Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (13 page)

On the street below, John Grainger had been co
rnered against the side of a yellow cab. He threw his hands up to shield his face and screamed once in terror. The zombies pressed around him and flailed with bloody arms. Grainger sank out of sight, and the zombies set about tearing his body to shreds.

One of the other women turned and ran in screaming horror. She fled towards the sidewalk. She could sense the zombies closing from every side, and when she turned to glance over her shoulder, she ran head-first into a plate glass shop front window, slicing her body to pieces and killing her in an instant gush of blood. Cutter looked away. The screams lingered for just a few more minutes, growing fainter – becoming weaker – until finally no one was screaming because no one was left alive.

Cutter took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could feel the room reeling like the whole world was tilting off its axis.

When he opened his eyes again, Father Bob was clutching at a bible, muttering a soft silent prayer.

“You have to get out of here,” Cutter said. “You can’t stay in the city. Sooner or later you’ll run out of supplies. Sooner or later you’re going to be faced with the choice of starving to death, or trying to escape.”

Father Bob nodded heavily. “I know,” he said. “That’s why you’ve come. You’re the answer to my prayers, son. We need your help to reach safety. Sam and I won’t make it on our own. I know that.”

Cutter began to shake his head in protest but at the same instant he heard a door close. He turned towards the sound – and saw a young woman standing in the hallway. She was maybe nineteen or twenty years old with soft blonde hair, wearing denim jeans and a blue sweatshirt with the name of a college football team written in large letters across where her breasts swelled beneath the fabric. She had honey-colored skin and vivid blue eyes. She was holding the bulky padded jacket in one hand and the baseball cap in the other.

Cutter stood stunned for long moments, until finally Father Bob put his arm
paternally around the woman’s shoulder, smiling fondly.

“Mr. Cutter, this is my daughter, Samantha.
You two have already met.”

The woman held out her hand demurely and Cutter felt the warm softness of her
skin. She smiled and her teeth were perfect and white, and her voice a shy breathy whisper.

“
Hello,” she said. “Sorry I didn’t think to introduce myself on the fire escape landing.”

* * *

Without the disguise of the bulky jacket and cap, the girl was slim and lithe, with long, almost coltish, legs. Cutter watched her from the sofa as she brought him an opened can of cold beans and a spoon.

“Are you sure you don’t want a plate?”

Cutter shook his head. He suddenly remembered how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours.

The girl wrung her hands apologetically. “It’s not much. I’m sorry…”

Cutter smiled and attacked the food with relish. “It’s great,” he said. “I appreciate it.” The girl went back to the kitchen and returned with a plastic bottle of water. She set it down wordlessly and then went to stand by her father at the open window.

Cutter finished eating quickly. He drank half the bottle of water and sat back for a moment, overcome by the sudden realization that this fleeting moment of food, drink and comfort were now considered life’s luxuries. He looked up at the pastor and fought
of a sudden wave of weary drowsiness.

“Why are you still here?”
he asked. “Why are you here at all? Don’t priests have congregations? Shouldn’t you be somewhere out in the suburbs, tending to a flock?”

Father Bob sighed heavily. He pushed himself away from the window and stood in the middle of the room, seeming to fill the space. His expression was suddenly bleak.

“I do have a flock,” he nodded. “In a little town a ways south of here called Granton. Good town. Pretty. And good people too,” he smiled fondly recalling some distant memory. “But Samantha and I moved here to Newbridge for a reason…”

“What reason?”

“Cancer,” Father Bob said and forced a humorless smile. “I’ve got cancer. So I took leave from the church and came here two months ago because it’s close to the hospital. It’s why we’re in this little apartment. And it’s why I prayed to God that a man like you would come to our aid.”

Cutter sat blankly. “Curable
?”

Father Bob shook his head
with heavy regret. “No, son.”

There was a long silence. Finally Cutter asked softly. “How long have you got?”

Father Bob shrugged. “I’m already on borrowed time,” he said. “It could be any day.” His complexion turned suddenly to ash, and the sparkle in the man’s eye faded.

His daughter came to him then, her expression heartbreakingly tender. She hugged herself to him and Cutter saw the
shine of unshed tears in her eyes.

The big man pulled her close to him
. He kissed her forehead, and they stood in absolute silence for long seconds as though drawing emotional strength from each other.

