Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (13 page)

He heard it before seeing it. And so did the dead. Ashen
faces turned cheek in unison, looking east towards the sound.

Elvis trained the binoculars on a spot where 138 made a bend
and adjusted the focus ring. A tick later a flatbed truck with three people
crammed into the cab came around the corner, geared low, slowly zippering
through the dead, swerving from shoulder-to-shoulder, seeking the path of least
resistance. He could see fear and stress and all manner of emotion set on the
trio’s faces as the dead tried to close ranks on the rig.

“Thank you,” blurted Elvis. He rose from the
daveno
and went back into the kitchen and peered out the window; he noticed that the
dead out back had forgotten about him and the house and trampling the shrubs.
Now all he could see was the back of their heads as they negotiated the drive
towards the road beyond.

Hustling back into the living room, he caught the tail end
of the truck, brake lights flaring, as it bulled through the front end of the
herd, then the reassuring droning of the motor as it disappeared from sight.
Now
or never
, went through his mind as he stowed the binoculars. Leaving the
case behind, he shouldered the pack and pushed through the kitchen, heading for
the back door and the woodland camouflaged GMC he had parked in the detached
two-car garage.

But on the way past the cellar the thing bashed against the
door. Then the glass knob jiggled ever so slightly. Finally, curiosity got the
best of him. Leaving now would be akin to leaving a Husker’s football game at
halftime. The need to know what had been periodically bumping the door and
taking up space in his head over the last sixty-some-odd-hours was gnawing at
him.

He stood there gripping the door handle for a few minutes
with the rational side of his brain urging him to walk out the back door—to
sprint to the pick-up he’d liberated from the Fonz and make his way through the
dead and go to wherever the silver GPS numbers would deliver him.

But the irrational side of his brain spoke to him—a sick
mantra, the words,
do it, do it, do it
resounding in his head. Manifest
Destiny be damned. Getting ahead of the
herd
or
horde
would have
to wait. And locating a GPS unit in order to play Bishop’s silly game would
also go on the back burner.

Do it.

And he did. Like a lion tamer, he held the kitchen chair
horizontally in front of him, left arm threaded through the back slats, four
sturdy legs ready to counter the creature’s inevitable first lunge. He leaned
forward and
snicked
the lock with his right.

Bang.

Do it.

That the door would open towards him was a given. Whoever
designed the first cellar stairway long ago had come to the conclusion that
opening a door into a darkened hole where the footing was uncertain and
lighting a luxury was likely a losing proposition. So Elvis pulled the door
towards him, releasing a sickly sweet stench of carrion and damp soil and old
rotted timbers. Then from the darkness, hunched over and gray, the toddler’s granny
fell up the top two stairs, landing face first on the kitchen floor, the impact
sending its dentures skittering across the floor and loosing a torrent of
squirming maggots from its toothless maw. Sidestepping the glistening white
larva, Elvis trapped the writhing creature to the floor. Picturing a soccer
ball at his feet, he torqued his hips and drew his right leg back to half-mast.
“Sorry, Ma’am,” he said as he dipped his right shoulder, starting a chain
reaction as the energy coursed through his back muscles, unloaded his cocked
hips and focused every ounce of inertia down his leg, culminating in the
introduction of shoe leather to bone.

Following through with a final twist of the hips, Elvis
drove the reinforced steel-toe of his boot through the monster’s septum and
into its brain. A sickening crunch reverberated through the galley kitchen and
Elvis hopped in a circle around the chair, struggling to dislodge his boot from
the stilled creature’s caved-in face.

He finally resorted to stepping on Grandma’s stick-thin neck,
grinding the vertebra there to a pulp while working his right foot free.

Fighting the urge to puke, he stepped over the body and
stared down into the void. Listened hard.
Nothing.

He pulled a mini-Maglite from a cargo pocket and twisted the
bezel until he had a nice wide cone of light to work with. Leading with the
pistol clutched in his right fist, flashlight held in the left, he took the
stairs two at a time. He stopped four strides later. Eight stairs
down—mid-flight. Starting at his four o’clock he swept the white light over the
packed dirt walls right to left. Freezing the beam at roughly ten o’clock, he
gasped as what he was looking at was rejected momentarily by the rational side
of his brain.

The little girl whose short life was on display in pictures
on the mantle upstairs was dead. She’d been killed and partially eaten by Grandma.
Her thick blond hair had stuck fast to the floor in the blood that had pooled
and dried where she had been ravaged and then finally reanimated.

