Resurrection: A Zombie Novel (15 page)

“Jesus Christ!” Lane said as his mind processed what he was seeing.

One second.

She pulled the knife out of her pocket with her right hand. She had her back to him so he could not see what she was doing.

She heard him back up against the far wall and slam into the paper-towel dispenser.

One-point-five seconds.

She grasped the dull edge of the folded blade with her left hand.

Lane gasped again. There was no doubt he knew exactly what he was looking at. Had he figured out yet where he’d seen her face?

Two seconds. She opened the blade with her left hand and pointed it straight out and away in her right.

Two-point-five seconds.

“You—” Lane said as if underwater or in slow motion.

She turned and faced him.

Three seconds.

His eyes widened slowly. At least it seemed to her like his eyes widened slowly. But they couldn’t have widened too slowly because she sank the blade of her knife into his throat at three-point-five seconds.

CHAPTER NINE

Everyone in the store heard Lane shouting, but Parker reached the door first. Parker heard banging and scuffling. They were fighting in there. Good grief, did Annie attack
Lane
?

Kyle rushed to the door and turned the handle. Locked.

“Stay back!” Roland shouted from his post near the front. He had his pistol trained perfectly level at both Parker and Kyle. “Do not approach the door while Lane is inside.”

Parker heard something that sounded like choking or gurgling.

“Annie!” Kyle said. “What’s going on in there?”

Silence.

Parker stepped away from the bathroom door but did not take his eyes off Roland. The asshole was just waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger. “Kyle,” Parker said. “Step back or Roland will shoot you.”

Kyle took a couple of steps back. Roland seemed to relax, but only a little.

Then, “I’m fine.” From Annie. “
We’re
fine.”

Nothing from Lane.

The hell?

Parker heard a rustle of clothing from the other side of the door, followed by some kind of thump on the floor. He could barely hear what Annie said next. She practically whispered it. “Where’s Roland?”

Kyle and Parker traded glances.

Roland was still guarding the front, but Parker wanted to know where Hughes was. He looked around the store. Didn’t see him. He assumed Hughes was also hidden from Roland. Carol, he knew, was hunkering down in the cooler.

Why did Annie want to know where Roland was? And what the hell’s up with Lane?

Roland, up at the front, had even less of an idea what was happening. He didn’t dare leave the front wide open.

Annie asked again, in a voice slightly louder this time: “Where’s Roland?”

“Usual place?” Kyle said. “By the front door.” He was no less baffled than Parker.

The bathroom lock clicked again, and in a single swift motion a blood-soaked Annie stepped out into the hall with a
gun
(!) in her hand and fired a shot straight toward the front where Roland was standing.

She missed and Roland dove for cover behind checkout lane number one.

“The fuck!” he shouted.

Parker also dove out of her way. That was the last goddamn thing he expected.

Kyle hit the deck next to Parker. Carol screamed from inside the cooler. Hughes and Frank came running from the direction of what used to be the vegetable aisle.

Annie stood over Parker now and faced the front door where Roland had just been a few seconds ago. She had blood all over her shirt.

“Come on, you sonofabitch!” she shouted.

Holy shit, was Parker impressed. Annie actually had Lane’s gun in her hand. And presumably that was his blood. What happened in there?

“Jesus, Annie, give me that gun,” Kyle said.

“No,” Parker said. “Give
me
the gun. Annie!”

“What did you do to Lane!” Roland shouted from his hiding place.

Hughes and Frank stepped past Annie and into the bathroom. “Jesus,” Frank said when he went inside.

“Lane’s dead, bro,” Hughes called out in his baritone voice. “Best give it up.”

Roland gasped and said, “What did you
do
?”

“He’s real dead,” Frank said. “Jesus, Annie.”

Roland popped his hand up and fired a blind shot from behind the checkout lane. His shot went wild and exploded into the potato-chip rack, tearing holes through at least three bags of BBQ Lay’s.

“Roland, bro, put the gun down and come out,” Hughes said. “You’re the last one left. Not much you can do. We’ll go easy. We know you weren’t in charge.”