Finally Father Bob broke from the embrace and stared Cutter hard in the eye. “That’s why I need you,” he said
bluntly. “I need you to get my baby girl to safety. I need you to promise me that if I fall, you’ll get her somewhere away from here.”

Cutter stared at the
man for long seconds. He felt that same sense of premonition and fate that he had first felt when he had found out the man was a pastor. Finally he nodded slowly.

“I’ll do it,” Cutter agreed. “But I have a price.”

Father Bob’s expression became suddenly guarded. His gaze turned to ice. He drew Samantha close to him again, holding her to him protectively.

“Name it,
” he said, the words edged with wary caution.

Cutter’s eyes flicked from the pastor’s expression to the face of his daughter. She was staring back at him, holding his gaze with her chin tilted in a gesture of resilience and defiance.
She was quite beautiful, he realized.

“I want yo
u to hear my confession,” Cutter said.

* * *

Father Bob stood perfectly still for long moments, staring at Cutter and seeing, for the first time, an urgency and desperation in the tall stranger’s face. The pastor shook his head slowly. “Son, I’m a pastor – not a Catholic priest. I don’t take confessions.” He paused and thought about his next words before beginning to talk again, as though suddenly he was back in his little church delivering a Sunday sermon.

“These are dark days,” Father Bob said. “It’s normal for people to find faith and God when the wor
ld seems on the brink of disaster. It’s normal for men to question everything they once believed in and look to the Almighty as their Savior. What you’re feeling now is exactly what millions of other lost souls are feeling. Afraid. You’re terrified that life on earth is over. You want to save your soul. Sadly, it’s too often been moments like this in mankind’s history that people look to God and eternal life as a desperate source of comfort.”

Cutter
shook his head with irritation. He stood up. “I’m not Catholic,” he said bluntly. “In fact I’ve only been to church twice in my whole life. Once was when I got married. The second time was a week ago when I stood over the coffins of my dead wife and young son.”

More silence. The two men stared at each other, the girl suddenly forgotten.
“And I’m not some religious zealot suddenly converted to the faith because I’m surrounded by death,” Cutter persisted. “This has nothing to do with the world going to hell,” he snapped. He sensed his anger rising and he forced himself to take a deep calming breath.

“
You said you were a man of God. Well I’ve been talking to God a lot over these last few days, and he’s not answering,” Cutter said. “I’ve never prayed before in my life, but over the last week it seems like all I’ve been doing. I keep asking him why I’m still alive and my wife and son are cold and buried in the ground. I need answers, dammit. Maybe he will hear me through you.”

F
ather Bob began to nod his head with slow understanding.

“You called me a Samaritan when we first met,” Cutter went on. Then shook his head
bitterly. “Well I’m not,” he said. “I’m not a Samaritan at all. I didn’t come to help you because it was the right thing to do. I came to help you to give God another chance to kill me,” he admitted. “I did it yesterday, out on the street too. I tried to save a man – but not to help him. I tried to get him to safety when I knew it was impossible… because I wanted to give God the chance to kill me, like he killed my wife and child. And that’s what I did again today,” Cutter’s voice began to rise with his anguished pain. “That’s what brought me here to you. That’s why I risked my life – not because of any noble or Christian gesture. I’m not that good a man. I did it because I wanted to know whether I’m supposed to be alive at all.” He turned away suddenly. He could feel the sudden sting of tears in his eyes.

Father Bob’s voice suddenly became gentle and compassionate. “Would you like to tell me what happened?”

Cutter nodded. “That’s what I want,” he said. “That’s my price for taking you and your daughter to safety. I want to know why God let me live, when I’m the one who is responsible for the death of my wife and boy.”

* * *

Cutter and Father Bob left Samantha standing in the doorway of the apartment armed with the revolver, and strode down the darkened passage.

“I don’t suppose you have keys?” Cutter asked when they were
out front of 3B.

Father Bob shook his head.

Cutter shrugged. He backed up and took three paces towards the door then lashed out hard with a sidekick aimed an inch below the worn brass lock. The timber door splintered, but the frame was metal. Cutter felt the impact jar through his boot and all the way up his leg. He kicked again. The door began to sag. The timber around the lock fragmented. On the third kick, the timber finally gave way and the heavy door slammed back against its hinges.

The two men stood in doorway and stared into the gloomy opening.

