Pavlov's Dogs (24 page)

Molded thoughts a moldy brain

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HA! HA! HA!

He turned the corner and looked back, coughing. His nose had started bleeding again. The zombies were still back there, but he wasn’t singing another verse.

It didn’t matter. They were coming on now, moaning together. They wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway. He alternated between the gas and the brake all the way up the block, then stopped at the next intersection. The dead caught up, surrounding the bus, hands scrabbling at the bottoms of the windows.

“This is as far as the tour goes, folks,” Ken yelled out the window. “You’ll have to find your own way back.”

He let off the brake and sped away. Two left turns and two minutes later, he was stopped in front of North Regional again, backing carefully up to the building. The rear of the bus tore away part of the overhang.

Ken put the bus in park. “Close enough.”

Hobbling to the rear, he clambered up onto a seat and muscled open the emergency roof hatch. He found himself looking up at Kelly’s smiling face.

“We were wondering if you’d gone off for a bite to eat or something.”

He returned the smile. “Something like that. Come on down.”

Julius leaned out and threw down a rope ladder made of electrical wire. The rungs of the ladder were made of sawn-off pieces of PVC pipe. Ken looked up and signaled his approval.

“Very nice.”

Ten people had climbed down by the time the zombies made it back around to North Regional. The moaning made the others on the ladder nervous, and trash bags full of water from the toilets fell from their hands.

The bags burst and splashed everywhere, and water poured down inside the bus, soaking Ken’s head and shoulders.

“It’s all right,” he said, drying his eyes. “We’ll get more later. Just come on down.”

Kelly ushered more people out the window and down the ladder, and still the zombies got closer.

“Don’t worry about them,” she said, helping a man who had a prosthetic hook for a hand descend the ladder. “The bus is too tall for them to get to us.”

The truth of her words was immediately evident, but the moaning was getting louder and louder, a choral dirge that didn’t abate, didn’t stop. Several survivors huddled in their seats, facing inboard and looking at the floor, or at their shoes. They held their hands over their ears.

Zombies piled up against the bus, and as they moved back and forth, a tidal motion began to rock the big yellow vehicle. Ken looked out, seeing the dead folk backed all the way up to the horrid sculpture in front of the building. As he watched, one of the guy wires that held the art in place snapped with a loud, metallic
twang!

“You have got to be shitting me.”

The sculpture swayed with the movement of the horde, moving in sympathy with the bus, and before too long, the motion was too much. Very slowly, the statue started to tilt.

Absently, Ken helped another person through the roof hatch as he watched the sculpture pass the point of no return. It tottered and fell, smashing six zombies beneath it. The end of the sculpture was no more than three feet from the bus. An easy distance to step across.

“Rifle!” Ken yelled up to Kelly.

She disappeared inside the building and came back with an M1 Carbine, the last of the rifles that still had any ammunition.

“What am I shooting at?”

Ken pointed at the end of the sculpture, where the mass of zombies had regrouped. Two of them had fallen against the colossal work of art, and the motion of the crowd had pushed them up onto it. One of them, a mechanic in his former life, stood atop the sculpture and took one wobbly step toward the bus.

Kelly fired, the shot pinging off the side of the sculpture and blasting through the nose of one of the zombies. The mechanic took another wobbly step.

Kelly took aim and fired again, this time taking the zombie through the hip. When it lifted its leg to step again, the damaged joint wouldn’t hold it, and the mechanic fell onto the horde like a crowd surfer at a wake.

“Is that everybody?”

Nodding, Kelly dropped the rifle into Ken’s waiting hands. “Just me and Julius.”

“Come on, then.”

Ken opened one of the bus windows and fired with the Walther at the other sculpture-riding zombie. It did a short dance and fell off.

One bullet left in this one. One more .44.

He checked the magazine in the rifle, found three more .30-caliber bullets in there.

“You want me to drive, boss?” Julius asked before lowering himself through the hatch into the bus.

Handing him the rifle, Ken shook his head. “I got it. You just take a seat. Who has the nines?”

Julius pointed up. “Kelly has one.”

“What about the other two?”

Grimacing, Julius said, “We’ll have to talk about that in a little bit. After we’re out of here.”

Ken pursed his lips and considered pressing the issue, but Julius was a stubborn old man; if he didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t. Neither would Kelly. Small as she was, she was tough.

“Fine,” Ken said, shuffling to the front of the bus. He sat down and checked the mirror. “Let me know when she’s in. Is this everybody?”

“Twenty souls,” Julius said.

“Twenty?”

“We’ll talk.”

Kelly dropped into the bus and Julius whistled. Ken put the bus in gear and pulled away from the building.

“Not bad,” Kelly said, slumping into the seat behind him. “Glad you came back when you did. Things got weird.”

He looked up at her in the rearview. “How do you mean?”

“Just, watch where you’re going. We’ll have the chance to talk soon enough. You know where Julius’s machine shop is?”

Ken sat up and dug the map out of his back pocket. He handed it to her and then fished the marker out of his shirt pocket.

“What the hell?” Kelly said, seeing all the blood on the marker.

“Ah, shit.” Ken wiped the marker off on his shirt. “Sorry. I had some problems.”

Kelly made a face and took the marker, passing it and the map to Julius, who marked an X on it and passed it back. He sat down and crossed his arms on the seatback in front of him, putting his head down.

“Wow,” Ken said. “Not a word about it. Must have been bad.”

Only raising her eyebrows in response, Kelly passed the map up. Ken smoothed it on the steering wheel. “Good,” he said. “This isn’t too far at all. We should be there in no time.”

