Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory (36 page)

Oh
,
why
did
it
have
to
be
you
? Dan thinks as he
shushes Mrs. McCleary, the librarian who disdains most popular
books. He’s grateful he’s the only one who’s heard her. From where
he crouches behind Brock Rottom’s treat truck, he gives her an
embarrassed smile and whispers, “Mrs. McCleary, how are you
today?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Williamson. I asked you a
question.”

“I’m adjusting my prosthetic,” he lies, in a
low tone. For effect, he wiggles his shoe that contains the slip-on
for his partially amputated foot.

“Poppycock!” She scoffs. “I heard what is
going on. You are trying to leave to save that brute and Sheriff
Hotpants, aren’t you?”

“Well… yeah…”

Before he can ask for her help, or in the
very least her silence, she heads towards the soldiers. “Gentlemen,
excuse me.”

Oh
,
what
the
fuck
,
McCleary
? Dan silently screams. He ducks down,
grasping at straws for an alternate plan.

“I saw that awful Williamson man,” McCleary
tells the patrol.

“Are you sure it was him?” one of the
soldiers asks.

“I lived in the very town he and his militia
held occupied for some time,” she says. “I saw him running down the
promenade. I believe he is heading for the marina down the far end
of the cove.”

“Command, Williamson is on his way to the
marina,” the soldier speaks quickly into his radio while raising a
hand to the old woman as a silent thank you. The jeeps speed away,
but before departing one of the men suggest that the Coast Guard be
called to cover the south end.

Dan stands, looking at the woman with
disbelief. He should be taking off, but he is so stunned he has to
utter, “Why?”

“You are wasting time, Mister Williamson,”
she tells him, then continues on her way.

Capitalizing on his chance to pull this off,
he hops the stone wall that lines the beach and races across the
sand towards the long dock jutting from the boardwalk. Running on
sand is a hard enough task with two intact feet, but his prosthetic
rubs and shifts within his shoe, making it even more unpleasant. A
small boat pulls up to the wharf and he plans on taking it out of
here.

###

“No,
they
called it failure to yield.
I say I ran a green light,” Gar says to his partner, a man named
Eli from the same city as himself. A man who has heard all of his
stories many times over and is happy to finally be hearing a new
one. The only reason the potsmith must regale him with a new yarn
is because the third in their party doesn’t want to hear a single
mention of her ex-husband, Randy Russell. “The cops decided to
check my car for illegal substances…”

“Really, Gar? You?” Eli pretends to be
surprised.

“I know, right? Totally profiling if you ask
me.”

“Or just damn fine police work,” Eli speaks
low. He likes Gar, but also likes giving him a hard time. Eli
enjoys the fishing trips they are allowed to go out on to bring in
food from the sea. Today it was lobster trapping and they’ve
brought in a good haul.

“They found my stash and brought me in.”

“And this was the first and last time you
were ever charged with anything?” Kelly Peel asks, while reaching
for the dock to bring their boat closer so it can be moored.

“Yeah. It was also the first and last time I
ever wore a suit,” Gar says. “My lawyer brought it to me.”

“Why would an innocent man need a lawyer?”
Eli says sarcastically.

“I didn’t know I had one until the day I was
supposed to be tried. I also found out that day that I was actually
working, indirectly, for Benito Sartori.”

“Bullshit!” Eli says.

“Who’s Benito Sartori?” Kelly asks.

“Big time mafia guy. There is no way you were
tied in with that shit, Gar.”

“Exactly!” Gar says. “I told him ‘no thank
you’ and that I would keep my mouth shut if they’d just forget we
ever met and separated any connections between us. I also said that
I would be keeping the suit and going with the public
defender.”

The story is halted so they can unload their
catch onto a truck parked on the dock. “It would have been safer to
keep the sleaze bag. The guy the court gave me wasn’t very good. He
was nervous and fidgety. I just sat there wondering what prison was
going to be like.”

“Sounds scary,” Eli says.