“Mr. Walker was a lawyer,” Father Bob explained for no apparent reason. Cutter frowned.

“And he was
living in a little up-town apartment?” It made no sense. His eyes swept around the interior. The layout was a mirror image of the pastor’s tiny unit.

“A divorced lawyer,” Father Bob added, and then glanced at Cutter as though that explained it all.

They went in cautiously. There were rats in the kitchen. The refrigerator door had been left open and the thick stench of rotting food filled the air. Dark scurrying shapes skittered away into deeper shadows. Cutter’s eyes swept the room quickly. There were cockroaches in the sink, feasting on food scraps and the floor was sticky with spoiled food the rodents had dragged from the refrigerator. He checked the cupboards and found a dozen cans of soup and packets of instant noodles – but not much else.

He went back into the tiny living room.

Father Bob was rummaging through a chest of drawers.

“Anything?” Cutter asked.

The pastor shook his head. Cutter nodded. “I’ll check the bedrooms and bathroom.”

The first bedroom was empty. No furniture, no bed. Just a small curtained window in the wall opposite and faded, peeling wallpaper that was brown with water stains. The second bedroom had an unmade
double bed, a wardrobe and a narrow set of bedside drawers. The air was musty and damp. Cutter found a dozen expensive suits and just as many silk shirts in the wardrobe. He also found a stack of old tattered porn magazines.

The bed was unmade. Cutter lifted the mattress but found nothing. In the small set of drawers he found reams of paperwork, a couple of packets of cigarettes and a lighter. He put the lighter into his pocket.

The bathroom was just a narrow cubicle large enough for a bathtub and a small washbasin. On the wall above the sink was a slim mirror-fronted medicine cabinet. There were dirty unwashed clothes on the floor and a damp discarded towel. Cutter went to the sink and looked inside the cabinet. There was the usual collection of medicines, a couple of bottles of expensive cologne – and a gun. Beside the gun was a box of ammunition.

Cutter reached for the weapon. It was another
Glock, similar to the one he had taken from Hos’s dead body. He stuffed the weapon inside the waistband of his jeans and snatched at the box of ammunition.

When he came back into the tiny living area, he found Father Bob sitting on a straight-backed chair. He was reading.

“What did you find?” Cutter asked.

Father Bob held up the book. “The Koran,” he said with a look of
puzzled surprise on his face. “It appears our Mr. Walker was a Muslim.”

Cutter shrugged. “So?”

Father Bob made a face. “So nothing,” he said defensively. “It’s just something about the man I never knew.” Then he noticed the box in Cutters hand. “Ammunition?”

Cutter nodded. “And a gun.”

Father Bob heaved himself wearily from the chair. He looked past Cutter’s shoulder, back into the kitchen. “What about the food you found?”

“
We take it,” Cutter said. “We take it all.”

* * *

The night fell like a heavy shroud, hunting away the last flaming rays of sunset and plunging the world around them into a place of darkness and dangerous shadows.

Cutter
stood by the window and stared. The city street was dark now. The fires had burned themselves out during the afternoon, and a stiffening breeze had swept the smoke into a hazy scar on the horizon.

Now the street below was silent.

The zombies had drifted away from the apartment doors, shuffling into the night, and the only light was from the first stars and a thin slice of moon that rose behind the high buildings on the opposite side of the deserted street.

Samantha and her father came into the room from the
kitchen carrying three plates and bottles of water. Father Bob muttered a brief prayer of thanks, and then they sat together on the lumpy sofa eating canned ham and three-day-old bread.

Candles burned, filling the room with soft flickering light, and Cutter watched the shadows leap and play on the wall opposite, his mind drifting, his body leaden and weary.

He felt wrung out: as though the tension and stress had burned through the last reserves of his energy. He felt his eyes getting heavy and it took a defiant act of will for him to resist the urge to slump over and sleep.

He dragged his hands across his face and blinked his eyes wide. “We had a
deal…” he said to Father Bob.

The pastor nodded gravely. He handed his plate to Samantha. “Take these into the kitchen please, honey. And then I want you to do an hour of bible study in your room. I need to talk to Mr. Cutter, and it’s a conversation we need to have in private.”

Samantha’s eyes flicked from her father’s face to Cutter’s, and a shadow passed behind her eyes. But she stood obediently and left the room without a word.