What a pitiful sight it was, watching it struggle and twitch,
its tiny teeth clacking together.

Unable to check the rising surge Elvis hinged at the waist
and vomited on the stairs below him.

Schriever AFB

“Boardwalk with one house ... that will be two hundred big
ones,” crowed Sasha, palm out. “Rents due, big bro. Pay up.”

“Dice are broken,” Wilson mumbled, ripping the paper band
holding the two-inch-thick stack of twenties he’d surreptitiously pocketed
after the imploding windshield encounter with the undead Wells Fargo driver
days ago. Why the stone-faced soldier had given the bricks of cash back after
quarantine was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Maybe the Army’s
don’t
ask, don’t tell
policy could be applied in more than one way, he’d thought
at the time. Especially after a society-crushing viral outbreak. No matter, he
gave Sasha a well-earned dose of stink eye, licked his thumb, and then flicked
away ten of the crisp, aromatic Andrew Jacksons.

“You’re just unlucky, Wilson. Don’t pout, give it here,” she
said gleefully, waggling her fingers in the universal gesture that meant
fork
it over
. As he handed her the worthless bank notes, his gaze shifted to
Taryn and he reflected on how lucky he’d been to have crossed paths with her.
How an unfathomable, yet serendipitous chain of events—like some kind of fated
butterfly effect—had thrown them together. How in an
you-cannot-make-this-shit-up kind of story she had been trapped in an airport
full of the dead, only to be rescued by a stealth helicopter full of Special
Forces led by the husband of someone he had recently met. Like he was living
out a plot device in a James Cameron movie, he fantasized that he’d somehow
been chosen to survive the initial outbreaks and then meet Taryn and conceive
and raise a child with her.
Their
child would then grow into a man and
eventually save the world. With a dreamy smile on his face, he was rudely
yanked from his flowery fantasy by Sasha’s whiny voice. “Snap out of it,
Wilson,” she said, mouth hovering a hand’s width from his ear.

“What were you thinking about, Red?” Taryn said softly into
the other ear from an equal distance.

“Zoning out I guess,” he said, bending the truth enormously.
“I guess I got way too much sun the last couple of days. Probably overdosing on
vitamin D or whatever it is in sunshine.” In truth, he surmised, the vivid daydream
had nothing to do with how many times he’d watched the Terminator movies. He
was no Kyle Reese and Taryn was not his Sarah. Fact of the matter was, he was
still grappling with the romantic repercussions of the previous night. A night of
bliss he’d never forget and hoped to replicate before leaving for Utah.
Hell
,
he thought,
if Captain America aka Captain Grayson wanted to go on a few
more missions, he was OK with that.
The window of opportunity was as wide
as it would ever be, and he harbored a considerable amount of fear it was about
to start the downward slide. Hell, as far as he knew the ink on the inevitable
Dear John letter was probably still wet and the piece of rotten news was tucked
away in the top drawer of the desk sitting against the wall under the warbling air-conditioning
unit.
On the bright side
, he thought to himself—as Taryn’s iPhone which
was sitting atop said desk caught his eye—there was no way he’d be experiencing
another one of those dreaded
I’m dumping you
text messages which had
been all the rage before the world went to shit. And the thing that had really
pissed him off about the ones he’d received was that there had been no way for him—the
dumpee—to cajole, plead, or argue his case with the thousands of cold and
indifferent pixels on the tiny screen telling him in more ways than one:
You
are not worthy
.

So he had told a little white lie. Big deal. He couldn’t
have just blurted out—
I was fantasizing about you and me living together
forever, Taryn.
Followed up by putting his irrational thoughts into words—
And
please don’t dump me, Taryn. You’re all I have to live for.

Melodramatic?

Yes.

But with the loss of his mom, and the swift and sudden
disappearance of the human race to the unforgiving Omega virus, the fear that he
would never find someone as beautiful and sweet-smelling as Taryn again was
visceral—and of late—all-consuming.

So he closed his eyes, hoping to live in his fantasy world
for as long as possible.

“You’re doing it again, Wilson,” Taryn said, delivering a
peck on his sunburned cheek.

And never the one to let her brother enjoy himself, Sasha
said, “Your roll, Miss Tattoo.”