“Oh, it was. I just sat in that hard chair,
looking over at my stash on the table. I thought, there’s a pound
of weed I’ll never be able to smoke. They read the charges out loud
and it hit me! I stood up and told the judge ‘that’s not a pound!’
I could see the bag wasn’t nearly as full as it was that day. Sure,
some settling may have occurred, but not that much. The bag didn’t
have the right plump volume it should have had.

“My observation lit a fire under my nervous
little lawyer. He demanded that the bag be weighed immediately and
in front of him. It was almost a quarter pound light!”

Eli has to laugh at the small time drug
peddler being let off because Waterloo’s finest were pinching the
evidence. “They just dropped everything?”

“It was too much of an embarrassment for
them, I guess. After that, I went into business for my...”

“Psst!” someone hisses from below the
dock.

“…self,” Gar finishes and looks around his
feet. “Careful, there’s some sort of snake around us.”

“Psst! Gar!”

“Holy crap! It knows my name!”

Eli can only shake his head at his hopeless
stoner friend. He kneels down to look between the weathered boards.
“Hey, I think they’re looking for you.”

“Perhaps they think I’m someone else,” Dan
says. “Can I borrow your boat?”

“First tell me why they’re looking for you.
They called us in because they don’t want civies going out anymore.
They said to be on the lookout for you.”

“Two of my people went out and haven’t come
back. I need to go and get them.”

Soldiers head toward them on foot. Eli looks
to his companions for advice, but they come up empty. “Gar, keep
them busy.”

“Fucking how?”

“Be creative. Roll ’em one, tell them about
God’s bugger, or about that crazy chick you met in Georgia.”

“I’ll do all three, man!” Gar jogs to meet
the soldiers halfway.

Kelly helps Dan out of the water while Eli
climbs back onboard. The pop star unties the lines that hold the
boat to the dock. Trying to look casual, she and Eli hold a cooler
between them to cover Dan’s entry. Kelly gives the craft a kick to
send it drifting right before Eli guns the engine and cruises away
at top speed.

They travel around the barrier wall that was
erected to keep adventurous trespassers from gaining access to the
park without paying the exorbitant admission. Eli helps Dan because
he respects what he’s trying to do, he respects him for holding the
cure in his blood, but mainly because when they had compared their
stories Eli realized Dan was the reason the dead left the suburban
street he once lived on with his daughter. This allowed him to get
his little girl to the Hammond Grand.

They drift up to a dock on the other side of
the wall. The world looks the same, but feels different. Dread
builds in Dan’s chest, which he hates, but he also missed the
feeling.

“There’s a truck by the tackle shop that’s
good to go,” Eli says. He hands Dan a 9mm. “Here. They let us carry
outside. You’ll probably need it. I’ll have to tell them you took
it from me.”

“Thanks for your help. I hope this doesn’t
get you in trouble or anything. I can hit you a few times to make
it more believable.”

“No, that’s ok. They’ll just have to take my
word on it.” Eli laughs.

Now armed with more than just good
intentions, and with a mode of transportation, Dan is as ready as
he can be. Oz and Carla had told him the route they were taking to
Rubicon, so he assumes they came back the same way. All he has to
do is find where they got separated from the group, track down
where they may have gone from there, and, if they’re alive, save
them.
Sounds
easy
enough
.

Carla and Oz watched in disbelief as the new
zombie breed tore apart the dried out corpse Oz had removed from
the car at the gas pump. It was a vicious, relentless attack. They
ripped the dead woman’s limbs from their sockets and ate her
dehydrated flesh. She’s merely an appetizer though. The main course
is out of reach, but still they try.

The radioactive dead pushed items to the
fallen soda machine, but so far haven’t been able to gain the
elevation required to climb as their quarry had. The trash can they
stacked on top of it buckled under their weight when they all
attempted to stand on it at the same time.

Though the ghouls are able to work as a team,
they still aren’t capable of sharing. They shove against an ice
chest, scraping it along the pavement until it reaches their
desired location. But then they push and fight one another to be
the first to climb up. It’s still not high enough, however.