Father Bob sighed. “It’s been hard on her,” he said sadly. “She lost her mother just a year ago. And then a month later I found out I had cancer. She’s a good girl – but she’s a pastor’s daughter – and that means she’s not prepared for what the world has become. If anyone can be prepared…”

Cutter said nothing for a long moment. The girl had the flare of hip and breast of a fully-grown woman. It was only in her face that he had seen the suggestion of naïve innocence. “How old is she?”

“Twenty,” the pastor said. “She’ll turn twenty-one next month.” He sighed heavily. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s the one thing that has kept me alive,” he confessed. “I promised her I’d be there for her birthday…”

Cutter slumped back in the sofa and sighed. He thought about what the world was becoming and the realization made his despair even darker. Once, a man like him could dream of a future, and of a family, and of watching his son grow up. And once a man like Father Bob could dream of his daughter’s birthday and plan for her future.

Once – but not now.

Now there was no future. Plans
were pointless. Life was too temporary. Then he realized it had always been that way – fate had always shattered futures.

But what was happening to the world now was something very different. It was brutal and ruthless and merciless… and inhuman.

All a man had now was the very next moment, because beyond that was only uncertainty and peril.

Cutter closed his eyes. He felt the waves of drowsiness beating at him, dragging him towards sleep. He felt himself beginning to drift, and he jolted upright in the sofa.

Father Bob was watching him.

“Do you still want to talk?”

Cutter nodded. He got to his feet. He went to the window and stared down at the street for long moments, then turned back to where the pastor was sitting. In the flickering weak light of the candles, Cutter’s face was shrouded in shadow, and he stood like that, gathering his thoughts until the words simply began to spill from him and he could not stop them.

“My wife – Christina – she was a good woman,” Cutter said, his voice faltering. “We had be
en high-school sweethearts, and when we married we bought a little farm out west of here. We were happy. We were in love, and then when we found out she was pregnant, life just seemed to get better.”

Cutter started to pace the room, keeping in the shadows. He felt his hands bunch into tight fists and the tension began to rise up through his back and shoulders. “When
my son Scotty was born, we left the farm and moved closer to Newbridge,” Cutter said softly. “He was ill as a baby, and we needed to be closer to town, but as he started to grow, he got stronger. I had been a farmer, just like my father before me. But now we were living in the suburbs and I needed a new profession. So I started painting,” he shrugged. “Don’t ask me why – I just don’t know how it happened. Christina thought I had some talent so I stuck at it. Eventually I broke into some commercial galleries, and then a publisher in New York asked me to design a cover for one of their authors.”

Cutter stood against the far wall, his eyes unfocussed,
and behind his blank gaze his mind was imagining a time and place beyond the tiny little apartment.

“I did well. Things were perfect. Christina started studying law, and Scotty turned six. I was living the dream,” Cutter said, but
there was bitter anguish in his voice now. “Until last Sunday when we came into Newbridge…”

Cutter stopped talking, and Father Bob let the silence hang in the empty space between them.
He watched the tall dark stranger move restlessly in the shadows and he felt the man’s despair.

“Did something happen?”

Cutter nodded. “Yeah,” he said harshly. “Yeah, something happened on the road into the city.”

“
What, son? Tell me what happened?”

Cutter looked up. There were tears in his eyes and he shook his head sorrowfully. “We were in Christina’s
beat-up old Ford,” Cutter began, but now there was a wavering tremble in his voice. A heartbroken sound of regret. “I was driving. Scotty was in the back seat. We had just bought him his first baseball mitt…” his voice drifted wanly for a moment then came back stronger. “I was driving a little too fast. We were getting closer to the city. I leaned over to change the music on the radio – and somehow missed a set of traffic lights,” Cutter said. There was another long moment of dead silence, and then his voice somehow became blank and devoid of all emotion. “We went through a red light. A truck was coming out from the intersection. It was already into the intersection when we drove through. The car slammed into the side of the truck. I saw it too late. I tried to brake and swerve, but all I did was turn the car sideways. Christina and Scotty were crushed to death. The side of the car folded in. The impact killed them instantly. Somehow I survived. Untouched.”

Cutter sagged, as though the telling of the tragedy had somehow left him deflated and broken. He stood, silent in the shadows and cuffed brusquely at his eyes.

