LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (27 page)

Yes, you and I were going to get on just fine, I thought.

***

The hardest part was not vomiting.
 

As dust fell from the ceiling under the hammer of multiple undead feet, I grimaced as I worked.
 

The robe was draped over my shoulders, tied tightly. My weapons secured underneath, fully loaded and ready to draw, but blocked from access—and from sight—by the heavy garb.

I had found a pair of bright yellow gloves, dingy with mold, laying near a wash sink, and I had donned them with glee.
 

This was not fun work.

The creature’s insides were the consistency of jello, with shattered bones and stringy tendons and arteries adding to the joy. My hands made their way through the viscera, pulling large amounts of blood and intestines toward me, smearing the robe with their chunky putrescence. The blood glowed in the meager light cast by my shielded flashlight standing on the small table in the corner.
 

Above, a hand found the door, slapping meaninglessly against the thin wood.

I cringed despite my work.
 

If they tried to push that door down, they would succeed. It was cheap wood—thin and mass-produced, the consistency and strength of balsa. If if were attacked, it would not hold for more than a minute.
 

Faster, I applied the creature’s essence to my new robe. It was thick, like clotted oatmeal. The blood had curdled long ago, and was now a thick pudding of gore. My hands rebelled at the chore, but I kept on, knowing I was running out of time.
 

Another hand found the door above, and this time it crashed against its frame, as if something had decided it wanted to see what was below.
 

I looked down at the display I made of myself. The robe was caked in thick, black blood and gore. Intestines were dropped over my shoulder, a cord of desiccated bowels nestled near my neck. I had even placed several ribs and its shriveled liver in the cushy pima pocket. The smell was overpowering and nearly debilitating.
 

The door shook again, and I heard the cracking of wood.
 

This would have to do.

I grabbed for my flashlight, wincing as I was forced to stick it into the pocket with the creature’s liver.
 

As I did, I cursed.
 

My head.

I needed something over my head.

Quickly, I searched around the room, not able to stomach the thought of smearing the thing’s blood on my head and face. In a box marked “Halloween” near the sink, I found what I was looking for.
 

***

In the kitchen above, several creatures had clustered near the door, their eyes vacant and staring. They followed the lead of one particularly vapid zombie—a man dressed in only a pair of undershorts, his thin torso covered in dirt and grime, several old bullet holes marking his abdomen, where a family of maggots had taken residence. His face—formerly that of an auto mechanic from a town thirty miles away—was drawn and lined, trails of blood having long since stained the skin around his narrow lips and open mouth. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten in weeks.

In the faded light of the kitchen, far from a major source of natural light within the small house, he had seen the barest of flickers of movement several long moments ago. So small that his horrible eyesight could have been deceiving him. So small, that his energy was only partially devoted to the cause. But it was enough.

He tried his hand on the door, pushing it. Pulling it. Finding it locked only irritated him. Like an angry hornet, he grew agitated. And his agitation attracted others. Herding to him, in case he had found something they had not. In case he had found food.

Within a minute, the door had collapsed inward, the shards of wood cutting his arms as he pushed his body forward.
 

As the cheap wood buckled inward, he tumbled onto the stairs, falling headfirst down the wooden flight, landing awkwardly on the cement floor below to find a leg and foot standing next to him. Eagerly, he lifted his head to find a face staring down at him.

If he were alive, he would have been startled. Or perhaps he would have been amused, as the visage of William Jefferson Clinton, smeared with viscera, blood and dirt, glared down at the broken zombie.
 

***

I stood stock-still, waiting.

The door fell in, and the zombies followed, and I stood.

Waiting.

This was the test.
 

If I could fool these, I could fool the rest. If I couldn’t … well, I was trapped in a basement with five or six zombies. No big deal. I could fight these off. But the others would hear the noise. They would come. They would block the stairs. I would be trapped.
 

And then I would die.
 

No. This would work.

It had to.

The creature before me, barely phased by its fall, was looking me in the eyes. Or rather, President Clinton’s eyes.
 

He struggled to stand, his calf bone now protruding from his leg. But he didn’t even notice the compound fracture.
 

I saw the nostrils widen slightly. The eyes scanned the vague features of the plastic face, seeing only human shape and smelling blood and death.
 

It moaned softly, as if curious.
 

I stayed silent, not trusting myself to speak.
 

Above, the remaining creatures were stumbling down, feet heavy on the stairs, wood creaking beneath their weight.

The thin zombie in front of me leaned forward, still confused.

I must not have smelled normal. Maybe not dirty enough. Maybe the smell of the rubber mask confused him.
 

It moaned again, and from the stairs, the others seem to respond, as if sounding off.

Shit.

This weird communication shit again. The others had answered him.
 

The creature in front of me seemed to be waiting, its eyes staring.
 

Then it hit me. They had sounded off.

The zombie leaned forward, its foot flinching slightly as if it would lunge for me.
 

My sudden moan was breathy and low, as I had heard thousands of creatures do before.
 

The zombie stopped, eyes rolling in a rheumy glaze. A hand rose briefly before dropping again to its side. Then it turned away.

The remaining creatures were reaching the foot of the stairs.
 

They passed me without looking, following their
de facto
leader.
 

Holy shit on a stick.
 

I had just bluffed my way into the zombie fraternity.
 

I didn’t pause to wonder at my luck. I got the fuck out of Dodge.
 

Clumsily, I ambled up the stairs, making each footfall heavy and deliberate. More were appearing at the top of the narrow passage, and I grimaced inside my presidential mask, pushing forward and slamming my shoulder into them as I imagined they would do to one another.
 

