbelt crossing his body suddenly going
taut.

Renewing its efforts at trying to eat the meat through the
rapidly clouding passenger side glass, the thing opened its maw wider and
planted its maggot-riddled tongue where Oliver’s face had been.

“Look at that thing,” Daymon said. “You want her to slip you
some of that? I could punch the window down and let you touch it.”

The monster was palming the window now, bony fingers splayed
out like gnarled tree roots. It tilted its head and, almost as if it could
sense the fear radiating off of the fresh meat, shot a confused dog’s look
straight at Oliver.

“You better go now if you want to make it to the compound and
back within the hour,” Oliver said, throwing a visible shudder.

“Don’t worry,” Daymon said. “We’ll make it.”

Turning away from the persistent abomination, Oliver showed
Daymon his watch. “That’s only forty some-odd minutes. How are you going to
make that happen?”

“Like this,” Daymon shot, simultaneously releasing the brake,
matting the pedal, and steering into the rotter. “I’m going to drive it like I
stole it.”

Taryn was holding the creature at bay—barely. Still, the
thing had been able to snake one arm through the four-inch-wide gap between
door and jamb and had gotten hold of a fistful of the nineteen-year-old’s
fleece jacket.

“Hurry up, Wilson!” she hollered across the parking lot.
“Damn thing got the jump on me!”

Unable to see the true gravity of his fiancée’s situation,
he tucked his carbine to his shoulder and called back, “Why don’t you just step
away from the door and I’ll pop it when it comes on out?”

Taryn was straining mightily, her shoulder mashed against
the door, all hundred-and-five pounds of her small frame invested fully in the
life-and-death struggle. “I can’t. It’s got ahold of me,” she said. “If you’re
going to be my husband, Wilson … you have to
jump
when I say
jump
!”

And he did. Not literally, though. However, even before he
had followed through on the first powerful stride towards the fix-it shop’s front
door, he had spun the carbine out of the way, letting it hang on its sling at
his back. The easier to handle Beretta semi-auto pistol had cleared its holster
and was in his fist as he halved the distance to the short, unkempt hedges
fronting the combination stairs/wheelchair ramp.

To Wilson, as he ran headlong for the stairs with the
carbine thumping steadily against his backside, time seemed to slow down,
allowing him to see that the looming, vertical rectangle of white Taryn was
crouched before was stickered over with certificates promising A+ Customer Satisfaction,
ensuring AAA Accreditation, and trumpeting Chamber of Commerce Membership Since
1982. All minutiae to the twenty-year-old considering the first and only true
love of his life was in imminent danger. And as his adrenaline-affected vision
began to narrow, he shifted focus from the big picture to the gnarled fingers
beginning to find purchase on the tightly braided shock of hair hanging down
the back of Taryn’s camouflage jacket.

He cleared the trio of cement stairs in one bound and added
all hundred-and-seventy-some-odd pounds of mostly wiry muscle to the effort. But
it was too late, for the thing had quickly transitioned its grip from Taryn’s
jacket to her long ponytail and was reeling her head toward the shadowy opening
which, inexplicably, was beginning to widen instead of narrow as it should
given the added weight.

Reacting to the sudden sight of his girl’s head snapping back,
Wilson disengaged the Beretta’s safety and, without thought of the
consequences, thrust his right arm into the narrow opening. After twisting his
wrist and bending his elbow to get the muzzle pointed to where he envisioned the
thing’s head to be behind the windowless steel-door, he squeezed off half a
dozen rounds to no good effect.

Slumping backward, her knees beginning to buckle, Taryn
slipped her knife from its sheath and motioned with her eyes to the arm
dragging her down.

Instantly getting her message, Wilson accepted the offered
knife with his free hand while loosing the remaining four rounds from the
Beretta at the shadowy shapes inside the darkened store.

Seeing Wilson going for her twisted hair with the black
Tanto-style blade, Taryn drew a breath and in a choked voice blurted, “The
wrist. Cut the tendons. That’ll make it let go of me.”

Having been in a nearly identical predicament himself,
albeit with the offending appendage sans the attached reanimated corpse, Wilson
had every reason to sympathize. So he hacked away with the razor-sharp blade,
slicing a trio of inch-deep furrows across the pallid swath of skin on the Z’s
upturned forearm.

On the third pass of the Cold Steel blade the Z’s fingers
snapped open and a thin tendril of sticky black fluid painted a crazy pattern
on the cement all around Wilson’s boots.

Freed from the cold hand’s grip, Taryn drew her pistol and
crabbed sideways from the door. “Let it come,” she hissed at Wilson, her eyes
never leaving the ever-widening crack between door and jamb.

Ears still ringing from his own weapon discharging so near
to his head, Wilson relied on his minimal lip-reading skills, complying only when
he realized what Taryn had in mind.

“Let ‘em come,” she urged, eyes dark with anger.

Wilson eased his weight from the door and backpedaled to his
left, taking up station partway down the wheelchair ramp.

Naturally, with the weight of the monster—or monsters—still pressing
out on it, the door flung wide open, hitting the outside wall with a bang.

Painted by the intruding slice of white sunlight, the sneering
creature looked more ghost than living dead. Eyes panning left and right, it
remained rooted, seemingly stuck making a decision as to which morsel looked
the most appetizing. Then, as quickly as the rotten male cadaver had filled up
the door, several pale arms snaked around both sides of his body.

The Beretta in Taryn’s small fist bucked twice. The first
9mm slug cut the air just to the right of the zombie’s left ear and hit a wire
rack containing pamphlets, sending it spinning slowly clockwise and a spritz of
shredded glossy paper airborne. The natural rise of the discharging pistol
combined with a slight flinch brought on by the first sharp report sent the
second bullet high and left of the first. Which was a welcome yet unintended
consequence that saw the speeding missile careen sidelong off the bridge of the
thing’s nose and embark on an exploratory mission of the inside of its cranium.
There was no explosion of brain, bone, and hair as Taryn had expected. Instead,
the strangely silent first turn’s head snapped back and its body instantly
followed that same trajectory to the floor.

Already having slapped a fresh magazine into the Beretta,
Wilson was pleading for Taryn to get off the landing when a pair of first turns
suddenly spilled through the doorway, clambering over the twice-dead corpse.
Numb fingers swiped the air a yard in front of Taryn, but, inexplicably, the
long- dead duo stopped their forward surge just one footstep beyond the door’s threshold.

“What the eff?” Wilson exclaimed, lowering his weapon.

“You’ve got to see this to believe it,” Taryn said,
massaging her scalp and slowly distancing herself from the curled fingers
kneading the airspace to her fore.