Shooting Sasha a look that said,
Don’t push it
, Taryn
threw the dice. “Lucky seven,” she said as she did a little dance in her seat
and moved the pewter gray roadster the appropriate number of spaces. “I passed
Go ... and that means I collect two hundred dollars. Pay me, banker man.” She
flashed a quick smile at Wilson, who was peeling off twenties and glaring at
Sasha, and concluded that there would be no better time than the present to
address the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. Scrunching her brow, she took a
deep breath and asked, “What did you two think about taking target practice on
the zombies?”

Without missing a beat Sasha piped up. “That creeped me out big
time. Especially how comfortable Raven was with the whole thing ... popping
them in the head like that with
her own gun
... almost seemed like she
was enjoying it or something.”

“Apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree,” said Taryn. “Because
it was crystal clear to me that Brook
was
enjoying every second of it.”
She shuddered visibly, went quiet for a good long beat, and then went on.
“Something about the way she calmly put down one after another of those things
didn’t seem normal. I had to stop counting after about ten.”

“She offed twenty-six of them,” Sasha said proudly. “I was
counting. And she didn’t even blink when she was shooting at the little ones.”

Taryn nodded but said nothing.

“A bite from a kid Z will kill you just as good as any,”
Wilson proffered. Then he threw the dice, strictly because they were there in
front of him. He watched the bones bounce around and finally come to rest
showing double sixes. Box cars. Good a sign as any.

Disregarding their ongoing game, he let his gaze fall on
Taryn and decided to dig a little and see if an earlier observation he had made
was correct. “Looked like
you
had no problem shooting the handful of
deadheads that you did,” he said. “
Granted
... Miss Grayson seemed to
think we all needed our
firearms
and
double hit
merit badges.”

“Double tap,” Sasha said, correcting Wilson. “
Two shots
to the head. The double tap ensures that they go down and stay down,
were
her exact words.”

“She doesn’t scare me a bit,” said Taryn, inclining her head
a degree to punctuate the statement.

“At all?”

“Not one iota, Sasha. So she’s comfortable with her role. Momma
lion protecting her cub. I get it. But she’s still human like you and me. She
puts her pants on one leg at a time.”

Breaking out in a big grin, Sasha said, “Which side you
think she lets it hang?”

“Grow up, Sasha,” said Wilson. He screeched his chair back and
looked Taryn square in the face. “I have to know something.”

“Go ahead. Shoot,” said Taryn.

Wincing at her choice of words, Wilson removed his hat. He
listened to the A/C rumble for a tick as his inner voice waged a losing battle
with itself, one second screaming,
Ask the question,
and the next begging
him to tell her to forget about it because he’d lost his train of thought. After
a few seconds the mental volley became too much and he popped the question he
assumed he already knew the answer to. “Did
you
enjoy it?”

“
Me?
” Taryn said incredulously. To Wilson her
response sounded rehearsed. Almost theatrical.

“Yeah, you,” he said back. “Did you get any
satisfaction
from ridding the earth of a few more of those infected things?” And to drive
home the seriousness of his question, he donned his hat and smashed it down to
its customary position, put his elbows on the table, cupped his chin, and
stared at her awaiting a reply.

“Not so much,” she answered softly. “I killed Dickless ‘cause
he had it coming. He was a pervert when he was my boss and he wouldn’t quit
staring at me after he got bit and turned into one of those things.”

“They all do that after they turn.”

“I know, Sasha. But you weren’t there to see him leering.
Your
skin wasn’t crawling twenty-four-seven just knowing he was out there dry
humping the door trying to get in.” Suddenly, as if she’d run out of gas or blown
a fuse, she went silent, lowered her eyes and bowed her head.

“Must have been awful,” Sasha replied sincerely.

There was a long moment of silence.

Lamenting the fact that Taryn was revisiting her darkest
moment because of him, Wilson fidgeted in his seat, praying for Sasha to rest
her case and conclude her line of questioning.

“It was,” Taryn said, lifting her head enough to shoot a
sidelong look at Sasha. “When I shot him in the face I was happier than I’d
been in days. Happier than when I found those two granola bars behind a porno
mag in his lower desk drawer. Shooting those burnt creatures by the fence today
was
not
the same ... I got
zero
satisfaction from that. Just
makes me have to think about how they died the first time around. Who they
were. Who they left behind. Made me think about my mother. My father, and my
brother. Reminds me of the hot rod we were gonna restore together ... as a
family
.
Just makes me think, and right now the last thing I need to do ... is fuckin
think.”

