Fire Birds (17 page)

I turned and looked at the two women. Christine slouched there like a marionette with cut strings. Her legs were obscenely bent and spread. Her head rested against the wall, and her mouth hung open. There was scratching on the bedroom door. Sara didn’t move. She sat cross-legged on the floor facing Christine.

“She was so angry,” she said, “even before all this, even before she lost Julio. She had so much anger.”

The thumps continued against the door and more started against the wall.

Then Sara looked up at me and shielded her eyes from the light. “Oh my God. Grant!”

“There’s nothing we can do right now,” I said. “Hopefully he stayed in the RV. He knows they’re inside because he had the RV headlights on.”

She stood and pulled the blanket from my bed. Then she put it over Christine’s body.

“She might turn soon,” I said. “We don’t want a repeat of Julio.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I’ll take care of her,” I said. “You go out the window and climb up the ladder to the roof. There’s a shotgun and a .30-30 in the closet. Have you ever fired a lever action?”

She didn’t answer. She bent over and picked up her little pink gun, checked it to see if it was ready, then quickly aimed at the blanket and put two rounds into Christine’s skull. The sound of the gun in that enclosed space made my ears ring. The smoke, moving through the blue light of my lamp, looked ghostly.

“Do you have food?” Sara asked calmly as she shoved her still-smoking weapon into the back of her jeans.

“Yeah,” I said. “Some.”

“Do you think they’ll get in? We could stay in here until morning at least.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t like them being so close. I don’t like her being so close.”

Sara looked down at Christine’s body again.

“We could…we could dump her out the window if you’re worried about her,” she said. “We could push the dresser against the door. It’s not like we’ll be able to get off the roof anyway.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to go ahead and move some of this stuff up there, though, just in case we have to go out. I want more than just the bug out bag. It’ll take more than one trip to get all of it.”

She picked up the flashlight and went to the closet to remove the long guns. I opened the window then went over to the dresser. I opened the top drawer and pulled out another headlamp, a .45 revolver, and a box of ammunition. I put on a shirt, tied my boots, strapped on my hip holster with the 9mm. Then I got into my shoulder holster with the .45. I strapped a knife to my leg by my boot and went to the corner for my baseball bat.

Sara stood by the window and watched me.

“Here,” I said and tossed her the extra headlamp. She caught it and put it on, but didn’t turn it on.

“Are you sorry I came back?” she said.

The knocks and scratches against the door were louder.

“Nope,” I said.

“It’s been trouble,” she said.

“And more to come, I expect,” I said. “But you’re worth it.”

She looked at the floor. “Grant and Bruce were the only ones. That thing Christine said earlier…it wasn’t true.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. It especially doesn’t matter right now. I just want to know about potential threats. I don’t like being in the dark. I don’t like you keeping secrets.”

She looked back to Christine’s body then back to me.

“You cared before,” she said.

“It took me by surprise,” I replied. “I hate surprises. Right now, we have a more pressing matter.”

She sat down on the bed and ran her fingers through her hair.

“I tried to kill Bruce,” she said, “and I thought I did. That’s why he’s here, I think.”

“What…you…?”

“I hit him in the head with a piece of wood and locked him in a room with the infected down in Hattiesburg, and I left him to die.”

A loud moan outside made her glance at the door. I just stared at her, unsure what to say.

“Did I ever really know you?” was what eventually came out of my mouth.

“He was a cruel man,” she said. “I had to do it.”

“Okay…but…Christ, Sara.”

“I’m not sorry I did it,” she said.

“Why are you telling me this now? Jesus Christ! Look around!” I yelled and waved a hand over to Christine and the pool of blood.

“I don’t want to think about this right now,” I said, putting the stuff on the bed next to Sara. “Christine just slit her wrists while she was sitting on top of me. She could have stabbed me. She could have done anything. There are zombies in the house, and–” I stopped next to Sara and looked down at her. My headlamp shined in her face. “What the hell is going on with you?”

She turned her head out of the glare and started to speak.

“Don’t answer that,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get her out of the room.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We have more important things going on right now. Grab her legs.”

I lifted Christine up from under her armpits, and Sara grabbed her ankles. The blanket fell off her when we went around the bed, and I was uncomfortably aware that my hand was touching her bare, lifeless breast. When we got her to the window, Sara helped me lift her up so her torso was hanging out then we lifted her legs and let gravity pull her out the window to backyard. She hit the ground below with a thud.

I took a moment to breathe and get over the sight of her bloody legs and dirty feet disappearing out the window. Sara stared at me expectantly.

“I’m taking some of these things up to the roof,” I said. “Can you move the dresser by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

I put on the backpack and grabbed the .30-30. Then I climbed out the window onto the ladder that I had built months before. It was dark outside, but below me I could see movement. I was hopeful that we wouldn’t be overrun the way we had been before. I knew there were a lot on the property, just from that brief view I’d gotten of the RV’s headlight beams, but they were only coming in through the gate at the driveway, unlike the last time when they came in from everywhere. If we could get the gate shut, I was confident we had enough ammo to clear them out.

I climbed up onto the roof and walked up the incline on the asphalt shingles to the peak. I put the rifle down across the top of the chimney and took off the backpack. Then I looked out to the front of the property. The RV’s engine was idling and the high beams were on. Most of the zombies from the road were either already inside or coming in. The lights barely illuminated the road, but from what I could see there weren’t any coming in to replace the ones that had come onto the property.