He took the bus through a turn and saw the Ford truck he’d crashed. A wriggling zombie was pinned under its front driver-side wheel. Ken tossed a salute at it as the bus rolled by. He turned again, pulling onto a smaller, narrower street.

“Oh, come
on
,” he said, slowing the bus. A car wreck had closed the street about halfway up the block. An overturned Saturn was wedged between a Jeep and a Land Rover, each facing opposite directions.

“Can we push through?” Kelly asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Let’s find out.”

Ken dropped the bus into low gear and moved forward, slowing as he got near the wreck. He turned the wheel so that the flat of the bumper was against the corner of the Land Rover’s. He goosed the pedal, and the entire wreck gave off a shuddering groan. The Saturn settled farther on its roof and slid with the Land Rover.

“Shit. I don’t think I can shake it loose.”

He gave the bus more gas, engine roaring in low gear. The combined mass of the wreck slid another two feet before the Jeep wedged against a parked van.

“Let’s just find another way, then,” Kelly said, patting Ken’s shoulder.

He shrugged and put the bus in reverse. The Land Rover came with him for a second, then let go with a crash. The bus began to shudder. Ken gave it more gas, and the shudder became worse, until the steering wheel felt like a jackhammer in his hands.

Julius got up. “I’ll take a look.”

Ken leaned down and picked up the wedged-in bat before pulling on the door lever. As Julius passed into the stairwell, Ken reached to his left and put out the STOP sign.

“Cute,” the old man said. He was out of the bus and back within seconds. “I don’t know what you ran over, hoss, but that tire is shredded. We aren’t going anywhere.”

Ken ran his hands over his head and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s...”

He drifted off as he caught movement in the rearview mirror.

“That’s truer than you know,” he said quietly.

The moaning began a moment later.

THE ALPHA DOG stood panting in the middle of the sparring cage, looking down on the body of his best friend. McLoughlin’s feral yellow eyes never blinked, waiting for the Beta Dog to change back, so he could at least see Samson’s face one more time. The body remained stubbornly lupine.

“Bravo, McLoughlin!” Dr. Donovan yelled. He had dropped his papers and was applauding. “That was—”

Faster than the neurotech’s eyes could follow, Mac streaked across the sparring cage and locked his teeth on the fence directly in front of Donovan’s face.

“That’s no way to be,” Donovan said, wiping spittle from his forehead. “You should be grateful you’re not being punished for disobeying my direct orders.” He turned to the Dogs gathered behind him. The Thetas and Sigmas all looked from him to Mac as if they were watching a tennis match.

“I am the Master,” Donovan said to them. “Is that not so? Heel!”

The Theta Dogs looked at each other, unsure of what to do, but the six Sigma Dogs moved forward at once, falling into rough formation before Donovan. Inferior minds, easier to control, and resigned to their status at the bottom of the totem pole. The neurotech raised his eyebrows and turned to look at the Alpha.

“You should have just listened to me. Did you think you were indispensable? There are graveyards full of men who were indispensable. Look there. I’m sure you never thought you would get along without your Beta.”

Alpha McLoughlin slashed at the fence, ripping his still-healing forearm back open. His roar bounced off the walls and his feet scraped for traction as he tried to force his way out. But it was as he had said earlier—the cage held.

Donovan began pacing to the left, following the curve of the fence. “Here’s the problem in a nutshell, McLoughlin. I can’t control you just by talking to you. For whatever reason, you refuse to acknowledge me as Master. I imagine that the pile of meat on the ground over there has something to do with it—”

The Alpha Dog, following Donovan around the cage, snapped his jaws at the fence.

“—but the fact remains. If I were sitting in Command right now, with the mere press of a button I could have you standing on your head reciting Chaucer, assuming you know any. But that is an untenable situation, and we both know it.”

He continued to walk, occasionally placing his hands on the fence, then pulling them away as the Alpha stalked him. They played this peculiar game of Dog and Doctor all the way around to the opposite side of the enclosure.

“Don’t worry about me, though. I have a contingency plan. To tell you the truth, I never really liked you. I thought you were too good to be true. And now look at you. You’ve killed your second-in-command. He was high on my list as your replacement.”

Alpha McLoughlin hurled himself at the cage again, impacting it hard enough to make the entire thing shudder.

Donovan crouched down, and the Alpha pressed his face up against the fence so that he and the director were almost nose-to-nose. Donovan waved his hand, beckoning for some reason.

In a low voice, he said, “But now that you’ve put Samson out of the running, I guess that just leaves Kaiser. You remember Kaiser. On my first day here, he put the Beta in his place, and—”

Mac snapped his jaws at the fence again. The sound of his enamel striking the steel was loud, and Donovan turned his head away for a moment. When he turned back, he was smiling.

“And finally, you insubordinate mutt, your honor guard has arrived, ready to escort you from this life, and out of my hair.”

The Alpha turned to find the six Sigmas arrayed behind him in the cage, and he suddenly realized why Donovan had made the seemingly meaningless hand gesture. The Sigmas looked at each other and back to the Alpha. They were bouncing from side to side, rolling their shoulders, looking like a set of professional wrestlers psyching up for a Battle Royale. Behind them, still outside the cage, the Theta Dogs looked on with stony faces.

“By the numbers,” Sigma 37 said. “Just like we trained.”

Donovan shook his fist in the air. “Sic ’em!”

The Sigmas dropped to all fours, their backs bowing and their voices raised in agony as the Change swept through them. Since their bodies hadn’t accepted the Dog upgrades as readily as the Alpha’s had, it always hurt more as their bones grew, realigned, and changed shapes beneath the flesh.