Wilson peeked from under his boonie hat. “Speaking from
experience, shooting them is a lot easier than killing them with a bat,” he
intoned, remembering how he’d been forced to brain his undead next door
neighbors at the Viscount Arms in Denver. “And now that I’ve got a feel for that
M4 of hers, there is
no
way on earth I’m ever going to use that
Louisville Slugger again. That thing is retired ... unless I have to use it as
a last resort.”

“So a convert, huh?” Sasha said. “Mom always was against
guns
.”

“Says my
sister
who won’t brandish
anything
except
for her knockoff Fendi and Louis Vuitton handbags,” countered Wilson. “You
didn’t even shoot Raven’s rifle ... did you?” he added accusingly. “No reason
to fear it. Thing’s about one notch above a BB gun.”

More than a little embarrassed to debate her fear of
firearms let alone her total inability to touch one, Sasha wisely made no
reply.

Sensing the chink in her armor, Wilson turned the tables and
pushed
her
buttons for once. “I suggest you put a couple of non-quarried
rocks in those pleather bags of yours and swing away. Then you could say you’re
a certified, green, organic, natural-born, free-range zombie killer,” he
quipped.

“Better than being a
gun nut
,” was the best Sasha
could come up with.

“One day this
gun nut
might save your bacon with a ...
oh my gosh ... a
gun
.”
Touché
’ thought Wilson. Living away from
home for a decent stretch before the outbreak had softened his delivery
somewhat. But the longer he found himself cooped up with his little sister, the
sharper his witty verbal comebacks had become.

There was a knock at the door. Staccato, machine-gun-like
pops of knuckle on wood containing a certain sense of urgency.

Everyone stopped talking at once, but it was Taryn who rose
and took a few tentative steps toward the door.

After a few beats it came again. Only louder, like someone who
was being shadowed down the street by a stranger and had just so happened to
have randomly chosen Taryn’s billet for refuge and wanted in ...
now
.

“Who is it?” Taryn called out, even as she peeled the
blackout curtain from the narrow window beside the door. The air conditioner
rattled on and a voice, barely audible above it, called back, “It’s Brook and
Raven’s with me. Can we come in?”

Taryn let go of the curtain and looked over her shoulder at
Wilson and Sasha and whispered, “It’s them. And there is a guy sitting in a golf
cart. He’s wearing some kind of uniform.” She took care to smooth the curtain
into place, making sure no outside light shone in, then hinged up and worked
the lock.

Brook and Raven stepped inside with a few bars of sunlight
and the faint smell of death close on their heels.

“Game’s over,” Wilson said to Sasha. The wheeled office
chair he had been sitting on emitted a pneumatic hiss when he rose. He stacked the
three unwrapped packets of twenty dollar bills totaling six thousand in all,
rustled up the loose bills and was about to stuff the whole lot into one of his
cargo pockets when he caught himself.
Old habits die hard
, he thought
with a smile upon recognizing the absurdity of giving a shit about leaving the
cash lying around. He tossed the worthless money on the table, watching it fan
out and then slide onto the floor.

“What did you go and do Wilson ... rob a bank or something?”
Brook said as Taryn shut the door and snapped the deadbolt into place behind
her.

Ignoring the quip, Wilson regarded her with a serious look
and said, “I thought you’d be down at the flight line by now welcoming your
husband back.”

Making no reply, Brook fixed her gaze on him, hitched a brow,
and tilted her head towards Raven, conveying the universal message that what needed
to be said wasn’t appropriate to voice out loud with young ears around.

Seeing the looks exchanged between Brook and Wilson, and
correctly guessing their meaning, Taryn grabbed Raven’s duffel bag and guided
her to where they’d be out of earshot from the others and vice-versa. “I’ve got
just the thing for you,” Taryn said to Raven. As she led them around the
makeshift gaming table, they passed by the trio of desks pushed tight against
the right side wall. She snatched up her fully charged iPhone and the white tangle
of wires that passed for earphones. Then she directed Raven to one of the
furthermost bunks, sat down and patted the mattress next to her. “I’ve got
everything
Lady Gaga ever recorded on this thing,” she added, hefting the smartphone in
her hand like it was the last one on earth. “Want to give it a listen?”