The stench of my coat and the creatures around me nearly toppled me, but as I made contact with one after another of them, moving slowly and shambling toward the front door, I marveled at the ruse.
 

Thankful that the door was open already, and I wouldn’t have to risk using the knob, I staggered into the dull daylight, my eyes burning slightly in the weak sun. The ash had stopped falling, but clouds of it were thick in the atmosphere still, blocking the sun’s direct rays, and protecting me from serious pain.

As my eyes adjusted, I stood on the porch in dismay.

The house I was in sat adjacent to the commercial district, near the intersection of the road leading to the dam, which stretched up and away from town to the north. Several shops lined the streets on either side of the four-way intersection. A police car stood forgotten and alone in the middle of the crossing streets, doors shut, windows covered in dust and ash.
 

Hundreds of the creatures milled around on the street, pouring to and from my happily burning neighborhood, past me and into the main part of town. I could still see large groups of them on the road leading to the dam. Fewer than before, but still too many.
 

It didn’t look like my distraction had worked.

***

I had practiced this before, you know.
 

Truth be told, I was no rookie when it came to blending in. On days when we felt adventurous, Kim and I use to saunter down to the local organic grocery store for kale smoothies and vegan toffee nut bars, right out in the public.

Dangerous, you ask?
 

You bet. We had to dodge shoppers with carts full of food, irritated customers, frantic moms, and the overall press of humanity—all without the benefit of special lines, physical barriers, or anything else to keep people away from us.

Yes, I had proved several times that I could avoid notice. Usually it was just a ball cap and some sunglasses atop a scruffy sweatshirt—the latter always ‘artfully distressed’ by some designer or another, costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.
 

Usually it wasn’t entrails and gore smeared over some dead granny’s moo-moo, but the concept was the same as it was at the organic food store on a Sunday.
 

Move among the zombies. Be confident but not too fast. Be aware but not too astute. But most of all, anger no one.
 

I staggered along the streets, noting absently the smashed windows of the storefronts and the trash that blew through the abandoned yards and fields beyond. That was one thing about the apocalypse that I couldn’t get used to—the trash.
 

Where had it come from? Why now? Did we really have that much paper and debris floating around the world on a daily basis that when our lights went out, it was a veritable snowstorm of garbage? When the cars crashed and the planes fell and the power went out, did large bins of paper simply seize the opportunity to gleefully topple over into the waiting avenues of the empty world, eager to blanket the streets?
 

Apparently the answer was yes.
 

Ahead of me, a small female zombie was battling against a symptom of that plague—swatting ineffectually at a newspaper that had plastered itself across her face. She struggled with it as she walked, and I had to seriously work at not laughing when she plowed into a light pole and collapsed to the ground.
 

More than two hundred creatures swarmed this small, narrow street, and I suppressed a
 
shudder beneath my Slick Willy mask. Sweat poured from my face and neck. The smell of blood and entrails made my breath ragged and shallow, creating more moisture inside the mask. I could hear my heart pounding and my breath echo inside the cheap plastic and rubber, and had to will my legs to shamble, not run.
 

If I broke, I would not get far at all.

As I reached the middle of the stretch of commercial buildings leading north and away from town, I slanted to my right, finding the alley that led behind a large brick building. The alley was empty and I sighed softly, picking up my pace slightly as the narrow corridor met a slightly wider alley behind the buildings. I turned left, searching for the door to the building.
 

The large metal door was riveted to the brick, and I slowly pivoted my head around, playing the part as I searched for other creatures. The alley was deserted but I could see crowds of them on either end, passing the narrow entrances without looking my way.

I knew that could change if they saw my movement, but I chanced it.

The door was the back entrance to the First Concrete Memorial Savings Bank and it was locked, of course.
 

However, luckily for me, my goal wasn’t to rob the place. It was to spring the alarm.
 

With dwindling options and no time, I had to take some risks, and after the fire house, I figured this was probably the loudest gig in town.
 

Carefully, I parted the front of my robe and reached inside for the pistol that was strapped to my hip. My hand stalled as a zombie wandered around the corner, next to my left side. It must have followed me down the narrow alleyway, and shuffled forward, almost as if curious. It turned to me, grunting once.

My hand tightened on the pistol with a desire to take the thing’s head off. Instead, I groaned once and waited until it turned away. Checking my flanks, I quickly pulled the pistol with a long, quick draw. I put a single shot through the back of the creature’s head, then turned to the door, putting five rounds into the locking mechanism.
 

The podunk bank hadn’t been hardened against a forceful entry like this, and the lock disintegrated under the onslaught. The handle was left hanging from a thin strip of metal, and I quickly reached forward and pulled the door open.
 

The ear-splitting ring that piercing the air was music to my ears.

Designed to withstand power outages with long-life batteries, security systems for places like this were intended to remain operational under environmental stress. I had counted on the longevity of the banking industry’s paranoia, and in this, I was not disappointed.
 

The gunshots and the alarm were quickly doing what they were intended to do. The alley was already filling with creatures from both ends, funneling forward toward me from each side. They were packed tight and moving quickly.
 

But I wasn’t concerned. Pulling the door back in place clumsily, I embraced my role of a lifetime, and entered the dark hallway of the loudly shrieking bank. Past a collective of small cubicles and glass-enclosed offices, a pair of bathrooms and a water fountain, and into a quaint, marble-floored lobby, complete with chained pens and ledger sheets. A large door behind the counters stood sealed shut, likely the lonely and lasting guardian of millions of dollars in cash.