Roland fired another blind shot. This one went high into the ceiling.

Annie stayed right where she was. She didn’t duck from either of Roland’s two gunshots. Parker was impressed, but she was about to get herself killed if she didn’t get the fuck down and behind some cover right now.

“Annie!” Kyle said. “Get down!”

“Hand me the gun, kiddo,” Parker said, “and get in the cooler. I’ll take care of Roland.”

Parker was still on the floor. Roland couldn’t hit him from there unless he stood up first, and Roland was not about to stand up. Annie looked down and made brief eye contact with Kyle. Parker thought she looked psychotic, all jumpy and twitchy and wild-eyed.

“Hand me the gun, sweetheart,” Parker said, “and I’ll finish this.”

Hughes and Frank carefully peered out of the bathroom toward the front.

Annie sat on the floor, her legs splayed in front her, with a stunned look of amazement on her face. She looked right at Parker and did not seem to recognize him.

He snatched the gun from her hands. She didn’t resist. Parker wasn’t sure she even noticed.

“Kyle,” he said. “Get her in the cooler.”

Kyle rose, took Annie’s hand, and led her away.

Roland stood up in front, fired three wild shots toward the back, flung open the front door, and ran.

Damn, Parker thought. Now he’d have to go after him.

*   *   *

Hughes couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Lane lay contorted on the bathroom floor in a lake of dark blood with a three-inch blade sticking out of his neck. Hughes fished around in Lane’s pockets until he found the keys to the Chevy, then bolted into the main part of the store just in time to see Parker run out the front.

He faintly heard Parker yell “fucker” and less faintly heard the
pop-pop-pop
of pistol fire, but he knew Parker would miss. It’s not that the man was a bad shot. He wasn’t. But even a trained man can only aim a handgun accurately in a firefight from a dozen feet at the most. You try running after a guy and hitting him at a distance of more than 100 feet. You can’t. Neither could Parker.

So Hughes jogged outside, unlocked the truck, and took out the scoped M-4 rifle from behind the driver’s seat. Parker was 100 feet down the street now, and Roland was even farther ahead because Parker had stopped to reload.

But Roland was running away in a straight line. He must have figured he was in the clear since Parker had emptied his weapon. Hughes could hit him through the scope at 300 yards, though, no problem. He might miss once or twice if Roland ran sideways or in a zigzag, but Roland ran so straight he may as well have stood still.

Hughes steadied the rifle barrel on the top of the Chevy’s open driver’s-side door, glassed Roland through the scope, aimed just over his head to account for the slight drop in the bullet’s arc at that distance, held his breath, and fired between heartbeats.

The rifle shot
cracked
loud enough to shatter the world and came echoing back from every direction.

Roland was still running, and he seemed to be running faster.

Hughes considered starting the truck and chasing Roland down, but the asshole might dart into a building and make things a whole lot more complicated, so he aimed again through the scope, glassed his target, held his breath, steadied his hands, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle shot
cracked
again, and Roland dropped like someone had flipped off his switch. The sound echoed back even after Roland had fallen.

Parker stood bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. Hughes saw him nod in satisfaction.

“You got him,” Kyle said. He and Frank stood just outside the front door and squinted off in the distance. Hughes didn’t know how long they’d been there.

“I got him,” Hughes said.

But something seemed to be troubling Parker. Hughes could even see that from a distance. Roland wasn’t dead yet. He was moaning and crawling away on his stomach. So Parker started walking toward Roland with his pistol in hand, and he took his damn time about it. Parker was going to enjoy this. He seemed to want to savor the buildup. He stopped when he reached Roland’s prone form. Roland stopped crawling. Hughes heard a small whimper, followed by a sharp
pop
.

“Well,” Frank said.

Nobody else said a word.

Then Hughes saw Parker cock his head to the right and stand up straight. Parker was far away, and Hughes couldn’t be sure he was reading the body language correctly, but Parker looked nervous.

“Frank,” Hughes said. “Get the shotgun out of the truck and take it into the store.”

Then he heard it. The sound was faint at first, like a faraway ball game. Hughes could just barely hear it at the edge of his perception.

