Ghost Run (7 page)

“Checkers, stay,” I said, causing the GARMR to collapse into its compact standby state.

I stowed the tablet and checked my wrist compass before sliding quietly down the mold-covered keel. My gun was at high ready, its magazines fully replenished from
Solitude
's respectable armory.

Turning the corner north, I made out a street sign that was nearly covered with debris. The same went for the tall oak trees all covered with gunk at about nine feet off the ground.

Could the hurricane surge have reached that high?
The answer to my mind's question could be heard in the trees.

Small branches snapped, forcing my attention upward. A dozen writhing undead were tangled in the gnarled branches, backs broken, arms and legs contorted into horrible positions of pain. One of the creatures had a fence post rammed entirely through its chest, another a small branch growing through its neck and shoulder. Alerted to my presence, they groaned and shook the branches, dropping acorns onto my head and back. I moved swiftly away from the trees of tormented souls, hoping that I'd finally seen it all.

I was able to go a mile, much of it uphill, before I started to feel tired. Instinctively, I pressed follow on the watch. The GARMR would be a few minutes behind me, so I made for the subdivision just ahead. The surge water didn't seem to have invaded this far above sea level.

I picked out a large cottage-style home and started my methodical process. Unkempt palm trees waved in the seaward
breeze. The grass was two feet high in the front yard. Sapling oaks jutted up, vying for sunlight against everything else. Another gap in the clouds illuminated the area, revealing undead that stood unmoving in the dark streets, between cars.

I slowly climbed the stairs to the wraparound porch. The boards slightly squeaked from the weight they hadn't borne in ages. In both directions, the porch was covered in leaves, dead palmetto bugs, and palm bark husks. Hurricane shutters blocked the windows, and large sections of sheet metal barricaded the front door. I tried to reach behind the metal to try the door latch, but the sharp edges persuaded me to stop. Tetanus treatments required refrigerated storage, so there would be none to be found—anywhere.

I walked down the porch, staying low to avoid detection until I made it to the corner leading to the back of the house. As I crept, I heard a bang in the distance, something metallic falling on concrete. I knelt, guarded on two sides by high metal rails. Checking the tablet, I could see the GARMR was okay and advancing. Slewing the camera, I saw the overturned boat from earlier. The machine was getting close.

I got up and continued. At the end of the porch, I stepped down to ground level and onto the driveway in front of the detached garage.

A bright spotlight came on, whiting out my NOD.

“
Goddamn security light!
” I grunted under my breath while I raised my rifle.

I pumped two rounds into the lamp assembly, missing the LED on the first shot but disintegrating it on the next. My NOD returned to its normal state. This happened to me once before, when I was making a run to the mainland not far from New Orleans and was walking down a newly discovered dock. I'd triggered a solar-powered security spotlight, and in no time a horde of highly irradiated undead spilled onto the dock and chased me back to
Solitude
with my Geiger nearly vibrating out of my pocket.

Right now, though, I remained in the middle of the driveway, taking advantage of the open area. I waited for the creatures to come, nervously scanning over my shoulder. After some time, I could hear the GARMR's feet click quietly down the concrete drive.

I moved toward the massive screened-in atrium that encompassed
the backyard pool deck and back-door area. Branches and pine needles punctured the remaining screens in almost every panel. The pool was half empty, filled with untold sludge and a motionless, bloated corpse. I opened the screen door and propped it open with a coil of garden hose, allowing the GARMR to enter the atrium. Once inside, I heard the shuffle of feet coming down the driveway around the corner. I kicked the hose out of the way and quietly closed the screen door.

“Checkers, stay,” I whispered into the watch.

With the GARMR in standby mode, I moved to the chest in the corner of the pool deck and crouched behind it. I watched two lumbering figures round the corner and step onto the driveway where I'd tripped the light just a few moments before.

