Safari - 02 (15 page)

Huge rats pawed at the bottom edge of the windowsill.

Gus drew back in revulsion. The window was five feet from the floor. The things had piled up on the backs of each other.

Splinters cascaded to the floor and the door bulged inward. Holes at the base widened. More rats scurried through and squealed in hungry delight. Gus jumped on them, holding his knife, but doing more damage with his boots. He stomped on two at once, feeling the twisting creatures underneath his soles. With more heavy stomping, he quickly turned the floor into a slippery mess of blood and innards. If he crushed anything but the heads, the rats moved on, answering the question of what feeding on the dead did to them. A long splintering of wood made Gus’s heart sink, and he turned to see a small torrent of rats gush inside, moving so close together they appeared like a solid stream.

Glass tinkled, some falling to the floor. Rats spilled inside like great greasy gobs of hair. He jumped back to the staircase, turned and kicked at them with one foot, crushing several into meaty lumps. The rats headed for the small office, and Gus watched the shadowy body of the old man zombie slowly disappear underneath a carpet of feeding rats and white tails.

Gus took three steps back up the stairs, keeping his eye on the front door. The lower part of the door finally gave way in a crackling snap, splitting right down the middle. Rats flooded the entryway, spewing across the floor. They found the corpses quickly and began feasting. The door cracked again as writhing darkness slowly widened the opening and more bodies wormed into the house.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he retreated a few more steps, placing distance between him and the fearsome tide. The door finally gave completely, and a sheet of rats surged into the house. The wood twisted inward, and when it was finally dislodged from the frame, it tumbled without a sound, landing on the hairy backs. It bobbed for a brief moment before the hungry river pouring into the house swallowed it.

Gus turned and bounded back to the trapdoor. Breathing frantically, he climbed the steps and hauled them up, leaving only a crack so he could see the dark hall and the landing.

“How the fuck do I deal with
that
?” he asked out loud.

No answer came, so Gus decided on his own. He grabbed his weapons, but then realized with horror that his boots would do more damage than the firearms or bat. The rats were too small for anything else. Then, he remembered the Molotov cocktail. He’d left it on the night table, along with a lighter. He grabbed the bottle. That was what he needed, but he needed
lots
of them.

Gus returned to the stairs and lowered them. He went almost to the bottom and paused for a moment, listening to the squeaking that had become almost a chorus of nail-on-chalkboard scratches. Nothing appeared in the shadows, so he crept to the landing and looked over the rail.

His breath caught in his throat. He suddenly knew what sailors must feel when ice or some other object pierced their vessel’s hull, allowing the mighty sea to gush in. Rats flooded the lower level, climbing over each other to get to the food. A few even reached the seventh and eight steps of the staircase. The sight of a dark, twisting, writhing mass filling the downstairs struck him speechless. And more were entering.

He flicked the lighter, and the flame flashed upward a good inch. He touched the flame to the cloth sticking out of the bottle. The wick lit up, and Gus watched it for a moment before hurling the Molotov cocktail at the wall next to the door below.

Glass exploded, and fire rained down on the mass of bodies. The flames caught the closest rats and stilled them within seconds. The fire clinging to the wall and around the stairway flashed up, illuminating the swarm and casting a ghoulish light on both them and the walls of the lower level. The mass of rats churned like a huge vat of black gruel.

He retreated back to the attic and located his motorcycle helmet and pads. He quickly suited up and checked his equipment, making sure he had all of his weapons on him. The Nomex was layered, the top coat draping over the pants, and Gus feared that rats might somehow get up under there. He hauled out the boxes of winter clothing he had found earlier and went through them, finding thick gloves and several scarfs. He looped the scarfs around his midsection and tied them off. With one last look around, he pulled on the helmet, leaving the visor up for the moment.

He ripped the blankets from the bed and, with his knife, shredded two of the thinner ones down the middle. Knotting the ends together, he made a rope. Last, he pulled on the gloves and took a deep breath.