Then Parker started running back toward him like hell.

“Uh-oh,” Frank said.

“We need to get inside,” Kyle said. “Now.”

“Help me with these guns,” Hughes said as he reached into the truck across the seat and opened the passenger door. There was a whole mess of handguns and a few half-full boxes of ammunition in the cab behind the seat.

Hughes tucked the rifle under his arm and grabbed two of the handguns. Kyle grabbed two more and handed them to Frank, then took the last two for himself.

The noise was a little bit louder now. Hughes clearly heard feet on pavement, but he still couldn’t see them. They were coming up one of the side streets.

Parker was getting close and waving his arms toward the store. “Get inside, get inside!” he yelled. “They’re coming!”

Hughes shut the Chevy’s doors. “Y’all get inside,” he said. “I’ll pick ’em off with the rifle.”

Parker arrived, but he didn’t stop or even slow down. Just ran into the store full-tilt and practically knocked Kyle over. Frank and Kyle followed him in.

Hughes stood there and waited. He might be able to pick off ten or so before he’d have to barricade himself inside the store with the others. He might even be able to pick all of them off. He didn’t see anything coming yet, but he sure could hear them.

While he stood there and waited, the sound kept getting louder. There were more of them than he realized. His bowels turned to liquid. Only a huge number of people—or things—could make that much noise. He needed to get inside—now—before they rounded the corner and saw him. So he backed up toward the doorway and almost made it inside when a horde burst around a corner six long suburban blocks down. There were dozens of them.

No. Not dozens.

Hundreds.

They screamed in unison when they saw him, their screams like the war cries of an army.

CHAPTER TEN

Kyle ran to Annie while Parker and Hughes slammed the door brace in place. Annie still sat in shock on the floor, drenched in Lane’s blood.

“Annie,” Kyle said and squatted so he could face her at eye level. She stared at an empty point in space over his shoulder.

“Annie!”

She snapped to alertness.

The roar of footsteps and screaming grew louder. Jesus, how many of those things were
out
there? They must have seen Hughes dart in the through the front door before closing it.

Annie heard them now. She turned her head in the direction of the noise and managed to look even more panicked and crazed than she had just a few moments earlier.

“They’re coming,” she said. “They found us.”

“They found us,” Kyle said and nodded. He had a pistol in each hand. He tucked one into his belt and offered his free hand to Annie. “Come on. Get up.” She took his hand. He pulled her up. “We all need to man the defenses.”

Everybody but Carol.

The screams outside reached a deafening crescendo as bodies slammed into the side of the building, shattering glass and shuddering the foundation.

“Fuck me,” Frank said.

Carol shrieked, loud enough to make herself heard over the screams of those things and their pounding and shattering.

Hughes, M-4 rifle in hand, took a knee in front of the door and aimed the barrel straight at its center in case the horde busted through.

Annie looked frozen, either lost in thought or going catatonic. Kyle couldn’t be sure.

“Annie,” he said. She shifted her gaze toward the front door, but otherwise remained frozen. The shattering changed to pounding now that most of the glass was out of the way, the sound like 10,000 hammers battering the boards they’d nailed up.

“Annie!” Kyle said. She startled and looked at him, her eyes finally focusing. “Can you shoot? Can I give you this gun?” He offered her his spare weapon.

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said and took it. “I’m sorry, I’m just—”

“Later,” he said.

Kyle watched Parker climb onto the counter in one of the checkout aisles and crane his neck upward to try to see out through the gap at the top of the boards.

“I can’t see them from here,” he shouted over the din. “So we can’t shoot them from here.”

They should have cut gun slots in the plywood. Jesus, why hadn’t anyone thought of that?

“Isn’t there a ladder in back?” Kyle shouted to Hughes.

Indeed there was, and Frank ran toward the back of the store.

The screams from the horde outside were lessening somewhat, but the banging, kicking, and scratching picked up. The plywood sheets couldn’t withstand that forever. If those things weren’t dealt with,
stat,
they’d burst in. Kyle was now glad that Lane’s boys had blocked the back door with a Dumpster.