As if on cue, the clouds shifted overhead; the NOD-magnified moonlight revealed ghastly details of the creatures through the ripped and tattered atrium screens. The first corpse must have been a weight lifter in his previous life. It was massive, standing well over six feet tall. Its lips had long ago retracted, giving it that trademark undead nightmare look I had become unfortunately all too familiar with. I stared at it from behind the chest. Expectedly, its eyes didn't reflect IR light back at me through the NOD. The enormous walking corpse stood there for a moment, craning its head from side to side, searching. After a few moments, the gargantuan creature shambled back in the direction it'd come from; its adolescent undead companion followed it in the direction of the street.

The hurricane shutters were all in place over the windows, but the sheet metal cover was missing from the back door. I reached for the handle and turned, expecting it to be locked. Thankfully it wasn't, as it would have been near impossible to get through the robust hurricane door quietly. Remembering the GARMR, I again propped the screen door open with the garden hose and went back inside the abandoned home, shutting the heavy door behind me.

I raised the NOD away from my eye and turned on my carbine light, illuminating a vast kitchen area. I pointed my barrel up at a large and ornate chandelier that hung over the center of the kitchen. The bright light bounced in a million directions from the hand-forged iron-and-crystal monstrosity.

I concentrated on the dancing crystal refractions and imagined for a few precious moments that nothing outside wanted to kill me. The nine-foot granite island below the chandelier was covered in a thick layer of dust. Something that could have been an apple had nearly disintegrated in the center of the slab. I ran my fingers across the granite, clearing away the dust and showing the blue stone concealed underneath.

An oak spiral staircase led up to a dark loft above the main floor.

I'd nearly forgotten.

I pointed the light to the floor to check for footprints. I saw nothing to indicate that anything had been inside this house for a long time. With the master bedroom and guest rooms cleared, I walked over to the dust-covered spiral staircase and looked up into the darkness.

I crouched down to see the bottom step. Concentrating, I thought I could see the outline of a shoe print somewhere in the layers of dust. I traced the outline of the print with my index finger . . . right foot, size 9, give or take. Could be male or female. Studying the next step, I saw another. I doused my light and brought the NOD down over my right eye, allowing my left to adjust to the darkness. My gun was at the ready. I could feel the warmth of the doused weapon light with my left hand while I climbed the staircase. As I ascended, I noticed a pair of skylights recessed into the twenty-foot ceilings. They spilled twin oblong rectangles of starlight onto the floor below.

Round and round up to the loft.

At the top of the staircase, I saw something I never would have expected.

An elaborate train set. Not a plastic, mass-produced children's toy; this was a model that someone had put hundreds of hours of their life into creating.

I folded my NOD back on top of my head and again hit the light on my gun. Although covered in dust, it was a spectacular sight to behold. A huge table sat in the center of the loft, encompassing all but a narrow walking path around the table. Tunnels, bridges, pastures, cities, and countryside were all depicted in the two-hundred-square-foot model.

The level of detail was staggering. I picked up one of the train engines and marveled at it for a moment. It was hand painted, right down to exhaust stains and weathering imperfections. Some of the cargo cars had tiny spray-paint graffiti on the side. I placed the cars back where they were on the maintenance tracks and just stared at the large table. Wanting to see the other side, I rounded the corner and entered the narrow walkway between the table and the wall. Walking sideways, I noticed a pond in a cow pasture. I dipped my finger into the pond, imagining it was full of water, and it probably was before. The miniature hay bales looked as if I could pick them up and break them apart like shredded wheat and feed them to the cows that drank from the dry pond. Transfixed by the train table, I moved awkwardly down the narrow walkway before tripping and falling down between the table and wall.

I'd fallen on a corpse.

I screamed and jumped, bumping my head on the side of the table, seeing stars. I bolted away from the corpse like a spooked animal.

It didn't move.

I shone my light on it and noticed the bright silver revolver in its right hand and the hole in its head.

It was holding something in its left hand. I moved toward the corpse with my gun trained. I reached down and peeled the fingers away, cracking the bones like dead branches.

There was a control box connected to a golf cart battery under the table.