Cutter saw Father Bob nod, and then reach for his battered bible. He held the book in his hand as he spoke, and his voice was deep and resonate.

“Son, sometimes we wonder why God does the things he does. And sometimes we wonder why life can be so cruel. We ask ourselves why would a compassionate God take the innocent and the ones we cherish and leave us – the unworthy – here to suffer,” the pastor said solemnly. “There are different reasons for us all, but for you, the reason is clear. Your wife and son died before this holocaust. They died living life to the fullest, never knowing fear of terror. Be grateful for that. They were released into His arms before the horror. That’s a blessing.”

Cutter said nothing. He stood as a darker shape amongst the shadows, silent and unmoving.

“And you have been spared because your task is not complete,” Father Bob went on. “He needs you. He has work for you in these troubled times. That’s why He saved you, and that’s why He sent you to
Samantha and me. You can call it coincidence, or you can call it fate. Either way, God led you to this place at this time for just one reason. Because your work is here… with us.”

* * *

Samantha came from the hallway holding a candle in front of her, the soft golden glow lighting her face and hair so that she appeared almost angelic.

She sat quietly on the sofa beside her father, and Cutter came from the shadows. He dropped to his haunches before them both.

“We need to leave here in the morning,” he said, watching their eyes carefully. “We can’t wait for the zombies to drift away from the city. There could be other pockets of people like us in a hundred buildings like this. That’s going to be enough to keep them interested – and lingering. Our only hope is to get to a place that is less populated. It’s our best chance of survival.”

Samantha stared into his eyes. “You’re coming with us, Mr. Cutter?”

He nodded. “I am,” he said.

Samantha said nothing. She glanced at her father and her expression was
serious as she seemed to look an unspoken question. Father Bob took her hand in his and nodded.

“How do you propose we get away from the city?” Samantha asked him. Her tone was level, and Cutter had the bizarre feeling that he was being interviewed for a job.

“We find a car,” he said. “Preferably a SUV. If not, something sturdy that will take a beating.”

“Just like that?” Samantha asked.

“Pretty much,” Cutter said, and then realized it wasn’t enough. He sighed. “Last night I was trapped in the bookstore with a group of women and a couple of other men. You saw us when we made our break this morning. We lost a woman, but the other three escaped. You saw it. I figure the same kind of plan will work again.” He got to his feet and strode to the window. He looked down. The night was black. “When daylight comes, we’ll pick a vehicle and go for it,” he said. “We have the advantage of height here. That means we’ll have some kind of warning – or at least some idea of what the undead are doing before we break for the street.”

He went back towards the sofa. “If we need to we can create some kind of distraction. It might buy us enough time.”

Father Bob nodded his head, but he knew it would not be as easy as Cutter was making the plan sound.

But it was a plan, and he noticed how the man’s voice suddenly had become resolute and determined. He sensed Cutter was rising to the challenge.

“Where will we go?” the pastor asked. “What was the plan you had when you escaped with the other women?”

Cutter shook his head. “I didn’t have a plan then,” he confessed. “Once we made it to a car, we were just going to get out of the city.”

“And go where?” Samantha asked.

Cutter shook his h
ead again. “I didn’t know, then.”

“But you do now?”

Cutter smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Now I know.” He reached into his pocket and found the wallet he had taken from Hos’s dead body. He pulled out the man’s driver’s license and held it up to the candle-light.

“This man
was killed,” Cutter said. “He was with us in the bookstore. He was a survivalist. He told me he had been preparing for a disaster situation like this for years. He told me he had a compound –a remote property away from the city that had a generator, six months of food and water, and a supply of weapons,” Cutter explained. “That’s where we are going.”

He looked at the
license and read the address, and there was another eerie moment of fate as he said softly:

“
He lived at 34 Eden Gardens, Guthrie.” Cutter looked at the pastor and then to Samantha. There was the faintest hint of an ironic smile at the corner of his lip. “The garden of Eden…” he said.

Cutter knew the area. Guthrie was a rural community about
forty miles north-east of Newbridge. He had a vague childhood recollection of rolling fields and leafy tree-lined roads with clustered mailboxes, and dirt trails that led to remote farmhouses.

Father Bob glanced from Cutter’s face towards the ceiling and muttered another heart-felt prayer of thanks.

Four.

Escape
.