###

Dan speeds along in his borrowed truck until
he can go no farther. He comes to a halt at a horrific scene. Down
the way is a mess of wreckage, where an overpass has been dropped
across the highway. At the road’s edge is a school bus on its side,
and a crippled semi has been abandoned in the path of oncoming
traffic. But what is strewn over the road is the most unsettling:
glistening bones picked clean, strips of cloth stiff with blood.
Dan takes in the sight with a shudder. Guns lay uselessly by the
skeletal remains. Many gleaming brass casings prove how useless the
weapons were against the dead.

This
must
be
the
place
, Dan thinks.
And
this
must
be
the
work
of
the
new
dead
. He turns his truck around, crunching over the
scattered bones and heading back slowly. He wants to try and put
himself in their shoes and see where they may have detoured since
he hasn’t run across them yet. Surrounded by miles of nothing, Dan
fights off thoughts that they are dead and tries to remain
hopeful.

The first exit the truck comes across offers
a clue as to where they may have run. A twitching corpse is on the
off-ramp. The ghoul is in tattered clothes and has only one working
arm. The other limbs are present but paralyzed. It has gunshot
wounds to the head, but as he was told this new batch need a little
more prompting to go dead for good. The entire brain needs to be
destroyed. Unlike the kinder gentler zombies he knows and loves,
not just one round will do.

The zombie claws at the ground, dragging
itself inch by inch. Its fingers are worn down to nubs from the
effort it takes to travel down the hill.

“They’d be looking for shelter,” Dan says as
he turns down the incline, running over the persistent corpse and
making sure his front tire crush its head. That is enough to still
the monster. If only he could line them up to dispatch them all at
once.

At the bottom of the exit, he can go right or
left. A blue sign tells him he’ll find gas and food to the right,
and pretty much nothing to the left.
That’s
where
they’d
go
.

He doesn’t have to go far before he finds a
crucial sign that his friends are alive. “Fuck me!”

Dan stops at the sight of the service
station. The lot and pump area are clogged with zombies. The dead
move erratically like drug users desperate for a fix. Their drug of
choice is evidentially on the roof.

###

“Hey, a truck!” Carla points. “I think it’s
Dan!”

“How can you know that?” Oz asks with
disbelief.

“He’s using his turn signal!” she says with
glee. “Who the hell is that for?”

Carla waves her arms overhead to catch the
driver’s eye. The pickup’s horn blows in long intervals, wanting to
get the attention of the dead. It doesn’t have to wait to see if
the zombies will take the bait. Once the noise is issued, all their
heads snap around to look at the new item that has been added to
the menu. They run as the truck quickly turns one hundred and
eighty degrees and peels away, taking the horde with it.

Though the dead had gotten plenty to eat on
the highway, and the morsel of their own kind in the lot, Carla
figures they are still famished by how fast they take after the
pickup. They chase it down the road and up the on-ramp. If it is
Dan, she knows she’ll be seeing the truck come back into the
service station’s lot pretty soon. He’s just making a small window
for her and Oz to get in.

Dan can’t believe how quick the dead are
moving. They look like they’re on fast forward as they fill the
rearview mirror. He lingers on the highway to ensure they take the
bait before speeding back down to park where his friends climb down
the wall.

“It took you long enough,” Carla says, once
she’s in the center of the cab.

“I had a little trouble getting out.” He
drives them from the service station.

“I can see that.” She refers to his still
damp clothing.

Dan can’t turn left to head back onto the
highway. The dead are too thick and too riled up. He heads right,
hoping to pull off the same trick he had just used to claim his
friends, heading towards a series of dilapidated old factories.

Oz hasn’t spoken a word since he got in. He
examines his leg just above his boot. A groan of pain leaves him
that makes Carla look at the spreading red stain. She lifts his
pant leg and lets out a gasp. One of the zombies bit into her
man.

“Oh, my god!” she says. “Why didn’t you tell
me you got bit?”