The power switch was in my hand and I just couldn't resist.

I flipped the power switch on and the world on the table was set in motion. The battery was weak but still putting out enough current to power everything. The streetlights flickered and dimmed as a small engine emerged from a tunnel, its headlamp dim from the battery's neglected state. As the engine rounded the corner, I could see something tucked into a logging car just behind three coal cars. The table lights dimmed once more, this time dramatically, before browning out. The engine stopped moving and the glow of its headlamp began to fade forever. Just like that. Something that someone put countless hours into building would never be used or enjoyed again. Fuck this world.

I set my carbine on the table's pasture between the hay bales. Its light shone over the terrain, casting a comical shadow of a cow onto the wall beyond.

The logging car held a note.

My name is Dudley. I had a long life and lived it well. I walked the earth for seventy-three years before the dead. My sympathies to the rest of you poor bastards on your trip to seventy-three. Warm Regards, D. Wildes

A bolt of jealousy struck me when I realized that I was one of those poor bastards.

I wrapped Dudley in a blanket from the nearby coat closet and placed his note on top. He didn't want anyone feeling sorry for him; he felt pity for me before pulling that trigger.

“I'm gonna take something for my daughter, okay, Dudley?” I asked aloud.

I took one of the cows from the table and placed it in my pack. Dudley's wheel gun was empty, so I let him keep it.

I went slowly back down the creaking oak staircase, now leaving my own set of footprints. Perhaps an explorer might happen upon this place in a hundred years and find Dudley, his note, and his spectacular train set. My money was on a Category 5 hurricane finding it first.

The pantry was full of canned food and something that used to be a bag of potatoes. The sack of spuds had sprouted roots that dangled down over the cans and had woven through the wire racks. Some bottles of water remained in a twenty-pack at the bottom of the pantry. I had learned to just leave the refrigerators closed in situations like this. A can of warm Coke wasn't usually worth what you had to endure to drink it.

With the home secure, I made camp in the master bedroom. Sitting on the soft king bed, I nearly unlaced my boots; this was a bad habit formed from living in the relative safety of the Keys. Taking my boots off would be the fastest way to have a hundred corpses smash through the front door, because Murphy.

Comfortable on the bed, I checked the tablet, as it had a lot more GARMR control options than the Simon watch. I tapped on
sensors and was given a plethora of options. I was surprised to discover that the GARMR had an onboard Geiger. I checked it, verifying its radiation levels were in line with my last readings. Ignoring the other sensors, I tapped IR. The GARMR's head unfolded and the real-time feed began to stream to the tablet. I panned the camera around the atrium to see if anything was out of place. All clear. Satisfied with the situation in the backyard, I put the machine in standby mode again.

•  •  •

I woke up to the violent sounds of thunder. On my back in the bed, I could see bright flashes of light through the open bedroom door coming from the skylights. Rain slammed down in sheets. My watch said 0312. It would be a few hours before sunup.

Storms have unpredictable effects on the creatures. I could wake up in a few hours, walk outside, and have the entire undead neighborhood back there. Thinking of that, I had an idea.

Taking advantage of the storm, I activated the GARMR's sensors via the tablet, selecting IR. I tapped on the video feed and hit
Go
. The machine went to the spot on the feed I'd touched a few seconds before: the patio outside the atrium. I sent it down the driveway toward the street. Lightning whited out the machine's vision just before another boom shook the house. I saw static on the video feed as it came back into focus. I panned the GARMR's camera to the street, watching the undead.

They were frenzied. A group of them seemed to be making noise in front of a home three houses down on the other side of the street. Gesturing on the tablet's screen, I zoomed the GARMR's optics. Those things were pounding on the front of the house and door, trying to get in. Hitting the thermal filter, I saw very little color variation between the undead and their surroundings. With the GARMR's eyes trained on the door down the street, I jumped when I saw the GARMR's camera jolt on the screen in front of me.

The GARMR began to move rapidly.