It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Gus descended the stairs with the blanket-rope in hand. He veered away from the burning stairs, toward the back of the house, and ducked inside what he thought was the master bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Tall sturdy looking bedposts greeted him, and he tied the ends of his makeshift rope to one of them. The window behind the headboard would lead to the backyard. He got up on the bed and kicked out the window. Drawing his bat, he cleared the frame of jagged edges before throwing the blanket-rope out into the void. He stuck his head through the opening and peered down, seeing only black, which did nothing for his confidence.

Around the edges of the closed door, the fiery glow grew and flickered. He caught a whiff of smoke and forced his way out of the window. Holding on for dear life, he felt the tug and worrying stretch of the tied blankets. His boots clattered and scraped against the side of the house as he rappelled. In moments, his soles felt ground.

And felt it shift.

Gus looked down and bit back a scream. The rats had come around the house, surrounding it. He instinctively lifted his feet, but realized he had nowhere to go. He couldn’t climb back up the rope. Even if he could, he’d be stuck in a burning house.

Taking a breath and twisting on the rope, he lowered himself down, feeling the pressure of the small bodies against his boots, then his knees, until his soles touched down on the backs of thrashing rats. They clawed at his legs, clambering to get higher. Gus teetered for a moment, slamming a hand against the house for balance. A multitude of jaws fastened onto the Nomex and chewed. He felt them wiggling furiously against his inner thighs. The rats pressed against his feet and lower legs like foam, thick enough that he momentarily thought his limbs had been sheared. Swearing, he reached back with one hand, pulled the bat out of the scabbard, and thrust it down into the mass. Using the bat like a cane, he waded forward, slapping his visor down. The light from the fire inside the house flickered through the windows, emitting a glow. Each step was an experience in loathing and terror. Gus waded unsteadily, feeling as if he were in a blocked sewage system. The rats stayed with him, fastened into the Nomex by the sheer strength of their jaws. Gus started pawing at himself, swatting the creatures off. Something shifted underfoot, and he leaned heavily on the bat to maintain balance. Rats nipped at his gloved hands.

He fell.

A combination of deep snow and writhing bodies underfoot made him sprawl face forward, arms going out in front of him. Rat tails wormed across the visor as furry bodies struggled to get a bite of his helmet. He felt pinches along his hands from a rash of bites at the gloves. The visor stopped the jaws of a puppy-sized rat, and Gus lashed out in reflex, batting the thing away. Hundreds of mouths gnawed frantically on the material, and he felt them all, like forceps trying to get a grip of meat through a rubbery membrane. They wiggled against his neck. They squirmed over his arms and back. They swarmed his legs. His
crotch…

Gus freaked.

With a yelp, he scrambled to his knees, using the bat for balance while swiping frantically at his person, knocking off the rats. He squished the lives from several of the creatures just by grabbing and making a fist, crushing their tiny bones. He struggled to his feet and ran, coming close to falling over twice more before he’d gone two feet. A minute later, he ran into the side of a storage shed, smashing against its metallic shell. Screaming, he rolled against it over and over as if lathering paint onto its surface, crushing the rats clinging to his back. He jigged on the spot, crushing more under his feet.

He looked back toward the house. He’d only managed to travel about twenty yards. Flames flounced and grew behind windows, lighting up the area and revealing the deep tide of the rats. Two lumpy currents flowed around the house, converging into one solid mass which scurried straight for him. Somehow, they knew he was fresh meat.

After rolling his body against the shed one more time, Gus broke away and put more distance between himself and the wave. Knee-high drifts of snow sucked at his feet as he plowed ahead, gasping for breath. He punched through a line of trees and emerged into the backyard of a dark split-level house. He pounded across the yard and bounded up the back steps of the deck, feeling his strength ebb away. He ran to the door and grasped the handle. Locked, of course. He looked back. The rats struggled across the snow, the edge of their mass blackening it in the moonlight. They might have the greater numbers, but he had the longer legs.