I didn’t see Grant, so I presumed he was sitting behind the wheel. I didn’t know what he had planned, but I hoped he was waiting for an opportunity to drive down to the end of the driveway and shut the gate.

Then there was a gunshot inside the house. It was unexpected, and it startled me. I turned around too quickly and lost my footing. I fell on my ass and skidded down the shingles. Thankfully, the heel of my boot caught the gutter and stopped my fall.

There was another shot in the house.

“Sara, are you okay!?”

Another shot went off. I edged over to the ladder, climbed down as far as the open window, and pulled my pistol. The room was empty, and the door was open. The gun went off again. My headlamp beam fell on a dead creature in the doorway.

I climbed in the window. There was another gunshot.

“Sara, what are you doing? Get back here!” I yelled as I ran for the door.

“Shut the door!” she yelled. “I’m fixing this!”

“Dammit, Sara, get up here!”

I stepped over the thing in the doorway, then over two more in the hallway, and found a “live” one on the stairs. I put it down with one shot, then stumbled over bodies until I got to the bottom of the stairs.

She was just about to go out the front door. She had the shotgun to her shoulder and fired out onto the porch. There were zombies in the house that she’d avoided or ignored. Between Sara and I were three of them just standing there as if trying to decide which of us they wanted. Sara pumped her shotgun and exited the house. I had taken the plug out of that shotgun, so I knew it held more than three–but I couldn’t remember how many times she’d fired.

“Sara, come back! You’re almost out of shells!”

There were guns in every room of the house, but I kept an AR-15 in the downstairs bedroom where Julio had died. Rather than go after Sara, I cut to my left to get the gun. Another gunshot went off outside. Then I heard Grant yelling. Sara answered him. There were four shots in quick succession.

“Goddammit, Sara,” I said.

The back hallway was clear, and I threw open the door to the bedroom closet. I grabbed the AR-15 and ran out of the room, past the bathroom, and out the back door. A naked female with no arms ran at me out of the darkness from the direction of the well house. The thing still had a full head of long, tangled hair. I brought the rifle up, pulled the trigger twice, and its brains sprayed out.

I looked to my left. There were several creatures gathering around Christine’s corpse. One of them was already on hands and knees and chewing on the body. Two shots rang out from the front of the house, then the horn from the RV sounded.

I ran to the right and rounded the corner of the house and into the driveway. Sara was climbing into the side door of the RV.

“Sara!”

Once she’d shut the door, the RV started rolling. Then, in the red glow of the taillights, I saw a line come up off the ground and straighten. It took me a second to realize what it was.

“No,” I said. Then I yelled, “No! Stop! The hose is still connected!”

The hose tightened and bounced a little then I heard the tires spinning in the gravel.

“Dammit, stop!”

There was a loud noise behind me from the cistern, and the hose came free. The RV sped up with the hose snaking along behind it. Grant plowed through the zombies in the driveway and pulled out into the road. Then he slammed on the brakes. The interior light came on, then went out. Creatures from the road started gathering around it and slapping the side. The vehicle lurched forward, stopped again, and then he sped away without closing the gate.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

Right before the taillights disappeared from sight, the horn went off in a long, blast that continued for a mile or more. But I didn’t stick around to listen to the horn. I could see the shadows closing in around me, and some of the things were coming into my light. I considered trying to make it to the car by the barn, but I didn’t want to take the risk. Instead, I ran back into the house.

I locked the back door then moved into the kitchen. A child was in there ripping into a bag of garbage. When my light fell on it, it turned and stared. I had no idea whether it had been a boy or a girl. It was hunched there on all fours. It growled at me then moved toward me slowly on hands and feet like an ape.

I hated shooting kids.

When it got close enough, I kicked it in the head. It fell back, and its leg jerked in a spasm. I went past it to the entrance of the living room. There were five adults in there. They turned when they saw my light and stared curiously. I looked at the front door. If I moved quickly, I could get the door shut before I had to fire my weapon.

To my right was the fireplace and mantelpiece. Some of Mrs. Lassiter’s figurines were still up there. I grabbed the closest one–a small, blue and white porcelain statue of a boy holding a pail. I threw it hard against the wall by the stairs. It shattered, and all the creatures turned to see the source of the noise. While they were turned, I ran and shut the door. After that, I had no qualms about firing my weapon.

Five sets of milky eyes settled on me again. A mouth or two dropped open. One took a dragging step toward me.

“Ghaaah,” another of them said.

I put the AR-15 to my shoulder and kept squeezing the trigger until they were all down and no longer moving. Then I went around and shot each one in the head two more times to be sure.

I found another one in the upstairs bathroom. After it was dead, I went back downstairs to remove the child. It didn’t weigh very much, but I didn’t pick it up–I didn’t want to cuddle it. I just dragged it to the back door by its foot, opened the door quickly, and slung it out like a rag doll before anything else could come in.

I turned my back to the door and rested on it for a second with my eyes closed and just breathed. Then I stepped over to the cabinet under the sink, pulled out a bottle, sat at the table, and had a drink.

At 7:00 A.M., I stood on the roof and leaned against the chimney with my bottle and my rifles and watched a crowd of dead people trample my garden. By the time the sun had risen, and I had noticed they were in there, it was too late to do anything about it; they’d been in there all night. The cucumbers, tomatoes, squash–it had all been walked down and crushed.

I took a drink.

“You missed a spot!” I yelled down to them. “Over there, assholes! I see a pepper plant still standing…pepper...right there…you sons of bitches...”