Gus raised the bat and slammed it into the window, shattering the glass. He reached in and found the lock. Not sparing another look at what was behind, he plunged inside and slammed the door. Chest heaving, he looked back out and saw the rats scurrying toward the house like a dark wave. But he was inside, and at least he could get a few moments rest.

Something slammed up against him, ramming him into the side of the doorframe and moaning in his ear. Gus squirmed around and came eye to visor with a huge deadhead, perhaps the tallest he’d ever come across. The gimp pressed him against the wall while gnawing on his helmet with almost feverish gusto. Gus saw the lower jaw squeak and grind against his visor. He shoved the thing back a few feet, but the arms of the corpse, long and wasted like bony vines, held onto his head. Gus swung the bat low, making contact with its knee and bursting it like a hard-boiled egg. The zombie teetered for a second before it crashed to the floor, hissing as if surprised to be actually off its feet.

Using the bat, Gus bashed the head open like a bad melon. He straightened only to see two more moaning forms shambling toward him in the meager light made even darker by the visor. Frustrated, he swung hard, pivoting at the hips for extra power, and took one head clear off the shoulders of one shadowy figure. With only one zombie left, Gus dispatched it with weary urgency, smashing the head in with two swings.

He trembled with exertion and struggled to push his visor up, needing air.

Seconds later, he heard scratching at the base of the door.

“Well, fuck me.”

Gus made his way hurriedly through the house until he came to the front door. He had no idea where he was anymore, only that he had to put space between him and the pursuing plague. He stumbled down a short set of foyer steps he hadn’t noticed in the dark. His arms felt like weighted lead, and his chest ached with each breath. Staying in the house was out of the question, what with the fresh zombie corpses there to draw the rats.

He looked out the window set in the front door. Attracted by the fire, the sounds, the smell, or just out for a midnight walk, zombies milled in the middle of the street. Gus put his bat away and got out the shotgun. He readied the weapon, unlocked the door, and stepped out into the night. The gimps in the street moaned and balked for a moment, as if startled to find the living amongst them. Gus fired, exploding the night with the shotgun’s violent beat.
Boom
, a head blew apart.
Boom
, a body flung backward.
Boom
, another spun about with the top of its skull gone.
Boom
, a face disintegrated.
Boom, boom, boom
, zombies fell and did not get back up.

Click
.

The shotgun emptied just as he came face to face with a zombie that had snuck in from his right side. Not feeling particularly sporting, Gus whipped the weapon’s length up under the zombie’s chin, snapping its head back. He tripped it a second later, and stomped its face in with an eggshell crunch. Ducking and weaving the others, Gus fed shells from his bandolier into the Benelli.

He cut a path through the dozen or so that still stood, killing any that came too close. When the Benelli ran out of shells again, he climbed the front steps of another house, and reloaded as quickly and as calmly as he could in the face of five approaching dead.

Then it came to him. He didn’t need to get away from the rats. He just needed a diversion.

He only had four rounds loaded when he aimed and shot the first zombie reaching the steps. The force of the blast knocked the dead thing to the ground. Gus got two more shells into the weapon before the others got too close. He shot them at close range as well, taking his time and destroying their heads. With his back against the house, he pulled more shells from his bandolier and thumbed them into the shotgun. A red glow erupted above the roof of the house he’d just run through, adding color to the night. The fire was blazing.

Gus staggered to the front door. He tried the knob and found it unlocked. He threw open the door, slipped inside, and slammed the door behind him. One quick look out the window informed him that nothing was in pursuit. Yet. He studied the interior of the house and eventually spotted the stairway.

“Hey. Any dead fuckers in here?” He waited. Nothing came to greet him. “Hey! Dead fuckers!” He waited seconds longer before deciding the coast was clear and moving through the house. A few minutes later, he declared the place clean. Only then did he come full circle back to the front door and the staircase. Breathing hard, he climbed the stairs and moved into a hallway, searching for an attic, but saw no trapdoors.

“Fuck it.” He moved into one of the bedrooms facing the street. He peered through white curtains and saw the inferno burning one lot over. Open flames licked at the dark and smoke billowed. He watched the street and waited for the rats to appear.